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 37 (Day 35)
In the Temple of the Crushing Wave …

1. 

   The party searched through the rooms Morbeoth had come from — an arcane workshop and adjacent living quarters. In the quarters they found an iron chest under the bed with both wealth and letters from Justran Daehl, the Cellerer and apparent Crushing Wave spy in Red Larch (Morbeoth’s Notes), including questions about evidence against Thuluna Maah that should be taken to Gar Shatterkeel.

2. In the workshop were pieces of some sort of apparatus being assembled from a glass bottle and copper fittings. The overall room was identified as something for creating artifacts powered by the magic of elemental water.
3. The next room was apparently the copper brewing vessels of the old brewery on their map. There were three of the completed bottle apparatuses against one wall. At least one of the tanks contained a Water Weird.
4. Traveling onward, they crossed a canal on the Bridge of Dragons, and encountered from under the bridge an Aquatic Troll. William invoked the name of “Olhydra,” which caused the troll to let them pass. A similar strategy worked in a further room where there were two more of them.
5. Passing the Court of the Merfolk they found a room with a richly decorated but desecrated door. Inside were two Ogres, who refused to let them pass and bother Thuluna Maah. The party ambushed the ogres at the doorway and eventually handled them, as Thuluna the Old Lady tottered out of a back chamber, frightened and bewildered by what was going on.
6. The sound of the battle attracted a group in the Market Hall to the north. Though the cultists there were easily handled, a Fathomer managed to Hex then Eldritch Blast Faith multiple times. Only the party’s last Fireball, and a charge by Faith and Theren and Moony, saved Faith from a grizzly necrotic death.
7. While the rest of the party searched the Market Hall, finding all sorts of trade goods and supplied, many of them most likely pirated from the Dessarin River traffic, William questioned Thuluna, spotting a terrifying, murderous gleam in her eye. He called to Moony, and after a few more questions, they quietly agreed to lock her into her room … but before they could, she dropped her illusory visage to become a creature of unspeakable hideousness …

Player Recap

That’s Not Beer!

Nala tries to persuade the magic user to come back and talk about his offer. She then peeks her head into the room he ran through. The room is empty. As the others move into the large chamber, Moony drags a bugbear body to block the door into the loft room. The focus of the room is a delicate looking device with a central large glass vessel and many copper tubes . Looks like it is powered by elemental water energy but the purpose remains a mystery. There is a room to the North that looks like it is being used as a bedroom. There is an area that looks like an arrow slit that has been filled with rubble. William notices a small iron chest under the bed. Moony examines the chest. It looks like it is latched but not locked. It contains silver and platinum pieces and some letters. Most of the letters are in a mix of block text and script. It looks like the writing of the spy letter we found in Feathergale Spire. There are also some fine notes in the margins of the letter. 

The brewery room. Of the eight copper kettles, there are a few that are cold and have condensation on them. William decides to check out the content. Standing on a chair, he quickly opens and closes the hatch. He is not quick enough to prevent a Water Weird from escaping. Faith waits to see if it is hostile. William calls out to it in Primordial “We mean you no harm, depart and be free.” The others also hold off. When the Water Weird reacts he charges William and envelopes him. Moony and Theren respond with attacks. Nala tries to shove the hatch back down on the elemental. She succeeds on her second try and Faith climbs on an adjacent 

Leaving through the north door of the brewery they come to the bridge of dragons. A blue troll stands up and demands something in a language that the group does not understand. Ninetooth the aquatic troll leaves the water and climbs the steps on the far side. William sets a bonfire in front of the troll and says “Olhydra says let us pass.” The rest of the group moves closer together and holds their actions. The troll pauses and questions “Olhydra?” and steps back down the steps about 15 feet. William says “Olhydra! Let us pass.”  crosses the bridge and moves into the hall on the far side. The others repeat the phrase and pass to the corridor. 

There is a door at the end of the hall and a corridor to the North that leads to a courtyard with a fountain. Moony listens and hears voices. It sounds like more trolls. The group decides to try their bluff again. They open the door and see two aquatic trolls. The first challenges Moony and William. They repeat the catch-phrase and the trolls stand aside. (It would have made more sense if there was another exit from the room.) They step back out and close the door.

Fountain shaped like a tree, with dancing merfolk. It is badly damaged. There are halls to the north, east, south (where they came from) There is also a door in the northwest. Moony listens at the door. It is covered with painted glyphs and aquatic images. They are very damaged. 

