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 54 (Day 41)
In … The Temple of Eternal Flame

1. Moony led a very cautious exploration of the hallway of dwarvish statues. Behind one he found the Crypt of Findon and Gitte, apparently never found by any cultists and undisturbed since the fall of Tyar-Besil. They left the sarcophagi undisturbed at Aldrik‘s insistence, though they did hide briefly in the crypt when a loud axe trap was poorly disarmed.

2. 

   An octagonal chamber beyond with lightly glowing obsidian pillars turned out to be a guardpost for three Razerblast fire cultists, as well as a flash-frying magma oven. The party prevailed, but not without Nala and William nearly perishing from vicious attacks and explosive deaths.

3. The party hid back in the crypt and took and enforced long rest. DING! Level 9!

Player Recap

Sleeping with the Dead and Liking it! 

After finishing off the ogres and finding their stash of coins, Moony sets off towards the hall leading out of the room. William and the others continue to look around the room or watch Moony explore the hall. Moony discovers a secret door behind the first statue. He enters the room with Aldrik close behind. It looks like a shrine with a couple of sarcophaguses’. Dust is thick on the ground. It doesn’t look like the cultists have found this room. There are Darvish rune on the sarcophagus “Rest well, Findon Stonemender. Dream of hammer and chisel echoing in your halls.” The second says “Beloved Gitte. Heavy are the hearts of all who knew ye.” Moony looks for traps on the first sarcophagus and asks if anyone would mind if he opens it. Aldrik eventually says that he would rather not have them disturbed.

Farther down the hall, Moony spots a trip wire between the last two statues. Unfortunately, he sets off the trap as he is disarming it. An axe drops across the hall. The group retreats to the crypts. They listen at the door and hear two people coming to the hallway. “I’m not surprised that one of them set off the trap.” “Surprised they aren’t here with an axe in their head.” Take more than that to damage them” “Should we check on them” “Nah” Then the voices retreat. Waiting a few minutes after the sounds stops, Moony creeps back out and explores further. 

In a large octagonal room with molten red pillars. Three razerblast fighters, with flaming spears and heavy armor. It is a tough fight, especially when the razerblasts explode upon death.

Game Notes

Check and double-check

The party has gotten high enough in level that the stock DCs on secret doors and traps are kind of getting laughable. I need to either up them, or just assume they will not be triggered. 

That said, I watched to see if the party was actually checking out the statues in detail. In anticipation of which, I came up with a description for each of the 8 statues in the “Hall of Remembrance,” because of course I did:  

• Male, war pick, shield, ringlet beard
• Male, axe and shield, long beard with glimpses of chain.
• Male, one-headed axe, chain, braided beard
• Female, plate armor, two-headed axe
• Male, great hammer, stylized beard.
• Female, shield and warhammer, hair in braids
• Male, great-hammer, ringlet beard
• Male, apron, hammer & chisel, plumb line from belt

Again, nothing I couldn’t have improvised … but why burn brain cycles mid-game when you can burn them during prep and not sound like you’re improvising? (“Hey, those descriptions are written down … they must mean something!”)

So the Rogue was able to see the hidden Secret Door to the crypt. Which, inadvertently, became their go-to hide-out for much of this part of the adventure. 

Kudos to the players (and a would’ve-been-Inspiration to the barbarian dwarf) that they asked before simply yoinking off the sarcophagus lids inside. And the Dwarf decided, y’know, these two deserve their rest. And the others (banter aside) went along with him. Good on them for not being mindless murder hoboes. This time, at least.

Giving the Players a break

So when the Rogue did poorly with the axe trap, the sound it made attracted guards from further in.

I could have had the guards (who assumed the trap was tripped by the ogre contingent up in the NE corner of the map) go and check things out there (“What are you dolts doing? We’ve shown you how to turn off the trap when you go off-shift!”).

Except (a) the guards probably wouldn’t have wanted to rile up the ogres. And (b) I didn’t want to suddenly turn this into another messy melee, with the guards discovering the massacred ogres and to start running and screaming for help. I mean, it could have happened, but I chose not to.

Beating up the Players

It is always important to remember that the DM and the Players are not competitors. The DM should not get into beating up the Players, or try to kill them. We are all here to create an intriguing and involved  fantasy tale that will be satisfying for all.

Of course, part of that fantasy tale should involve beating up the Players. 

Last game, after Aldrik rejoined into the party, I went around to the various encounters in the Temple of Eternal Flame and bumped them up a bit. An extra Hobgoblin here, a Guardian not asleep there. That sort of thing. No checking on CRs — I’m a professional! — just a slight bump.

This was not done as wisely as I intended.

First, the Party was a level below the recommendations for this dungeon (they had not Long Rested and dinged up yet). I was so used to them being a leg up on things that I simply forgot to check.

Second, the Razerblasts they were about to bump into are powerful foes, and adding an extra one didn’t help the Party’s calm. They lack effective ranged tactics (unless they want to throw away their weapons), but up close they combine high AC, very high (for this level) HP, and three attacks / turn. Plus I had them hold back a bit so that the party would come after them and they could trigger the heat trap. Once that was done and they closed to melee range, they were murder and, in fact, their saves and HP meant that the Party began to think the Razerblasts had resistance to Radiant as well as Fire damage.

And then there was the way they exploded when they died, which became very problematic for our heroes. Both the Fighter who charged in and the Druid who was at the edge of the trap (and, when a Razerblast engaged, he scored a hit and two crits) nearly died, and others in the party were bloodied — except the Barbarian, who, damn, is a killing and damage resistance machine.

(Indeed, I concluded I needed to look at the balance between the Fighter and the Barbarian. The former was having problems keeping up, melee-wise.)

It was, even if an ultimate Party success, a pretty wild melee, lots of maneuvering (and hiding), but also a huge bloody nose and reminder that not every opponent could be walked over. Which was not my intent, but … y’know, that’s not necessarily a bad reminder now and again. 

Especially since the session then ended with the party taking their Long Rest (in the crypt), and getting their ding up to 9, to then sleep with dreams of vengeance.

And, well, other dreams I had in mind …

As well as restocking the two rooms they just cleared …

Amusing moment of the evening

After the battle, the party spent a chunk of time trying to figure out how the heck to magically ignite the Razerblast spears for their own use, as the added damage was quite nice.  Alas, as with the rods of Stonemelders, their extra elemental damage is just an intrinsic part of Razerblasts being highly ranked / initiated fighters in the Fire cult. And none of the players, when they finally reached that conclusion, were that interested in it.

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<< Session 53 | Session 55 >>

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!

---

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 …

---

<< Session 52 | Session 54 >>

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!

---

GM Recap

Session 51 (Day 41)
In … the Temple of the Black Earth

1. Dreams and Visitations occurred for all the characters. Upon waking there was much discussion about how real dreams were, or, in Nala‘s case, could they be an actual communication? The final answer was indeterminate.

2. 

   The party went south to the laboratory of Miraj Vizann, which was filled with giant stone statues of dwarvish warriors and lab workbenches. Moony pretended to be delivering a message via Yarsha for Marlos Urnrayle, but Miraj was taken in only briefly. After some inconclusive dialog, the party eventually attacked Miraj, who activated one of the Stone Warrior statues to “protect.” It actually didn’t last long under the onslaught of the party’s spells and weapons, but Miraj, escaping, swore vengeance for the destruction of her plans and lab.

3. The party explored to the north, finding a dining hall full of Black Earth guards, who were quickly dispatched. In exploring further, the party found another partially-collapsed barracks — and the dead body of Yarsha, apparently killed by one of her Black Earth Guards. They took a Short Rest there, with an apparent inclination to follow a crevasse to the north.

Player Recap

Why we don’t like sleeping!

Dreams Dreams Dreams

William

Deeper, darker, every step more terrible. 

Once there was sunlight, bright, cleansing. But now, for far too long, it’s been gone, leaving just the chill and shadow.

Once there was air, fresh, brisk, invigorating. But all the wind and breezes have been stilled, the air sterile in your nose..

Once the air carried a dampness, allowed for growth, the sound of creeks tinkling in the air, the drip of moisture sustaining the green around you. But that, too has been cut off …

Now there is only stone, still and dry, sand and earth and the cool of the tomb …

… except ahead is heat, heat to melt stone, heat to dry any moisture, heat to whip up winds. 

And after that? Only darkness …

Faith

You are in a great stone palace, the place where you dwell. It’s a grand palace … no, not a palace, the Great Cathedral in Waterdeep, the high church of all gods, the temple complex of all the traditional gods of the great city, a pile of cold stone, distant, hostile to mortals save the wealthiest … the finest … powerful bishops and bombastic prophets and bejeweled hierophants, who sit at long tables, laden with food, gorging themselves, arguing amongst each other as to who is of the highest rank, who is of the greatest power, then purging themselves in gemmed buckets to start the cycle over. Gold and diamonds vie with filth and corruption for what catches most your eye, what turns most your stomach.

You realize you are merely a servant, a drab, bedraggled girl, mopping and sanding the floors, keeping the candles lit, and, most importantly, airing the room out by opening the great windows to let something fresh inside, even as the men and women at the table shout and yell against it, preferring their own reek to an invigorating breeze.

