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. But 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 36 (Day 35)
In the Temple of Howling Hatred …

1. 

   The party explored to the east from the Plaza of Moradin, trying to find supplies. They did that, in what looked to be the feast-hall of Tyar-Besil‘s royalty. They also found a flock of Kenku, whom they quickly dispatched. And they found a Purple Worm skeleton, rising out of the ground in the middle a room, presumably slain in an ancient battle with the Dwarves.

2. Walking back to the gatehouse, behind the pyramid, they were attacked by a Water Elemental from the river, who grabbed Aldrik and carried him away down the waterfall into the eternal darkness below. Bummer.
3. With supplies and arms and survival advice from Nala, the freed hostages  were sent back up the tunnel path to Feathergale Spire and, they hoped, safe passage home. Ko went with them to keep them safe.
4. The party returned to the Plaza. Looking west there were what were possibly royal quarters or tombs, too crumbled to easily tell without more exploration. There was also a presumed graveyard/mausoleum, behind ornate doors … that had been spiked, recently, from the outside. The party demurred any further exploration.

5. 

   Instead, they headed to the southeast, and, getting past a locked gate, found themselves in what they presumed was the area of Tyar-Besil occupied by the Crushing Wave cult. Turning away from the harbor (?), they checked out a door to the north, with multiple people examining it and listening through it. Thus, when they opened the door, the Bugbears inside were not surprised.

6. A long, pitched battle ensued, with the Bugbears augmented by a large group of Reavers attracted from the next room by the loud spellfire, as well as Morbeoth, a strange dwarf with a glowing white eye and powerful Fear magic. All that was countered by aggressive attacks, a well-placed fireball, and other AoE spells, leading to final victory party, though Morbeoth got away.

Player Recap

Aldrik Does Not Get Eaten By A Purple Worm

After clearing the batter, the group continues to the East. Moony takes point. When he gets to the first cross corridor there are screams and phrases that sound like Aerisi. Everyone assumes it is more Kenku. They locate the feasting hall where there are plenty of supplies for the refugees. William decides to leave via the far door since there is another area on the map labeled supplies. Unfortunately, there is a room full of Kenku across from the dining room. The Kenku are surprised by Ko and attack. They are quickly defeated. When William chases down one of Kenku he sees the skeleton of a purple worm that is embedded in the floor.  

On the way back to the doors, the party is surprised by a large water creature. It surrounds the group and knocks several people prone. It then grapples Aldrik and flees. There is a rumble from the water “Not consort … not key … not plunder … SACRIFICE …”

With supplies and arms and survival advice from Nala, they sent the freed hostages back up the tunnel path to Feathergale Spire and, they hoped, safe passage home. Ko went with them to keep them safe. Back to the purple worm. William works his way down the cavern created by the purple worm. The bones provide enough grips to climb, but William also uses a rope. There is a sense that something is very wrong down there … watching. 

Next they decide to explore the area labeled “Royalty”. It is basically rubble. There are doors in the North wall that lead to the area “The Sacred Dead”. The doors are spiked from the outside. The group decides to leave the dead and heads to the Southeast and the corridor with the water marking. A large chained gate blocks their path. Moony picks the lock and they continue onward. 

The area opens up into an area with a lake shore directly in front of them. There are boats on the shore. A passage branches off to the north. Moony pauses at a door and listens. There is a conversation on the other side, but he doesn’t understand it. One by one the party members approach to listen. Eventually angry noises make the party realize that they have been heard. Faith bursts the door open to find a number of Bugbears in a room with bedrolls and supplies. There is a loft along one wall. Faith and Nala begin the battle … Theren fireball … Reavers arrive … Morbeoth enters the room with mirror image and casts a cone of fear catching Moony, Faith, and Nala

Morbeoth says, “You idiots, I can pay you twice what Thaluna is offering you. She is just using you” and flees through the door to the north.

Game Notes

A multi-faceted title

“Empty Nests.”  Which subtitle referenced the general sense of birds/Air and the emptiness of the Temple of Howling Hatred, but also the Kenku who remained, and also that our son was headed back to school for spring semester.

