This is an article in an ongoing series about my DMing Princes of the Apocalypse, a D&D 5e adventure published by and © Wizards of the Coast.

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 just a general D&D DM who wants to see what the ride was like … read on!

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GM Recap

Session 9 (Day 15-17)

1. Moony scouted out some of the as-yet-unrevealed portions of Feathergale Spire (3), Nala contemplated the hungry ferocity of the Initiates, William camped out on the roof, and Faith had a dream.
2. The heroes were invited in the morning to a rooftop assembly where, under heavy Knight presence, Thurl asked them to investigate the possibly-evil, possibly-Black Earth monks of the Sacred Stone Monastery, far into the hills.
3. Choosing not to fight over it, the heroes traveled east to the Dessarin River and Rivergard Keep to gain transit up to the monastery. Along the way they were attacked by a trio of Ankheg (eek!).
4. They camped out overnight, short of their target, to regain spells and HP and so forth. DING! Level 4!
5. They arrived at Rivergard Keep. They were met at the heavily guarded gates by an officer named Holger, and were escorted into the presence of the apparent lord of the castle, Jolliver Grimjaw, who did not seem pleased to meet them.

Player Recap

After Savra leaves Moony and Nala, Moony quietly slips out and goes to the other room. Moony “Are any of you joiners?” He explains Savra’s offer and wonders if information might be gained by pretending to join. At Moony’s prompting, Faith provides extensive background on the elemental practices and realms. After some discussion, Moony returns to his room to share the knowledge with Nala.

A bit later William leaves the South room and walks up to the roof. There are a couple knights and their vultures on guard, looking out at the fog filled valley.

Nala is thinking over the dinner and remembers that there was something odd about the initiates. She realizes that the initiates only spoke when spoken to. There is a sameness about them, they move in a similar fashion and when at rest there hand steeple in a triangle pointing down. They are also hungry, lean but not emaciated.

Moony gather up some tools and heads down to the entry hall. The initiate in the main hall does not pay attention to Moony, muttering to himself swaying slightly. Quietly opening the door off of the staircase, Moony finds a bunk room with 4 sleepers in the bunks. He moves onto the room off of the entryway; it is well lit with several initiates standing at windows looking out at the entrance. He steps back and quietly closes the door unnoticed. The final unexplored floor draws the curious cat. There are four doors on this level, all of them with raised bars on the outside. At the first door, he hears some chanting or praying on the other side. No noise comes from the second door, but it is well sealed. Through the third door, Moony hears sobbing; likely this is Savra’s room. 

As he descends back to the main floor, the initiate is still standing at the window. He overhears the words free.. free.. Moving to a better spot to see, Moony observes that the initiate, while doing something on his chest, is chanting, “Free me, I must be free, I will be free, I am free”.

Another bad dream for Faith – Looking from a very great height, feeling weightless as you slowly circle the landscape, a narrow valley in the hills, a river winding through it … your eye catches on something below … your vision is narrowing, as though you were suddenly dropping, dropping, the screaming of the wind in your ears, sight fading to blackness but the screaming, the howling continues, like cries of wild beast, the angry shouts of the mad, echoing from the walls about you, screaming to be released to rend and slay and … Savra knocking on the door. Savra asks the group to join Thurl on the pinnacle. Faith explains that she needs 15 minutes to pray first, but will join them shortly. Faith asks Theren to look for William to let him know. Savra then goes and wakes Nala and Moony. They get ready and wait for Faith to finish her prayers before heading up together.

Theren arrives at the top of the stairs and William wakes up. There is the sound of a lot of bird flapping. In addition to the two guards, there are four mounted knights. Thurl is on the opposite side of the tower. He invites us over to him. The knights and Savra are not looking as friendly as they were last night. Savra appears to be angry at our turning down the offer of joining the knights. The others knights are giving her side-long looks and appear to side with her.

Thurl greets us and again toasts our victory. He says that we would make good knights, but … You are brave and honorable people. You would have made fine Feathergale Knights, if circumstances were different. But your lives’ paths, your station … and your narrow vision, all weigh in the balance. I have a proposal for you. To the east and into the hills lies the so-called Sacred Stone Monastery. Those reclusive monks harbor, I believe, great evil, perhaps even association with the Cult of the Black Earth — their very name reeks of their bound and stifled souls. Go there. See what you find. If there is evil, dash it upon the very stones they claim for their symbol, and mark yourselves champions for liberty . Do this for me, and I will know you are no threat to the freedom of my people, or the empowering of each individual in the realm. Do this for me, and you will be greatly rewarded. 

Nala asks more about what Thurl is asking us to do. William senses that the party is a weapon being pointed at a target. He is more interested in the fate of the target than the party’s welfare. Thurl offers some rations for the trip. They go with Savra to collect the rations and head out. Thurl sees them to the gate and wishes them well. 

The journey towards the river is quiet at first. The party discussed their impressions of strangeness about the tower. 

Shortly past the Shallow Graves, walking through the grasslands the party feels another tremor hit. This is different from the tremors they have been feeling lately. The earth upslope is breaking apart and starting to roll down hill. Abruptly, a giant insect erupts from the ground. Its long antenna twitching, hook-like limbs clawing out the dirt. The first Ankheg moves to attack as a second and third Ankheg emerge from the ground. Spells and arrows fly, weapons ring out, acid spews, but the fate of the Ankheg is set as one by one they go down. (The GM weeps as the final Ankheg misses his cool bite attack).