The servant girl next to you, her gray-blue hair barely tucked into the scarf across her hair. “Wouldn’t it be funny if we left all the windows open and wind just swept them out of the room?”

She pulls out an ornate spear from behind her back. “Wouldn’t it be funny if we just killed all of them?”

And … it would be kind of funny.

Moony

The ancient Tabaxi elder with the odd, triangular pupils puffs on his pipe.

“Dimensions. Dimensions and angles and the ways one leaps from branch to branch, or ground, or into the air. The Tabaxi understand dimensions, do we not?”

“Consider one dimension. The layers of an onion, growing in strength, growing in pungency, growing in sweetness as one bites inward.” [illustrated]

Or … The shell of a shellfish — the rough surface, ground down, to a pearlescent layer, and delve further to find the sweet and salty meat [taste!], and, in some cases, a pearl, itself a world of many layers.

“To find what is valuable, drill down, seek what lies within. Beware the sharpness of flavor, the hardness of the hidden gem, but know that what is of value, what must be found, lies deep inside.”

“Those of the Tabaxi know to clean their food well. Wash well. Be thorough. But … as all is cleaned, bite deeply.”

Nala

You are in the Port Market of Waterdeep, a place you patrolled regularly against petty thieves, pickpockets, drunks, disturbances of the peace …

But today it’s nothing but peace. Utterly deserted. Every shop, every wagon, every booth … everything is stocked — fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, spices, and other things — ironmongery, scrolls, toys, anything anyone would want to buy …

… but nobody is there to buy.

And nobody is there to sell. 

You hear a small bell, ringing, in the distance.

The breeze blows a hundred scents to your nose, whistles in the buildings about you. But, aside from the bell, you hear nothing. You make your way down Fishmonger Way, into another courtyard. Vegetables mostly here, as you recall, and as you see now.

In a small, not terribly clean booth in the back of the courtyard, its display tabletop covered in crates of multi-colored carrots, you can see, on the table at the back, a small brass bell, sitting atop a folded piece of cloth.

A throat clears behind you after you’ve gone around the table. 

Xharva Deem is there on the other side of the table. The customer side. 

“Now. I will buy. You will sell. I have traveled many, many leagues to be here. And now, what you have, I will buy ... YOUR SOUL.”

Theren

The walls press around you. Stone, some dressed, some rough and jagged, forces you to crouch down, scrape against the walls, scramble down and up and down the floor, as the air gets more and more warm, more stuffy, sweat across your body, salt in your eyes, taste of salt on your lips …

And ahead of you, a crackling sound, a roar of something consumed in flame, generating a hot wind.

“Theren …” you hear within that crackling, that roaring. “You have called to me. Now I call to you ….” as the air blasts into your face, hotter than a furnace, singing to the flames within your mind, the wild magic that burns so brightly, without control, unstoppable, and …

Back in the real world

Nala shares her dream and asks the magic users if Xharva could actually be in her dream. Faith, Theren and William offer suggestions for how it might be done. After the long rest the group heads back to the large hall and explore South towards the assumed location of the mud sorcerer. Half way down the hall their is a T intersection. About 20 feet down the West hall the walls and ceiling have collapsed and block the passage. To the East is a door with a scowling dwarf with maces for hands. 

Moony cracks open the door and sees a humanoid, her skin and hair seemingly earthen, though in places slick with moisture, dressed in earth-brown robes. There are statues around the walls all of dwarves’ with maces or clubs for hands. Some have been deformed. 

“Yes, what do you want?” “Yarsha sent me to tell you Marlo wants you right now.” She sighs and then looks more closely at Moony. “Marlos has other means of contacting me. What does Yarsha really want?” “She is not happy with your lack of progress on furthering Marlos’s vision” “I am not surprised, she wants to replace me. But you interest me, your accent is interesting, it might be something with your throat, step closer.” The conversation continues. Eventually, she invites Moony and the party to discourse. Moony asks what she will offer us to switch to her side. She only offers not to kill the group. 

About then, Faith gets bored and starts preparing a spell. Moony take a sneak attack against Miraj, who doubles over and calls to the statues to protect her. William casts Spike Growth inside the room and steps back around the corner. Faith casts Bless on the group. One Stone Warrior moves into action. Nala shoots magic missiles at it and Theren tosses off a fireball into the room. The warrior is quickly taking damage. Miraj gets off a shatter spell and then flees into the back wall. 

In exploring the room, they find golds, gems and a potion of water breathing. There is also the dwarvish runes for protect carved into the the tables. They appear in various location around the room. William uses his wood working tools to remove the runes while they take a short rest. 

After the rest they head back North towards Marlos. At the T intersection North of the Ogremoch statue they turn East. Four Black Earth Guards go down quickly. A cultist comes out from the back room to join the fray. When the room is clear and move on to the room beyond. The body of Yarsha is in the middle of the room. A guard who fled first room tries to ambush Moony and while he scores a hit, it’s not enough to take Moony out. The guard is severally out-classed. It looks like the guard killed Yarsha when she came back to the barracks to get her stuff. Maybe he overheard her selling them out. Either way, one less stone witch to worry about. A Short Rest and the party will be back on the hunt.

Game Notes

More churn and grind, to a certain degree.

Dreams

Since there was a long rest, I did another set of dreams for everyone (recorded by my wife in the player log above). William had basic druidic depression about being underground so long. Moony was told by his Tabaxan god that he should head downwards (while still cleaning the areas above). Theren was given a hint that his invoking the name of Imix (the Fire Elemental Prince) in vain was maybe not a good idea. [I don’t recall when he did it, but it had been recently.]

Nala, the fighter holding the thing that Xharva Deen wanted, was visited by her in a dream and, after appropriate prompting, when she asked what Xharva wanted, was responded with, Your soul!

This led to much discussion over breakfast as to the reliability of dreams — or, rather, the question of how much messages could be sent from another plane via dreams. The idea that this was a combination of maybe a bit of message and a bit of unreliable internal fear never occurred (which is fine). It shook folk up, and it laid the groundwork for some interesting discussion when Xharva reappears, so it’s all good.

Faith, meanwhile, had a dream that meant to suggest that all worship of the mainstream gods was futile and corrupt, and only a brisk wind (and maybe some stabbing with a spear) would clear things up. She was not happy about this.

The Mud Sorcerer

I’d added some lab tables to the map of Miraj Vizann because the color text mentions all the tables and the map itself had zilch. I mean, they had the statues set up in the room, but no tables. I had some Roll20 materials for tables and lab gear and tomes, so that made for a nice, complex room.

Miraj Vizann herself was an interesting bird. A magical researcher whose allegiance was to the Black Earth (kinda-mostly), but didn’t feel like she needed to restrict herself to just those magics. Call her Crushing Wave-Curious. Thus her disdainful moniker as the “Mud Sorcerer.”

(Yes, “her.” The character struck me that way, and I had this very nice image I found of a stone genasi that looked to be a great fit.)

Marlos still relied on her for her knowledge and power and, being Marlos, her lack of ambition. This didn’t sit well with the other important folk in the temple, thus Yarsha’s betrayal.

I saw her as smart, somewhat distracted into her research on the old magicks of Tyar-Besil (its stone warrior defenders, as an example), and happy to give orders efficiently so as to keep people out of her damp.

She was smart enough, I thought, to figure out the party’s bullshitting her, even if distracted, so I thought it would be an engaging, dialog-heavy encounter, at least to start.  But the encounter and discussion I anticipated never happened. Moony said many taunting things from the door, Miraj tried to engage in discussion (but not until everyone was willing to come into the room), the Stone Warrior was unleashed, the party quickly whittled it to size (action economy!), and Miraj swore vengeance for the disruption of her experiments before blending into the wall (something she had the spells to do, and which tied into her showing up later in the Black Geode — kinda-sorta). 

I always like it when old threats get teed up as future threats. It feels … efficient, and narrative. Miraj Vizann has a lot going for her as an intelligent foe.

Some good experience, then, all-around, but the most notable event was Windvane trying to influence Faith to attack with her, and Faith easily resisting, and then shoving the spear into the party’s Bag of Holding.

So, Inspiration for Faith, certainly. But that’s really not fun for me, so Windvane will still talk with her from behind the Bag (because it’s already in her head. And I need to come up with a situation where Windvane will be essential (or maybe have it be repentant and thus turn into a useful tool again).

(We are at session 51. I’ve been treating Windvane resistance as a Wisdom Save of 10+(episode-50), so it should be getting a bit rougher as we continue.)

Further clean-up

Cleaning out the refectory took a short bit of time (I handwaved the cooks down in the kitchen). The party was … surprised to find Yarsha dead in the back room.

Yarsha certainly had the possibility of causing trouble. But her forces were limited (if I wanted to make the level what it was), and I need to get moving onward. 

So the idea is that Yarsha, taking advantage of the ridiculously loose oath she was sworn to (that Faith would not see her for the next week) snuck back into the temple while the party was taking a Long Rest, and went for the barracks where her goods were. Maybe she was going to rally the troops, or maybe she was going to bug out with her treasure.