Moony listens at the door and then peeks into the room. Ogre “Get out of here. Don’t bother Thuluna.” The group decides that it is best to take care of this now. While they are fighting the Ogres a wizened old crone steps out from behind a cloth curtain in the back of the room. When the ogres are defeated the crone begs for mercy. William believes her and worries that they have been hasty in their attack. As the Ogre battle is wrapping up several cultists come running down the North hallway to attack. The fighting ends in the large chamber North of the market hall. 

Returning to Thuluna William questions her. “They were keeping me from leaving. They thought I knew about where the Shatterkeel was hidden or secrets about the temple. They were so cruel.” William can tell that she is lying and has a malicious gleam in her eyes. He calls Moony for healing help. After he arrives, they look to back out and spike the door. William decides to torch the drapes to see if there is another exit that way. This is when Thuluna turns on them and drops her illusion  A visage so hideous and otherworldly that to look upon it is to know terror. Slimy scales covering her pallid skin, her hair a seaweed that covers her unnatural body, her glassy eyes as lifeless as a doll’s. 

Game Notes

Searching Glances

The Temple of the Crushing Wave is a bit more traditional of a dungeon crawl. Though it has the water features, it’s also got a real “and now you move on to Room C12” vibe to it, with various rooms of bad guys, hints of underlying story, some politics, and various directions one can travel.

The group did the normal search through Morbeoth’s place, puzzling over the weird glass-and-copper tank under construction. I gave a noodge to have them find the chest under Morbeoth’s bed (to be fair, I’d forgotten it was there when folk were scattered about searching). I’d beefed up the payload there. Ordinarily there are notes from Justran Draehl, the cellerer at the Helm at Highsun tavern in Red Larch which, in case similar notes had been missed back at Rivergard Keep, would establish Justran as a Crushing Wave spy.

Well, the party had already resolved that mystery,  so I decided to pay with it a bit — calling out particular notes about things Justran (and, after Justran had fled, some other mysterious hand), outlining things the party had done in Red Larch (and a few from elsewhere, also mysteriously) …

… plus some commentary in the margins by Morbeoth, trying to interpret the party’s actions, wondering why they hadn’t taken out Feathergale Spire or Rivergard Keep the first time around (who was influencing them?), mentioning that Urshnora (a Crushing Wave fugitive … or is she?) was hanging with them … and speculating that maybe this was evidence of Thuluna Maah’s treachery.

(The whole Morbeoth / Thuluna rivalry, plus Thuluna’s desire to usurp Gar’s place, create for some fun things to play with, but there just aren’t a lot of opportunities to do so in the game. By fleshing out the writings here, I could both make their previous actions come alive as part of the campaign, and maybe lead them to some fun times.

Weird!

William’s player decided that the kick-in-the-door-and-kill-everything bit might not be the most effective, given the somewhat dire battle last time vs the Bugbears and Reavers. So when they investigated the brewery and, ta-daaah, released a Water Weird, he decided to be diplomatic because he could speak Primordial to it.

Which would have gone great, except that he offered to let it escape from its tank, which, since Water Weirds can’t actually leave their pool of water, was taken amiss as an insult, and it attacked. 

(The party actually had the bright idea of trying to close the hatch on the tank, which treated as an Athletics match, actually worked.)

The whole idea that Morbeoth was trying to harness (or even enslave) elementals into weapons technology was kind of cool, even if it goes nowhere. Worse, though there is mention made both of glass tanks and of partially completed mechanisms, there are no visuals provided by the game, in the book or on the map.

I jiggered some visuals together from a bottled water image, and I thought that helped.

Talking with Monsters

This zone is full of canals (with kind of finicky sight lines, so that’s nice).  When the party tried to cross the nearby bridge, there was, of course a troll underneath it (which appeared just as the players started joking about such a thing).

Ninetooth was an Aquatic Troll. Nobody in the party could speak Giant, but they could understand when William started talking about “Olhydra,” and the book text makes it clear that Ninetooth will go along with the flimsiest reason to let them pass. So they did. Encounter averted! Inspiration awarded!

(And, again, a great reason for Milestone Leveling — no incentive to kill everything.)

There is no token provided for an Aquatic Troll, just a normal troll one. Bah. I figured one out.

A similar tactic worked at the room where two other Aquatic Trolls hung up — the party was hesitant to go into the Court of the Merfolk because they were sure something awful was going to happen with the broken fountain there.

Nope, but they did end up in a big battle around Thuluna Maah.

Language

This was really the first place where there’d been multiple encounters where language was a barrier (or, looked at a different way, where the party actually wanted to understand, if not communicate with, the opposition). So I actually got around to looking at what people knew, and what languages they spoke, and what languages other groups of critters spoke, and created a Handout about it, for my easy reference, but also for the party.

