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 45 (Day 38-29)
In … Red Larch!

1. William wandered under the new moon as a Giant Badger. He had something to remember on the tip of his tongue, but couldn’t think of it.
2. Faith dreams of the young woman she’s welcomed to her hut. Nala has a dream of conversing with Aldrik at a bar. Moony has a dream of speaking with a mysterious, grizzled old Tabaxi who asked him questions about hunting and prey. 
3. Pursuing Bruldenthar‘s mysterious Sending, the Theren and Faith sought out Endrith Vallivoe to enquire about what the “Dearest Treasure of the Dwarves,” which Endrith thought might be the Crown of the Silver Keep. William, on the other hand, speculated it might have been the Vale of Dancing Waters, which Bruldenthar was previously known to be searching for.
4. The Shopkeeper sent a half-elf urchin, Vetch, to bring Theren to him. The whole party went. The Shopkeeper spoke to him of powers, spells, and specialization, then offered, as some sort of odd “experiment,” to sell him a Ring of Fire Resistance for half its value (Theren bargained him down further). (This item still needs to be Attuned.)
5. The party traveled toward Feathergale Spire to return to where they’d last been. Along the way, they were struck by a powerful earthquake, which seemed to have a localized effect. While passing the Spire, William left a funerary offering to the dead, hoping that Haeleeya Hanadroum would see it and treat it as an apology for Savra’s death. 
6. Upon reaching the Temple of Howling Hatred, and lengthy consideration of their next path, they chose to enter the “Gates]” area of Tyar-Besil. After dispatching the returned Nothic in the room of the Gargoyle Fountain, they scouted their way forward.

7. 

   Just within the next zone, they discovered the passage was apparently guarded by a large, chained, sleeping bulette. After lengthy debate about what to do, they attacked it from down the corridor, doing it substantial damage before it could even get to its feet. It did managed to take a huge bite out of Faith, before falling, crying out in its pain.
       At which point, other voices of bulettes echoed from deeper in the chamber

Player Recap

Landshark

William heads out to enjoy the new moon on the knoll West of the inn. There is a thread of a memory I had previously. There is an old man escorted by a worker and someone else. He is complaining that everyone has forgotten him. 

Dreams:

• Faith dreams of taking in a man in need
• Nala is in the Glaive ‘n’ Goblin in Waterdeep along the gateway. She is drinking with Aldrick. To keys that open doors and to keys that close them. 
• Moony dreams of an old Tabaxi 

Theren and Faith go to Vallivoe’s to see if he knows anything about “The Dwarves’ Greatest Treasure” Endrith mentions several possibilities but lands on the Crown of the Silver Keep. Eventually he sells Theren a book on the subject. When they leave, a half-elf street urchin, Vetch, gets their attention and says that the “Shopkeeper” has something for his dilemma.

Theren decides to stop by the inn first to collect the rest of the party. When he enters the shop he is greeted by the Shopkeeper. Theren wants to get to the point, but the Shopkeeper insists on that Theren owes him a story and request that he tell of the tower of smoke and fire. Theren gives him a bare bones description of the events leading to destruction of tower.

The shopkeeper offers Theren a Ring of Fire Resistance. He makes it clear that it is only available to Theren. The price is 3,000 gold, but he is talked down to 2,000 gold. The shopkeeper is amused and indicates that the decisions that Theren makes is worth the added expense for the experiment. 

Theren asks Moony to check around back. There is a back door to a yard, which is well traveled.

About an hour out of town, Nala notices that the woods are silent. Suddenly, the earth moves violently. A huge fissure appears near them. The magic users decide that it must be a spell since it is so limited in focus. The rest of the travel to the entrance is uneventful. 

William takes a short detour to leave 100gp inside the Feathergale Spire with a simple note that says “For the deceased”

The rest of the travel to Tyar-Besil and to the Temple of Howling Hatred is uneventful. As the enter the area of the temple, they hear loud piercing sounds of women screaming or birds crying. Williams shouts “We mean you no harm if you do not attack.” The cries stop. 

Moony wins the flip and the group moves to the northeast corner of the air temple. Moony gets to the entrance of the earth temple. Moony is near the entrance and he says “They’re back.” A nothic attacks Nala and it is hit by a telekinetic reprisal. The nothic is running for the door that the group used to entered the gargoyle plaza. Moony retaliates with a short-bow attack. William and Theren finish it off. They poke at the remains and see that it is inherently magic and totally wrong. 

Resuming the path to the earth temple. Moony listens and checks for traps. He see a landshark chained to a pillar. After some debate William does an augury spell that strongly suggests that releasing the bulette and trying to scare it further into the temple would not be a good idea (Thank You,  Faith!) Instead the group clusters in the hall and begins attacking the monster. A lot of damage is done by the party before it is able to get to its feet and charge the party. Faith is the only person within reach of the creature. He takes a chunk out of her and then dies as the acid from the Vitriolic Sphere eats through his hide. 

Game Notes

Filling out the Red Larch dance card

I’d gotten through most of my Red Larch stuff the previous session, but there were still a few items to hit.

