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. 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 26 (Day 30) 

1. Faith dreamed of flying, of a city under assault by a great wind, of Deneir whispering to her that she had lost something, of howls of Aldrik’s rage, the laughter of a madwoman, and the crashing of a wave of rain.
2. Faith invited Urshnora to the chapel; she demurred, but … politely. The party also offered her a chance to part ways; she seemed surprised they would let her go, but offered to accompany them to their next destination.
3. The party traveled out the Larch Path to find the passing clues they’d been given back in S.2–3 … a Cave of Treasure (which turned out to be full only of stirges), and a mysterious Skull Pinned To A Tree By A Black Arrow Wrapped In A Human Skin Scroll With A Mysterious Message (The Last Laugh Parchment) on it (which would have seemed just trivial, if not for a mysterious vision William had when he first touched it).
4. They turned at the described point and climbed into the hills, eventually finding, as night descended, Scarlet Moon Hall and the smoke-shrouded encampments about it. They chatted, at the first encampment, with the young druids they’d met in S.20 at Summit Hall, who mostly seemed greatly enthused about the prospects of Elizar leading the Ritual of the Wicker Giant.
5. They decided to camp out with their druid friends, which gave Moony a chance to scout out to the west up the hill (rangers (?) sitting around a campfire; another campfire with a fiddler, someone clapping, and faeries (?) flitting about). He came back down and scouted east (a camp with a couple of figures and a chained bear which sensed his passage; a camp with some hooded and indistinct figures …)
6. … And a pair of Worgs, which chased him down the hill, snapping at him the entire way … and followed by (apparently) that camp’s denizens, a trio of Bugbears. Things were looking grim for Moony until he was saved by both his own friends plunging into the darkness to save him (Theren Fireball for the win!), and the druids of the nearest camp (Ingulf and Aylbrith) who attacked the “abominations.”
7. That celebration was cut short by the chained bear breaking free and attacking one of the druids with a singleness of purpose, until it was killed. Faith offered to raise it to life the next day, and the party had a series of … suspicious but not conclusive discussions with those neighboring “druids.” After which they returned to their camp and went to sleep.
8. What you know of the area: Scarlet Moon Hall (Map) [See below]

Player Recap

Nobody Likes Worgs

Faith Dream: You’re flying again, a sky of dark clouds behind you. Your hear the roar of wind, buffeting you, making it hard to stay on course. <what do you do?> Below is a great city. Everyone is inside, hiding from the winds. Torches are flickering, going out in the gale. Dirt and sand are whipped into the air, to fall back, and even the stones of the walls you can see seem to sway in the gale. “You have lost something,” Deneir whispers in your ear. Below is a great pyramid, from which you can hear two things: a deep male voice roaring with rage, and a woman laughing with madness. Then the clouds crash down with rain, and you can see or hear nothing except the light creeping through the window at the Swinging Sword … and the bitterly cold wind outside battering at the shutters..

Breakfast is Ham and porridge cooked in house, so there is no question of poisoning.

They leave town via the Larch Path. It is less than a road, but more than a trail. About 7 miles out of town, there is a pile of stones that they recall is reported to lead to a cave full of treasure. Turns out is is full of Stirges. After they clear the cave of pests, they recall, Albaeri Mellikho and Elak Dornen told them about the cave.

As they continue along, William notices that there is a giant vulture struggling in a against the chill wind. It doesn’t have a rider.

After about 10 miles there is a tree that looks like a large chicken reaching up into the air. There is a decaying skull with a large black arrow through it’s eye socket. William decides to recover the parchment that’s attached to the arrow. As he goes to dislodge the arrow his mind is filled with an image of a skull rushing toward him. The others gather closer to try and determine what is might be. Eventually Moony determines that it is likely human skin. After some discussion, Moony removes the scroll from the arrow. Inside the scroll is a more natural tone  “The Last Laugh – You’ll be next! Valklondar.” Theran crushes the skull with a rock and William casts a Bonfire to burn the skull and scroll. 

