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

1. The party investigated the temple. You feel a sudden presence. An … awareness. The air is thick, damp … you feel like you are being watched, weighed, considered, eyed carefully … found … wanting. A whiff of anger, a glimpse of disdain. Faith had some additional odd feelings …
2. In return, they stole the offerings on the altar and burned the Crushing Wave symbol on the wall. They also spotted a possible passage where water was entering the temple. 
3. A nearby room was full of priests and cultists, who spoke of the Prophet, and something about towns and annihilation and Olhydra. They were quickly dispatched, followed by a short rest in their comfy quarters.
4. Less quick was dealing with the Mezzoloth demon down the hall, who guarded stairs downward, and resisted an attempt by Faith to banish it. The demon poisoned and blinded them with a Cloudkill in the tight corridors; they eventually prevailed, but at high cost, requiring a second short rest. 
5. The party checked out that hidden tunnel in the water, with William discovering a chamber with the source of the entire underground canal and water system. There were also chests with treasure, and with what looked to be the stolen books of Bruldenthar. 
6. Having basically cleared the Temple of the Crushing Wave, the party was faced with the choice of … (a) going to the zones believed to be controlled by the Black Earth or Eternal Flame, (b) descending deeper under the earth via the stairs, the skeletal Purple Worm, or the pit in the pyramid, or (c) moving back to the surface to restock.
7. DING! Level 8!

Player Recap

A Daemon Not Banished

They search the bodies and dump the lizardmen into the water. The demon is too big and would likely clog the culvert. As Moony walks towards the altar. There is a sense of being watched, weighed, and found wanting. And then it withdraws. There is what looks like a small crack in the wall in the corner where the water is appearing. 

Room to the west is oddly empty with a wall that appears to have been covered with mosaic but is now bare. There are doors west and south leading out of the room. Moony hears voices at the South door. 

The Prophet will soon be back (mutter mutter) the Eye (mutter mutter) great sacrifice in the Fane. He still controls the flow. The lessers here (mutter mutter) their place.

What of the guttering flame? (mutter) vengeance?

They (mutter mutter) we will choose the next town.

(mutter mutter) Annihilation.

Only the prophet (mutter) Olhydra will rise and cleanse the world. 

(singing, in some very ugly shifting minor key)

The group decides to proceed through the door. The room contains cots, tables and chairs. The priests and cultists are surprised by the intrusion. Attacks fly and one cultist is killed, several others damaged before their surprise wears off. 

Ohydra take your soul! Yan-C-Bin will never win! Says the priest just before he’s killed.

They take a short rest to recover hit points. 

Exploring the door to the west of the antechamber. 

Demon – Mezzoloth: Faith tries to banish it but it makes its save. It casts Cloudkill, blinds the group, and does lots of damage. Faith does Gust of Wind to move the cloud. Mezzoloth goes down quickly.

Return to the rectory and take another short rest. 

Back in the altar room William strips and explores the water passage. There is a pool of water flowing up from below. There is a ledge to one side. William goes back to the others and invites them through. In the ancient crates they find gold and gems, but also Bruldenthar’s books.

Game Notes

The Key Spot

The module basically has a key spot in each temple where one of the Prophets will be. The write-up is all around that happening, their motivations and what they do and BBEG battle notes.

But the module also has the Prophets high-tailing it down to the Nodes or the Fane if one of them is defeated (like Aerissi has been). There is, sometimes, a substitute left in place to hold the fort, but in general these central places are dull, empty disappointments without the Prophets in them.

I threw in some atmospherics once they approached the altar, sort of to compensate for that. The sense was to be that Olhydra — or maybe the Elemental Eye itself — was briefly aware of their presence profaning that place, that they had defeated the power there, then gave a haughty sniff, and moved on. 

(I added an additional note for Faith, since she was carrying and using Windvane. She promptly told everyone about it. I needed to start leaning on her a bit.)

It wasn’t much, but it made for a sense that Some Big Mojo was in play.

Water, water everywhere

The channels  and canals of this map have little wavy lines, but I added some arrows on the Roll20 map to show the flow of the water in different places around the Water Temple. This is an environmental clue that would be quite visible to the characters.

Thus, in the temple, they quickly noted that the water was coming from the NE corner of the pool. But having Perceived it, they had to Investigate to find the source, and everyone was rolling (via me) crap, except for the Dragonborn on the bridge. So she got a “good angle.”

They debated investigating, but decided to clear first.

Spare room

The room past the temple chamber is just empty. No description or anything. I made it an inner shrine that had been even more thoroughly stripped by the bad guys — altar demolished, murals totally taken down. Took me five minutes, and made the room 500% better.

