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 39 (Day 36)
In the Temple of the Crushing Wave …

1. The party had a Short and Long Rest, refreshing all that stuff. Various Dreams and Visitations ensued. Faith learned far more about how awesome a weapon Windvane is.
2. They exited Morbeoth‘s stronghold. Ninetooth was not beneath the bridge, but they heard voices roaring the name of “Thuluna!”  Which turned out to be the other two aquatic trolls, a pair of whom attacked them.
3. The party crossed the Bridge of Victory and dealt with a multiple groups of troops in various rooms and the embarkment point to the river back to the outside world. At the end, they had captured a final room, and Khalt, a frozen-eyed Crushing Wave mage.

Player Recap

“If You Wait by the River Long Enough, The Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By”

The vivid dreams return. 

Ko returns. He indicates there was a conflict with people who yip and bark. He helped drive them off. 

As they leave the brewery and cross the dragon bridge, Ninetooth isn’t there. The sounds echo around with all of the water and cave surfaces. Someone somewhere is calling out Thuluna’s name. As they move towards the market square, Nala senses that the sounds are getting louder and is ahead of them. A second voice joins in from the East. As they approach the second bridge an aquatic troll charges towards the group. The hall constricts the party’s movements but the troll quickly takes significant damage. Before they can finish Marrowsucker off, a second troll charges from behind. The next turn the oil Moony poured on Marrowsucker ignites and he perishes. The battle moves to Gorgebelly. Faith has been battling him with the Windvane. Doing damage and pushing him back. When the group focuses their attack on him the tide turns quickly in their favor. 

They approach the Bridge of Victory. There is a door immediately east of the bridge.. Moony listens at the door. There is a corridor running east just north of the door. Some broken wall and another corridor South of the door. 

There are people speaking Common on the other side of the door. They mention Shatterkeel, Thuluna, Morbeoth and other items less clear. The party takes their places and William opens the door with a thaumaturgy spell. The door opens on a barracks with several Reavers and a Priest. They pile out of the room from the now open door and another door to the south. A pitched battle ensues. Ko is brought down, but the rest of the party does well. While the others loot the room, Moony rolls the bodies into the canal. They float away.

The group travels south to clear the way behind them. There is a room that looks like it has been used as a jail with some cots and a water barrel. As Moony rounds the corner of the hallway, he runs into a group of guards coming the other way. Both groups are surprised. The attackers includes more Reavers, a Dark Tide Knight, and a Fathomer. Moony attacks and the encounter commences. Faith calls her fairy spirits at full strength. Along with William’s Moonbeam, they tear through the enemies. 

Around the corner the path opens out and there is a boat tied up. There may be something in the canal, but nothing comes to the surface. They can see the opposite side of the lake where the first entered the water area. 

After a short rest, the group moves on to explore the Northeast corridor. They pass two large granaries. Now empty except for the gaping storage holes. Next, they come to a door. Again Moony listens and hears voices speaking in Common. This time the group is surprised when the door slams open. Inside are yet more Reavers, a person that has a frosty white eye like Morbeoth. Approaches the door and frightens Theren and Moony. At the end, they had captured a final room, and Khalt, a frozen-eyed Crushing Wave mage.

… We win! They lose! Neener Neener Neener!

Game Notes

Kind of a grindy game, to be honest. Not bad, and some fun times, but not a lot of new stuff, mostly door-to-door clearing.

Time Marches On!

Even if the players didn’t get / take a chance to head back outside, the various Cult Reprisals / Retributions continue in the Real World. At this point, it involves the unleashing of Devastation Orbs.

The orbs are basically elemental bombs. When I first read about them I overestimated their power, so the Fire Devastation Orb I unleashed on Womford basically acted as a nuke for the town. They’re powerful, but not that powerful.

There are four towns kind of surrounding the Sumber Hills:  Red Larch, Westbridge, Beliard, and Womford. (Arguably, Summit Hall could also be a target, and, in retrospect it would have been a solid one, given the party’s ties there.)

Red Larch was out because I wasn’t going to have it destroyed whilst they were away. At least, not yet. I wanted to go back and play in Beliard, too. I decided on Womford because, well, it drew the short, highly flammable straw.

And, of course, this kind of thing is going to start happening on a semi-regular basis as they wipe out the Temples. So there’s still plenty of time to take down the other towns …

But how does the party learn about all of this?  Simple: dreams and gossip!

Dreams!

