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

1. 

   The party continued their exploration of the Temple of Black Earth.  The crevice led to a hidden trail midwall in a great cavern, ending up at an arrow slit in the rocky wall. Moony‘s use of the Claws of the Umber Hulk let the pass from there into Marlos Urnrayle‘s chambers. There they found luxurious treasure and two very realistic statues — one of whom they concluded was the petrified form of their old friend, Aldrik. Which was odd, because Aldrik had been taken at the Air Temple by a Water Elemental ….

2. Carefully searching the chamber beyond as a giant crab (as they had decided there was a petrifying creature nearby, and giant crabs can use Blindsight), William was attacked by a shadow demon, who viciously struck at him, only to discover that a restored William, with lighting, and a Moonbeam, could do a hella radiant damage.
3. Spells up and clock ticking, the party left Aldrik behind and rushed down the hall to the shrine that Moony had previously scouted out. Kicking in the door, they interrupted the Black Earth Priestess Erione doing something creepy and mystic that seemed to involve a lot of very fragile cultists and sacrificing a deep gnome named Rukh to a black pudding. A shortlived melee ensued, though Nala‘s armor was damaged by the black pudding’s acid.
4. Rukh gave Nala some information about he’d come there and what lay below, including about the Fane of the Eye.
5. The party ran to the “First ???” location on the map, a chamber of great square pillars. Another of the great stone warriors was there, watching to the northwest, but they attacked and quickly dispatched it.
6. It was time for a short rest, so they decided to take a quick peek at the area that might be the staircase that Rukh had spoken of leading to the Fane of the Eye.  Moony found it a great cavern with a pillar and spiralling staircase leading downwards into the dark. Which is the point when Xharva Deem came up around the final turn of the stairs. “YOU!”

Player Recap

Where we once again find Aldrik in a loin cloth!

They leave the room and travel down the rough hall to the North. It ends in a blank wall that with some chicken bones and other human trash. Moony locates a hidden door and concealed latch. Looks like it hasn’t been used frequently. Traversing along a path around a large crevasse leads Moony to an arrow slot. When the group joins him […]

A beautiful appointed room. Lushes tapestry … There is a status of a dismayed elf (holding a cloak) and an angry dwarf in a loin cloth. It’s Aldrick. Don’t […]

William turns into a giant crab and scuttles into the room to the south of the bedroom. In the dark he can sense large immovable object and then senses a presence coming from above. William tries to find. The creature says in Williams head “You don’t belong here” and slashes him. William quickly changes to human form and drops a moonbeam on to the creature. It screams loudly and flees East as the others enter the room. 

Pressing on rapidly while Faith’s fairies are active. The cavern was once beautiful, but the natural stalactite’s, stalagmites, and flows have been destroyed. There is a small cleared path through the cave. Around the room are more petrified statues

Trying to maximize the fairy time, the group quickly goes to the door to the South. Next is a large room with a tall domed ceiling. The tiles have been pulled up in the center of the room and a pit is being dug. There is a large dark obelisk in the pit with bones littered around it. There are several earth cultists, Erione – female earth priestess in stone armor and Rukh – Gnome shackled to a smaller stone obelisk. The cultists and Erione go down quickly, but not before Erione hits Faith and Moony with a shatter spell. Nala approaches Rukh asking him in Gnomish, “Friend or Foe?” Rukh is too terrified of black ooze coming up around large obelisk. Nala swings at the chains with her sword and shatters them. She then tries to shove him out of the way of the black pudding. The Black Pudding gets an attack on Nala just before she takes it out. 

The Gnome tells us that he was captured below. His people use to have a colony there and he was an explorer looking for them when he got caught and brought up to serve as bait for the black pudding. He lets Nala know that Marlos is a Gorgon.

Continue North and enter room devoid of carvings with a large stone statue in the middle. It is another of the Giant Dwarf animated statues. Faith’s fairies damage and slow the status. Other move into attack range.

Party decides to check out one other hallway before taking a short rest. The corridor leads to a large cavern area with a grand staircase down.  A voice in Moony’s head says “YOU” A figure that looks amazingly like Xharva Deem comes charging up the stairs.

Game Notes

Sneak, sneak, sneak

The big crevasse around the northeast of this map means there are a lot of ways to get into Marlos’ hide-out other than the main doors. Given the map marking of “Death,” it made sense to figure those ways out.

The party’s use of the hidden path was great out-of-the-box thinking, especially as they sussed out what its use was (a back door for a guy who can walk through walls).