(I also found a nifty, if not quite canonical, linguistic family tree, which can help cover some edge cases:)

Annoyingly (on both sides, to be honest), most of the conventional opponents spoke something that the party didn’t. They did have a sorcerer who could learn Tongues or Comprehend Language, but hadn’t figured out that might be a good idea.

Thuluna Maah

So Thuluna is 2nd in Command in the Temple. She’s a Sea Hag, and lives in luxurious (if torn up) quarters in the center of the map, with two Ogres in her antechamber to keep her from being disturbed.  

The Ogres, like the Lizard Folk, like the Trolls, all love Thuluna — or worship / are devoted to her — because she looks after them as part of her power base against the “normal” humanoids that cluster around Morbeoth. As such, they are determined and vocal in protecting her, which gave the battles this session and next a bit more oomph.

That said, the party was maybe lulled a bit by the very pliable Aquatic Trolls. The Ogres give them a bit of shit for disturbing them, and demanded they leave before Thuluna was awakened. (Moony could have actually snuck open the door and closed it again, except that everyone was standing around with light spells blaring and it was dark inside.)

Rather than leave things be, they decided to take the Ogres down, cleverly using the doorway as a choke point — a Bonfire plus Spirit Guardians plus the Ogres being constricted (and thus at Disadvantage) trying to get through the door. Clever. 

Mid-battle taking the Ogres down, three things happened:

1. Thuluna, in her “I am an innocent, if ugly, old crone, tottering along” guise tottered out and was “bewildered” and “horrified” by all the violence occurring.
2. The cultists in the Market Hall to the north (with no additional Random Encounter critters added to their number, thank Bog) harkened to the noise and came running toward the party.
3. William decided that they had been hasty in thinking that the Ogres were Water Cultists, and tried to calm things down.

The Cultists were quickly cut down (in fact, by being taken down in the corridor, they served to slow the party members trying to advance, actually keeping the team together for a time), but the Fathomer with them had a perfect opportunity because everyone else was occupied with the Ogres but the cleric Faith, who was quite visible down the corridor. The Fathomer managed to get off a Hex on her, then started peppering her with Eldritch Blasts. So not only was she taking a ton both Force and Necrotic damage, but her CON rolls were hampered, so her Concentration rolls were Disadvantaged, which eventually knocked down her Spirit Guardians.

She almost got taken down, which was both gratifying (not in a “I like to kill players” way but “Hey, I’ve been an actual threat” way) and is now the second session in a row when that had happened, which was illuminating for the player.

Meanwhile, Thuluna and William were having a nice tête-à-tête, with Thuluna playing the “Woe is me” routine, trying to figure out when best to strike. The Sea Hag can drop her illusion and be revealed in her Fear-inducing self — but it only had a range of 30 feet, and unsupported by her Ogres, she wanted to have everyone there, but by now everyone had run off to deal with the cultists.

By the time couple of increasingly skeptical players had decided the thing to do was to slip from the room and spike the door (the skepticism enforced by a truly horrific disparity in an Insight vs Deception roll), Thuluna realized she wasn’t going to get a better shot. As they backed out, she dropped her illusion, revealed in her mind-boggling, terrifying self …

The stock picture for a Sea Hag is … kind of pathetic. Less “so hideous that it drives people mad with fear” and more “so hideous that all the kids in school make fun of her.” So instead I found this great pic by Frank Calico that looks like a Mike Mignola and has that very otherworldly Elder God “so unnatural it drives people mad with fear” vibe.  

 

As previously mentioned, I subbed out a lot of tokens in the game for ones that I liked better. Usually it was for a named character that either didn’t have a token at all or had a generic monster type token (e.g., Morbeoth as a One-Eyed Shiver). Thuluna is a one-off (there are no other Sea Hags in the campaign), but this was another case where searching for a better image made me feel a lot better about the game I was presenting.

Action Economy

Thuluna is another case of Action Economy dominating the game (as was the incident with the Fathomer). Spellcasters are very powerful — but also fragile. 

The Fathomer only was able to pull off the Hex+Eldritch Blast combo for a couple of rounds because Faith was a lone target (everyone else was around a corner, intentionally) and was at range. Once she got reinforcements, the Fathomer’s only hope was to take her down before he was (and that attempt failed).

Thuluna was in a similar quandary. She’s got an awesome “Anyone who sees her has to save vs Gut-Wrenching Fear” thing, plus a follow-up power to literally kill a person who is already afraid … but she either needs to do it when everyone is in the room (and scare them all), or else when there are just a couple of people in the room (to take them out quickly).

Thuluna was certainly doomed as soon as she dropped shields and attacked.  The only question was … how many will she take with her?

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