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!

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GM Recap

Session 31 (Day 32) 

1. The party charged upstairs — first Moony, then Faith — to face the defenses of Elizar Dryflagon. A Flame Wall, then a Stinking Cloud, plus smoke mephits from Elizar’s pipe — held the party in check for a while, but eventually they defeated Elizar and took from his body the Fifth Key.
2. They found Grund upstairs in the giant-bat-ridden belfry of the hall. He’d been defended by Flix, the sprite.
3. They rejoined the others down on ground level, where the Guardian who had been pushed off the scaffold had been being interrogated by Urshnora and the various druids. 
4. They decided to take the rest of the afternoon off to clean up, research the items found, and relax. Urshnora approached Faith and said she was leaving the group, going with the young druids, rather than betraying the party and trying to steal the Fifth Key.
5. Long Rest. DING! Level 7!

Player Recap

Where there is smoke

Faith finds that the Azer had a finely crafted war hammer and claims it. Below on the ground floor are a couple of injured guards, previously on the third floor, and a handful of magmin. The guards are trying to stay out of site of the hole in the ceiling and the magmin are concentrated on the side near the tunnel, casually burn any wood around. 

The voice we heard outside calls to the group. Are you sure you want to come up hear and beard the lion in his den. I’m sure that William knows the foolishness of that. Moony explores the next floor up. There are several bedrolls but it is otherwise empty. The floor creaks and feels very unstable. As he debates whether to continue up to the next floor, a figure appears at the top of the stairs leading up. Elizar is happy to see Moony and with a wave of his hand a wall of fire springs up between them on the stairs.

Moony comes racing back down the stairs, well-singed. Faith races up the stairs to confront Elizar. She dodges the wall of fire and then decides to charge through it. Elizar is surprised at her appearance and loses concentration of his spell when she attacks him. He back away from her, taking another hit from Faith. He puffs wildly on his pipe and 4 smoke mephits appear around Faith. The Spirit Guardians attack both Elizar and the imps. The imps attack back and blind Faith with burning embers. A Stinking Cloud fills the room and the stairway. The group slowly makes their way into the room and through the cloud. The only clear space is on top of the desk and book case. The group takes aim at Elizar from their elevated perch. The imps and Elizar take damage from the Spirit Guardians until eventually, Elizar dispels it the smoke. Once the bulk of the party can see Elizar, he goes down quickly. 

Loot is recovered and the 5th key is found. A couple of thumps come from above. Faith moves up the ladder to see what is there. As she lifts the trap door a creature streaks bye. The sprite Flix says They’re here! They’re here! and rushes back up. Faith and William follows them back up the ladder. They find a damaged Grund in the corner. As Faith calls out to Grund, the giant bats attack. They are dealt with swiftly and come around unscathed except for the reek of guano.

Everyone returns to the courtyard. The other have captured the guard that was thrown off the scaffolding and questioned him extensively. Gariena has awakened and tell her tale of being kidnapped and imprisoned as sacrifice for the Wicker Man. There is some debate on what to do with the guard; when no one takes a firm stand, Urshnora steps up and kills him.

The questions wind down and the various groups leave the courtyard and returns to their camps. The party and the young druids celebrate for a while and have some quiet conversations. Urshnora tells Faith that she will travel with the young druids to keep them safe and see where life brings her. 

The party awakes feeling much stronger!

Game Notes

The Battle of Scarlet Moon Hall

This started last session, of course, with the party turning a big chunk of the side of the tower into mud — fortunately (DM handwaves) not collapsing the tower itself (with the party on its scaffolding), just opening a big honking hole into the main room of the tower. In the ensuing battle, not only were the Eternal Flame mooks on the main floor taken out, but any strays sleeping on the floor above.

(All of this laid out on my own map of the Hall, as previously described, harrumph.)

That left just Elizar up in his office, once the rogue had deftly avoided the fragile floor on the next level. I enjoyed playing Elizar as annoyingly self-confident, even after I realized I had not played him quite as well / deadly as I might have. Still, Action Economy would have doomed him sooner or later, so I enjoyed my little victories (Wall of Flames, blinding from Mephits, Stinking Cloud) where I could get them.

After that, it was pretty much just aftermath.

Elizar, in some ways, represents one of the bigger problems with PotA (and not just that campaign):  cool characters that it would be fun to do more with, but aren’t written to easily do so without a lot of serious change to the plot.

It might have been interesting, in retrospect, to have him be the common “recruiter” that people mention having invited them to the Rite of the Wicker Giant (“A tall man, he was, with a pipe. To hear his voice, you’d follow him anywhere …”). It might also have been interesting (to maybe snitch a bit from Tolkien) to have a vision of him walking the campground at night, observing and picking and choosing (or rejecting) his new recruits.

Riffing off of Christopher Lee both as Saruman and Lord Summerisle works well, given the obvious borrows the module provides. A good DM should figure out ways to better use him while still leaving some mystery for the players.

The Return (and Departure) of the Guest Stars

This episode largely wrapped up (save for some farewells next time) a lot of the plot threads that had been hanging around. Part of that was ending an overly long dungeon, but part of it was realizing this was the last of the Haunted Keeps, which meant the party was about to do some actual dungeon-diving into Tyar-Besil.  The only question would be where.

At any rate, we finally learned about how the Eternal Flame folk the night before had captured Gariena, her pixies, and Grund, then made it to look like she’s simply packed up and left the campground. One of the pixies, Flix, had escaped, and tried to warn the party, but hadn’t been understood; they couldn’t get to Gariena and the other pixie (who died of its injuries), so instead went up to the attic/belfrey of the Hall, and protected the injured Grund from the giant bats there.

Urshnora, meanwhile, has been busy with the Young Druids, sufficient to bring her to a narrative decision point, choosing to go off with them as their mentor, continuing (one hopes) her redemption arc along the way. She announced it to Faith, the cleric who had been trying to sway her toward good (whilst dealing with her own alignment issues).

That she participates in the questioning of one of the fire cultist guards, and then offs him when he’s answered what he could — well, the party might have done that, too, and she did say she wanted to revenge herself on the Eternal Flame cult for the destruction of Rivergard Keep (and that whole water-vs-fire thing).

I enjoyed having Urshnora along, both as a potential threat (the casual way she mentions she had intended to steal the Fifth Key from the party) and as a voice for the DM. It was time for her to move on (I decided not to level her up with them, at least not overtly), but I’d miss her …

… until, of course, I brought her back again.

Bits and Bobs

So, yeah, the party picked up the Necklace of Elizar Dryflagon, and, presumably, the ability to use the four necklaces to form the Fifth Key.

We’ll see how — and where — that works out for them.

And, yes, I finally leveled the players again, to 7, and to bring them in milestone sync with having taken down all the Haunted Keeps. This represents a sea change in the campaign, as we’ll see, and one appropriate for a level.

Or so I thought. In reality, I’d bumped them a level high (The Temple of Howling Hatred, their probable next stop, was designed for Level 6). Ah, well …

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