First, I really wanted William to remember seeing folk taking bodies out for burial the end of their first visit. But at least two Investigation rolls later, nothing doing. Ah, well. Not critical.

Second, I really wanted someone to read Bruldenthar’s scroll, to see if that would noodge them toward the Vale of Dancing Waters, since I had gone to the effort of making an enhancement pass on the side quest. So I was both kind of excited and a bit daunted when the Theren decided to inquire of Eldrith about what the dearest treasure of the dwarves was. 

Insert quick GM improvising about a lengthy legend of a dwarvish warrior and the quest for the Crown of the Silver Keep, and selling an old book to Theren. (I created a Roll20 Journal Entry for it after the fact.)

That one of the players then picked up on the Vale was kind of cool. Alas, the consensus was “Go back to Feathergale Spire.” Ah, well. 

Third, I had a few more prods to a couple of characters, esp. Theren (whose patron god, unknown to him, was sitting there as the Shopkeeper) and Faith (who was always good for a provocation). I didn’t expect the whole party to attend, and so I focused just on Theren, and offered him at ruinous prices a Fire Prot ring. The question was, would he carry it himself, as a protection, or give it to someone like Nala, who stands on the front lines and could be hit by one of his Fireballs?

(Answer: he wore it himself.)

Dreams!

Plenty of dreams that overnight. Faith‘s was to try to lull her (or have her realized she’s being lulled) by Windvane. Nala was to let Aldrik (or his spirit) drop some clues that might help them (I wasn’t happy by how that one turned out). 

Moony‘s was fun because most of the ones I had crafted for him were “the hunter hunted” type and I wanted something different. So, with the idea that Denier, Faith’s god, is getting shut out from her dreams by the presence of Windvane, I had him manifest as a Tabaxi to talk with Moony. I’ll do that a few times and see what Faith’s reaction is. (The party members tend to discuss their dreams, so I’m not treating them as secrets.)

Two more notes from the dreams. First, I realized at this point I’d done so many that having a single Roll20 journal entry for them was getting unwieldy. So I broke them into separate ones, though public.

Second, Aldrik. My expectation had been my son coming back from college and picking the character (who was currently chained by the altar in the Fane) again. And then (and this is a Good Thing), he got a post-graduate field job on the other side of the country. So on the one hand, yay! On the other hand, awww! 

I had no idea at this point if he’d pick up playing remotely (huzzah for Roll20!). If he did, I might need to scramble, because the party would NOT be at that point by then.

The Sidekick

I actually added to the populace of Red Larch by adding a half-elf  urchin (stowaway on a caravan from Waterdeep) named Vetch. Insert street urchin tropes here. She was working for the Shopkeeper, and it was fun to play her.

I had a stray thought that he would be sending her to follow the party and keep track of them (as a god, he wanted to monitor what’s happening, but the magical interference of the approaching Princes was blinding, even the gods, just as the oracle who first assigned this quest to them to this was blinded).

I would need to do some further thinking on the matter, as there were plenty of opportunities to be saddled with civilians in this campaign. On the other hand, the idea of somehow maneuvering it so that Theren ended up with a half-elven ward was utterly delicious. 

(And I could use the Sidekick rules to create an easy NPC. Hmmmmm.)

EVENTUAL UPDATE: Conceptually, Vetch was a lot of fun. But things were complicated enough already for me and the players, so I dropped the whole idea.

The Slow Road Back to the Action

I skipped over all other random encounters, with the idea of getting them to the action as soon as I could. William delayed things by his touching leaving of a purse of gold coins for Haeleeya, as perhaps the final denouement of the Savra story.

But that was nothing compared to the party arriving, under the mountains, at the entrance to the Temple of Howling Hatred … and trying to decide what to do. Head up to the (presumed) Fire Temple at the “Forges”? Head across two zones to the (presumed) Earth Temple at the “Gates”? Take one of the three or four gates downward that they’d found?

I love my friends (including the dearest friend who’s my wife), but one flaw they all have (which is usually a virtue) is that none of them are pushy, or want to be seen as pushy. So all of them might have an idea, and they might even present the idea, but then they would almost invariably say, “But, hey, that’s just my idea, no obligation to do it, what does everyone else think?”

Lather, rinse, repeat.

So a half hour later, I finally asked the Tabaxi, “So, which path seems the least boring to you?” I’m not sure he legitimately gave an honest answer to that, but he urged the path from the Water Temple toward the (presumed) Earth Temple, and so they did it.

While it slightly slowed things down, I felt obliged to have the Nothic who escaped the party earlier from the Gargoyle Fountain room to have crept back in the couple of days they were gone. Brief combat and defeat, marred only by the player who’s dug up the Thieves Guild Guide to Breaking Down Monsters for Parts You Can sell going through all the things you can sell Nothic parts for …

Sigh.

Meta Mapping Issues and Roll20

I don’t know who adapts the WotC modules for Roll20 — a WotC crew or a Roll20 crew – but I would like to have words.

First, as noted earlier, it would be really nice to have it confirmed that the passages from one Temple zone to the next are really only about the length that actually shows on the maps (combined). (That’s actually a WotC PotA problem.)