A few more miles along the wind begins to die down. They pass the old abandoned quarry and at mile 16 there is a short stone plinth that is charred.  This is the marker to indicate where to turn east to find the circle of the red moon. The trail quickly opens up into a path that is wide enough for a cart to pass. Moony notices that the entrance to the path is disguised to look smaller. Moony and William both notice that there has been traffic other than goats along the path.

About four miles along the path the group starts looking for a place to camp. There is the scent of smoke hangs in the air. The group decides to continue along towards the site. A steep hill rises up in the darkness. Visible through a smoky haze that covers the hill is a square tower ringed by ruined walls. In front of the tower burns a bonfire shaped like a fiery giant. Scattered on the slope below the tower are several bonfires with tents clustered around them. Indistinct humanoid figures, obscured by smoke, huddle near these closer fires. A trail leads up to these hillside encampments.

Standing before the bonfire at the bottom of the hill, four robed humans—two male, two female—chant and laugh. On the periphery of the firelight are two massive elk, placidly chewing. The chanter are the Muldoon, Varigo, Inir, and Fariya. William approaches the druids and greets them. They are happy to see him and glad that he has come to the red circle druids. Your timing is great, the wicker giant burns but is not consumed. The ceremony shall begin the next night or the next day. It looks like they have been celebrating. They talk of Elizar who has inspired them (Inari more than Fariya) 

After talking some more the heroes drift off to “sleep”. William chats some more Fariya. She is less certain than the other druids, but is hopeful.

Urshnora is very unhappy. She dislikes the fire and oppressive magic. Faith agrees and promises to keep a sharp watch through the night.

Moony heads off to skulk around the camp. Swinging wide and creeping in to check out each fire circle. He takes a misstep at the far northeast camp. Two Worgs spot Moony and give chase. When he gets closer to the camp the ruckus draws the rest of the group and they go rushing off into the dark. The Worgs have caught up to Moony and several Bugbears are running after them. With a blind shot, William dropped a bonfire on one of the Worgs and Theran followed up with a spectacular Fireball. A couple of followers came from a nearby camp site and joined the battle. In the end, the remaining Bugbear runs off.

After the fight, the bear chained near the campsite breaks loose and attacks Ingulf. Nala and William move to protect her, but not kill the bear. After the initial attack, Ingulf throws scorching rays at the bear, killing it. It is right about then that Inari and the other druids arrive at the campfire.

In the end, none of the followers had seen the Worg before and they assumed that they had come from outside the encampment. Ingulf sheds crocodile tears for the dead bear, but the party can’t quite decipher her motivation. Faith casts Gentle Repose on the bear and William heals Ingulf. She flirts with William in a distracting and not entirely pleasant way. When the conversation dies down, the group goes back to the campsite with Inari and the druids. Everyone agrees that killing the bear was very undruidic.

Game Notes

Old Red Herring Week

There’s a ton of side quests along the Larch Road, which get brought up when the party first arrives at Red Larch and talks to various people. The party had wildly outleveled them at this point, which meant that when they went into the stirge cavern  (which I’d had to create and populate myself some months prior, dagnabbit) it was no threat to them — but they remembered the Believers still back at Red Larch who had suggested they check it out when they were still 1st level.

The Last Laugh scroll thing was a weird, one-off thing that would give the person affected by it a partial protection from (more like an aversion by) the undead for a tenday.

That’s awesome … but the only undead in this campaign are at Lance Rock. It would have been very cool then, not so much now.

It did give me an idea this Valklondar (undefined in the campaign) being some sort of undead adventurer, himself hunting the undead, and haunting William while he’s still under the influence of the “blessing.”

The Return of the Young Druids

Back in the late 60s/early 70s, there was a minor herd of “Young” TV shows, trying to merge the standard TV series formulae with a “young” cast to grab the attention of “young” (late teens, early 20s) audience with “hip” characters who wore their hair slightly longer. So you had The Young Lawyers and The Young Doctors and The Rookies, etc.

Every time I referred to the Young Druids, I flashed back on those TV shows.

The book simply gives their number, gender, their elk, the fact that they are partying, and that they are “good” enough that Elizar has decided that they will eventually be sacrifices. But I’d already teed them up as individual characters back in Session 20, at Summit Hall, as they followed (one of their member’s) dreams to come to Scarlet Moon Hall.

