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 41 (Days 36-37)
In … The Temple of the Crushing Wave, mostly

1. Before taking a long rest, William and Theren investigated the unexplored shops on the north end of the Temple of Howling Hatred. They only found a cloaker lurking in the shadows and, when they returned to rescue William’s stuff, audible signs of more kenku about. Somewhere in there, they slept and had disturbing dreams.
2. The party snuck back to the Temple of the Crushing Wave and, using Ko as a scout, determined that the dragon turtle was no longer around. They passed north to a bridge over the canal, under which lurked Ninetooth, the “missing” aquatic troll, who attacked them, grieving for Thuluna Maah.
3. The bridge ended in tall doors protected by a glyph of warding, which Theren deactivated. Over the roaring water, Moony and then William heard draconic voices talking about a pirate town, a war, and Olhydra.
4. The party charged into the temple. The lizardfolk guards were pretty easily dispatched, but stench-ridden hezrou demon took a lot of attacks (and heals) to overcome, leaving the party in possession of the desecrated temple.

Player Recap

Another Day, Another Demon

There will be several hours before the groups take a long rest. Faith Prays, Moony naps, Nala does sudoku. Theren and William decide to see if they missed anything in the air temple rooms they cleared before. They pass the cultists that are still tied to the pillars. They do not want to be released. There is nothing interesting in the room with the fountain. At first the merchant area is uneventful. Things go downhill when they enter a jewelers and William picks up a cloak that is actually a cloaker. He escapes death by the skin of his teeth by turning into a war horse to break free and run away. Unfortunately, William left his magic flame and everything he was wearing in the room with the cloaker. 

Dreams.

William casts a new spell on Ko. He can see and feel through Ko’s senses. He walks quietly towards the room where the group met the dragon turtle. There is no sign of dragon or other foes. The group moves deeper into the water temple watching the dragon tooth sword as they go. The market square has tables overturned and smashed from when the dragon turtle came aground. Moony approaches the doors and examines it and the wall near the spillways. He notices a subtle magical glyph on the door. Theren is able to disable it with his arcane knowledge. He also listens at the door and hears voices speaking draconic. William sneaks up and can hear one saying something about a pirate town. Several others laugh. When the party is ready, Nala opens the door and charges into the room. There are about half a dozen lizard folks. The round doesn’t go well for the lizards. After they take significant damage an ally Hezrou emerges from the water. A grotesque demon, of mighty strength of limb and stench. The demon causes several party members to double over retching. Teamwork wins the day and the party is victorious.

Game Notes

What to do, what to do?

Something funny happened on the way to the next part of the adventure …

Player rests are always kind of a contentious thing in D&D, especially when their effect is so strong as it is in the 5e rules. For players, it becomes a matter of resource management — I have this many spell slots left. I have this many hit points remaining, and that many hit dice to convert them. That cool ability I have, I can only do once between Long Rests.

The temptation is, when the party’s been taxed and burned their resources, to take that Long Rest and get back up to snuff. Problem is, the rules are clear that you only get one Long Rest per 24 hour period, and it’s possible to burn all your powers well before evening falls.

In this case, after the near-disaster with Bronzefume, the party retreated to the Air Temple to take, yes, a Long Rest. But by my reckoning it was only about 2-3 in the afternoon. They were going to be hours sitting in that little dorm room, waiting to get sleepy enough to start the Long Rest cycle. I was trying, in a soft way, to chastise them for burning time that way.

(The scenario indicates that sleeping in one of the temples is very dangerous, because the Princes and their Prophets can detect their presence and send guards their way. I agree in principle; in reality, though, all the locals in the Air Temple have been killed, and I really don’t want to grind through more play time with parties of Howling Hatred cultists finding them and getting into a fight. Bo-ring. The only useful thing of that sort that I might do is have said parties interrupt their Long Rests so that they felt the need to exit Tyar-Besil altogether, and so deal with the mess out there.)

So I emphasized the “staring at the wallpaper” aspect of camping out, and the players reacted …

… by splitting the party, sending the Druid and the Sorcerer off checking out locales in the Air Temple for clues or treasure.

I could have simply hand-waved it — you find nothing but empty rooms and rubble — but the module is clear about What Lurks in the Shops around the Plaza of Moradin. And I thought it might be some fun lesson-teaching about wandering off in that fashion. (Yes, I am complex in my motivations.)

That the Cloaker almost killed the Druid (and, had I decided not to split attacks to the Sorcerer, too, would have) was just icing on the cake. And it gave the Druid a chance to do his beast form thing, which he almost never does.

Lesson, I expect, learned.

