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 44 (Day 38)
In … Red Larch!

1. In the aftermath of the battle against the Black Earth cultists, bodies were cleaned up and searched, the priest’s crystalline staff/glaive was claimed by Moony, and the Orb of Red Larch was put back in its custom crate (which appeared to be of new construction) and taken by Faith to the Allfaiths Shrine. There she noted that the crate was inscribed with symbols of the Howling Hatred.
2. The reaction by the general populace of Red Larch was worry about this attack, how it was connected to the devastation in Womford, and why this sort of thing always seemed to happen with the party was around. The very power of the party appeared to daunt many.
3. Faith complained at various times that she felt the Orb of Red Larch might be whispering in her ear. Even after it was stashed in its chest in the Bag of Holding, that seemed to be an issue. This was worrisome to the party.
4. Harburk Tuthmarillar tried to learn what the party knew about the attack on Womford, and how these cultists might be connected. He was concerned about further attacks on the town while the party wasn’t there. They showed him the symbols of the four Elemental Cults as a warning sign.
   1. He discussed his stand-still with the Believers in Red Larch, and how the folk who might be able to break open whatever conspiracy there might have been — Marlandro Gaelkur, Grund, and Baragustas Harbuckler — had all left town.
   2. He also thanked them for their rescue of the captives in the Temple of Howling Hatred.
5. Elak Dornen followed Nala and Theren, and, after an apology, offered to hire them as a town guard against further incursions like that of the Black Earth cultists. When that failed, he offered to hire them to go after the Black Earth, paying them a stipend, providing them supplies, and letting them keep a generous 40% of any treasure they found. They did not accept the offer.
6. William visited Haeleeya Hanadroum, who was just leaving town to return to her home in the south, stopping by Feathergale Spire to collect the body of her estranged daughter, Savra Hanadroum. She said she would also deal with the other bodies left there. William gave her a cool trinket from his pocket.
7. Moony brought the priest’s glaive to the Helm at Highsun to offer as a wall decoration.
8. Everyone, sooner or later, visited the Shopkeeper at Magister’s Market to buy new items, sell items, exchange gold for gems, etc. It turned out he was holding a scroll from Bruldenthar, left for Aldrik. Nala took custody of it.
9. Faith used Send to let Bruldenthar, wherever he was, know about the books having been found. His response was grateful, but mentioned a calamity, and also ran out of words. 

Player Recap

Elementals Session 44: S*H*O*P*P*I*N*G

Constable  Harburk arrives and asks about the disturbance. Nala gives a short explanation and suggests that a more private discussion would be in order. He directs the constables to take care of the scene and agrees to see them in about an hour after the group has breakfast. Faith takes the crate with the orb to the all-faith’s temple. Brother Sand helps her move it to the room that she is using. The crate has howling wind marking on it. The orb is smooth and dark without marking. The inside of the case is plain. The cultists and priest are all wearing black earth symbols. 

Faith asks Brother Sand if her presence at the temple is doing more harm than good. He says that if that was the case it would be his jobs to guide them towards understanding. Faith and William rejoin the other at the inn. 

While the group is eating, the merchant Trayen comes down. He talks briefly to Kaylessa before sitring at a table by himself. He appears nervous. Nala approaches his table. She asks to join him. After she sits down, they begin to talk about Womford. She relays a summary of the story as she had heard it. He confirms the tell. She probes deeper and discovers that the perpetrators were wearing fire cult garb. 

The group, except Moony, go to the butcher to talk with the constable. It is clear that he would like to blame them for the morning’s disturbance, but does not go there. When the air is cleared, the group splits up to shop. 

gold to gem exchange 20% over

Game Notes

So this was sort of a filler episode — a chance for them to get caught up with story lines left a-dangling last time they were in town. I was a lot more prepared this session, knowing where the characters were and where they were likely to go. They still managed to surprise me.

Whispers

The macro I had for Faith to hear whispers in her head worked like a champ, and her player seemed to have fun with it — though she lampshaded it a bit much, supposing out loud that it was the orb that was whispering to her, and asking others if they were hearing such a thing.

I suspected strongly I would not get a “Frodo slowly being turned by the Ring” kind of vibe going here, but I was slowly making the (unrealiable) case to Faith that, without Windvane, she wouldn’t be able to stop the next Orb of Devastation that comes along.

It’s Magic!

I learned a lesson about giving the players access to a magic store: take orders in advance, so you can figure out the value, likelihood of availability, etc. I spent waaaaay too long calculating costs for stuff, esp. as the players took the opportunity as a “What might you have that would be of interest to me?” kind of thing.

Still, people who had a specific direction got the chance to buy the stuff they wanted, so that was all good.

I had a lot of interesting stuff to do with the Shopkeeper, interacting with some of the player — hinting to Faith that he knew of her plight, and to Theren that he was the voice in his dreams. Unfortunately, the fact that I had everyone arrive at the shop at once, and the delays in the pricing, hampered some of that.

I planned to play around with more 1-on-1 encounters next session.

The Message

Bruldenthar’s scroll to Aldrik — and his abortive message to Faith — were meant to provide the players with a nudge toward the Vale of the Dancing Waters side quest. But the scroll got tucked away by Nala, who, of course, would never dream of reading it while Aldrik was off at college a mysterious captive. And Faith, having gotten an abortive message back, never bothered to tell anyone.

I mean, it’s not a huge loss if they never go there, but it is kind of a fun side quest. I ran across it in reviewing my “What happens after the next Temple they defeat?” list. And it was at the right level for them. As a bonus, I discovered I had never read through the quest, or the map, etc. Roll20 made some interesting use of multi-sided tokens in the adaptation, though I ended up redoing most of the tokens to make them look like the character(s) they were supposed to.

I kind of hoped they ended up going there (but they did not).

Red Larch as campaign fodder

As I look back on this campaign, I’m glad I invested so much time in Red Larch and its people. It wasn’t the centerpiece of Princes of the Apocalypse, but having it there provided a break from elemental shenanigans (or gave them a new spin), and provided some immediate stakes for the payers as to why they might want to avert the end of the world.

I think without Red Larch as a grounding element, PotA would have been much more of just a series of dungeon crawls. Which some players might have enjoyed more, but would have had me, at the very least, far less entertained.

Bits and Bobs

The scene with Haeleeya was somber-to-sad, which is a fine thing to do with the right players, and a counter to the amusing encounters they were doing a lot of.

Best scene of the night, by far, was with the local VIP, Elak Dornen — who I suddenly realized was sort of a Lex Luthor character, the guy who knows he is naturally in charge of everything, who has his vision for how best the town should be served, and is willing to pay off and/or manipulate anyone to pursue both his personal power and that benignly despotic power.

And just like Luthor has a blind spot when encountering someone who cannot be easily bought (or eliminated), Dornen had this week’s tone-deaf approach to Nala and Theren to try to buy  the party off into protecting Red Larch, now that he realized that the Black Earth wasn’t going to spare them. Part of the fun was the obviousness of his approach, and part of it was the grotesque local-yokel under-estimation of how much money it would take to buy them. His oh-so-generous offer to let them keep a whopping 40% of whatever treasure they picked up while under contract to the town was … the icing on the cake.

As usual, we didn’t get as far as I had expected, but there’s still a lot of stuff I had teed up for the next go — some dreams (I got a couple down at the last minute before the game started), William connecting the dots that he saw the Believers dragging bodies out for shallow graves back in their original stay, and maybe some of those bits I wanted to do with the Shopkeeper.

But most important, the players should have left here for the next bit with a heightened sense of “Shit’s going down” that would drive some action.

Let’s see what happened there.

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