Second, it would be even nicer if those bridging passages were not cut off on each map, wasting a good ten feet of corridor, esp. since the far end of those corridors is often dangerous and problem-laden. In this particular case, a fitfully sleeping bulette.

There was no way to fit a party of five into the corridor space allotted without their being in view of the bulette.

(Digression: The History, in D&D Editions, of the Bulette, including, canonically, how to pronounce their name.)  

Of course, I could simply plop characters down into the interstitial space between the edge of the drawn map and the edge of the physical map. But, alas, there’s not only no corridor drawn there, but there’s a light/movement barrier there. So if I put any characters back there, they not only cannot move up the corridor into combat, but they get a delightful “behind the scenes” look at the inside of the walls.

(Rolls eyes.)

And I can’t easily break that light barrier because whoever does the (not always very good) job of drawing the barriers on the light layer in Roll20 does like a quarter of the dungeon at a time. So I can (a) suffer, or (b) redraw a quarter of the dungeon. (Which is a huge PitA, though my redrawing is usually better than the original.)

UPDATE: I eventually discovered the Roll20 PathSplitter API script (yay for Roll20 Pro), which let me  relatively painlessly break that extended path of walls and create a reasonable staging ground for the players. So, again, yay.

Extended problem-solving

I’ve mentioned how much I love my friends, none of whom would ever dream of taking command seeming pushy. So I also loved how it took them half an hour to devise a way of dealing with the bulette. Or not. 

In the end, four things happened:

1. They managed to surprise the sleeping bulette, which meant they’d taken it down substantial HP before it started after them. (In retrospect, I should have been rolling against their endless planning to see if it woke up on its own.)
2. They learned where the chain binding the bulette to the pillar extended to, which meant most of them were safe …
3. … Except Faith, who learned how godawful many HP a bulette could do with a chomp.

And, at the very end, as they congratulated themselves on killing the bulette (except the one player who noticed it was labeled “Bulette 1“), they got to hear the roaring howls of the other bulettes in the hall, who were now awake, enraged, and ready to start working on their chains.

Bits and Bobs

I realized I’d been forgetting about the weather lately (as the party was underground). Today’s roll on the Weather Table, to make up for that, was an Earthquake (the characters are at higher levels, therefore the “weather” was getting worse). 

<< Session 44 | Session 46 >>

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. 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 15 (Day 21)

1. A Map of Sacred Stone Monastery
2. The party took a Short Rest in the Kitchen, while evaluating Spell Scrolls you found, the Necklace of Hellenrae, sifting through more Marlos Urnrayle info, and testing the local liquor.
3. The party invaded the central temple of the monastery, fighting two Black Earth guards and Qarbo, the Black Earth priest.
4. The party took a Long Rest in (they presumed) Hellenrae‘s quarters, sussing out the additional magic items in their pockets (including Spell Scrolls you found).
5. They began their descent into the space under the monastery, down past well buckets to look into a well chamber with a handful of figures in it, one of them particularly large …
6. Meanwhile Aldrik came up with a quick costume switch …

Player Recap

Better take the bread out of the oven

After the fight in the kitchen, Moony spikes the doors, William jumps in a washtub, and people (short) rest and recover. The magic users take a look at the scrolls while the other check out the other loot [noted with class that can use it].

In the locked chest:

1. D/S: Earthbind
2. S: Maximilian’s Earthen Grasp
3. C: Speak with Dead
4. D: Transmute Rock

In the Scriptorium:

1. D/S: Dust Devil
2. D/S

Other swag:

• Moony: The Necklace of Hellenrae: It is magical. It is … disturbing. It is a key. But it is incomplete.
• Aldrik: Leather pouch: a scrap of parchment, folded and refolded. “forgiven if only” and “please come home”
• Nala: The papers/scroll about Marlos Urnrayle: He is the self-described “Prophet of Earth” He was drawn to a place he calls “the Fane of the Eye” by powerful visions and promises of power. One of the things he found in the Fane was “Ironfang, the Holy Implement of Earth Power,” which he took as his own.
• Aldrik/Nala: The booze from the distillery: Rough, not well distilled or flavored. Nala trusts Aldrik’s assessment and declines to try it.

Once rested, the group debate their next move. It is decided that Moony should sneak into the main temple room and determine the threat level. As the group stands in the entrance room, Moony steps forward and sees two guards and a person behind the altar. Entering in further, Moony does a double take as the rock priest at the altar looks a lot like Larrakh. Moony motions the rest of the party into the room.

After Moony sneak attack shoots the Earth Priest, Qarbo (surprising both groups) the fight ensues. The party moves into the room. Qarbo opens the attack from Team Evil with a large damaging effect against a cluster of heroes near the door. After that the fight goes downhill for the earth priest and his guards.

William finds a lever in the northwest wall. Aldrik and Faith determines that the temple was once dedicated to Moradin, the all-father Lawful Good god of the dwarves.  Moony calls out that he is going to test the lever. The group scatters and the stairs down from the middle of the room turn into a slope. Pulling the lever back up, the stairs return. Moony removes the lever to disable the device. The party gathers the items from the alter and from Qarbo and head to Hellenrae’s room for a long rest.