But the crossbow mook who was left in that room was able to hear through the arrow slit the things she said when she was surrendering to the party last session.  So at some point in time, while gathering her goods, he whopped her in the back of the head with his morningstar, game over.

(All her treasure was found on a mook that had been sitting in the refectory alone, saw the party, and ran off to the back room, only to be quickly taken down by the party. Fun.)

Not a lot of map left … but a lot of stuff in those unexplored areas.

---

<< Session 50 | Session 52 >>

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!

---

GM Recap

Session 47 (Day 40)
In … The Temple of the Black Earth! (Mostly)

1. In the Gargoyle Fountain chamber, the party attuned to various magical items, then took a Long Rest. Dreams were had by Nala, Moony, and Faith. William just enjoyed the tinkling fountain.

2. 

   In the morning, an Augury bade good fortune to destroying the Orb of Red Larch in the forge of Xharva Deem. The party traipsed back into the Temple of Black Earth, only to be ambushed by a bulette and rider, along with a trio of hobgoblins, who apparently had found the previously slain bulettes. The party triumphed, but William nearly died, and Moony and Nala both took major hits (while Theren got Large)..

3. The party headed for the forge, only to hear that someone was back at work inside, presumably Xharva Deem. Moony checked out the doors from the pool room; to the south, it sounded like a barracks (someone talking about rotating beds); to the east, something deep-throated and gutteral.
4. They chose the south, in an area on the map marked for “Healers,” to find the stonemelder Heldorm, who presided over the prisoners and torture chamber there. Moony kept him calm long enough to tee up the team attacking. The cultists went down quickly; Heldorm took longer (and did some damage along the way, not to mention exploding after he died and turned to stone), but was eventually vanquished.
5. The party freed the four prisoners:
   • Orna, angry human prisoner in rags, who laid claim to the Black Earth guard armor in Heldorm’s treasure chest.
   • Droth, tattooed human who was suffering from major head trauma; Faith fixed his dementia, but not his vision.
   • Wulgreda, dwarf, so far fairly quiet.
   • Gervor, elvish noble, grateful to the little people for freeing and healing him, now, can he have his nice armor and sword back?

Player Recap

Where the weal takes us

The group has retreated to the gargoyle fountain room. After they have dinner and some time attuning to the new magic. When sleep comes it is filled with ominous dreams for all but William. He enjoys the soothing sound of the tinkling fountain.

In the morning William case augury and asks “Should we destroy the orb in the forges of Xharva Deem.” The onyx raven hops out of the gargoyle fountain, shakes it’s wings off and says “Weal! Weal!” 

When they reach the hall where the bulette were, the group is surprised by the last bulette with Burrowshark, a human fighter, riding it. The bulette lands on Moony. A hobgoblin also joins the battle wielding a long bow and then two more hobgoblins. The group suffers from the attacks. William is gravely wounded, but the group fights on and finally takes down the bulette, hobgoblins, and fighter. 

They move onto the room outside of the forge. There is hammering within the forge. Stepping away Moony checks the East and South doors. At the Eastern door he hears guttural sounds and the other sounds like a guard’s quarters. The group decides not to leave potential enemies at their back and choose to start with the barracks.

Through the Southwest door there is a villain and several prison cells. Holderm: “I’ve told Mallow more than once that they, Yarsha, are not to be trusted.” Opening the door they shout “Drown yourselves water scum.” Mooney calmly explains that he is not a water cultist. They pause long enough for the group flows into the room and attack. They quickly take down the jailer. There are cages in the room occupied by gaunt humanoids. The prisoners include several humans and an elf. Faith and William race forward to heal the wounded while the other check out the rest of the room. The jailer has some gold and is holding a rod. While Moony is searching the body it begins to shake violently. Nala reaches for the rod and removes it from the corpse. Shortly after that the body turns to stone and explodes. Moony and Theren open a treasure chest in the corner. The prisoners claims several of the items in the chest. 

Game Notes

Not as much happened here as I expected, though some of that was because of my own actions.

All I have to do is (give) dreams

I had dreams set up for the players, which, of course, took some time. I continued my motif of Faith’s dreamscape with Windvane as a sulky chargirl. Nala had a dream where she was being pursued (Jesus in the “Lepers” scene in Superstar) by people who wanted various things from her (including Xharva Deem). Moony had a weird dream of being in a museum, being lectured by the grizzled Tabaxi (the Library God, Denier) about the history of Tyar-Besil, hinting about the Dwarvish love/healing goddess, Sharindlar.

William the Druid just had pleasant dreams of the babbling Gargoyle Fountain he was sleeping beside.

The Gargoyle Fountain

I was playing here (and elsewhere) with trying to noodge the players into learning that the Gargoyle Fountain is actually a Short-Rest generator, something that there’s no non-trivial way for the players to figure out without, y’know, taking random drinks, which my naturally cautious group of adventurers was reluctant to do.

 One kinda-cool thing I did was play around with the nascent AI image generating tools out there to craft an image for the Gargoyle Fountain. It wasn’t great, but it still felt more interesting than just a verbal description. 

The Orb

The party has not forgotten they are still carrying a deactivated Orb of Devastation. They took an Augury to determine that, yeah, melting it down in Xharva’s forge would probably work.

I don’t recall precisely what my thinking was here — the Orb had been disabled by Faith’s Dispel Magic back in Red Larch (and, no, that shouldn’t have worked, but I’d ruled at the moment it did). On the other hand, it’s not necessary that I now, or then, had a coherent story — as far as the party was concerned, they were holding a nuke with the pin put back in the trigger, and making sure that the bad guys didn’t get it back was a fine idea.

And then they did something reckless

Wandering back into Earth Temple, I was surprised the party wasn’t more on-guard, having left a room-full of dead bulettes (that had clearly been under some sort of care) for the previous 8+ hours.

But, even with a couple of Passive Perception checks, they just sort of marched in to continue their explorations — and promptly got ambushed. Bingo!

The bad guys were taken down, eventually, but the party knew it had been hit.

(Most amusing moment of the night — the Sorcerer’s Wild Magic finally caught up with him, and he got basically stuck in the corridor coming in by growing too large.)

Exploration

Healing up, they returned to their course, and were disturbed to hear the sounds of Xharva Deem back in her forge. Rather than immediately attacking (the DM quietly applauds), they scoped out the rest of the room with the pool. I had added some decor, or expanded on what was suggested.

As the former dining hall, the walls were full of brag scenes of the bucolic wealth of King Torhild’s domain — echoing what Deneir had been lecturing Moony about that night in his dreams.

By one door were marred images of Sharindlar, the dwarvish goddess of mercy, healing, and love. That door led to what had been the infirmary (and was now the prison/torture chamber). I added in some symbology that tried to hint back to the gargoyle figure at the Gargoyle Fountain (healing!).

Kudos to the party for approaching the next encounter with something other than “We kick in the door and start fighting.” Being able to get everyone into the room before the balloon went up made for a much easier encounter.

That said, I wasn’t thrilled by how the encounter went with Heldorm and the prisoners. I felt like I rushed things, or had too many balls in the air, or something. As a result, I failed to have Heldorm explode when killed (it happened later). I hate it when that happens.

Also, throwing in four NPCs cause my brain to seize up a bit, and some of the reveals with them didn’t quite work right. I knew I’d need to practice a bit before the next game to make them come a bit more smoothly.

The NPC prisoners actually get reasonable write-ups in the book, enough to RP them. Of course, they also get generic tokens in the Roll20 instance, so I had to find/craft some for them. I additionally gave them their own journal entries — because, again, if someone doesn’t have a journal entry, the players know they aren’t important and can ignore them.

I also crafted custom tokens for each of the Stonemelders in the dungeon here, because they are high enough level to deserve them. Not finding anything through a simple search, I used Hero Forge to pull something together quickly, then with variations.

What will the party do with a mixed set of prisoners that wants help out — and likely won’t take “there’s the door, we don’t think there are any monsters over there” as an answer? We’ll see!

Not much added to the map this time around, but I was still enjoying how the marred and added inscriptions on the map they’d copied from Aerisi’s pyramid throne room were both informative and obscure.

---

<< Session 46 | Session 48 >>

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!

---

GM Recap

Session 46 (Day 39)

In … The Temple of the Black Earth!

1. The party fought two more previously chained bulettes, without further damage. The massive chamber they were in was split in half by a huge crevasse, which post-dated its construction.
2. To the west, the party found a large chamber apparently owned by an ettin named Broog-Norb. Moony, in Black Earth cult garb, avoided combat with him, er, them.
3. Going along a ledge on the crevasse, they found a hallway leading to a highly decorated chamber and a pool of water. To the north, they found a smithy. Theren fireballed a couple of duergar through the door, and then was confronted by the imposing figure of Xharva Deem, who said that she was forging weapons “under contract” for Marlos Urnrayle. The party moved in for the attack, and a lengthy melee ensued, with Xharva casting a number of spells (including summoning an Earth Elemental) as well as smiting mightily with her hammer. She was particularly interested in something Nala was carrying — “Lizard Fleshling! You dare possess such a thing? What is your price? I will meet it, to half of my fortune!” In the end, before the party could vanquish her, she walked through the stone wall and was gone.
4. The party retreated to the Water Cult room of the Gargoyle Fountain and spiked themselves in for a good Long Rest (and investigating some Magic Items they had picked up).