Challenges

Walking into this game, I had two challenges. Well, it turned out I had three, but we’ll get there

1 – Mission-Driven Players

First, this set of players is very mission-driven. Though I joke about their being murder-hobos, they really aren’t. They all have their eyes on the prize. A lot of DMs complain their parties found the Mirabar Delegation driver for the campaign incredibly weak, but my players were definitely still actively inquiring about it. Either I’ve done a good job of building that narrative structure to feel important, or they have that dedication to a goal as an internalized thing, or they know that’s the sort of thing as a DM I like and are seeking to go with the flow.

In any case, this would usually be a good thing. Except it means that they are also hesitant sometimes to do things that don’t seem on-point, and at other times are very bold to dive in if they think that’s the way to further the mission. Which can make for headaches of their own.

In this evening’s case, there was still a fair amount of the northern Temple of Howling Hatred to explore. As far as they were concerned, though, their only goal was finding some supplies for the freed captives and then move on to the corridor with the Water symbol sand-blown on the floor (an addition I made to all the cult interfaces here in Tyar-Besil). 

This also tied into their utter disinterest in returning to the surface any time soon. Which means the Cult Retaliation threads go by the wayside, as well as the other side quests up above. Is that a bad thing? I kinda feel like it is, but it may also just be what needs to happen, if that’s what makes the players happy. There’s cool stuff along the way, but that may not be enough reason to push it.

2 – What to do about Aldrik?

The second challenge was what to do about Aldrik, whose player was headed off to spring semester and whose Friday nights there were otherwise booked. This was complicated / enhanced by (a) need to have hooks to bring him back in at the end of the semester (but not make the campaign hinge on it, since there’s a finite possibility he could be away from home and similarly out of pocket over the summer), and (b) how to make it fit in with meta narrative that I’d already fit him with when he was previously away: his importance to the cults occupying Tyar-Besil because of his heritage (as the last of the bloodline of the Besilmer kings, which would give him — and thus them — access to additional powers and abilities and Lair Actions around the city).

I’d had an idea. Then I had another idea. Then my wife had an idea that would have been best of all in some ways, but Aldrik’s player wasn’t as interested in. More below.

It’s Kenku-hunting season!

I had some fun with the Kenku lurking in northern area of the Air Temple map. In the campaign, they make haunted house noises to scare the players away. I decided to riff off that, but with a purpose. They did start with screams and cries, but then began to mock Aerisi with some of her catch phrases (cough things I didn’t get to have her say during the final battle cough), ending in mocking laughter. Then they hid.

The message from the Kenku was, “Hey, we didn’t like Aerisi, either, so you do you and we’ll do us, and let’s not fight.”

The message the party heard was, “Hey, come over here and see what’s happening so that we can ambush you.”

Which is why when Ko the Magic Dragonet stumbled into where the half-dozen of them were hiding in one of the back chambers, a slaughter party ensued. Sigh.

I mean, yeah, I’ve had the Kenku seem like murderous thugs in previous encounters, because that’s kind of their role here. But …

When is a map not a map?

As part of the continuing pet peeve of disconnects between text and illustration, room A13 is marked as an old dwarvish feasting chamber (Vergadin’s Hall), now used for meditation by the HH cultists. Per the description, wooden tables and chairs are scattered around the place, and three large casks are behind a bar (empty). 

Which would be great, except the tables and chairs in the map are perfectly set up, like it was an ongoing tavern. And there are no large casks (which I then manually added in).

And it’s a writing change that or discrepancy from the art that looks bad but doesn’t mean anything. I think the idea was that, well, the self-starving HH cultists wouldn’t have a refectory, so they just go there to meditate. But there’s almost certainly some cause to eat, esp. among mercenaries like the Kenku.

Just a random irritation.

Fools plan to rush in …

Okay, I mentioned the players staying on task?  I’d had Bero, the halfling captive from the shrine on the south end of the zone mention not just his wife being taken, but a “fancy human” and some other troublemakers. I’d intended that as a reference to Deseyna Majarra, the Mirabar Delegation noble who shows up with Bero’s wife, Nerise, about to be sacrificed in the Air Node in a later act.

One of the players caught it and this episode, while they were stocking up on the supplies they found in the feast hall, she interrogated the freed captives about the matter, confirming  the woman in question resembled Deseyna as described to them way back when. The hounds begin to bay again …

So one cool element off at this corner of the map is a chamber with a desiccated Purple Worm head/skeleton sticking out of the ground, showing the dwarf axe injuries that killed it (with some dwarf skeletal remnants in its gullet). This is not only just a cool (and frightening) thing itself, but the skeleton is a vertical, climbable tunnel that goes down to the Fane of the Eye. Which will be very useful … later.