Overheard chit-chat

I used the priests in the rectory to drop (as the party listened through the door) some final information — hints about Gar being down below in the Fane, a sacrifice (heh heh heh), the Spheres of Annihilation being used on a town, Hail Olhydra!, etc. No pennies dropped, but the information was out there now.

The party handled targets easily — the two Priests were outclassed, and Cultist mooks are practically one-shots. The main value of that encounter was to give them a comfy place to Short Rest. Which they needed.

(Though I did enjoy having the priest smell the stink of Air Elemental magic on Faith/Windvane, and assume that’s who had sent them. Faith started running into that a lot, which I hoped would be worrisome.)

Demon in the Dark

The Mezzoloth demon in the stairway room looked to be a really nasty challenge. Which meant that Faith’s decision to burn her Lvl 4 spell slot on a Banish sounded like a great idea. And very disappointing when it just barely succeeded in saving (and only because it got Advantage on spell saves).

In retrospect, I should have nudged the dice and have it defeated. The battle that ensued was pretty nasty — Cloudkill in the corridor with attendant blinding effects and its movement catching them on a second round of poisoning — but I was too enamored of wanting to actually play with it. It would have also been a great triumph for a character. My bad. 

I realized as I got into the encounter that I was kind of confused over the Darkness that the Mezzoloth cast — and, possibly, the Heavy Obscuring that the Cloudkill had. Was either blinding to folk who have Darksight? How did the different light spells in play interact with the Darkness?

In the end, I decided, screw it, and just turned it into a slugfest, which the Mezzoloth lost in a few rounds, even with people taking a time-out to do various Healing things. 

Time for another Short Rest.

Lessons Learned:

1. Result nudges should be considered for their Rule of Cool impact.
2. Understand the mechanics of the scene you are about to be in.

Everybody into the pool!

It was getting late at this point, but I nudged them into checking out the pool, which was literally the last thing I expected them to explore on the map.

But their having done so, I wanted them to end with a victorious note, which they did, finding the treasure and a bit of the mystery:  Bruldenthar’s books (which Shoalar Quanderill had extorted as the price of ferrying the Black Earth kidnappers across the river, and thus had eventually made their way into Gar’s treasure chamber). 

People sometimes argue that the module uses the Mirabar Delegation merely as a McGuffin, and they are not completely wrong, but there are enough breadcrumbs, with reminders, to make it work.

(Note: Despite treasure chests being the most prominent thing in this room, the map shows no such thing. Clip art to the rescue!)

Penetrating Dampness

Finally, after six freaking episodes, we were done with the Temple of the Crushing Wave (with the exception of the harbor and customs house at the south end of the map, but who cared at this point (I did, because there were some cool things there, but not so much I was going to force the matter) and also the Starry Lake, which they were avoiding like the Dragon-Turtle-infested plague).

I’m not sure why it took as long as it did, save that this is a fairly cautious and conservative group, who were always eager to pull back, and lick their wounds with a rest, before moving on. Adding in some RP and color elements didn’t really slow things down, as I think back on it. 

Part of it may also be that we usually ran the game from 7 (read 7:30 by the time weekly chit-chat is done) to 10:30 or 11. So a 3½ hour session; if we were running 4-5 hour matches, we’d have been done much sooner. But, then, we are all of us in the 4-6 decade range, so, on a Friday night, we need our sleep. 

Ding!

I did want to give folk a final morale boost. While my house rule is to do leveling during a Long Rest, I made an exception and, with the defeat of the map, dinged them to Level 8. That got everyone going for another half-hour, figuring out what they were going to take. It’s been 11 sessions  since the last level (yes, yes, far too long for the 5e era, according to all the best people, though shorter than the 6-to-7 gap had been).

The big question was: what now?  Logical order was to head into the Earth Temple. It would be easier for them to descend in one of the down-shafts to the Node/Fane level (I still had my “oooooh, spooky!” rules for doing that in place, but going up a level definitely helps them); would they quickly die a horrible death if they do though?

And, with this temple down, Cult Retribution in the outside world would kick up a notch, to the Reckless Hate level. If they decided to step outside, they will learn about Womford, get warnings about Red Larch, and intercept an attack just short of it. If they didn’t … Red Larch takes it on the chin (from, I decide, the Water Cult), but not total destruction. And eventually they would find out, because the next time, the cultists would be taunting them about Beliard …

Milestone unlocked!

From an eventual episode count standpoint, this session marks the half-way point of the overall campaign. Woot!

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