Player Recap

Two Fireballs No Waiting

A second Bulette races toward Moony and comes up short as its chain stretches tight. As the group attacks they hear a sounds of screeching metal. A third Bulette charges from the right. Faith notices that this one has some leather tack on it. Bulette Two breaks its chain. Nala steps up to attack it. The group is able to take down the Bulettes without getting bitten.

They explore the large room that the Bulette were chained. There is a corridor to the west and a large chasm to the North. It looks like the earth split open a long time ago they can see neither the ceiling or floor of the crevasse. There is a ledge along the west side of the crevasse. Some natural pillars form stepping stones across the chasm 

Moony goes ahead and encounters an Ettin arguing with itself. He talks his way out of it and returns to the group. They decide to take the ledge path. There is a hallway going west from the ledge. It leads to a beautiful courtyard. There are frescos along all of the walls and fountain in the middle. The sound of hammering comes through a door. Moony takes a peek and tells the group that they are in fireball formation. Theren lights them up and takes out the duergar guards. 

Unfortunately the smith Xharva Deem is not amused. She is a great stone-skinned figure in rich clothing and decorated with rings and gold. From the waist down, she is a swirl of sand. Her great hammer is massive, but strikes with incredible precision. After the initial flurry of attacks she calls forth an earth elemental. As she does, she stares at Nala. Speaking Auran in a very heavy elemental accent: “Lizard Fleshling! You dare possess such a thing? What is your price? I will meet it, to half of my fortune!” 

When the battle turns against her, she steps back says “Our bargaining has not ended” then walks through the wall.

Game Notes

So this was another of those schizophrenic episodes where the players acted unpredictably and inconsistently. Which makes me think I need to plan things more than I do.

Bulette Time

First off, yes, the party dealt with the two bulettes quite successfully. Part of that was due to some random factors in when they broken free from their chains, and Nala unexpected charging one of them (which meant it couldn’t do its leap attack). But a bigger part was that they were rolling like demons — great hits, amazing damage.

That would not be the case later in the evening.

Must have been something I Ettin

The encounter with Broog-Norb was not handled my best. Part of it was a deadly DM sin: falling in love with my own cleverness. I had written some additional dialog for the two of them, and really, really wanted to deliver it. So I did, beyond the extent that die rolls should have allowed, at which point the party kind of decided, y’know, we don’t really need to check this out, so we’ll back away. Which they did.

As self-punishment, I will leave my dialog in the bowels of my campaign notes, never to see the light again.

I did appreciate the rogue actually using a costume and pretending to be a cultist. Even if only an Ettin wouldn’t question a Tabaxi cultist.

I was curious to see if the party would ever circle back. In point of fact, they never did. Broog-Norb may be there still …

There are encounters, and there are encounters

The encounter with Xharva Deem was … again, not what I expected.

As written (and this is true for way too much of the campaign), the party politely knocks on the door, opens it, and engages the folk within in conversation.

What this party tended to do was either (a) sneak a peek and then back off, daunted by what they saw, or (b) charge in, spells blazing, and kill everything in their path. What decided (a) vs (b) surpasseth all understanding (at least mine).

So the party peeked in, and sees Duergar. Duergar are, they remember (from the Sacred Stone Monastery) Bad Guys. So, hey, perfect opportunity for a fireball!

Which killed the duergar assistants, but fortunately didn’t impact Xharva.

She, in turn, moved over to see the sorcerer, declared she works under contract for Marlos Unrrayle, decried his action in costing her assistants, and cast Phantasmal Killer on him as a punishment, then slammed the door.

Now, given that, the party might have given it up as a bad idea, or at least approached matters more carefully.

Nah. They kicked open the door and charged in.

Xharva, as a Dao, could probably kill multiple of them. But she’s a mercenary, and not interested in dying herself, so she retreated when her HP are getting down in the “I might die soon” range, even after she’d unleashed an Earth Elemental on them (which levelled out the Action Economy wonderfully).

Three things of note:

The Powerful Weapon That Wasn’t

First, the cleric wielding Windvane — which was begging to be used against a foul Earth creature — ended up rolling for crap during the melee, which did not do her relationship with the weapon any good.

(I mean, sure, it’s not fair to criticize the weapon when the player is doing the dice-rolling, but the player character was understandably put off by her failure to score a hit, which frustrated the scheming DM to no end.)

The One-Off Bad Guy That Wasn’t

Second, I decided that, in addition to the other canned motivation for Xharva, to give her one more bit of schtick to play with. And it would be, ahem, canned, too:

The players had rolled up trinkets at the beginning of the game. I’d found some fun stuff to do with the little silver raven the druid carried, making it the inspiration for some of the spells he’d used, or the preternational things that happened around him. This time, I played with the “metal can that sounds like it’s filled with sand” that the Dragonborn fighter had, which I decided was (for whatever happenstance reason) a incredibly valuable (and addictive) drug for those from the Elemental Plane of Earth.

Xharva, engaged in combat with the cleric and the fighter, basically turned to the fighter and said, “You have what on you? I will pay you up to half my fortune for it!” The fighter didn’t speak Auran (which the Dao used of surprise), but the cleric did — and promptly interpreted it aloud as the Dao wanting the fighter’s weapon: a magic sword taken from Thurl Merosska (the Feathergale Knight leader), renamed after his tragic assistant Savra, that (I decreed, to give the fighter a magical weapon) was a +1 Greatsword (+2 vs Earth Element creatures, +0 vs Air Element Creatures).

The fighter was very confused about this, since while it’s a good weapon, it’s not spectacular. It was only later that she considered that, relistening to the quote, it might not be the weapon she wanted …

Xharva Deem turned out to be a fun recurring character, motivated by that bit of improvisation to not be as nasty as Dao are, personality-wise. Not that she wouldn’t be interested in enslaving all of them and carrying them off as gifts or trade, but she’s also both bound by her contract here with Marlos and kind of bored with it.  Recurring characters — especially dangerous and mysterious frenemies — are a Good Thing.

The Grab Bag Marginally Useful Magic Item That Wasn’t

One of the objects in the Dao’s workshop is a set of Claws of the Umber Hulk.

I would come to regret that.

Dossing Down

That the party retreated for their Long Rest was no surprise.

There weren’t really any good places they’d found to camp, and, frankly, the map notes they had from the Pyramid Map were a bit scary, with added lines and text that had been etched in by others as Tyar-Besil began to fall.

That they decided to camp out in the Gargoyle Fountain room is a bit more surprising. And would lead to a couple of interesting results, in terms of what they would find there, and what they would find when they returned ….

---

<< Session 45 | Session 47 >>

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!

---

GM Recap

Session 39 (Day 36)
In the Temple of the Crushing Wave …

1. The party had a Short and Long Rest, refreshing all that stuff. Various Dreams and Visitations ensued. Faith learned far more about how awesome a weapon Windvane is.
2. They exited Morbeoth‘s stronghold. Ninetooth was not beneath the bridge, but they heard voices roaring the name of “Thuluna!”  Which turned out to be the other two aquatic trolls, a pair of whom attacked them.
3. The party crossed the Bridge of Victory and dealt with a multiple groups of troops in various rooms and the embarkment point to the river back to the outside world. At the end, they had captured a final room, and Khalt, a frozen-eyed Crushing Wave mage.

Player Recap

“If You Wait by the River Long Enough, The Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By”

The vivid dreams return. 

Ko returns. He indicates there was a conflict with people who yip and bark. He helped drive them off. 

As they leave the brewery and cross the dragon bridge, Ninetooth isn’t there. The sounds echo around with all of the water and cave surfaces. Someone somewhere is calling out Thuluna’s name. As they move towards the market square, Nala senses that the sounds are getting louder and is ahead of them. A second voice joins in from the East. As they approach the second bridge an aquatic troll charges towards the group. The hall constricts the party’s movements but the troll quickly takes significant damage. Before they can finish Marrowsucker off, a second troll charges from behind. The next turn the oil Moony poured on Marrowsucker ignites and he perishes. The battle moves to Gorgebelly. Faith has been battling him with the Windvane. Doing damage and pushing him back. When the group focuses their attack on him the tide turns quickly in their favor. 

They approach the Bridge of Victory. There is a door immediately east of the bridge.. Moony listens at the door. There is a corridor running east just north of the door. Some broken wall and another corridor South of the door. 

There are people speaking Common on the other side of the door. They mention Shatterkeel, Thuluna, Morbeoth and other items less clear. The party takes their places and William opens the door with a thaumaturgy spell. The door opens on a barracks with several Reavers and a Priest. They pile out of the room from the now open door and another door to the south. A pitched battle ensues. Ko is brought down, but the rest of the party does well. While the others loot the room, Moony rolls the bodies into the canal. They float away.

The group travels south to clear the way behind them. There is a room that looks like it has been used as a jail with some cots and a water barrel. As Moony rounds the corner of the hallway, he runs into a group of guards coming the other way. Both groups are surprised. The attackers includes more Reavers, a Dark Tide Knight, and a Fathomer. Moony attacks and the encounter commences. Faith calls her fairy spirits at full strength. Along with William’s Moonbeam, they tear through the enemies. 