(It’s actually a neat touch. This almost certainly happened in the era when Tyar-Besil was crumbling under repeated assaults. This Purple Worm breaks in frighteningly close to the palace, is defeated — but the Dwarves can’t do anything about it because they’re fully engaged in battle elsewhere. They just pull out all their supplies from the room and go on with their long, twilight struggle.)

I really wanted them to find it, but they really didn’t want to go that direction, until they got into the inadvertent battle with the Kenku and two of them fled down the corridor to it, which corridor they hadn’t even seen.

Exit, Stage Down

The dead purple worm (which dates back, by the way, about five thousand years old, so, whoa) was, by the way, my first exit point for Aldrik. I’d long joked about the situation of having to remove him from play for a while (as that part was no secret), and joked about having him be swallowed whole by a Purple Worm and carried off.

What if, I thought, I get him checking out something inside the worm skeleton, and the whole thing collapses, bearing him down into the Fane, the tunnel choked off behind him?

So I had this in my back pocket as they poked around at things here briefly — but too briefly, and Aldrik never went near the thing.

Cue Aldrik’s exit, as the party, escorting the freed hostages to the gatehouse, had to cross and march along the underground river, and chose to do so on the back side of the pyramid, by the waterfall. 

And the Water Elemental swoops out, slams into the narrow causeway, tossing people aside, grappling Aldrik, dragging him off and over the waterfall.

And over the roar of the fall, the water thrums with vibrations, and you hear a voice [Gar Shatterkeel]: “Not consort … not key … not prize … sacrifice.”

I had to tweak the Water Elemental a bit, giving him what I called a Whirlpool attack that mirrors the Whirlwind attack of Air Elementals, but keeps some of the grappling power of Whelm. I wanted to play it somewhat legit, even if I was going to railroad the result.

And, actually, playing fair with the initiative and surprise, and damage, the party landed some good blows on the Water Elemental. They could have defeated it in a stand-up fight (if they could have stood up), but with its hit-and-run nature, they never really stood a chance.

Given the spooky voice, and having seen something very much like this before at Feathergale Spire (and since folk realized what was happening in meta terms), the party took it with some aplomb. Aldrik’s player was LOLing in the chat channel to me — he knew he was going to be yoinked, and we’d even discussed the Water Elemental fight, but he’d been surprised at how relatively early it had happened in the game. 

Still, he played it perfectly straight. Bravo.

The idea with Gar’s voice is I’d decided since Aerisi’s death the distribution of the other Prophets, since they all get visions to retreat once the party has slain one of their number. Marlos and Vanifer were going to their nodes, respectively — both seemed like fun nodal battles to play, whichever way the party goes. Gar, more of a pirate-style villain, was instead going to the altar of Elemental Evil to try and get the Eye to assist him. And Aldrik would make a perfect sacrifice (and his captivity a great holding pen). And if the party could get to the Fane of the Eye in four play-months, the timing would be perfect. 

And, if it took longer, as expected, then Aldrik escaped, or Aldrik got kidnapped by one of the other Prophet’s forces and taken to wherever he needed to be. It wouldn’t change the story much, and, honestly, changing movie scripts to shoot around schedule conflicts with the stars is not unknown.

Coming up with elegant or interesting ways to exit or re-enter a player character can really enhance the player experience — both for those whose characters are coming in and out, and for the rest of the party. Having a reason for those entries that plays into the campaign makes it all seem like everyone planned it that way from the beginning, which is kind of cool.

Farewell to the hostages

The freed hostages had been fully supplied with all the hard tack and jerky they could stuff in their pockets, and all the Kenku and cultist weapons they could carry without hurting themselves, so it was time to send them on their way. The Dragonborn fighter sketched out the tactical situation up above, and how best to deal with the Gnolls there. None of the hostages were happy about it, but given the laser-focus of the players on proceeding, they didn’t have much alternative about it.

At the last moment, William, the druid, sent his Drake Companion with them (though it was unclear at the moment how far away Ko could get from William, or how best/fastest to summon him back). It was actually a compassionate gesture, though, esp. as our party was now down to five bipeds.

The Purple Worm turns

The party knew of a few ways off this level — the corridor with the Water Cult symbol, the howling shaft in the pyramid that was a short-cut to the Air Node (eek!), the Purple Worm skeleton hold down to the Fane, and a passage noted on the map “to the Forges.”