Watch order

1. William & Nala
2. Moony
3. Theren & Aldrik
4. Faith

After (long) resting for 8 hours, undisturbed, they decide to take on the basement. It is night and the monastery is dark. Using the stairs that lead down to the well, they head underground. It’s dark, so they light up in their various ways. Moony opens the door …

Game Notes

A Key Innovation

As mentioned previously, one of the criticisms of The Sandbox That Is PotA is that it is waaaaay too easy for people to wander from their nice, safe, 4th level shenanigans into a 12th level hellhole — which they may not realize until it is too late.

In theory, players will spot such things and back out, but I didn’t trust myself not to inadvertently bring down a TPK.

So I stole and expanded on the “keys” idea from Sly Flourish. Basically, each Keep has a passage down to Tyar-Besil and that element’s “Temple” (portion of the city). Since we know the cults are all in a Cold War with each other, they wouldn’t want their opposition to have an easy back door (even if the security at the Temple level between the cults, let alone the joint stewardship of the Fane, make this slightly less plausible — but, then, I hadn’t read that far in full detail yet).  At any rate, each passage from a Keep to its Temple has a mystical mojo barrier, passable only in the willing presence of someone who has sold their soul to their elemental Prince (figuratively, or perhaps literally, speaking). Anyone else — from another cult, or just a wandering adventurer, is locked out …

Except that each of the keep holders has a portion of a “Fifth Key,” crafted by the fiends who set this all up. These look like their elemental symbol from the symbol of Elemental Evil (something which the party had only glimpsed in the Necromancer’s lair, and not yet had an opportunity to figure out). Join the four pieces, and the resulting magical item could let someone open up all the mystical barriers. A nifty weapon for any of the Keep Lieutenants. A nice way to keep the party out of trouble and, eventually, wanting to hit up all four keeps.

I cobbled together some imagery for the necklaces to serve as a handout. Because named items should have handouts. So we started with the “Necklace of Hellenrae” and went from there, adding some weird “attunement” effects that gave the indication that it was definitely a key to … something … but incomplete.

(I made it a mystical mojo barrier rather than an Iron Door because any barrier that could conceivably be penetrated will have breach attempts made on it for hours by my players.)

The overall effect image is trying to create a metal framework around the symbol as it appears in the full-out Elemental Evil thingummy that they briefly glimpsed in Oreioth’s stronghold. I was particularly pleased with threading it around a necklace image.

I’m the Map!

So along with game logs, and now that we were in dungeon territory, I started crafting maps for the players to review between sessions or even during the session (rather than zooming out in Roll20), stored in the public  journal entry for “Sacred Stone Monastery.” Unexplored areas were blacked out. E.g.,

For this session, I included it in the episode recap.

In these early days, I filled in the names of some of the areas (“Crispy Monks” being where they had popped the door and Fireballed the barracks). But the idea was to make up for the players not actually being there and having a sense of what the place looked like (and what areas were as yet unexplored). By the end of this episode, then, the two main areas left (on the ground floor) were a back room of Renwick’s (which nobody was interested in) and the main temple.

A lot of decision-making was done going over those maps, so it was worth the time (after each session) it took me to craft them.

Around this time, I think, I began having two journal entries in Roll20 for every dungeon (keep, temple, etc.):  the main one that came with the game (which I renamed, e.g., “Sacred Stone Monastery (GM)”), holding all the room contents and dungeon notes (as updated and modified by me), and a new public one for what the party knew about the place, what they had discovered, links to people they and met and (often) killed, etc. (named, e.g., “Sacred Stone Monastery”).

The Campaign Logo

So for various idiosyncratic reasons, I wasn’t thrilled by either the name “Princes of the Apocalypse” nor with cover art of Aerisi. It just didn’t do it for me.

So, for hopefully obvious reasons, I redubbed the campaign “Elementary,” and went with something intentionally cute.

That’s from u/shmeckerel on Reddit, link here.

It was going to be obvious quickly that elemental powers were involved in the campaign, so coming up with something preemptively cute felt like a fun move.

As time passed, and more elemental symbols were resolved, I did a bit of modification …

That made it a bit less cute.

I had this on the campaign landing page, and, by the end of the game, I had put (a la the meme), “Is this a material plane?” next to the butterfly.

Bits and Bobs

Although Qarbo was, I believe, pretty much the same level bad guy as Larrakh, the fact that the players were now 4th level rather than 2nd made the battle in the temple pretty anticlimactic, although lengthy enough to take up much of the session.

Of course, Qarbo isn’t actually the Keep holder. That would be Hellenrae … whom the party had dispatched previously, because they snuck in through the back door. Sigh.

While the party was murderhoboing, kinda-sorta, I wanted to emphasize that there were implications of same — not just Renwick registering a mild (if pointed) complaint about the noise, but the idea that not every cultist was a slavering mad dog hell-bent on destroying the world for their elemental master.  Thus the leather pouch that one of the monks carried, with a fragment of a letter they had gotten from their family —  a scrap of parchment, folded and refolded. “forgiven if only” and “please come home.” And while he clearly hadn’t gone home … he’d kept the note, or that fragment of it.  Yeah, that’s the dude you just killed before he could get out of bed — sweet dreams!