Since it was Long Rest time, I wrote up Dreams for everyone:

• The Fighter got some weird call-backs to Aldrik being taken by the water elemental a few sessions back. She’s the one who’d be likely to remember him.
• The Druid, who got terrified by Thuluna Maah last time, had one of those dreams where his girlfriend at the harvest festival turned out to be her and tried to drown him in an irrigation ditch. Fun!
• The Tabaxi Rogue, who’s brushed against Fear a couple of times recently got one of those the-hunter-hunted dreams.
• The Cleric, now attuned to Windvane, got to overhear (through a dream as a child at the church orphanage) the Prophets arguing, some veiled references to Womford being obliterated, and some encouragement by her new best friend (Windvane) to break the rules and dare everyone else to do something about it.
• The Sorcerer, whose background is causing terrible fire accidents as a kid, got to have a 1st Person PoV of the fire-based Orb of Devastation being brought into Womford and detonated. Glee!

Gossip!

I wrote up “gossip” items for the to potentially hear bits of when they listened at doors of rooms full of people:

• Gar Shatterkeel is gone.
  • They say he had visions,
  • They say he has traveled to The Plunging Torrents to pray and consult with  the Crushing Wave, the Dark Tide, the Well of Endless Anguish (Olhydra).
  • Who guides our course now?
    • Thuluna Maah. She is powerful and cunning. The ogres follow her.
    • Morbeoth is clever. He studies the water. He knows its secrets.
    • Gar still controls the flow. He has set guards over the temple. None shall pass.
• The pirate town is gone (Womford)
  • The great war commences. The guttering flames must be quenched!
  • No, it’s a sign of the final struggle; Olhydra will soon rise and cleanse the world.

It all helped give some further texture to the tale, passed on some info they should have (misleading or not), and, by having it pre-written, it gave me an easy reference when someone says, “I listen at the door, what do I hear?”

Windvane!

Windvane is a kick-ass weapon, and the Cleric had a lot of fun with it — especially since, as a Tempest Cleric, she gets an optional 10-foot knock-back if she does Lightning damage. Oops.

I decided to bend the rules slightly and not reveal quite all its powers.  I gave her the normal combat features, but kept the language boost, Lighting resistance, Dominate Monster, Orb building, and (of course) Flaw secret, for now at least. Some of them would become clear when the circumstances triggered them.

I decided to make that Flaw — “I break my vows and plans. Duty and honor mean nothing to me.” — softer rather than harder. I don’t like dominating other players and, not having raised it as a Session Zero item, I was reluctant to just impose it on the character or player (especially as the player is … independent-minded, we will say).

So instead I approached it with a soft approach — the encouragement, the whispering in the character’s ear, etc. I also started from the get-go encouraging the suspicions of the other characters about whether Faith was acting funny.

In the end, Windvane was a great set piece, even if the Cleric tended to roll for crap with its attacks. I managed to get some zingers in on the character, and she literally carried the thing, attuned, for most of the rest of the campaign.

Bits and Bobs

The infuriated aquatic trolls were kind of fun, especially with the characters being trapped in the corridors with them. I realized after the previous game that they would not take Thuluna Maah’s death well, and getting shouting “THU-LU-NAAAAAAH!” in their rage was a hoot.

A couple of the most-fun moments were both “I step around the corner and come face-to-face with an opponent.” One of those happened to the Rogue to kick off an encounter, the other to the Fighter

during a later battle. The Fighter could see a door on the far side of the room through the doorway they were fighting at, and went to flank around to it — only to discover that an enemy was doing the same thing to them. Hilarity ensues!

I don’t think the Druid’s summoning, Ko, could have accompanied the freed hostages so far away from the Druid, but it was enjoyable having him come back and preen over having helped them against the Gnolls up topside.

Ko could have been really annoying, but the player didn’t try to do anything cray-cray with him. Most often, once the party got into their cadence, he simply did Help actions for fighters on the front line, plus serving as an implicit “adjoining ally” for the Rogue’s Sneak Attacks.

The party eventually visits all parts of the shoreline around the “Harbor,” but refuses to take a boat out onto it, thereby missing both the creepy undead in the Customs House, and the Giant Octopus lurking in the depths. Sigh.

Action Economy remains the bad guys’ downfall, especially as the mooks are getting to be one-shot wonders, rapidly turning the tide in the players’ failure against their more powerful leaders. Of course, most encounters shouldn’t be life-or-death struggles, just a steady erosion of HP and spell slots, so that makes sense. 

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