To my surprise (and dismay), the plurality voted for the Purple Worm route.

Okay, I had just sent Aldrik down to the Fane. It was way too early for them to catch up with him. Also, the Fane was designed for Level 10, and these folk were Level 7. The possible scenarios:

1. They TPK in the Fane. Whoops.
2. They steamroll their way forward, skipping tons of content, successfully overcoming the obstacles through the rest of the campaign (with a few grudging group levels on the way).
   1. More likely, they manage the Fane (which is not that high level), but then TPK in a node, because those places are nasty.
3. They are partially killed early, but unless it’s the cleric who can rez, they continue on until they TPK.
4. They are partially killed early enough that they can withdraw, go back up, do things in a more logical order (maybe even withdraw to the surface), and things hum along as the gods intended.

Yes, I know that as GM it’s my job to avoid poor TPKs, but also to let such a thing, if fully warranted by the players’ informed decisions, happen. But I really didn’t want to see the party wiped out.

Fortunately, I had figured out a way to straddle the line — the following added rule:

Descending into the Fane or a Node results in a psychic attack stemming from:

• of the magic of each of the elements
• the nature of the other dimensions leaking through into our reality
• a foreboding sense of the Eye watching

Each character must make a WISdom Save versus DC 15 + (9 – player level) – (number of others who have made the save already)

If the save fails, the character simply feels it’s too terrifying to continue.

The idea is that as the players leveled, the attempt would get easier. Further if anyone made it, it would make it that much easier for the next person to get through (I wanted to play fair).

So, the first player to make the attempt got told:

You feel … the chill of the darkest depths of the sea … the heat of the most scorching desert … walls of earth closing in upon you … confusion, buffeted about you …

Something … watching … waiting for you to come to it … something … horrifying …

And it actually did as intended, and William (a decently high WIS character as a Druid) just failed.

Whew.

Room Numbers

I’ve mentioned this before, but another pet peeve of mine in this campaign (and with a lot of other D&D modules) reared up here: the “room” numbering was apparently done by a drunken idiot with a dart board. 

Back in the day when I was homebrewing my own dungeons, the idea was to keep things relatively sequential based on likely order of travel. So if you are in room 1, the next room is room 2, and maybe there’s a branch so you go to rooms 3-6 in that direction and rooms 7-15 in that direction. Even if there are no rails on the floors, it just makes things tons easier for the GM to flip one page, or scroll down one entry, than hop back and forth.

Not here.  From the Plaza of Moradin (A7), surrounded by shops (A5), you travel east to the Plaza of Vergadain (A6) — but that has the Feast Hall of Vergadain (A13) as its central point, and that goes to the adjoining room with the Purple Worm head (A20).

Nuts.

Roads not traveled

The party decided to poke around to the west of the Plaza of Moradin. This has two features.

There are the Villas Royal Chambers, which lie in complete ruins (in which lurks an Umber Hulk, but also some useful treasure). They took a look, peremptorily decided the Kenku would have raided any valuables (well, the Cultists tried, until too many were eaten by the Umber Hulk), and decided to skip that.

There was also the graveyard, sealed up behind ornate solid gates that are spiked from this side. They party completely read the message that “There’s bad stuff in here” (a flock of Ghouls), and so decided to skip the pain (and so the treasure therein). They also checked out one shop (did not roll “successfully” for the Cloaker inside), and decided to skip the rest, losing out on that potential treasure.

Sigh.

I mean, I get it, and applaud it. They had a mission or two: find the Delegates, find Aldrik, defeat the rising Cults (this last is kind of vague, but, sure). Clearing out levels was not part of the mission.

And since we’re doing milestone leveling, and they’d done what was necessary for this temple, there’s no hit point harvesting needed.

On the other hand, it meant that if I wanted them to have some of the gewgaws and magic that they would otherwise have picked up, I had to shift it around to areas where they do go. Or find a reason to make them more interested in searching things more carefully.

That’s why they pay me the big bucks.

The Temple of the Crushing Wave!

The party decided to head off for the Water symbol corridor. A new map! And the appropriate level. Huzzah!

I had discovered, you might recall, too late that I still had the party out of sync, level-wise. Clearing the Temple of the Howling Hatred should have dinged them from 6 to 7. Since they were already 7, it meant they were already of the recommended level for the Water Temple.