Around the corner the path opens out and there is a boat tied up. There may be something in the canal, but nothing comes to the surface. They can see the opposite side of the lake where the first entered the water area. 

After a short rest, the group moves on to explore the Northeast corridor. They pass two large granaries. Now empty except for the gaping storage holes. Next, they come to a door. Again Moony listens and hears voices speaking in Common. This time the group is surprised when the door slams open. Inside are yet more Reavers, a person that has a frosty white eye like Morbeoth. Approaches the door and frightens Theren and Moony. At the end, they had captured a final room, and Khalt, a frozen-eyed Crushing Wave mage.

… We win! They lose! Neener Neener Neener!

Game Notes

Kind of a grindy game, to be honest. Not bad, and some fun times, but not a lot of new stuff, mostly door-to-door clearing.

Time Marches On!

Even if the players didn’t get / take a chance to head back outside, the various Cult Reprisals / Retributions continue in the Real World. At this point, it involves the unleashing of Devastation Orbs.

The orbs are basically elemental bombs. When I first read about them I overestimated their power, so the Fire Devastation Orb I unleashed on Womford basically acted as a nuke for the town. They’re powerful, but not that powerful.

There are four towns kind of surrounding the Sumber Hills:  Red Larch, Westbridge, Beliard, and Womford. (Arguably, Summit Hall could also be a target, and, in retrospect it would have been a solid one, given the party’s ties there.)

Red Larch was out because I wasn’t going to have it destroyed whilst they were away. At least, not yet. I wanted to go back and play in Beliard, too. I decided on Womford because, well, it drew the short, highly flammable straw.

And, of course, this kind of thing is going to start happening on a semi-regular basis as they wipe out the Temples. So there’s still plenty of time to take down the other towns …

But how does the party learn about all of this?  Simple: dreams and gossip!

Dreams!

Since it was Long Rest time, I wrote up Dreams for everyone:

• The Fighter got some weird call-backs to Aldrik being taken by the water elemental a few sessions back. She’s the one who’d be likely to remember him.
• The Druid, who got terrified by Thuluna Maah last time, had one of those dreams where his girlfriend at the harvest festival turned out to be her and tried to drown him in an irrigation ditch. Fun!
• The Tabaxi Rogue, who’s brushed against Fear a couple of times recently got one of those the-hunter-hunted dreams.
• The Cleric, now attuned to Windvane, got to overhear (through a dream as a child at the church orphanage) the Prophets arguing, some veiled references to Womford being obliterated, and some encouragement by her new best friend (Windvane) to break the rules and dare everyone else to do something about it.
• The Sorcerer, whose background is causing terrible fire accidents as a kid, got to have a 1st Person PoV of the fire-based Orb of Devastation being brought into Womford and detonated. Glee!

Gossip!

I wrote up “gossip” items for the to potentially hear bits of when they listened at doors of rooms full of people:

• Gar Shatterkeel is gone.
  • They say he had visions,
  • They say he has traveled to The Plunging Torrents to pray and consult with  the Crushing Wave, the Dark Tide, the Well of Endless Anguish (Olhydra).
  • Who guides our course now?
    • Thuluna Maah. She is powerful and cunning. The ogres follow her.
    • Morbeoth is clever. He studies the water. He knows its secrets.
    • Gar still controls the flow. He has set guards over the temple. None shall pass.
• The pirate town is gone (Womford)
  • The great war commences. The guttering flames must be quenched!
  • No, it’s a sign of the final struggle; Olhydra will soon rise and cleanse the world.

It all helped give some further texture to the tale, passed on some info they should have (misleading or not), and, by having it pre-written, it gave me an easy reference when someone says, “I listen at the door, what do I hear?”

Windvane!

Windvane is a kick-ass weapon, and the Cleric had a lot of fun with it — especially since, as a Tempest Cleric, she gets an optional 10-foot knock-back if she does Lightning damage. Oops.

I decided to bend the rules slightly and not reveal quite all its powers.  I gave her the normal combat features, but kept the language boost, Lighting resistance, Dominate Monster, Orb building, and (of course) Flaw secret, for now at least. Some of them would become clear when the circumstances triggered them.

I decided to make that Flaw — “I break my vows and plans. Duty and honor mean nothing to me.” — softer rather than harder. I don’t like dominating other players and, not having raised it as a Session Zero item, I was reluctant to just impose it on the character or player (especially as the player is … independent-minded, we will say).

So instead I approached it with a soft approach — the encouragement, the whispering in the character’s ear, etc. I also started from the get-go encouraging the suspicions of the other characters about whether Faith was acting funny.

In the end, Windvane was a great set piece, even if the Cleric tended to roll for crap with its attacks. I managed to get some zingers in on the character, and she literally carried the thing, attuned, for most of the rest of the campaign.

Bits and Bobs

The infuriated aquatic trolls were kind of fun, especially with the characters being trapped in the corridors with them. I realized after the previous game that they would not take Thuluna Maah’s death well, and getting shouting “THU-LU-NAAAAAAH!” in their rage was a hoot.

A couple of the most-fun moments were both “I step around the corner and come face-to-face with an opponent.” One of those happened to the Rogue to kick off an encounter, the other to the Fighter

during a later battle. The Fighter could see a door on the far side of the room through the doorway they were fighting at, and went to flank around to it — only to discover that an enemy was doing the same thing to them. Hilarity ensues!

I don’t think the Druid’s summoning, Ko, could have accompanied the freed hostages so far away from the Druid, but it was enjoyable having him come back and preen over having helped them against the Gnolls up topside.

Ko could have been really annoying, but the player didn’t try to do anything cray-cray with him. Most often, once the party got into their cadence, he simply did Help actions for fighters on the front line, plus serving as an implicit “adjoining ally” for the Rogue’s Sneak Attacks.

The party eventually visits all parts of the shoreline around the “Harbor,” but refuses to take a boat out onto it, thereby missing both the creepy undead in the Customs House, and the Giant Octopus lurking in the depths. Sigh.

Action Economy remains the bad guys’ downfall, especially as the mooks are getting to be one-shot wonders, rapidly turning the tide in the players’ failure against their more powerful leaders. Of course, most encounters shouldn’t be life-or-death struggles, just a steady erosion of HP and spell slots, so that makes sense. 

---

<< Session 38 | Session 40 >>

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!

---

GM Recap

Session 38 (Day 35)
In the Temple of the Crushing Wave …

1. 

   Thuluna Maah‘s horrific appearance terrified William, though Moony was not as affected. The two of them, though, managed to dispatch her with surprising swiftness.

2. Thuluna’s room included a Dragonbone Sword, a couple of magic potions, and an Immovable Rod.
3. Checking out the two rooms off of the Market Hall, the party went to the room where folk were inside talking in Common. This turned out to be full of various cultists, as well as the fled Morbeoth. Regardless of various banter and offers of cooperation, all the opposition was killed, and the party spiked the doors for a Short Rest. During that time, the Dragonbone Sword was revealed to be able to detect dragons at 120 feet (leading to much triangulation around where it glowed, indicating a dragon (?) might be to the northwest of the city quadrant.
4. The room to the south end of the Market Hall turned out to be full of Lizardfolk, who actually sent out a flanking party. That still didn’t end well for them.
5. The party retreated to Morbeoth‘s old workshop to settle down for a Short and/or Long Rest.

Player Recap

“If I’m Stabbing People with Weapons, We Are Fucked.” — Theren

The hideous visage of Thuluna charges the door. She claws at William and Moony strikes back. The horrid brain twisting creature turns Williams’ bowels to jelly. He is frightened and steps back. He succeeds in moving the bonfire between Thuluna and the doorway. As the others race to join the battle, Moony strikes true with his arrow and defeats the monstrosity. Moony and William toss the room and the bodies. The room was once opulent, but the tapestry and furniture was severely scratched. In the far room by the remains of a once ornate bed is a wooden chest with gold and platinum. There is also a two headed rod with a button on one end and figures of horses. There is also a curved longsword leaning in the corner. It appears to be made of bone with glowing rubies in the hilt. There are also some potions on the body. They are a Potion of Hill Giant Strength and a Potion of Fire Resistance. 

They decide to take a short rest but do not want to use Thuluna’s room. Moony listens at the door in the southeast corner of the market room. He hears multiple creatures hissing and growls.

Wanting rest they decide to try the northeast door. There are human voices talking about “Shatterkeel” … “torrents” … an angry voice and clattering noises. Inside are a number of people who turn around and look at Moony. “Hey, what are you doing here?” “Hi, I’m Moony, I wanted to talk to you about the Crushing Wave.” The cultists start to grab their weapons. Moony steps back and Theren tosses a Fireball into the center of the room. Morbeoth steps up and Moony says “Surrender and our cleric may have mercy on you.” “Your cleric is a cold bitch, but I may still make a deal with you.” Nala and Theren enter the room and confront the remaining Reaver. “You fools, I was probably your only hope against her.” He flees the room, only to run into Faith. 

