This is part of a series about my DMing Princes of the Apocalypse, a D&D 5e adventure by and copyright Wizards of the Coast.

Table of Contents. The Party.

There will be SPOILERS. If you are playing in a PotA game, please don’t read this. If you are DMing a PotA game, or are a DM who wants to see what the ride was like … read on!

Table of Contents. The Party.

There will be SPOILERS. If you are playing in a PotA game, please don’t read this. If you are DMing a PotA game, or are a DM who wants to see what the ride was like … read on!

---

GM Recap

Session 2 (Day 10-11) “Welcome to Red Larch”: After an overnight, quickly-melting snow, the party became acquainted with the town, visiting contacts and gathering clues.

• The constable, Harburk Tuthmarillar, wanted help with bandits.
• Endrith Vallivoe, with the sundries shop, told Theren of an odd arrow-in-a-skull warning he’d heard of.
• Faith, William, and Moony had a useful trip to Haeleeya’s Bathhouse and Dress Shop.
• Moony learned the wonders of pickles from a half-orc named Grund.
• Nala chatted up the family at Tarnlar’s, bought a cloak, and learned from the kids about a mysterious warning of plague at Lance Rock.
• She also talked with Kaylessa Irkell, who pointed to “fell magic” and an “evil presence” at Lance Rock, and offered to hire the party to go investigate.
• Nala and Moony stumbled upon the barber (and fence/pawn shop) of Marlandro Gaelkur.
• Faith chatted with the priest Imdarr Relvaunder.
• Theren talked to some workers from Mellikho Stoneworks and learned of their being watched by stone-masked, cloaked figures during night shifts.

The party visited the quarry at night to investigate, but were chased off by Albaeri Mellikho; the party then called it a night.

The next day, they traveled down the Cairn Road to check out old bandit camps … and appear to have found one.

Player Recap

Morning of the first day: 

Breakfast of Champions: There is snow outside and the party heads down to breakfast. Crumble cake and small beer. Rough cooking because the kitchen had a fire and they are cooking outside. Moony enjoys the meats and William focuses on the porridge and eggs.

Harburk the Butcher and Constable: Shopkeeper identifies us easily as strangers and likely looking for Harburk. He tells us that the Mirabar caravan hasn’t come through town. Asks for some help with some trouble outside of Red Larch. Theren offers to help if the constable would help them with some additional questions. Harburk directs everyone to the contacts they ask about. 

Endrith and the missing manuscript: Denies any knowledge of the manuscript. Prattles a bit about this and that and then mentions something odd. I heard about the weirdest thing the other day: Someone saw a skull pinned to a tree with a black arrow with a warning or curse attached to it. Located half days on the Larch path and then East into the Sumber Hills. Theren buys a map before heading back to the inn.

Nala meets Helvur the Taylor: The finest clothier within a 100 miles (frequently interrupted). Nala inquires of the Delegation and he denies knowledge of their passing. He asks about their composition so he might be prepared for their arrival. Talk of the weather and offers a selection of cloaks for the cold. Nala buys one (

Moony learns about baths: Haeleya Hanadroum owner of the bath house and dress shop, located on the North end of town. Elegant and slightly foreign looking woman is chatting with a couple of women who have obviously been to the bath. The dresses are very nice and fancy. William waves at the vase in the window and indicates the “friends” from Water Deep suggested that she might be helpful in his tasks. She speaks of weather, robbers, goblins, ghosts  and earth moving. She is nothing if not a full of the gossip. She also recommends that we talk with Mistress Irkell at the inn. Quarry to the North has stopped working at night because of spooky things. Shift the conversation to Faith and dresses/accessories that she is looking at. William dissuades her from a fancy dress, but buys for her a scarf that is purple with gold and tassels. Moony tries to look into the baths to figure out what that is all about, but Haeleya intercepts him and explains the baths. He [a Tabaxi] is shocked and distressed. Haeleya suggests that there is a sunny bench out front if he prefers. 

Trouble at Quarry Mellikho #18: She declines that there is anything wrong, but the worker for the quarry calls out about the “watchers.” Mellikho changes subject: But you are are interest in something They say that there is treasure in Trickle Rock cave. It is up Larch Path and on a trail at the forked tree. Friendly banter and disparaging of the other quarry on the South side of town.

Return to the Inn of the Swinging Sword #2: Nala seeks out Kaylessa Irkell. She blames all the troubles on fell magic coming from Lance Rock. “It is an evil place” She is willing to hire us to check it out. The group catches up and shares what they have learned and then head back to the constable. They learn the details of the bandits to the South and his opinions of the other happenings.  

