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.

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!

GM Recap

Session 27 (Day 31)

Dreams!
It was a frigidly cold day at Scarlet Moon Hall. Not just the smoke, but ground effect fog made vision no better than at night.
Moony and William scouted up the hill. At the first camp, they run across old, scruffy acquaintances, Storol and Wiglaf, whom they met shortly after their departure from Sacred Stone Monastery (S.17). The pair were apparently really bored here, waiting for something to happen, and grew increasingly belligerent, eventually revealing themselves as werewolves and attacking the two heroes. Moony ran for help, while William tried to fend them off. The rest of the party caught up, and eventually killed the werewolves (made a bit easier by their having their hybrid form ripped from them by William’s Moonbeam.
The violence did not sit well with the quartet of cranky druids the next camp over, who seemed ready to defend themselves if attacked. The party quietly backed down, and returned downhill.
They then visited (all together!) the camp immediately east, Faith determined to raise, then free, the dead bear. This plan outraged the “druids” there (Ingulf and Aylbrith), who then attacked. Ingulf was taken down quickly, but Aylbrith let loose two fireballs — the second killing himself and, nearly, Faith.
All this took place under the watchful eyes of that already-defensive quartet of grumpy druids.
Individual and group heals, along with a Short Rest, left the party with the question of what to do next.
- Can they just take over the camp of the last pair they killed defended themselves from?
- Are the remaining camps druids or fakes?
- Can/should they get a group of allies from the other camps to go with them to the top?
- Should they stroll in the front opening, or sneak in from the broken walls around the side?

Player Recap

Moony and William get into trouble and then Faith makes it worse

That night, the watch is uneventful but the groups dreams

William … It’s dark. It’s stuffy. It’s everything you don’t get, walking upon the earth, feeling the breeze, smelling the rich smells of loam and wood and water. Instead, you’re constrained, not bound, but in a tight space, stone-edged, standing upright, the air almost gone, barely able to … <<what do you do>> [William shifts into star form] The stone door before you swings wide — and you’re battered by hard, round objects … falling on you from above, flooding the space, clattering lightly, each a bit of weight, a slight of hardness, but in aggregate … Skulls! You’re buried alive under hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of skulls, all of them grinning at you, all of them laughing. “The last laugh,” says a man’s voice, cool, deep, dry. “Where is he, the Lord of the Stone? Where are they, of Stone and Earth and the breaking of the highest laws of life and death?”

Another man’s voice, aggrieved. “She took him, not me. Him, not me!” But there’s light! Beyond the skulls, you capture a glimpse of light, then more, then still more, as men in leather garb and masks shovel away the skulls, and beyond them a woman, pale as death, slender as a reed, wrapped in silks and silver and her ears and face show her to be of the elves, and she laughs, and says, “Ah. A new prize. I shall collect the set, even if this one is but a bishop to my king.”

And a cold wind whips up and blows away the remaining skulls, clattering and rolling like crockery before it, and a madwoman laughs somewhere, and the wind is chill and biting and … very real.

Theren: You’re sitting at a table in a tavern. It’s quite warm, perhaps because of the roaring fire in the fireplace. Perhaps because the tables around you are ablaze. Perhaps because of the massive figure sitting opposite of you, himself ablaze and smoking a pipe the billows sparks and smoke. “We’ve been waiting for you,” the figure says. [Theren asks “Who are you?] The temperature continues to rise. “You look tense. You’ve not had much of a chance to let go of late, have you?”

It’s becoming difficult to breathe. “You’re among friends here. Go ahead. Let go. Release that which you keep pent up in yourself all day, and all night. BRING THE FIRE.” All all around, the flames rising from the tables look at you with as fierce a gaze as the burning man opposite.

Moony: You don’t remember much of your dreams, except that there are huge dogs chasing you and they have William’s eyes.

Nala: You are standing on a barren plain, upon sand that ripples and moves in the flickers of cold breeze about you. You see no hills, no rivers, no trees … only endless sand under a pale blue sky. The wind whispers to you, in a deep, aged voice … “Those of the Eternal Flame are full of pride. They see only their own glory. They bathe in violence, wear it as a ruddy glow. They are useful tools, the best of a bad lot, sometimes creative in intuitive leaps, and firm in their intent once their fury takes them. You can trust them to do what they say they will do, and trust them to turn on you once that time is past. Trust your cold heart to defeat their burning ones.” And it occurs to you that you are, in fact, damned cold …

Faith: For once Faith has a dreamless sleep.

It is a very cold morning and the smoke and smoke. The young druids are up. Muldoon and Varigo are tending the elk. Fariya outside Iniri’s tent arguing about how cold it is. Varigo is optimistic that today will be the day that Elizar will begin the ritual. The two group pool their resource for breakfast. Hope step slightly outside the camp circle to do her morning prayers. William and Moony as the druids about the ceremony and camp. Urshnora suggests that the couple with the bear are evil and need to be dealt with. The Elk interrupt Hope, probably looking for a treat.

