Backstory, part one

After the party first discovered the abandoned guard post, they rescued an injured guard named Everett. He guided them to the location of a dragon cult and shrine, where they recovered a rare magic item revered by the kobold cultists as a talisman to summon and empower the adult red dragon, Antaraxes Glavenis. Concerned about what powers the necklace contained, as well as why the cultists desired it so greatly, he suggested consulting a wizard named Anastasia living high in the mountains nearby to research the necklace and find some answers. The party opted to continue their journey upriver, so Everett made his way on his own to the wizard, with a promise to deliver any information he could discern, somehow.
Everett’s plan was to visit the wizard, gather the information, then cross the mountains directly to Aron’s Bowl in order to reconnect. Unfortunately, the information the wizard needed to recover was more difficult to attain than expected, and involved a separate journey of their own to gather. They found information that suggested the existence of an earlier cult devoted to the dragon that had a shrine deep in the mountains. The necklace was mentioned in connection with this shrine, but the shrine itself was targeted and the cult destroyed over 150 years ago, slipping into legend as a lost location. Everett and Anastasia went in search of the forgotten shrine, and found it - reconstructed! They were careless in their approach, and taken captive. After weeks of captivity, Anastasia finally managed to escape her captives and recover her spell book, free Everett, and slip away. She had used her time and limited magic to interrogate the cultists about their plans, and after discovering the location of several key histories and artifacts revered by the group, made sure to grab them with Everett’s help on the way out. They disappeared into the hills, found a secure location to hide in while they learned what they could and to allow the searching for them to subside.
After another week, they managed to make their way cautiously back to Anastasia’s tower, but with so many trials and so much elapsed time, the original plan of crossing to Aron’s Bowl was out the window. Anastasia suggested the use of a Dream spell to send Everett to visit one of the party in their dreams in order to communicate the information they had discovered.