It also gave me a great opportunity to use Roll20’s new one-way vision dynamic lighting barriers, perfect for multiple layers of “this is above and you can’t see it, but it can see you.” I retrofitted that tech onto the map, rather than have a lot of removable light barriers.

It was also a completely unanticipated use of the Claws of the Umber Hulk. I wish Moony hadn’t already had Inspiration, because I would have given him one for it.

That said, little did I know how tired I would get of that particular magic item.

Marlos’ hang-out

Marlos has a sumptuous private chamber, which bolstered their treasure supply. It also had (I decided) two statues — one the petrified Aldrik (see below), the other a petrified elvish warrior. On the assumption that he wouldn’t end up revivified, I didn’t bother to work up a backstory on him — at a guess, an adventurer whose near success led Marlos to giving him a place of honor (or to contemptuously use him as a coat rack).

The main chamber outside of it was a bit different. There are a dozen statues placed around the map — very cool, but not a word of description about them, other than that they all look terrified (having been petrified by Marlos). I numbered them all and crafted up some brief descriptions  across races, genders, and classes (e.g., “Male human, a bit fat, holding a hammer, squinting as if to see something”) — it’s the sort of thing a DM should be able to improv, but why improv it when you have prep time for it?

Also, the way the place is described, the floor is covered with rock, stalagmites, flowstone, etc. So … there should be paths to allow the statues to be enjoyed (or just to get between the doors). I had to add those on the map.

The main doors into the this area from the south I covered with stone masks — actually, stone faces of still more of his victims. I thought it was a nicely gruesome touch.

Aldrik!

They found Aldrik! Huzzah! And he’s back to being in a loin cloth. And, of course, made of stone.

Now they need to figure out what to do with him. For the record, there are now three relatively clear options (since I put a kibosh on their putting a 1400-pound Aldrik statue into the Bag of Holding):

1. Cut a deal with Xharva Deem, who has also shown up. She can do a Wish, if persuaded (and bribed with the Can of Sand, which I have finally given a name).

2. 

   Purify (with the Ewer they picked up earlier) the water of the Basilisk Fountain I had placed at the Duergars’ hidey-hole. Ironically, the party thought that the Basilisk Fountain is evil, and the Gargoyle Fountain might be able to do the job.

3. Wait until next level-up for Faith to get Greater Restoration, and use that.

My son, who runs Aldrik, sat silently through the game that night, since that aspect didn’t get resolved. Which I felt kind of bad about, but I still thought it was a great re-entrance.

Speaking of which, I (minorly) blew it. I’ve been establishing that each time they fulfill the level-up requirements for the zone they are in, they get a brief sense of Being Observed (as they attract the momentary attention of the Prince/Godling involved). That should have happened when they took down Erione and the Black Pudding, but I completely spaced on it (not helped by the party wanting to rush off to the next encounter) …

What’s the rush?

Yes, my current pet peeve is that Faith’s Spirit Guardians (which Moony noticed look a lot more like Aerisi than they used to) lasts for 10 minutes (with Concentration), which has suddenly created a huge motivation for the whole party to run from one encounter to the next to get maximum utility out of them. Which, as in this case, kind of ruins the moment. Rukh had a lot of info to dump (and was an interesting character in and of himself), and I ended up skipping some and rushing through other bits, just because Faith was dragging everyone onward to the next battle.

I decided I was going to have to something about that. I understood the incentive, but it felt artificial and encouraged bad metagaming behavior (i.e., game mechanics were driving behavior that was not good for the game). Maybe being under that kind of pressure should have an impact on the rogue’s scouting — disadvantage on Perception, trap clearing, disadvantage on the party’s Stealth, etc. …

Xharva Deem

Anyway, Xharva Deem is back! One of the players said it was the surprise of the evening, which I felt somewhat gratified about. 

Running into her again was, by DM fiat, inevitable — they would have encountered her trudging her way back to them whatever exit they went to first. It’s hard to permanently Banish someone who can Planar Travel, even if it’s not that accurate (“Take me back to my Forge” ended up with her being somewhere in the Black Geode and having to make her way through the Fane back to here).

Let’s see if she can convince the party to not immediately attack her. At least I was able to reasonably suggest that the party’s internal debate after killing the Stone Warrior (which, honestly, wouldn’t have attacked them if they hadn’t attacked it first) about where to Short Rest was long enough for the Spirit Guardians to have faded.

Hmm. For some reason, I didn’t do (or save) an exploration map for this session. Ah, well.

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