Moony and William take a torch and explore the camp some. At the first camp up from the druids they come across Wiglaf and Storol. William, “Ah, the strangers from the road, I see you found your way.” Storol, “You said that you didn’t know the way but here you are” William, “But we didn’t know until we went to Red Larch.” The conversation gets confusing and Storol is contrary on all avenues. Moony indicates that it is time to move on and Storol says, “Hey the cat is rabbiting” and begins to change. They are both werewolves, taking on hybrid form. A bloody battle ensues and William takes the brunt of the damage. He calls up Moonbeam, which forces the lycanthropes to return to their original form. Moony and the rest of the group takes care of them while Faith heals William.

There are some druids from a nearby camp that are watching the group. A Dwarf (Comnall) demands “What is your intention” William explains that they were just trying to find out more about the ceremony and the werewolves attached as they left their camp. I was just fighting for my life.” Sauruki comments “We have been here a while but we don’t know what the schedule, so you are visitors? William answers “I have heard that there is a great druid ceremony that will restore balance” Murcadh says “Violence like this does not help restore balance.” They all agree, but point out that there was no other choice. The druids are uneasy and watch them carefully as the group goes back down the hill.

After getting cleaned up Faith insists that they all go to the camp with the bear. Ingulf and Aylbrith stand to meet them. Faith offers to resurrect the bear but requests that he be set free. Ingulf begins to protest and then Aylbrith says “Ingulf, enough, take her.” Aylbrith open things out with a fireball on the party. Ingulf goes down quickly and in the end Aylbrith kills himself with a second fireball, trying to take the party with him.

Moony explains to the druids from up the hill that Faith had a disagreement with the campers about resurrecting the bear. Theren tells the young druids that “The priest we travel with is crazy.” The young druids appear to mostly accept the description of the battle but are concerned.

The group takes a short rest to recover hit points and then discuss plans. They also discuss the other camps on the hill and what the young druids know about the wicker man and the main hall.

Game Notes

Pacing at Scarlet Moon Hall

The book sort of assumes that the party will engage the whole campsite (or bypass it) in one concerted set of activity. There’s no provision made for “we took out some bad guys, and now we’re going to rest until nightfall, and we took out some more, and now we Long Rest and get ready for the morrow, and …”

Which is what the players ended up doing, tackling the hill bit by bit, with full evenings in-between. And, honestly, short of Elizar sending his (not numerous) troops down to deal with the problem, and breaking all the fun at the top of the hill, I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I suppose I could have had more druids show up, or more covert troops, or something, until they felt they needed to tackle things more directly.

Anyway, that’s on me, though it would have been nice for the campaign to consider it, as they did in other locations.

Dreams

Yes, back to the dream channel.

In William’s case, I’ve got the Valklondar bits from the Last Laugh tying in (as they should have) to Oreioth, with a bit of mysterious Aerisi thrown in.

Theren gets more temptation by the spirit of Fire present in this place.

And Nala, a Silver Dragonborn, sort of gets the opposite, her unconscious affinity for cold coming to the fore.

Unhappy Campers

By the end of the session, the party is full of doubts whether there are any real druids on hillside at all except for their William, and (maybe?) the Young Druids.

We’d already met Wiglaf and Storol back right after the party took down Sacred Stone Monastery, with their thinking that William was the druid they had heard tell of.

That intro not only started the sequence of “ne’er-do-wells are being drawn to the Sumber Hills” bit for the players, but introduced some new folk for here at Scarlet Moon Hall. Which meant a little more meaningful interaction, at least until they discovered the pair were werewolves.

Which would have been a scosh dire, except for William’s favorite damned spell, Moonbeam, which is not only a kickass attack, but forces shapeshifters back to their human form.

Sigh.

And then there were the Cranky Druids. Not everyone on the hill is a bad guy, and Comnall, Murcadh, Ragnad, and Sauruki were actual druids (well, Sauruki was a Water Cult spy, but that aside), interested in seeing the Rite performed and “restoring balance.” They’re suspicious (not without cause) of some of the folk in the camp, which means discovering, multiple times, that Our Heroes are actually attacking and killing people … doesn’t go over well.

This builds off the the brief descriptions in the book, which is fine. It created some competent antagonists for the party who weren’t actually bad guys, included some complications for Urshnora (also from the Water Cult), and overall made the situation that much more rich.

They aren’t referred to as the Cranky Druids by the campaign, but that’s the title that stuck by the end, particularly when they kept yelling for the party to stop all that (combat-related) racket.

Bits and Bobs

The book doesn’t say anything about ground effect fog, but I figured the smoke needed some reinforcement during the daylight hours. Or maybe it was an added reaction to some unexpectedly frigid weather that blew through.

The party was in fact trying to figure out what to do, but could come to no consensus, and I refused to put my thumb on the scales through the NPCs they were with. Part of me didn’t want them to bypass the various conflicts and discoveries on the hill. Part of me wanted them to get on with it.

<< Session 26 | Session 28 >>

Princes of the Apocalypse, Session 27: “Bad Moon Rising”