It was around this time that I realized the party was beginning to pick up magic stuff they needed to keep track of for purposes of investigation and attunement . So I created a Roll20 Journal Entry called Spell Scrolls you found, which later turned into Magic Stuff you found that I could pull up or point people to when Short or Long Rests occurred (with the notes about what each of the items did hidden in the GM section).

The party had to figure out a new watch order, now that they had (and, mostly, trusted) Aldrik, the 6th member. I eventually realized that both Marching Order and Watch Order were perfect for a Roll20 Journal Entry that anyone (including the DM) could reference.

The logical path forward / downward for the party was the large ramp opened up in the temple. So, of course, the party took the stairwell by the kitchen.

<< Session 14 | Session 16 >>

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. 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 14 (Day 21) 

1. After a brief chat with Renwick the Lich, the team looted the bodies, hid the bodies, then briefly holed up in the nearby bedroom (though not before lifting some booze bottles from the distillery).
2. A disguised (and invisible!) Moony scouted out the narrow internal courtyard, and determined that there was at least one gargoyle there with very good hearing.
3. The team raided the Scriptorium, killing the monks there and those who came in from the foyer. They also took out a room of sleeping monks, found a chest full of nice stuff in another room, and dealt with a room full of Duergar. They also killed a bunch of cooks in the kitchen, which is where they decided to hole up for a short rest and debate over whether they are murder hoboes.
4. Things of interest picked up included:
   • Spell Scrolls you found in the Scriptorium and the locked chest
   • Some other papers from the Scriptorium talking about a Marlos Urnrayle (“The Prophet of the Earth”)
   • Some bottles of booze from the Distillery
   • A small leather pouch one of the monks had.
   • The mysterious Necklace of Hellenrae.

Player Recap

A looting we will go … “but they were all bad”

Helenrae has a cord with some keys around her neck and a steel chain with a dark Earth symbol. Most of the monks did not have anything of interest. One has a pouch at his waist. Moony also grabs a mask and a monk’s robe.

Renwick comes through a door to investigate. He asks if the group is done causing a ruckus. He spies the body and Hellenrae and comments that her death will complicate his life. He also muses that it probably couldn’t be helped.

Pile the dead in the dojo and retreat to the room with the treasure chest. The keys do not fit the room or chest.  Theren turns Moony invisible and he scouts ahead, discovering gargoyle(s?) in an open courtyard.

The groups first stop is the library with four monks. An invisible Moony back-stabs the first unsuspecting Black Earth monk. The monks are taken by surprise and go down quickly, as does the two additional monks in the adjoining foyer.

The group returns to the library to search the scrolls. Most are about Marlos Urnrayle the Prophet of Earth. Faith finds a number of scrolls on Marlos Urnrayle that the monks were copying. She also grabbed a scroll that mentions Ogrémoch. Theren finds some magical scrolls off to one side. There are also some large tomes that are probably valuable. The group grabs 15 of them and puts them in their packs.

Next up a room, full of uncomfortable straw bunks with monks sleeping – On Fire

A locked room is next to the monks’ barracks. The lock opens to Moony’s delicate touch. There are six more comfortable bunks. Three are made up with sheets and pillows. Most of the trunks are unlocked. The occupied beds have miscellaneous personal items. One is locked. It contains gold gems and fine priestly vestments.

Down at the corner of the hall. a door opens into the barracks of a group of armed dwarves. The room is dim and very hot. There are blankets over the windows. Faith steps in and asks if the Dwarves are here against their will. A dwarf replies “No one can keep us if we didn’t want it” Faith casts a Thunderwave, damaging the four caught in the blast and pushing several dwarves back. She pulls back and Aldrik rushes in calling out Dwarvish insults. Two swings with the Devilwood Grandstaff and the first Duergar goes down. The rest of the party moves into the room and joins the fray. Theren snipes from outside the door. The Duergars in the back of the room one by one grow to large size. Their armor increases with them. But when they die they resume their original size. Aldrik decided that he can alter the scale armor enough to not be noticeably Duergar.

From the Duergar barracks the group moves onto the refectory. It is a large room with several tables. Several doors lead out of the rectory. Moony chooses the door that leads to the kitchen. Moony enters in his monk robes and mask the dwarves in the room barely give him a second glance. Aldrik walks in and the dwarf at the stove does a double take and finally demands “What are you doing here?” Aldrik doesn’t have a witty come-back, so Moony attacks. The cooks don’t have much of a chance against the professional adventurers. When the dust settles and the fires go out, the group tosses the dead bodies out the back door. The other door from the kitchen leads to the bathhouse/laundry.

The session ends there with the party taking a short rest.

Game Notes

Welcome the Jungle

So Sacred Stone Monastery was really the first “dungeon” the party had gone through, at least since Red Larch. As such, there was much reestablishment of how the party functioned in such an environment, with Moony the Tabaxi Rogue taking point most of the time.

Once again, the party proved schizophrenic, going from “We need to be careful, quiet, and not approach every encounter as a bloodfest” to “Murderhobos, Assemble!” In fairly quick order, they cleared most of the entire ground floor — though, after Renwick ghostily chided them, they took extra care to not let too much noise carry over to his side of the monastery.