William asks “Which her? We have already defeated Thuluna” “I don’t believe anything you say.” he responds and blasts Faith with a blast from a gem inset into his eye. Proving his point, Moony, Faith, and Theren continue to pound on him. He has nothing more to add before he is defeated. The gem in his eye is actually a chunk of ice that is slowly melting as the body warms. 

The group decides to hole up in the kitchen and take a Short Rest. They regain hit points and identify the magic items that they recovered. Feeling refreshed they decide to return to the southeastern door. Before they enter Moony notices that the creatures are speaking draconic. Nala can hear them and understands them. They sound like fighters bitching about their job. They hear the party outside and the battle begins. 

Several lizardfolk sneak out the back door to come from the east. Moony calls out “I see you”. No one responds. It becomes a battle on two fronts one at the main door to the room and the other in the rubble along the canal.

When the battle is over they explore the barracks and find human remains on the fire spit. Disgusted, they move back into the market square to plan on a Long Rest. 

Their walk back to the brewery section is mostly uneventful. The aqua troll Ninetooth appears at the dragon bridge scowling. He lets them pass when they again praise Olhydra. 

Game Notes

Battles a-plenty

Thuluna turned out to be a bust. Yes, horrifying creature, but a bit of a glass cannon. If they players aren’t Frightened by her (and DC 11 is not a huge barrier at 7th level), then she’s toast. In this case, the Rogue was able to plonk a couple of sneak attacks while the Druid shook the Fear off. She never even got to use her insta-kill Terrifying Glare or whatever it is. Sad.

Lesson Learned: critters like that need their backups. She should have gone after them while she had her ogres. Of course, the party bottled the ogres up nicely, so maybe that wouldn’t have worked. 

The folk in the galley were pretty easily handled by a Fireball from our running-on-fumes Sorcerer. That’s where I had stashed Morbeoth, figuring he had more of an in with the Human cultists (Thuluna being the one controlling the non-humans — the Trolls, Ogres, and Lizardfolk). It made sense, but, again, he couldn’t handle the party on his own, especially when his Fear didn’t work this time. There were attempts by him and the Druid to calm the battle down (which I appreciated), but the players generally just wanted to have done with.

The Lizardfolk were more of a challenge, especially when they went out the back door and started flanking the party through the ruins. The Druid’s Spike Growth locked down most of the Lizardfolk inside though, with the Fighter at the door holding them in so that the spell-casters and Rogue could snipe around them.

They weren’t in any great danger, but the margin was not as easy to overcome as with the previous … and it left everyone out of spell slots for the most part.

Leveling

I realized that, at this point, they’d basically “won” this Temple — Morbeoth and Thuluna were dead, and Gar was fled to the Fane. In at least one point, that was described as the victory conditions, though another place (at least in my transmogrified notes) said that the temple/altar room also needed to be cleared.

Since “winning” the Temple was the Milestone for leveling, this was not just an academic matter.

I decided on the latter target — I wanted them to spot at least one more exit from this place — and so I skipped over their leveling to 8 during their Long Rest. I’d encourage another day of adventuring (or withdrawing) before they could Long Rest and ding to the new level for this milestone.

I’ve always tried to do leveling up as part of a Long Rest, as it seemed starting the new day at a new level made the most “sense.” I though I’d read this once, but it’s not Rules as Written.  Which means that every DM is kind of on their own as to how they handle it — instant video-game level-up, level-up at end of session, level-up after a Long Rest, etc.

The most sensible answer I’ve seen is that (a) class features and ability increases and the like happen immediately, (b) intrinsic things like additional HPs/HP Max and spell slots get awarded immediately, but (c) no recovery occurs (i.e., if you are down 25 HP, you are still down 25 HP; if you have used all your 1st level spell slots, they are still gone, as is the new one you just got). 

That makes sense, but it’s also full of tangles for each and every bit, especially for all the different spellcasting classes, which have their own variations of how spells are stored. Also, the Roll20 Charactermancer doesn’t really support it.

So I’ve stuck with the “Long Rest” approach, which not only gives the characters their abilities, but restocks all the shelves, so to speak. I will let them know when they are ready to level, but not until they Long Rest (which gives everyone a chance to pre-plan).

Treasure

The party found the “Dragonbone Sword” in Thuluna’s quarters, and after their Short Rest figured out the whole Dragon Detection thing. Which, as they’ve wandered around a bit, has let them triangulate that the putative dragon is somewhere in the direction of the shadowy end of the “Starry Lake.”

Will they actually go after the dragonturtle there? Hmmm.

The Cleric took the first step toward attuning to Windvane, Aerisi’s prophet weapon. Everyone, as players, was deeply suspicious (and with good reason), and as GM I good-naturedly played along with that (“Don’t worry how everyone else is the next morning, they’ll all be dead with spear-shaped wounds in the heart”), but I was also quietly mentioning how good and liberating it felt to wield it, and I will doubtless begin whispering more clearly to her once she actually starts using it.

It’s nifty weapon … but it comes at a cost.

I added in one more reward item than was written out — the Immovable Rod, which was originally a treasure item in the “Villa” in the Air Temple sector. It’s just too useful an item (for spiking the door, if nothing else). They eventually found some good uses for it down the line.

Bits and Bobs

I mentioned before how this Temple does have more of a D&D Dungeon vibe in layout than previous locales visited in this campaign.

That said, the whole central zone of this map makes for a very maneuverable environment, with lots of side passages, back doors, etc. That made the combat with Morbeoth’s crew and with the Lizardfolk a lot more fluid than they were used to, with attempts to flank and split forces much more likely.

As a DM, of course, the fact the opposition knows this place like the back of their hand should be exploited, tactically. On the other hand, splitting up too much rarely ends well.

Side note: I realized late in the game that the party was searching willy-nilly through the Market Hall without any Perception rolls from the groups in the adjoining rooms. I also forgot about the decoration on the Lizardfolk room. Ugh. I hate missing details like that.

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<< Session 37 | Session 39 >>

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 36 (Day 35)
In the Temple of Howling Hatred …

1. 

   The party explored to the east from the Plaza of Moradin, trying to find supplies. They did that, in what looked to be the feast-hall of Tyar-Besil‘s royalty. They also found a flock of Kenku, whom they quickly dispatched. And they found a Purple Worm skeleton, rising out of the ground in the middle a room, presumably slain in an ancient battle with the Dwarves.

2. Walking back to the gatehouse, behind the pyramid, they were attacked by a Water Elemental from the river, who grabbed Aldrik and carried him away down the waterfall into the eternal darkness below. Bummer.
3. With supplies and arms and survival advice from Nala, the freed hostages  were sent back up the tunnel path to Feathergale Spire and, they hoped, safe passage home. Ko went with them to keep them safe.
4. The party returned to the Plaza. Looking west there were what were possibly royal quarters or tombs, too crumbled to easily tell without more exploration. There was also a presumed graveyard/mausoleum, behind ornate doors … that had been spiked, recently, from the outside. The party demurred any further exploration.

5. 

   Instead, they headed to the southeast, and, getting past a locked gate, found themselves in what they presumed was the area of Tyar-Besil occupied by the Crushing Wave cult. Turning away from the harbor (?), they checked out a door to the north, with multiple people examining it and listening through it. Thus, when they opened the door, the Bugbears inside were not surprised.

6. A long, pitched battle ensued, with the Bugbears augmented by a large group of Reavers attracted from the next room by the loud spellfire, as well as Morbeoth, a strange dwarf with a glowing white eye and powerful Fear magic. All that was countered by aggressive attacks, a well-placed fireball, and other AoE spells, leading to final victory party, though Morbeoth got away.

Player Recap

Aldrik Does Not Get Eaten By A Purple Worm

After clearing the batter, the group continues to the East. Moony takes point. When he gets to the first cross corridor there are screams and phrases that sound like Aerisi. Everyone assumes it is more Kenku. They locate the feasting hall where there are plenty of supplies for the refugees. William decides to leave via the far door since there is another area on the map labeled supplies. Unfortunately, there is a room full of Kenku across from the dining room. The Kenku are surprised by Ko and attack. They are quickly defeated. When William chases down one of Kenku he sees the skeleton of a purple worm that is embedded in the floor.  

On the way back to the doors, the party is surprised by a large water creature. It surrounds the group and knocks several people prone. It then grapples Aldrik and flees. There is a rumble from the water “Not consort … not key … not plunder … SACRIFICE …”

With supplies and arms and survival advice from Nala, they sent the freed hostages back up the tunnel path to Feathergale Spire and, they hoped, safe passage home. Ko went with them to keep them safe. Back to the purple worm. William works his way down the cavern created by the purple worm. The bones provide enough grips to climb, but William also uses a rope. There is a sense that something is very wrong down there … watching. 

Next they decide to explore the area labeled “Royalty”. It is basically rubble. There are doors in the North wall that lead to the area “The Sacred Dead”. The doors are spiked from the outside. The group decides to leave the dead and heads to the Southeast and the corridor with the water marking. A large chained gate blocks their path. Moony picks the lock and they continue onward. 