That meant the players had folk they could talk with more freely, felt the stakes for their friends more deeply, and tied together the saga as a whole.  It also gave them a campsite they could doss down at.

The Madness of Scarlet Moon Hall

One thing I will say for Princes of the Apocalypse: the four Haunted Keeps are all very different sorts of “dungeons.”  Feathergale Spire is a narrow circular tower, with nearby stuff to investigate if you choose. Rivergard Keep is a standard castle. Sacred Stone Monastery is a more traditional dungeon, above (the monastery) and below (the caves).

Scarlet Moon Hall is just … weird. That’s both good and bad. There’s the hall at the top, proper, which has its own interesting issues we’ll explore when appropriate. But the hill up to the hall consists of several interlocking campsites of various groups that have been drawn here for their own reasons. They’re all outdoors, but all shrouded by the smoke from the bonfires and ever-burning wicker giant. And they are all close enough by each other that a disturbance at one draws the attention of others (as carefully laid out in the book.

That takes up the front of the hill. The back of the hill? As you can see, it’s (a) not really on the map, and (b) described in the book as pretty featureless, but a possible approach to things. Oooookay.

A party that comes here could, if they chose, and just march up to the front “gate” and confront Elizar, his troops, and, possibly, a bunch of other folk from the campground, not happy about their Circle and Rite being threatened. Or they could circle around and do it from behind, and avoid most of the unhappy campers.

Or they could spend a lot of time, and multiple sessions, engaging with each camp and trying to figure out what was going on. Which is what this group did.

It’s a weird situation, and I had not expected the atmospherics to actually make the various campfires into quasi-separate “rooms.”

I also had not expected, for some unknown reason, that the Rogue would scout out a bunch of the camps — hampered by (a) Dark Vision only gives dim light with Disadvantage on Perception Rolls, especially when (b) people are sitting around big bonfires and (c) the hillside is covered in smoke, further hampering vision.

Anyway, in his scouting, the Tabaxi Rogue was able to at least see what the camps were presenting themselves as, but not what each of their Deep, Dark Secrets were. Until he failed his Stealth roll against some highly Perceptive Worgs.

After the session (i.e., as prep for the next session), I crafted the map below to show what they could see and where things were, based on what he saw / encountered.

What the map doesn’t give an idea is that smoke and haze (and, at night, darkness) over everything. I believe that, from a Roll20 perspective, I turned all the lighting off, just having the bonfires visible and, as they explored, the terrain slowly revealed.

Exit, Pursued by Worgs

So one of the camps is inhabited by some Bugbears and Worgs, who took over the site from some druids who were sacrificed by Elizar & Co. Why are the Bugbears there? What do they want? How do they hope to avoid being found out? What happens if they are found out by Elizar & Co.? Who knows? Certainly not the campaign book.

Ah well. It made for some excitement, especially in the smoky darkness, which hampered the party from knowing what was going on, whether Moony was actually in trouble, where he was, what they could see getting there, etc., especially if they weren’t going to haul light sources along and make themselves targets of those in the other campsites.

All’s well that eventually ended well, but it did give an introduction-in-battle to a neighboring camp that was actually a pair of Fire Cultists pretending to be druids and subtly grilling any newcomers. That then provided a chance for their chained (!) bear (named ohmygoshwedidn’tthinktoname him “Bear-Bear”) to break free and attack, requiring the bear to be killed, raising even deeper suspicions …

Can you actually do a Quiet Repose and then a raising of the dead … on a bear?  Or does it require an ensouled / sapient creature? I decided to go along with the cleric’s impulse.

Bits and Bobs

Faith dreams of Aerisi, the Air Temple, Aldrik, etc. No real clues here, but a reminder of an outstanding major plot thread or two.

The NPC Urshnora is offered a chance to go free — kind of a big deal from the party, and unexpected. That she chooses to come along is a surprise to them — but, no matter how she’s feeling more kindly about the party, she’s also out to get vengeance on the Fire Cult, and that’s right where they’re going.

 

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