Oh, about that Lich …

On an inquiry about liches from a player noting that (a) liches were like Level 15 back in the olden editions, wielding Finger of Death, and (b) they might be someone famous we would know about.:

It is not metagaming that you folk would know that liches are a thing of legend (or at least lots of fairy tales that usually end with either “And then he feasted on their souls for ever” or “and the entire kingdom breathed a sigh of relief, and built statues to the heroes so that their brave sacrifice would never be forgotten”). They are wizards of very high level who have cheated death, keeping their souls locked away someplace safe and separate. As such, they may have had renown in some circles, though not necessarily any that folk here would know, esp. if we’re possibly talking centuries ago or more.

At any rate, they are usually considered pretty tough characters, and are generally considered evil (because that’s kind of how necromancy rolls). I would be happy to answer more on some Arcana or History rolls.

Which is not to say that there isn’t some grand, epic thing that couldn’t happen, or that Faith isn’t completely legit in wanting to smite this fell creature, or that you don’t have a Scroll of Lich Annihilation in Theren’s bag, unread. But it might be a worthwhile topic of conversation to have whilst you’re taking a (short?) rest in the kitchen.

I didn’t really want them to fight Renwick (seriously), but I was happy to let them worry about fighting Renwick.

Bits and Bobs

Aldrik was remembering only bare glimpses of any of this. Which was disturbing. I was still toying around with who or what Aldrik really was.

You would think that Invisibility and the Rogue would be a natural match, but this is one of the few times I can ever think that someone used it on him. In part it was because, in this scene, the actual gargoyle(s) in the courtyard heard him (everyone gets a bad stealth roll now and again) and, I think, tainted the whole idea.

The party had already encountered the Black Earth symbol, back with Larrakh and his pet cult in Red Larch. I kept things faithfully recorded in journal entries which some players used to start piecing things together (which always warms the cockles of a DM’s heart).

Though the party very rarely tried to sneak or bluff their way along, Moony the Tabaxi Rogue always made a point of grabbing cultist gear — and did, occasionally, use them (though, as a Tabaxi, it was tough for him to “blend in”). That said, it worked this time.

Speaking of which, it took a bit of nudging to get the players to actually look at the contents of the scriptorium — which I wanted because there was tonne of lore and backstory and discussions about Marlos Urnrayle, and I wanted that foundation laid as they went along, since it’s kind of critical to understanding about the prophets and all that.

(It also gave me a chance, through some writings, to RP the fabulous Marlos Urnrayle, in a way that would never come up later in the game.)

The Duergar were interesting. I’d never heard of them before, and I didn’t read up on them until way too close to encountering them, and their biggest advantage — being able to go from Dwarf-size to Large — really didn’t work well in their cramped little quarters.

It did give Aldrik some RP time, though, given the animosity between their races. And, as I recall, he spent a while agonizing over taking armor and weapons from them, so that he wasn’t wandering around with a loincloth and club (Barbarian or not).

Camping in the kitchen was slightly dodgy, because while they had systematically killed almost everyone in the monastery, that didn’t count whomever was in the main temple, or anyone downstairs who might come up.  Fortunately, the DM didn’t want to deal with those implications or more piecemeal out-of-context battle, so they got away with it. This time.

<< Session 13 | Session 15 >>

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. 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 12 (Day 19-20) 

1. Faith had a dream about the missing Narl Elrok.
2. The party follows the trail of the ambushers of the Mirabar Delegation, an estimated thirty bugbears and humanoids, along a long-desolate roadway in the hills. The roadway ended at a broken bridge over the Dessarin River, but the party tracked the raiders south, camping overnight once they reached the southern edge of the Dessarin Hills. 
3. The next day the trail picked up south, then curving west to the river. They found where the raiders had apparently been picked up in boat(s) — and, by coincidence, a small ship came along, the Rivermaid, commanded by a genasi gentleman, Shoalar Quanderil. He agreed, for a fee, to transport them upriver to where they could get to the Sacred Stone Monastery. He did so, as everyone ducked down as they passed Rivergard Keep. There were no problems, though Shoalar did have some interestingly-labeled shipping crates in the hold.
4. After a treacherous climb from the rubble at river water level to the broken bridge, the party advanced into the hills, following the vague directions given by Thurl Merosska. They walked into a waiting ambush by a party from Rivergard Keep, but managed it handily. Half the assailants fled, but the water priestess Drosnin was gleefully taken out by Faith.
5. As they searched the bodies, William was confronted by a bloody-eyed dwarf, coming up the road in a most threatening fashion.

Player Recap

Faith dreams. You’re soaring above the cloud wrapped snowy peaks, your wings uplifted by great winds, the incipient lightning in the sky tingling along your feathertips. Something catches your eye, of more importance than any rabbit or squirrel or wolf cub might be. You circle, stoop, dive, and You land on a battlefield, the battle long since past, crows cawing at you angrily for your intrusion.

A gaunt figure, vacant-eyed creature cringes before you holding up its arms to ward you off. (Handout: Ghoul) “I surrender!” the ghoul hisses, voice distorted. “I give up. It burns. Stop it from burning. I gave up. I surrendered. I surrendered, I said uncle.”