The area opens up into an area with a lake shore directly in front of them. There are boats on the shore. A passage branches off to the north. Moony pauses at a door and listens. There is a conversation on the other side, but he doesn’t understand it. One by one the party members approach to listen. Eventually angry noises make the party realize that they have been heard. Faith bursts the door open to find a number of Bugbears in a room with bedrolls and supplies. There is a loft along one wall. Faith and Nala begin the battle … Theren fireball … Reavers arrive … Morbeoth enters the room with mirror image and casts a cone of fear catching Moony, Faith, and Nala

Morbeoth says, “You idiots, I can pay you twice what Thaluna is offering you. She is just using you” and flees through the door to the north.

Game Notes

A multi-faceted title

“Empty Nests.”  Which subtitle referenced the general sense of birds/Air and the emptiness of the Temple of Howling Hatred, but also the Kenku who remained, and also that our son was headed back to school for spring semester.

Challenges

Walking into this game, I had two challenges. Well, it turned out I had three, but we’ll get there

1 – Mission-Driven Players

First, this set of players is very mission-driven. Though I joke about their being murder-hobos, they really aren’t. They all have their eyes on the prize. A lot of DMs complain their parties found the Mirabar Delegation driver for the campaign incredibly weak, but my players were definitely still actively inquiring about it. Either I’ve done a good job of building that narrative structure to feel important, or they have that dedication to a goal as an internalized thing, or they know that’s the sort of thing as a DM I like and are seeking to go with the flow.

In any case, this would usually be a good thing. Except it means that they are also hesitant sometimes to do things that don’t seem on-point, and at other times are very bold to dive in if they think that’s the way to further the mission. Which can make for headaches of their own.

In this evening’s case, there was still a fair amount of the northern Temple of Howling Hatred to explore. As far as they were concerned, though, their only goal was finding some supplies for the freed captives and then move on to the corridor with the Water symbol sand-blown on the floor (an addition I made to all the cult interfaces here in Tyar-Besil). 

This also tied into their utter disinterest in returning to the surface any time soon. Which means the Cult Retaliation threads go by the wayside, as well as the other side quests up above. Is that a bad thing? I kinda feel like it is, but it may also just be what needs to happen, if that’s what makes the players happy. There’s cool stuff along the way, but that may not be enough reason to push it.

2 – What to do about Aldrik?

The second challenge was what to do about Aldrik, whose player was headed off to spring semester and whose Friday nights there were otherwise booked. This was complicated / enhanced by (a) need to have hooks to bring him back in at the end of the semester (but not make the campaign hinge on it, since there’s a finite possibility he could be away from home and similarly out of pocket over the summer), and (b) how to make it fit in with meta narrative that I’d already fit him with when he was previously away: his importance to the cults occupying Tyar-Besil because of his heritage (as the last of the bloodline of the Besilmer kings, which would give him — and thus them — access to additional powers and abilities and Lair Actions around the city).

I’d had an idea. Then I had another idea. Then my wife had an idea that would have been best of all in some ways, but Aldrik’s player wasn’t as interested in. More below.

It’s Kenku-hunting season!

I had some fun with the Kenku lurking in northern area of the Air Temple map. In the campaign, they make haunted house noises to scare the players away. I decided to riff off that, but with a purpose. They did start with screams and cries, but then began to mock Aerisi with some of her catch phrases (cough things I didn’t get to have her say during the final battle cough), ending in mocking laughter. Then they hid.

The message from the Kenku was, “Hey, we didn’t like Aerisi, either, so you do you and we’ll do us, and let’s not fight.”

The message the party heard was, “Hey, come over here and see what’s happening so that we can ambush you.”

Which is why when Ko the Magic Dragonet stumbled into where the half-dozen of them were hiding in one of the back chambers, a slaughter party ensued. Sigh.

I mean, yeah, I’ve had the Kenku seem like murderous thugs in previous encounters, because that’s kind of their role here. But …

When is a map not a map?

As part of the continuing pet peeve of disconnects between text and illustration, room A13 is marked as an old dwarvish feasting chamber (Vergadin’s Hall), now used for meditation by the HH cultists. Per the description, wooden tables and chairs are scattered around the place, and three large casks are behind a bar (empty). 

Which would be great, except the tables and chairs in the map are perfectly set up, like it was an ongoing tavern. And there are no large casks (which I then manually added in).

And it’s a writing change that or discrepancy from the art that looks bad but doesn’t mean anything. I think the idea was that, well, the self-starving HH cultists wouldn’t have a refectory, so they just go there to meditate. But there’s almost certainly some cause to eat, esp. among mercenaries like the Kenku.

Just a random irritation.

Fools plan to rush in …

Okay, I mentioned the players staying on task?  I’d had Bero, the halfling captive from the shrine on the south end of the zone mention not just his wife being taken, but a “fancy human” and some other troublemakers. I’d intended that as a reference to Deseyna Majarra, the Mirabar Delegation noble who shows up with Bero’s wife, Nerise, about to be sacrificed in the Air Node in a later act.

One of the players caught it and this episode, while they were stocking up on the supplies they found in the feast hall, she interrogated the freed captives about the matter, confirming  the woman in question resembled Deseyna as described to them way back when. The hounds begin to bay again …

So one cool element off at this corner of the map is a chamber with a desiccated Purple Worm head/skeleton sticking out of the ground, showing the dwarf axe injuries that killed it (with some dwarf skeletal remnants in its gullet). This is not only just a cool (and frightening) thing itself, but the skeleton is a vertical, climbable tunnel that goes down to the Fane of the Eye. Which will be very useful … later.

(It’s actually a neat touch. This almost certainly happened in the era when Tyar-Besil was crumbling under repeated assaults. This Purple Worm breaks in frighteningly close to the palace, is defeated — but the Dwarves can’t do anything about it because they’re fully engaged in battle elsewhere. They just pull out all their supplies from the room and go on with their long, twilight struggle.)

I really wanted them to find it, but they really didn’t want to go that direction, until they got into the inadvertent battle with the Kenku and two of them fled down the corridor to it, which corridor they hadn’t even seen.

Exit, Stage Down

The dead purple worm (which dates back, by the way, about five thousand years old, so, whoa) was, by the way, my first exit point for Aldrik. I’d long joked about the situation of having to remove him from play for a while (as that part was no secret), and joked about having him be swallowed whole by a Purple Worm and carried off.

What if, I thought, I get him checking out something inside the worm skeleton, and the whole thing collapses, bearing him down into the Fane, the tunnel choked off behind him?

So I had this in my back pocket as they poked around at things here briefly — but too briefly, and Aldrik never went near the thing.

Cue Aldrik’s exit, as the party, escorting the freed hostages to the gatehouse, had to cross and march along the underground river, and chose to do so on the back side of the pyramid, by the waterfall. 

And the Water Elemental swoops out, slams into the narrow causeway, tossing people aside, grappling Aldrik, dragging him off and over the waterfall.

And over the roar of the fall, the water thrums with vibrations, and you hear a voice [Gar Shatterkeel]: “Not consort … not key … not prize … sacrifice.”

I had to tweak the Water Elemental a bit, giving him what I called a Whirlpool attack that mirrors the Whirlwind attack of Air Elementals, but keeps some of the grappling power of Whelm. I wanted to play it somewhat legit, even if I was going to railroad the result.

And, actually, playing fair with the initiative and surprise, and damage, the party landed some good blows on the Water Elemental. They could have defeated it in a stand-up fight (if they could have stood up), but with its hit-and-run nature, they never really stood a chance.

Given the spooky voice, and having seen something very much like this before at Feathergale Spire (and since folk realized what was happening in meta terms), the party took it with some aplomb. Aldrik’s player was LOLing in the chat channel to me — he knew he was going to be yoinked, and we’d even discussed the Water Elemental fight, but he’d been surprised at how relatively early it had happened in the game. 

Still, he played it perfectly straight. Bravo.

The idea with Gar’s voice is I’d decided since Aerisi’s death the distribution of the other Prophets, since they all get visions to retreat once the party has slain one of their number. Marlos and Vanifer were going to their nodes, respectively — both seemed like fun nodal battles to play, whichever way the party goes. Gar, more of a pirate-style villain, was instead going to the altar of Elemental Evil to try and get the Eye to assist him. And Aldrik would make a perfect sacrifice (and his captivity a great holding pen). And if the party could get to the Fane of the Eye in four play-months, the timing would be perfect. 

And, if it took longer, as expected, then Aldrik escaped, or Aldrik got kidnapped by one of the other Prophet’s forces and taken to wherever he needed to be. It wouldn’t change the story much, and, honestly, changing movie scripts to shoot around schedule conflicts with the stars is not unknown.

Coming up with elegant or interesting ways to exit or re-enter a player character can really enhance the player experience — both for those whose characters are coming in and out, and for the rest of the party. Having a reason for those entries that plays into the campaign makes it all seem like everyone planned it that way from the beginning, which is kind of cool.

Farewell to the hostages

The freed hostages had been fully supplied with all the hard tack and jerky they could stuff in their pockets, and all the Kenku and cultist weapons they could carry without hurting themselves, so it was time to send them on their way. The Dragonborn fighter sketched out the tactical situation up above, and how best to deal with the Gnolls there. None of the hostages were happy about it, but given the laser-focus of the players on proceeding, they didn’t have much alternative about it.

