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 51 (Day 41)
In … the Temple of the Black Earth

1. Dreams and Visitations occurred for all the characters. Upon waking there was much discussion about how real dreams were, or, in Nala‘s case, could they be an actual communication? The final answer was indeterminate.

2. 

   The party went south to the laboratory of Miraj Vizann, which was filled with giant stone statues of dwarvish warriors and lab workbenches. Moony pretended to be delivering a message via Yarsha for Marlos Urnrayle, but Miraj was taken in only briefly. After some inconclusive dialog, the party eventually attacked Miraj, who activated one of the Stone Warrior statues to “protect.” It actually didn’t last long under the onslaught of the party’s spells and weapons, but Miraj, escaping, swore vengeance for the destruction of her plans and lab.

3. The party explored to the north, finding a dining hall full of Black Earth guards, who were quickly dispatched. In exploring further, the party found another partially-collapsed barracks — and the dead body of Yarsha, apparently killed by one of her Black Earth Guards. They took a Short Rest there, with an apparent inclination to follow a crevasse to the north.

Player Recap

Why we don’t like sleeping!

Dreams Dreams Dreams

William

Deeper, darker, every step more terrible. 

Once there was sunlight, bright, cleansing. But now, for far too long, it’s been gone, leaving just the chill and shadow.

Once there was air, fresh, brisk, invigorating. But all the wind and breezes have been stilled, the air sterile in your nose..

Once the air carried a dampness, allowed for growth, the sound of creeks tinkling in the air, the drip of moisture sustaining the green around you. But that, too has been cut off …

Now there is only stone, still and dry, sand and earth and the cool of the tomb …

… except ahead is heat, heat to melt stone, heat to dry any moisture, heat to whip up winds. 

And after that? Only darkness …

Faith

You are in a great stone palace, the place where you dwell. It’s a grand palace … no, not a palace, the Great Cathedral in Waterdeep, the high church of all gods, the temple complex of all the traditional gods of the great city, a pile of cold stone, distant, hostile to mortals save the wealthiest … the finest … powerful bishops and bombastic prophets and bejeweled hierophants, who sit at long tables, laden with food, gorging themselves, arguing amongst each other as to who is of the highest rank, who is of the greatest power, then purging themselves in gemmed buckets to start the cycle over. Gold and diamonds vie with filth and corruption for what catches most your eye, what turns most your stomach.

You realize you are merely a servant, a drab, bedraggled girl, mopping and sanding the floors, keeping the candles lit, and, most importantly, airing the room out by opening the great windows to let something fresh inside, even as the men and women at the table shout and yell against it, preferring their own reek to an invigorating breeze.

The servant girl next to you, her gray-blue hair barely tucked into the scarf across her hair. “Wouldn’t it be funny if we left all the windows open and wind just swept them out of the room?”

She pulls out an ornate spear from behind her back. “Wouldn’t it be funny if we just killed all of them?”

And … it would be kind of funny.

Moony

The ancient Tabaxi elder with the odd, triangular pupils puffs on his pipe.

“Dimensions. Dimensions and angles and the ways one leaps from branch to branch, or ground, or into the air. The Tabaxi understand dimensions, do we not?”

“Consider one dimension. The layers of an onion, growing in strength, growing in pungency, growing in sweetness as one bites inward.” [illustrated]

Or … The shell of a shellfish — the rough surface, ground down, to a pearlescent layer, and delve further to find the sweet and salty meat [taste!], and, in some cases, a pearl, itself a world of many layers.

“To find what is valuable, drill down, seek what lies within. Beware the sharpness of flavor, the hardness of the hidden gem, but know that what is of value, what must be found, lies deep inside.”

“Those of the Tabaxi know to clean their food well. Wash well. Be thorough. But … as all is cleaned, bite deeply.”

Nala

You are in the Port Market of Waterdeep, a place you patrolled regularly against petty thieves, pickpockets, drunks, disturbances of the peace …

But today it’s nothing but peace. Utterly deserted. Every shop, every wagon, every booth … everything is stocked — fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, spices, and other things — ironmongery, scrolls, toys, anything anyone would want to buy …

… but nobody is there to buy.