Faithful unto Death

Yes, those air cultists shackled to the pillars on the Air Temple map … are still there. Still starving to death. Still refusing to be released. Still hoping that Yan-C-Bin will teach them to “eat” air. Fanatics.

Rightly or wrongly, the party let them have their way.

Call of the Wild

One fun bit I added in was hinting that there were still Kenku lurking in the northern part of the Air Temple. Not only had the bodies of Aerissi’s troops been stripped of weapons, but we got an echoing chorus of women screaming, trying to scare off the intruders.

I don’t know if the two party members would have checked those voices out on their own, but when they fled the Cloaker, it was full gallop back to the hotel room.

Dreams

So time for another round of dreams. The most noteworthy (from my perspective) were for Faith, the cleric who is now attuned to Windvane. How’s that going for you, Faith?

It feels like you’ve returned home after a long journey out to sea. You sit on a chair, looking out over the city, knowing that it is yours to rule, to conquer, to be loved by.

Your god is coming soon. You can feel it. Everything you’ve longed for, coming to fruition. You will be a queen, and all will want you, but will not be able to have you.

Your holy symbol — all that represents the power of your god. It is with you. You cannot come to harm.

At your feet, Moony is curled up, deep vibrations, inaudible but perceptible, across your feet and ankles.

Silently behind you, around you, Nala protects you, waiting for your command, should any threat arise.

William sits to one side, hand-picked herbs and spices burning in censors at his feet, the smoke rising up about his head, giving him strange visions.

Theren prances about the floor before you, entertaining, creating fireworks, fountains of sharp-smelling liquids. He tries so hard.

Your wings — your beautiful wings, flicker and flap against your back. You are where you belong. Nothing can stop you now.

Yeah, she’s dreaming she’s Aerissi. Heh heh heh.

The Fighter and the Rogue had dreams around the Turtle Dragon. Unpleasant ones.

Theren the Sorcerer started getting instruction from Faith’s patron deity, Deneir, who was having problems reaching his cleric.

William the Druid, who triggered the Last Laugh magic a ten-day ago, had come to the end of his undead protection from the spell.

A man in black — black mask under a black brimmed hat, black cloak over velvet black finery — stands before you, sword drawn. “The Lord of the Stone. I can no longer protect you — you have delayed and procrastinated. Now I will never find him, never have the last laugh. And I blame –” He extends the sword until its tip is nearly pricking your nose. “– you.”

Valklondar, the hunter of the undead (or at least a dream visage of him), was pissed that William never told him where Oreioth is. Ah, well.

Moving On

There had been, last game, a question of where the party was going to go. After everyone trucked up the shops to recover William’s goods (dropped when he shifted into a horse, so that his continual flame item would continue to light up the room), I was half-convinced they were going to head off to the Fire Temple zone, right near where they were.

But, no, they’d all gotten the resolve to go to the “temple” part of the map for the Water Temple, which is where I wanted them to go anyway (so I could justify dinging them up to next level). (Recall that they are working off of incomplete maps drawn from the city map in Aerissi’s throne room.)

They cleverly (if a bit callously) used Ko the Drake Companion to William (who’d take a Ranger level of three) to scout out to see if Bronzefume was still there. Nope. But they did run into the last Aquatic Troll lurking under the last bridge, loudly attacking them in vengeance for Thuluna.

(I loved bellowing “THU-LU-NAAAAAA!” as a grieving, vengeful troll.)

The Rogue did spot the Glyph of Warding (which would have made the battle in the temple a lot more interesting had it gone off).

The battle in the Temple was relatively quick — the party really does outclass Lizardfolk by this point, and the Cleric’s Spirit Guardians remain a buzz-saw of doom. The Hezrou was a bit more of a challenge — the stink/poison effect is delightful, and his resistances were astronomical, so taking him down was a pretty arduous task.

Meanwhile in Roll20 Tweaking

With Roll20 allowing people to put together their own token status sets, I created one myself using things that actually worked for the various conditions and so forth in D&D.  I used the free icons at game-icons.net, and they worked out really nicely (with the exception that the PotA‘s Roll20 maps are at half-size, so the status icons come out oversized, old and new, harrumph).

Anyway, the process was easy-peasy, and I was able to name the items for what they were for (e.g., the icon I wanted to use for the Blind condition, an eye with a slash through it, I named “Blind”, which made my Tweak-Status macro a lot more intuitive).

As the DM drums his fingers …

By God, they better finish up this dungeon this next game. The only question will be, will they go down the stairs to the Fane? I will probably do a similar Uncanny Feeling like I did with the Purple Worm — if they can push through it, I may well let them descend, even if they will be outclassed below. More lessons (not too fatal ones, I hope) to be learned.

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