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 53 (Day 41)
In … the Temple of the Black Earth (one more time!)

1. 

   Xharva Deem insisted she did not want a fight, nor Nala‘s soul, but just what Nala was carrying on her. Which turned out to be the Sands of Broken Bonds, a trinket Nala was carrying as a  good luck charm. They negotiated an exchange, the can containing the Sands for Xharva reanimating the petrified form of Aldrik.

2. Aldrik didn’t speak much of his experience, except that he’d seen some sort of conflict between the Crushing Wave cult and the Black Earth cult, and had been petrified by the medusa, Marlos Urnrayle.
3. Nala recalled that she had been given a letter for Aldrik in Red Larch, but didn’t give it to him.

4. 

   After a short rest, and Aldrik nicking a crystal glaive from the dead Black Earth Priest in the room, the party headed for the Tyar-Besil – Manufactory Quarter, which they had every expectation would be the Temple of Eternal Flame. On their way, they had a sudden feeling like they were Being Observed from everywhere, the sensation passing after a few, brief moments.

5. The first room in the new zone they found a guard set against intruders from the Temple of Black Earth consisting of several half-ogres and ogres — who were little match for the party, bolstered by Aldrik.  

Player Recap

We traded a can of sand for Aldrik

Xharva Dreem requests that Moony let her negotiate with Nala. Eventually, Nala decides to bargain. After much back and forth it turns out that Xharva wants Nala’s trinket, the can with what sounds like sands in it.

They go back to Marlos’ room where the Aldrik statue stands. Xharva encircles the stone with her sandy form. When she withdraws, an unhappy Aldrik is standing in his loincloth. His manacles are strange stony substance, maybe coral. Once freed the group decides to quickly move out of Marlos’ room.

While taking a short rest, they get a very brief story from the Aldrik. Mostly that the water and earth temples aren’t working together and that he needed more beer before getting anything else out of him. They find some clothes and a glaive from a earth priests.

When the group decides to head towards the northwest door leading to the fire temple. Moony explores ahead down the hall and hears a group speaking in low guttural voices. The group decides to charge in. After a few tense moment against the large opponents, the group of 2 ogres and 4 half-ogres fall. 

Game Notes

A very fun pay-off session, with all sorts of things wrapping up neatly.

Unlike Anakin, Xharva loves sand

We finally got the Xharva Deem story resolved, with the mysterious Sands of Broken Bonds earning the party a Wish spell from the Dao to de-petrify Aldrik.

Yeah, with enough time I had neatly expanded the whole sands thing from a rando trinket (#47 “A metal can that has no opening but sounds as if it is filled with liquid, sand, spiders, or broken glass (your choice)”) to an artifact with its own journal write-up:

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Sands of Broken Bonds

In the words of Xharva Deem:

The stuff that dreams are made of. In fleshling cultures, they speak of it as though alive, carrying them into the dream world, where all things are possible, all pleasures fulfilled. That is but a crude, meaty misinterpretation of the Dust, the Grit, the Sands of Broken Bonds, of which all creatures long for, even if they cannot use them, and even if their vision is blurred by the sands within their eyes.

As Xharva described it, any creature of the Plane of Elemental Earth would find the sands a combination of a mind-expanding hallucinogenic, an aphrodisiac, a reward pathway stimulant, a Nepenthe of forgetting sorrows, and a rich, powerful, mind-blowing experience. She did not mention any limitations of time or dosage, or any down side or harmful effects of using the substance.

It turned out that one of the party’s Trinkets, a can apparently filled with sand that Nala‘s old guard captain, Brex Gelvain had given her as a good luck charm, actually contained some of these Sands. Xharva, detecting that, sought to buy them from Nala when they met in the Temple of Black Earth, and could not believe that the Dragonborn warrior didn’t realize what she had, leading to multiple antagonistic encounters.

Xharva considered the sands beyond price, however, and, in a final, peaceful engagement, even deigned to cast a Wish spell to reanimate the petrified Aldrik in exchange for the can. 

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Xharva, at least, had a “happy Gollum clutching the Ring as he falls into lava” look as she vanished from the campaign indefinitely. Normally Dao will only grant Wishes in exchange for personal service (slavery) of some value; in this case, a brief case full of uncut heroin did the trick.

Will she use the Sands herself? Or sell them to someone else for even more treasure? Let’s leave that as a mystery for another day, perhaps another campaign.