Wandering around town: Faith visits the temple and meets Imdarr Relvaunder, a priest of Tempest. He offers some advice to the young cleric on the honor of war and tells her about the Dwarf shrine of the Dancing Water in the hills. Moony meets Grund the half-orc pickle seller and discovers that he doesn’t like pickles or “strong water”. He also learns that there will be a market in 7 days. Moony and Nala discover Gaelkur’s, the barber/bar/pawn’s shop. William seeks out the caravan grounds. He chats with a lone dwarf merchant. He is heading to Waterdeep from Triboar. No trouble on the trip. William let’s him know about the bandits we met to the south. Nala returns to the tailor, a lady greets her. The cloak is almost done, she lets them know that she will be leaving early and would pick up the cloak early if convenient. Nala brings up the children’s adventure near Lance Rock. About 3 days ago they were hunting berries and goofing off when a Dwarf prospector appeared and shooed them away because there was plague.

Dinner at the Helm: The party gather for drinks and dinner. Theren walks over to a table of quarry workers and ask about the “Watchers”. They laugh and tell Theren he wants the Mellikho miners: They’re crazy. Later the other miners come in and Theren learns more about the “Watchers”. They showed up a couple of months ago when they were working the night shift. People in stone masks were watching them from the quarries edge.  Best description is they are creepy. The group decides to wander to the quarry to see if the watchers show up. Mellikho is not happy and sends us on our way. William dances in the fields behind the inn under the moonlight. He and Moony sneak back in later that night.

The Next Day

Looking for Bandits Down the Cairn Road: Following the road out of town we find two sites that had been abandoned for a while. Approaching the third site, we smell meat cooking

Red Larch Contacts:

• Harburk #11: Constable and Butcher. Has asked for our help.
• Endrith Valivoe #22: Seller of oddities and Theren’s contact
• Helvur Tarnlar #7: Runs a clothing store, reputedly the best for quality clothing for a hundred miles. His wife is Maegla Tarnlar, who appears to actually run the business. They have four rambunctious children: Vintul (m,10), Alia (f,9), Saeza (f,7), Thul (m,6).
• Haeleya Hanadroum #15: Bath house and dress shop, located on the North end of town. 
• Albaeri Mellikho #18: Owner of Mellikho stoneworks. Middle-aged and potbellied. She is usually in the quarry itself, overseeing things, cajoling and cursing the sweating stonecutters here. When not in the pit, she becomes much more jovial.
• Kaylessa Irkell – Inn of the Swinging Sword #2: Clean and well managed. The current home for the party. A recent fire destroyed the kitchen, so most meals are taken across the road at the Helm, (#3). 
• Imdarr Relvaunder #1: One of the visiting priests at the All-faiths Shrine in Red Larch. His holy symbol shows him to be a follower of Tempus, a god of War, Honorable Battle, and Unstinting Courage.
• Grund #21: Half-Orc pickle vendor. Not too bright.
• Marlandro Gaelkur #17: Barber, bar keep, fence and gathering spot. Shopkeeper and barber at Gaelkur’s in Red Larch. A slight man, quite the smiler, always willing to make a sale, or even buy something from you he thinks he can resell. A hint of an accent in his voice.

[Note: I think I gave my wife Inspiration for the length and detail of this player log.]

Game Notes

A lot of roles being played

So, to be open and honest, and as has already been mentioned to death: I am a story-teller. I love role-playing. I am big into the chit-chat between NPCs and PCs. 

Not everyone is, and that’s including some in the group playing this campaign. So I did need to balance and temper how I handled RP and social interactions with spell-slinging and sword-ringing.

I will admit that I was not always balanced when it came to Red Larch.

Part of the problem was wanting to slowly set up the situations and information. I didn’t want clues to just pop up, or Quest Givers to be standing on the corner with question marks floating over their head. I wanted to more organically build the characters’ knowledge, have them figure out where to go (with appropriate nudges) and what was their priority. 

That did make, though, for some slower sessions where nothing was set on fire or stabbed. Like this one. Mea culpa.

Still, by the time the session was over, they’d started learning about the whole Believers cult (though not by that name), had some clues as to the side quests outside of town (and were actually on their way to one), and were learning (from the get-go) about the weird weather. And I’d gotten to play a few dozen characters, which was fun (if a bit exhausting), at least for me.