And nobody is there to sell. 

You hear a small bell, ringing, in the distance.

The breeze blows a hundred scents to your nose, whistles in the buildings about you. But, aside from the bell, you hear nothing. You make your way down Fishmonger Way, into another courtyard. Vegetables mostly here, as you recall, and as you see now.

In a small, not terribly clean booth in the back of the courtyard, its display tabletop covered in crates of multi-colored carrots, you can see, on the table at the back, a small brass bell, sitting atop a folded piece of cloth.

A throat clears behind you after you’ve gone around the table. 

Xharva Deem is there on the other side of the table. The customer side. 

“Now. I will buy. You will sell. I have traveled many, many leagues to be here. And now, what you have, I will buy ... YOUR SOUL.”

Theren

The walls press around you. Stone, some dressed, some rough and jagged, forces you to crouch down, scrape against the walls, scramble down and up and down the floor, as the air gets more and more warm, more stuffy, sweat across your body, salt in your eyes, taste of salt on your lips …

And ahead of you, a crackling sound, a roar of something consumed in flame, generating a hot wind.

“Theren …” you hear within that crackling, that roaring. “You have called to me. Now I call to you ….” as the air blasts into your face, hotter than a furnace, singing to the flames within your mind, the wild magic that burns so brightly, without control, unstoppable, and …

Back in the real world

Nala shares her dream and asks the magic users if Xharva could actually be in her dream. Faith, Theren and William offer suggestions for how it might be done. After the long rest the group heads back to the large hall and explore South towards the assumed location of the mud sorcerer. Half way down the hall their is a T intersection. About 20 feet down the West hall the walls and ceiling have collapsed and block the passage. To the East is a door with a scowling dwarf with maces for hands. 

Moony cracks open the door and sees a humanoid, her skin and hair seemingly earthen, though in places slick with moisture, dressed in earth-brown robes. There are statues around the walls all of dwarves’ with maces or clubs for hands. Some have been deformed. 

“Yes, what do you want?” “Yarsha sent me to tell you Marlo wants you right now.” She sighs and then looks more closely at Moony. “Marlos has other means of contacting me. What does Yarsha really want?” “She is not happy with your lack of progress on furthering Marlos’s vision” “I am not surprised, she wants to replace me. But you interest me, your accent is interesting, it might be something with your throat, step closer.” The conversation continues. Eventually, she invites Moony and the party to discourse. Moony asks what she will offer us to switch to her side. She only offers not to kill the group. 

About then, Faith gets bored and starts preparing a spell. Moony take a sneak attack against Miraj, who doubles over and calls to the statues to protect her. William casts Spike Growth inside the room and steps back around the corner. Faith casts Bless on the group. One Stone Warrior moves into action. Nala shoots magic missiles at it and Theren tosses off a fireball into the room. The warrior is quickly taking damage. Miraj gets off a shatter spell and then flees into the back wall. 

In exploring the room, they find golds, gems and a potion of water breathing. There is also the dwarvish runes for protect carved into the the tables. They appear in various location around the room. William uses his wood working tools to remove the runes while they take a short rest. 

After the rest they head back North towards Marlos. At the T intersection North of the Ogremoch statue they turn East. Four Black Earth Guards go down quickly. A cultist comes out from the back room to join the fray. When the room is clear and move on to the room beyond. The body of Yarsha is in the middle of the room. A guard who fled first room tries to ambush Moony and while he scores a hit, it’s not enough to take Moony out. The guard is severally out-classed. It looks like the guard killed Yarsha when she came back to the barracks to get her stuff. Maybe he overheard her selling them out. Either way, one less stone witch to worry about. A Short Rest and the party will be back on the hunt.

Game Notes

More churn and grind, to a certain degree.

Dreams

Since there was a long rest, I did another set of dreams for everyone (recorded by my wife in the player log above). William had basic druidic depression about being underground so long. Moony was told by his Tabaxan god that he should head downwards (while still cleaning the areas above). Theren was given a hint that his invoking the name of Imix (the Fire Elemental Prince) in vain was maybe not a good idea. [I don’t recall when he did it, but it had been recently.]