And it’s not a ghoul, but a young man (Narl Elrok), lying on the snowy ground before you, near death, the blood, too much blood, oozing through the rents in his armor. . On his tabard is the symbol of the Knights of Samular, the crossed sword and torch. He lifts his head, looking at you. “I was sore beset. I cried uncle,” he says, “but they didn’t listen. But he did, he heard, I cried uncle, and he heard. I’m just … so very cold. A fire would be nice. A bright, warm fire, not this cold, dead, tomb, twice dead tomb, not dead tomb. I cried … to the brother … uncle –!”

And the young man’s head lies back down, flops limply to the side in a way that looks very uncomfortable, and your neck hurts, too, and you realize you’ve rolled off of the pillow you formed out of your pack, and it’s morning, and there’s a rock digging into your cheek, and your friends are getting up and fixing breakfast.

William gathers some twigs and bits and bobs then finds a quiet spot to divine the success of our path. A silvery raven pops out of air in front of him and say “Weal of fortune,” Confirming the path forward. As the head out, William easily follows the path of the combatants, occasionally seeing the prints of bugbears mixed in with the humanoids. It dawns on him that this may have once been a road. 

The trail goes south that roughly parallels the Dessarin Road. After a few hours it begins to turn a bit west towards the river. About four hours of travel, the trail suddenly becomes muddled. The path splits into two routes, one going south on a rougher path and the other continuing west along the smoother path. The group continues towards the river. They break through the scrub brush to see a gorge with the remains of an ancient bridge. The slope is steep. There is also a slight signs of a trail going down the cliff on the opposite side. After noting the surroundings, the group backtracks and heads south. After the split, the path turns difficult. 

When the group finally moves out of the difficult terrain, the group spots the river as the sun is setting. Faith notices that the vulture overhead is actually a giant vulture high above them. There may be a rider on the vulture. Moony finds a pleasant campsite and the group rests through the uneventful night. 

Once again William gathers some leaves, pebbles, and seedpods. This time he adds his Raven token then finds a quiet spot to divine the success of their path. A silvery raven pops out of the air in front of him and says “Weal”. They break camp and continue on their way south. Soon the path curves west towards the river. They are now well south of Rivergard. It look like the some boats have were pulled up here. The trail ends at the river. While they try and decide what to do next. Faith notices a large boat heading up the river. The boat is about 30 feet long. Several sailors are working on deck and a halfling is shouting orders. There are fine ornate fish designs on the sails. A nattily dressed blue-green gentleman calls to group. Are you stranded, lost, or in trouble? We are carrying cargo to Yartar. Moony asks if they can take us up river. For the sake of good conversation and company, let’s say 25 gold apiece. Theren persuades him to lower his price to 15. 

He carefully maneuvers the ship closer to the shore and the crew rows over a dingy to pick them up. Once everyone gets aboard, he introduces himself as Shoalar Quanderil, a well-dressed water Genasi armed with a jovial manner, captain of the Rivermaid, along with Pyx his first mate. He asks a few pointed questions, wondering why the group didn’t know that the bridge was out and why we didn’t ask Rivergard for help. Moony derails him with a steady stream of questions about the boat and the river trade. Nala is keeping an eye on the river to spot the Rivergard Keep. She mentions to Shoalar that the group had an encounter with ghouls the night before and asked if they might rest for a bit. He offers the hammocks below deck and Nala and Moony follow Pyx below. Faith curls up in a cloak on deck. Theren stays on deck looking at the horizon. William sits on a crate on the poop deck with his back to the West side of the river. He talks about trade with Shoalar.

As they approach the keep, William notices some palisades on the East bank of the river. When they go by, Shoalar says, “When we pass this bend in the river, the keep will be out of site, if your friends would like to walk the deck more freely.” William, “That obvious is it?” “Well, most folks don’t go below deck unless it’s raining.” Nala notices some crates marked with the Water elemental symbol on her way back up deck. As they approach the broken bridge the group asks Shoalar if there is anything concerning in the area. He mentions the weather, river pirates, and Dwarf pilgrims. They disembark and say farewell.

The path up is steep and challenging. Moony offers to bring a rope to the top to help the others. Part way up he stumbles. William warns the group and then changes into a giant wolf spider. He easily reaches the summit with the rope. When it is secure, Faith and Nala successfully ascend. Theren starts up the rope and slips a bit, recovers himself, and then slips again falling down the slope. After making sure Theren is okay, Moony heads to the top with only a slight bobble. Finally, Theren ties the rope on and the group pulls him up to the top of the trail. 

The party continues ahead to the remains of the bridge. The stones are very worn. Faith notices some design features that look Dwarvish. William studies the path and finds signs of recent travel up the canyon road. A largish group passed by within the last week or so. The path forward looks narrow and smoothed out a bit like the old road on the opposite side. The adventurers make their way up the canyon on high alert. Moony takes the lead stealthily making his way ahead. He spots an old wagon ahead in the middle of the path. When the others approach it is obvious that the cart has been here a very long time. The path splits at this point. 