One of the interesting things about the whole Tyar-Besil / Underdark setup for this campaign is that the dungeons are not linear. You can enter from any direction. There’s a main entrance to each from the surface keeps, but you can move laterally to two other temples from any given temple, plus vertical paths that take you to the Fane or the Nodes.

This can be a bit hair-pulling for a DM (at least for me, and I don’t have much hair to spare), for reasons described above. But it’s also a challenge, especially on the lateral moves. There is no “the players will come in here, and first encounter this, and then encounter that. Each corner of the map is a potential entry point, each challenge something that could happen right up front or in final clearing-out activity.

So when I first went through the Temple of the Crushing Wave map and material, I assumed things came up along the river from Rivergard Keep. Fortunately, I’d realized a few meetings back that they were likely going to come in from this direction, so I reviewed this corner carefully to see how opponents here behaved. Which served me well.

I’d labeled this as the Trade Quarter on the throne room floor map, and the party had had a chance to review the notes they’d taken from there.

Coming in, they could just see the edge of the lake (labeled as the Great Harbor on the map — the Dwarves are just as self-aggrandizing as any other race), but Moony turned the party north to where there was corridor and door (the “Brewery” on the map). He could hear voices inside, but couldn’t make out what they were saying (as they were Bugbears, and talking in Goblin). For some reason, this got the whole party (well, at least two other folk) wanting to crowd up to the door to listen to see if it was a language they understood. 

Which, given the Stealth rolls made, and the fact that there was an arrow slit just up the corridor that would convey sound, meant the party did not surprise the Bugbears when they charged in.

The battle was notable only because of its numbers; there are several Bugbears (who hit freaking hard — our cleric, who has been kind of cocky over her AC and her retaliatory boom when someone hit her, found herself quickly down to half HP and still on the pointy end of the stick) and because the sound of the battle (by the book, even if people aren’t casting Thunderwave) attracts another several Reavers from the next room (not as many as the party thought — I had intentionally given them high numbers for just that meta a reason), as well as a One-Eyed Shiver named Morbeoth — basically a mage with a glowing chunk of ice for one eyeball. 

(I worked up a unique token and hand-out for him. If you’re going to name a guy and give him a backstory, he deserves at least that much.)

The numbers could have been telling, save that they came in waves, so nobody could be totally overwhelmed, and the party was able to use AoE spells very effectively — Theren’s Fireball took out or half-killed many of the Reavers, and William’s Moonbeam choked traffic at the door nicely.

Morbeoth was able to Misty Step into the room, and nail three party members (Moony, Faith, and Nala — the top melee folk) with a Fear cone. I did get the players to tell me their worst fears (the Fire Elemental at Scarlet Moon Hall, her gods being disappointed in her, and drowning-personified-as-a-Water-Elemental) before throwing down their weapons and fleeing.

But it was too little, too late at that point with only a few Reavers left to back Morbeoth up. After he (I) learned the limitations of Mirror Image (NFG against AoE, like the still-up Moonbeam), he accused them of being in the pay of “Thuluna” and escaped, letting the remaining Reavers pay the price for being his rear guard. 

That seemed a good opportunity to call a pause for the evening, and so we did.

Cult Politics

There’s actually a fair amount of political intrigue going on at the Water Temple, per the campaign. Morbeoth thinks he should be in charge (or, at least, second in command to Gar Shatterkeel), and hates Thuluna. Thuluna, a sea hag, commands the loyalty of the monsters / creatures / non-PC-races here.

You don’t actually get too see how too much how all that plays out, which is a shame (in theory the players could forge double-crossing alliances, and infiltrate quite a ways, if they chose). Still, it was fun having Morbeoth accuse the players of being in Thuluna’s pay. It gave them a few things to think about.

The Dust Settles

I thought/hoped the melee was a wake up call for some characters. They’d been slightly overlevel for a while, and while they were able to defeat the foes here, they’d faced some bigger magic, and bigger hitters, than they had previously. That might make them more conflict-avoidant, or might make them more tactical in how they tackled things. The fact that they just lost a melee heavy hitter might play a role there, either …

I had no clear idea what was going to happen next time — there’s not really a grand saga in the Crushing Wave temple, just interesting set pieces and opponents. I’d have to think about where Morbeoth ran to, since his domain and power base and lab are all in that corner. Certainly he’s not going to run to Thuluna Maah …

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