Freeing Aldrik

Besides the Dao Wish, I had figured three other ways to free Aldrik by the time the episode came around —

1. Wait for Faith to level and get Greater Restoration (imminent), or
2. Play around with the Basilisk Fountain I’d introduced, or

3. 

   (A new one) have Windvane pitch a fit about them abandoning a comrade in the Earth Temple (she has abandonment issues, not surprisingly, and is, from the Air perspective, utterly opposed to Earth) and wielding some sort of Wish-like magic from inside the Bag of Holding, which would burn her out for several episodes (and make her all the more fun when she came back).

But my wife figured out the “Oh, she offers to buy the can at any price? Can she do something for Aldrik?” move, as I was hoping, and some nifty negotiating later, everyone walked away from the deal happy.

Except Aldrik, who was near-naked (again) and unarmed (again) and without any ale.

Fortunately as a barbarian, Aldrik didn’t need armor (there was some Duergar scale mail elsewhere in the area, but the only thing worse than Duergar to the Dwarves are Duergar who have been a few days dead.

Instead, he armed himself with one of the crystal glaives of the Black Earth Priest in the barracks room where they Short Rested. It’s a fun-looking weapon, it will provoke reactions from anyone in the cults they meet, it counts as a magic weapon for attack purposes (even though it has no particular bonus), and it gave me a chance to learn more about how Reach Weapons work in 5e.

So what was going on with Aldrik?

I had already decided that the dwarf was somehow linked by blood and spirit with the old king of Tyar-Besil, such that he had some control over aspects of the city (or could be used for such control). This tied in some strange way to his first appearance as an apparent escapee from the Stone Circle Monastery.

1. Aerisi had detected it back at Feathergale Spire, and kidnapped him via Air Elemental to serve her (and, when he refused, stuck him into amnesiac slavery).
2. And then Gar Shatterkeel got wind of it and used a Water Elemental to nab him — and take him with him when he went to the ziggurat Temple of Elemental Evil in the Fane … convinced to either get him cooperating over control of the city, or using him as a sacrifice to the Elder Eye.
3. Marlos, also getting info about this, led his forces into the Fane, and managed to capture Aldrik for himself, then put him on ice (er, rock) while he figured out his next move.

It’s 2-3 that Aldrik remembers, with a fair amount of trauma (threats from Gar being less awful than witnessing the horrors of the rituals seen, not to mention being literally petrified).  Or so I guess: Aldrik’s player had been very intentional to be gruff and laconic, so a lot of the background I wrote up (or that he wrote up, for that matter) never got brought out at the table.

Which is fine.

None of this is in the campaign, of course. But working character stories into campaign is one of a DM’s main jobs. Plus, as structured, it helped him disappear as a player at various times (as Real Life interfered), which was also helpful.

The Purloined Letter

Way back on the last visit to Red Larch, I think it was, they were given a letter that Bruldenthar, the dwarvish librarian from Mirabar, had left for Aldrik. Nala had been holding onto it, but for whatever reason, didn’t see fit to share it with him (yet).

Which is … maybe okay (though intriguing), as it was a letter intended to drag him/them over to the Vale of Dancing Waters sidequest, which I think they had outleveled by this point, and didn’t actually need to do.

Now Leaving the Temple of the Black Earth

And praise Ogremoch for that!

Speaking of Whom, I finally gave the party that “Oh, Ogremoch is paying a fraction of their attention to me and what I’ve done and bring me my brown pants!” feeling of wiggins — late, but the party didn’t necessarily know that.

The rest of the evening was taken up heading into the Fire Temple (the Manufactory Quarter, better known as the Forge) and fighting several ogres/half-ogres. The bad guys never really had a chance, but, then, the guard posts aren’t supposed to be impenetrable, just wearing down and interesting. And if they back out of the Fire Temple, there are rules for how the room gets re-populated shortly.

And back out they might, because that’s the third Temple down, and the Cult Retaliation rules say they will get “Race to Destruction,” a warning that the someone (Fire Temple, most likely) is going to send more mad bombers against … their dear friends in Red Larch.  (They will find out they already missed out on the devastation of Westbridge, a town they’ve never been in.)

Presumably this will get them out of the dungeons for a bit. And, sometime shortly, they’ll Long Rest and ding up to Level 9 …

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