The party moves on and as it is getting dark they choose to camp for the night rather than press on toward the keep. Refreshed and unmolested overnight the group awakes. They feel stronger and more competent. After wondering at their own changes, they notice a wolf curled up on William’s bedroll. 

Shortly after breaking breakfast they arrive at the gates of Riverguard Keep. They are questioned rather rudely by the guard. William explains that they merely want to go up-river and if they want proof of their good deeds, he can walk out and see the three giant insects that they killed last night.  Faith offers to feed any in need and is snubbed. Moony takes over the conversation, reiterating that the group wants to catch a boat heading north. Eventually they pass into the castle yard and follow the guard to the great hall of the keep.

A large gentleman stands up from behind a table cluttered with papers and says “Who the devil are you?”

Game Notes

Sooner or later, the party is intended to defeat the Feathergale Knights.

This party declined, for the moment. Courteously.

Which pulled me up short. I’d thought the confrontation on the spire-top was the moment that bloodletting would occur — the FKs were scary, but not that scary — but the party sort of knuckled forehead and told Thurl they’d be happy to go check out Sacred Stone Monastery. 

I didn’t want to just start a melee from the FKs’ side — it made no sense as set up (especially as Thurl really was pointing them as a gun toward the Black Earth cult), and would feel very railroady.

Okay, fine … but … what about Milestone Leveling?

They hadn’t really taken down Feathergale Spire … though they had engaged with it a lot and learned from it. But Rivergard Keep was optimized for Level 4. I didn’t want the party wiped out (in my own way I was as paranoid about a TPK as the players), and I suspected it was a location that would not be easily escaped from if they got into a fight. (An interesting concern, given what happened the next session.)

So … I let them ding up to 4th Level. I’m still not sure if that was a mistake or not, but it wasn’t the last I made, certainly.

Bits and Bobs

All the cults have hand gestures that are used to signal who they are and, outside their strongholds, maybe signal others of their kind. These gestures (which sort of echo the cult symbols) are sometimes labeled in the Campaign As Written (CAW) as a way to prove bona fides when going into someplace secure. 

But the number of opportunities to point out someone is doing something with their hands, without really lampshading it, are pretty limited. I tried, but it wasn’t something the party ever picked up on.

The creepy initiate at the window muttering about wanting to be free was, by the bye, doing more scarifying. But his back was turned, so Moony couldn’t see it.

I have no idea what Faith was dreaming about. A Manticore? Could be.

Poor Savra. She’s cut herself off from home, but still misses it. She wants to be Thurl’s indispensable lieutenant, but he just uses her. She meets some cool new people who seem to want to be friends, and then they turn down her offer to join her exclusive club.  No wonder she’s crying during Moony’s search of the tower.

Faith’s player had her studiously praying every morning. Just a bit of character color … that I was able to do a very creepy thing with down the line …

Hey, we got a hit on the Random Encounter Table for this level, and, hey, it was Ankhegs. Coolness! Even if they got taken down far faster than I expected (a common theme through the entire campaign).

The entrance into Rivergard Keep was much less friendly than that into Feathergale Spire, and the wrap-up on their being presented to Jolliver and having him snap out, “Who the devil are you?” was fun. I had no idea what the party was going to do the next time, but I suspected they’d be coming to blows with the pirate lord of Rivergard Keep.

The Landing Page

It was around this time that I started crafting a Roll20 landing page for the campaign — a map where all the players would land when they signed in each game before I shifted attention to the actual campaign map. I mean, sure, you can have the “campaign book cover” landing page as provided in Roll20, but it’s a scosh busy and also a snapshot from a moment of time in the campaign.

What I had evolved over time, but its elements included:

• The campaign name
• A cute campaign logo
• The session number and day number of the session
• The phase of the moon (which the druid asked for at one point)
• A tableau of the player character tokens
• A tableau (where it could be done without spoilers) of tokens of figures they were likely to (re)meet the next session
• A tableau of tokens of prominent enemies they had encountered, with a note as to their status.
• A list of outstanding questions (i.e., clues I had dropped, things they had thought might need more investigation, etc.), as a reminder of what they had been focused on last time (or what I wanted them to focus on this time). Some of it was sometimes a bit tongue in cheek. This list also showed up in the campaign page in Roll20.
• A map of the Dessarin Valley, showing where they were (eventually maps of the dungeons they were in, with unexplored areas masked, showing where they were), as a reminder.
• Once they got into the Temples and Nodes, a “band tour” listing of the places they had explored.

I eventually set up an amusing (to me, at least) layout as if this was all being done as a Quinn Martin production series intro:.

ELEMENTARY … a Hill-Consortium Production … Starring … [player character tokens] … with Guest Stars … [various likely folk they would encounter, no spoilers] … Special Guest Star … [usually the main baddie I expected them to face, no spoilers]. Tonight’s episode … [episode title].

To avoid spoilers, I crafted a series of “question mark” tokens I could fill in.

Yeah, it’s not the prettiest thing, and it sort of grew like Topsy, but it served my purposes.

You can google Roll20 landing page and actually get a lot of cool examples (and some templates for sale from enterprising entrepreneurs).

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