There were some fun bits, too, and things that unexpectedly ended up lasting the entire campaign. Like the very nice winter cloak that Nala picked up, and was still carrying with her 2½ years (real-time) later.

Red Larch is fun because the players will likely (and, here, did) revisit it multiple times over the PotA campaign, and each time it and its denizens will have evolved due to the player characters’ actions (or inactions). Harburk’s final fate many episodes later (in my game) had more tragic/heroic meaning once the players had gotten to know him, the jobs he did, and his relationship with his wife.

I always try to remember the writers truism that everyone is the hero of their own story. Thinking about who these people were, their part in their local society, and their motivations for acting as they did, not only made for better sessions early days, but built NPCs that could be revisited later on.

Deconstructing and Reconstructing Red Larch

As mentioned previously, the Red Larch stuff is rich, complex, and crap for organization in the book (or its VTT version).

I did some initial organization in a big spreadsheet (feel free to borrow, modify, and enjoy) of places in Red Larch, the people there, how they fit into the Level 1-3 adventures (“Trouble in Red Larch”) and, in a bit less detail, how they evolve for the Level 4 main adventure chain (“Rumors of Evil”).

But I realized pretty quickly that I was thinking too small. The Roll20 Journal is an incredible tool, basically a mini-wiki that you can add too, break apart, and cross-link to an extreme.

So … why have a bunch of individuals in a single, long document/handout. For that matter, why have a bunch of key locations in a single long document/handout, too?

Setting a trend for the entire campaign, I basically deconstructed and then reassembled in more usable bits all of Red Larch. I created individual Journal handouts for all the significant players, and for many of the significant buildings, grabbing imagery (for private use only) for both to make it all feel more real and more worthy of investment of attention and interest for the players.

It worked out, to my mind at least, swimmingly.

I also created tokens for individual NPCs when they either did not exist or were just “names in a circle” tokens. I made use of both sets of generic tokens you can find out there on the Internet, or I took the images I’d found and used the the amazing TokenStamp tool to create them. 

There are two ways to put together entries of this sort in Roll20:

1. Create a basic Journal Handout for the person, including a picture. Create a token from the picture. Stash the token, on the GM layer, somewhere on the map so you can find it. This is easy to setup, and quick to open, but can require a bit of searching for that token (which is non-functional) to deploy.
2. Create a basic Journal Character for the person, including a picture. Create and associate a token for the person. When you want them, drag them onto the map. This is a bit more difficult to set up, slower to pull up the hand-out, but easier to deploy a usable token.

I did a little of both of these, which was annoying later on.

What all this meant was that whenever the party encountered someone (or somewhere) for the first time, or even later, I had a handout I could share on the screen to set up or refresh the players’ memories, and, for characters, a token so that they could see at a glance who was where and chatting with whom in town.

All in all, I created many dozens of new Journal Handouts and tokens for the campaign as time went on, and reorganized the entire Journal to my use. It was a lot of work, but it helped me feel like I’d done my part, and it sure made my life easier.

After a session or two, I also picked up a nice Roll20 marketplace item, POI Markers CC, that gave me some markers I could use to identify the various buildings around the Red Larch map (and, later, on the Dessarin Valley map). Not necessary, but a nice touch, and something I’ll use in the future. (No, I don’t get a kickback; I just like the product.)

Updating the Journal

I also made the effort to update those journal entries after each session to reflect the interaction the player characters had had with people and places, something that would come in handy for both players and the GM in the games to come.

This was a tactic I used, successfully, throughout the campaign.  Trying to remember that weird engraving, or where you last saw Kaylessa, or where Lance Rock is? It’s all in the journal, not just for this visit to Red Larch, but for every visit to Red Larch.

As you approach town, you see Harburk running toward you.

Sorry, who’s he again?

(“Share With Players” the Harburk journal entry I have linked to this part of the campaign.

Oh, him. I ask how his wife is.

Ditto for every other town, location, group, individual, and noteworthy thing. It was a heck of a lot of extra work, but it made life a lot easier for me in-game, and for the players, too when they availed themselves of it. And by taking an hour or so after each session to do it and all the other note-taking, I did it while it was still fresh in my memory (which could be refreshed the following week).

My favorite part of the session

Playing Grund, the half-wit half-orc pickle briner living rough out at the market grounds, interacting with Moony the Tabaxi, was a hoot. Enough so that I brought Grund back a few times, later in the game.

---

<< Session 1 | Session 3 >>