Nala, the fighter holding the thing that Xharva Deen wanted, was visited by her in a dream and, after appropriate prompting, when she asked what Xharva wanted, was responded with, Your soul!

This led to much discussion over breakfast as to the reliability of dreams — or, rather, the question of how much messages could be sent from another plane via dreams. The idea that this was a combination of maybe a bit of message and a bit of unreliable internal fear never occurred (which is fine). It shook folk up, and it laid the groundwork for some interesting discussion when Xharva reappears, so it’s all good.

Faith, meanwhile, had a dream that meant to suggest that all worship of the mainstream gods was futile and corrupt, and only a brisk wind (and maybe some stabbing with a spear) would clear things up. She was not happy about this.

The Mud Sorcerer

I’d added some lab tables to the map of Miraj Vizann because the color text mentions all the tables and the map itself had zilch. I mean, they had the statues set up in the room, but no tables. I had some Roll20 materials for tables and lab gear and tomes, so that made for a nice, complex room.

Miraj Vizann herself was an interesting bird. A magical researcher whose allegiance was to the Black Earth (kinda-mostly), but didn’t feel like she needed to restrict herself to just those magics. Call her Crushing Wave-Curious. Thus her disdainful moniker as the “Mud Sorcerer.”

(Yes, “her.” The character struck me that way, and I had this very nice image I found of a stone genasi that looked to be a great fit.)

Marlos still relied on her for her knowledge and power and, being Marlos, her lack of ambition. This didn’t sit well with the other important folk in the temple, thus Yarsha’s betrayal.

I saw her as smart, somewhat distracted into her research on the old magicks of Tyar-Besil (its stone warrior defenders, as an example), and happy to give orders efficiently so as to keep people out of her damp.

She was smart enough, I thought, to figure out the party’s bullshitting her, even if distracted, so I thought it would be an engaging, dialog-heavy encounter, at least to start.  But the encounter and discussion I anticipated never happened. Moony said many taunting things from the door, Miraj tried to engage in discussion (but not until everyone was willing to come into the room), the Stone Warrior was unleashed, the party quickly whittled it to size (action economy!), and Miraj swore vengeance for the disruption of her experiments before blending into the wall (something she had the spells to do, and which tied into her showing up later in the Black Geode — kinda-sorta). 

I always like it when old threats get teed up as future threats. It feels … efficient, and narrative. Miraj Vizann has a lot going for her as an intelligent foe.

Some good experience, then, all-around, but the most notable event was Windvane trying to influence Faith to attack with her, and Faith easily resisting, and then shoving the spear into the party’s Bag of Holding.

So, Inspiration for Faith, certainly. But that’s really not fun for me, so Windvane will still talk with her from behind the Bag (because it’s already in her head. And I need to come up with a situation where Windvane will be essential (or maybe have it be repentant and thus turn into a useful tool again).

(We are at session 51. I’ve been treating Windvane resistance as a Wisdom Save of 10+(episode-50), so it should be getting a bit rougher as we continue.)

Further clean-up

Cleaning out the refectory took a short bit of time (I handwaved the cooks down in the kitchen). The party was … surprised to find Yarsha dead in the back room.

Yarsha certainly had the possibility of causing trouble. But her forces were limited (if I wanted to make the level what it was), and I need to get moving onward. 

So the idea is that Yarsha, taking advantage of the ridiculously loose oath she was sworn to (that Faith would not see her for the next week) snuck back into the temple while the party was taking a Long Rest, and went for the barracks where her goods were. Maybe she was going to rally the troops, or maybe she was going to bug out with her treasure.

But the crossbow mook who was left in that room was able to hear through the arrow slit the things she said when she was surrendering to the party last session.  So at some point in time, while gathering her goods, he whopped her in the back of the head with his morningstar, game over.

(All her treasure was found on a mook that had been sitting in the refectory alone, saw the party, and ran off to the back room, only to be quickly taken down by the party. Fun.)

Not a lot of map left … but a lot of stuff in those unexplored areas.

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