At the last moment, William, the druid, sent his Drake Companion with them (though it was unclear at the moment how far away Ko could get from William, or how best/fastest to summon him back). It was actually a compassionate gesture, though, esp. as our party was now down to five bipeds.

The Purple Worm turns

The party knew of a few ways off this level — the corridor with the Water Cult symbol, the howling shaft in the pyramid that was a short-cut to the Air Node (eek!), the Purple Worm skeleton hold down to the Fane, and a passage noted on the map “to the Forges.”

To my surprise (and dismay), the plurality voted for the Purple Worm route.

Okay, I had just sent Aldrik down to the Fane. It was way too early for them to catch up with him. Also, the Fane was designed for Level 10, and these folk were Level 7. The possible scenarios:

1. They TPK in the Fane. Whoops.
2. They steamroll their way forward, skipping tons of content, successfully overcoming the obstacles through the rest of the campaign (with a few grudging group levels on the way).
   1. More likely, they manage the Fane (which is not that high level), but then TPK in a node, because those places are nasty.
3. They are partially killed early, but unless it’s the cleric who can rez, they continue on until they TPK.
4. They are partially killed early enough that they can withdraw, go back up, do things in a more logical order (maybe even withdraw to the surface), and things hum along as the gods intended.

Yes, I know that as GM it’s my job to avoid poor TPKs, but also to let such a thing, if fully warranted by the players’ informed decisions, happen. But I really didn’t want to see the party wiped out.

Fortunately, I had figured out a way to straddle the line — the following added rule:

Descending into the Fane or a Node results in a psychic attack stemming from:

• of the magic of each of the elements
• the nature of the other dimensions leaking through into our reality
• a foreboding sense of the Eye watching

Each character must make a WISdom Save versus DC 15 + (9 – player level) – (number of others who have made the save already)

If the save fails, the character simply feels it’s too terrifying to continue.

The idea is that as the players leveled, the attempt would get easier. Further if anyone made it, it would make it that much easier for the next person to get through (I wanted to play fair).

So, the first player to make the attempt got told:

You feel … the chill of the darkest depths of the sea … the heat of the most scorching desert … walls of earth closing in upon you … confusion, buffeted about you …

Something … watching … waiting for you to come to it … something … horrifying …

And it actually did as intended, and William (a decently high WIS character as a Druid) just failed.

Whew.

Room Numbers

I’ve mentioned this before, but another pet peeve of mine in this campaign (and with a lot of other D&D modules) reared up here: the “room” numbering was apparently done by a drunken idiot with a dart board. 

Back in the day when I was homebrewing my own dungeons, the idea was to keep things relatively sequential based on likely order of travel. So if you are in room 1, the next room is room 2, and maybe there’s a branch so you go to rooms 3-6 in that direction and rooms 7-15 in that direction. Even if there are no rails on the floors, it just makes things tons easier for the GM to flip one page, or scroll down one entry, than hop back and forth.

Not here.  From the Plaza of Moradin (A7), surrounded by shops (A5), you travel east to the Plaza of Vergadain (A6) — but that has the Feast Hall of Vergadain (A13) as its central point, and that goes to the adjoining room with the Purple Worm head (A20).

Nuts.

Roads not traveled

The party decided to poke around to the west of the Plaza of Moradin. This has two features.

There are the Villas Royal Chambers, which lie in complete ruins (in which lurks an Umber Hulk, but also some useful treasure). They took a look, peremptorily decided the Kenku would have raided any valuables (well, the Cultists tried, until too many were eaten by the Umber Hulk), and decided to skip that.

There was also the graveyard, sealed up behind ornate solid gates that are spiked from this side. They party completely read the message that “There’s bad stuff in here” (a flock of Ghouls), and so decided to skip the pain (and so the treasure therein). They also checked out one shop (did not roll “successfully” for the Cloaker inside), and decided to skip the rest, losing out on that potential treasure.

Sigh.

I mean, I get it, and applaud it. They had a mission or two: find the Delegates, find Aldrik, defeat the rising Cults (this last is kind of vague, but, sure). Clearing out levels was not part of the mission.

And since we’re doing milestone leveling, and they’d done what was necessary for this temple, there’s no hit point harvesting needed.

On the other hand, it meant that if I wanted them to have some of the gewgaws and magic that they would otherwise have picked up, I had to shift it around to areas where they do go. Or find a reason to make them more interested in searching things more carefully.

That’s why they pay me the big bucks.

The Temple of the Crushing Wave!

The party decided to head off for the Water symbol corridor. A new map! And the appropriate level. Huzzah!

I had discovered, you might recall, too late that I still had the party out of sync, level-wise. Clearing the Temple of the Howling Hatred should have dinged them from 6 to 7. Since they were already 7, it meant they were already of the recommended level for the Water Temple.

One of the interesting things about the whole Tyar-Besil / Underdark setup for this campaign is that the dungeons are not linear. You can enter from any direction. There’s a main entrance to each from the surface keeps, but you can move laterally to two other temples from any given temple, plus vertical paths that take you to the Fane or the Nodes.

This can be a bit hair-pulling for a DM (at least for me, and I don’t have much hair to spare), for reasons described above. But it’s also a challenge, especially on the lateral moves. There is no “the players will come in here, and first encounter this, and then encounter that. Each corner of the map is a potential entry point, each challenge something that could happen right up front or in final clearing-out activity.

So when I first went through the Temple of the Crushing Wave map and material, I assumed things came up along the river from Rivergard Keep. Fortunately, I’d realized a few meetings back that they were likely going to come in from this direction, so I reviewed this corner carefully to see how opponents here behaved. Which served me well.

I’d labeled this as the Trade Quarter on the throne room floor map, and the party had had a chance to review the notes they’d taken from there.

Coming in, they could just see the edge of the lake (labeled as the Great Harbor on the map — the Dwarves are just as self-aggrandizing as any other race), but Moony turned the party north to where there was corridor and door (the “Brewery” on the map). He could hear voices inside, but couldn’t make out what they were saying (as they were Bugbears, and talking in Goblin). For some reason, this got the whole party (well, at least two other folk) wanting to crowd up to the door to listen to see if it was a language they understood. 

Which, given the Stealth rolls made, and the fact that there was an arrow slit just up the corridor that would convey sound, meant the party did not surprise the Bugbears when they charged in.

The battle was notable only because of its numbers; there are several Bugbears (who hit freaking hard — our cleric, who has been kind of cocky over her AC and her retaliatory boom when someone hit her, found herself quickly down to half HP and still on the pointy end of the stick) and because the sound of the battle (by the book, even if people aren’t casting Thunderwave) attracts another several Reavers from the next room (not as many as the party thought — I had intentionally given them high numbers for just that meta a reason), as well as a One-Eyed Shiver named Morbeoth — basically a mage with a glowing chunk of ice for one eyeball. 

(I worked up a unique token and hand-out for him. If you’re going to name a guy and give him a backstory, he deserves at least that much.)

The numbers could have been telling, save that they came in waves, so nobody could be totally overwhelmed, and the party was able to use AoE spells very effectively — Theren’s Fireball took out or half-killed many of the Reavers, and William’s Moonbeam choked traffic at the door nicely.

Morbeoth was able to Misty Step into the room, and nail three party members (Moony, Faith, and Nala — the top melee folk) with a Fear cone. I did get the players to tell me their worst fears (the Fire Elemental at Scarlet Moon Hall, her gods being disappointed in her, and drowning-personified-as-a-Water-Elemental) before throwing down their weapons and fleeing.

But it was too little, too late at that point with only a few Reavers left to back Morbeoth up. After he (I) learned the limitations of Mirror Image (NFG against AoE, like the still-up Moonbeam), he accused them of being in the pay of “Thuluna” and escaped, letting the remaining Reavers pay the price for being his rear guard. 

That seemed a good opportunity to call a pause for the evening, and so we did.

Cult Politics

There’s actually a fair amount of political intrigue going on at the Water Temple, per the campaign. Morbeoth thinks he should be in charge (or, at least, second in command to Gar Shatterkeel), and hates Thuluna. Thuluna, a sea hag, commands the loyalty of the monsters / creatures / non-PC-races here.

You don’t actually get too see how too much how all that plays out, which is a shame (in theory the players could forge double-crossing alliances, and infiltrate quite a ways, if they chose). Still, it was fun having Morbeoth accuse the players of being in Thuluna’s pay. It gave them a few things to think about.

The Dust Settles

I thought/hoped the melee was a wake up call for some characters. They’d been slightly overlevel for a while, and while they were able to defeat the foes here, they’d faced some bigger magic, and bigger hitters, than they had previously. That might make them more conflict-avoidant, or might make them more tactical in how they tackled things. The fact that they just lost a melee heavy hitter might play a role there, either …

I had no clear idea what was going to happen next time — there’s not really a grand saga in the Crushing Wave temple, just interesting set pieces and opponents. I’d have to think about where Morbeoth ran to, since his domain and power base and lab are all in that corner. Certainly he’s not going to run to Thuluna Maah …

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