William hears something off to the right and sees only rock until a figure steps out “Wash this canyon with their blood!” Drosnin is obviously still pissed. The group focuses on Drosnin. Moony plunking her with arrows, William pulling her off the cliff face with a thorn whip, Theren tosses off a fireball that takes the cart, two Reavers, and singes Drosnin. She throws magic missiles at Theren, who deflects them with a shield spell. Faith provokes an attack of opportunity from the Bugbears and races towards Drosnin. She tosses off a lightning bolt and smashes her divine might. That puts an end to Drosnin. Nala, Theren, and Moony take on of the remaining Bugbears and Reavers. At least one enemy flees over the escarpment. William calls forth a Moonbeam to shine radiant light on two of the remaining Bugbears. 

After the last two combatants take off, Faith finds a Black Earth symbol carved into one of the rocks. Moony and William notice some rocks sliding down from the cliff near the body of Drosnin. While several people in the party spot the rocks, no one can find the escaping source of the noise. As they search the area, they find the campsite of Drosnin and the party from Rivergard Keep. There is not much worth looting. There is some camping gear. Drosnin had an obsidian dagger and a knob shaped like a fist. Nala notices that Drosnin and the Reavers have Water element tattoos. The disturbing tattoos on Drosnin appear to be moving. They decide to burn the bodies. 

A Dwarf in tattered black and red livery approaches William, brandishing a branch. “Alright you assassin, let try that again!” 

Game Notes

Dreams

Faith and her dreams are always a good time. In this case I began to weave in elements of the story of Narl Elrok (the missing Knight of Samular) and the fact that his body is in the care of his “uncle,” or, rather, the brother of Samular Caradoon, the founder of his order: Renwick Caradoon, the lich living at Sacred Stone Monastery, where the party was headed.

(I don’t recall now where the flying bird or ghoul imagery came from; the latter might have been a reference to liches and the undead, or just a bit of memory of the previous night’s encounter.)

Somewhere in here I realized I had been throwing a lot of dreams at people, so I created a set of Journal pages in Roll20 to hold the dreams, by episode number, that people had had. I don’t know if it helped the players, but it helped me in later days.

The Wandering Path of the Mirabar Delegation

This is the episode where the zaniness of the missing Mirabar Delegation and their kidnappers’ meandering journey came into actual play. All through the hills they wander, along the bare traces of roadways laid down during the Besilmer Kingdom’s era.

I can’t find much of the preliminary information that might have been in the book but I think I ended writing up an entire several pages about tracking the delegation and their captors, including:

• 

  A broken dwarvish bridge across the Dessarin River, very difficult to cross from the east (so blocking the Black Earth raiders from getting to the Monastery), but with a rubble-strewn jetty on the west side of the river (for visitors coming up from Rivergard Keep); getting from river level to the path was also non-trivial, involving Athletics challenges.

• A map of the site, complete with bridge, river, jetty, etc. 

I really felt I needed all that in order to understand in my own head how all this worked. 

The party eventually gets to the river. They spot a Feathergale Knight overhead — Thurl is watching for his “agents.”

And finally they get to meet Shoalar Quanderil, the Genasi pirate (Genasi were first developed for this module, though they’ve been modified a bit since). He kept under cover during the initial visit to Rivergard, and the encounter with him in Womford never happened. I figured he would be a perfect tool to get the players upstream toward Sacred Stone Monastery, as well as dropping a few further clues about various goings-on.

The party’s efforts not to be seen by any guards at Rivergard were quite amusing. I considered having Shoalar pull in there, regardless, but decided that created complications I didn’t want the party to have to deal with (a long battle on the ship, for one). And Shoalar — who knew who they were — was happy to simply observe and take notes of where he let them off. Oh, and turn a nice profit off of ferrying them.

Shoalar is also, I decided, the guy who ferried the Black Earth raiders across the river. Which put him in possession of Bruldenthar’s books, some of them at least. That clue comes up in the future.

Also in the cargo hold were some supplies that were, for some reason, branded with the mark of the Crushing Wave cult. But why? It’s not like some supplier is marking the cargo for shipment to Rivergard with that symbol. It wouldn’t make any sense to add the symbol to goods which Shoalar had pirated, either.

(The real reason, of course, is to show Shoalar’s allegiance, or maybe to learn more about the cult and its activities, or stuff like that. Just go along for the pirate ship ride.)

The Revenge of the Rivergard

I decided, leading up to this episode, that if the party wasn’t going to tackle Rivergard, Rivergard would tackle them. In this case, the antagonist was the deeply, deeply offended Water Priestess, Drosnin, whom our cleric Faith had punched in the snoot after being disrespectful. She brought with her half the force at Rivergard and, knowing that the party was after the Sacred Stone Monastery (they’d asked Jolliver about passage there), set up an ambush for our heroes. Who had leveled at least once at that point, so it was clear the ambush was not going to go well.

Since this was all made up, I dug up a generic battle map of a valley with a junction in the middle of it. Perfect. I think this was one of the first maps that I played with Roll20’s dynamic lighting to any degree — and, setting a precedent, spent a lot of time controlling what could or could not be seen behind rocks or ridge lines.

The battle had three results:

First, it left Rivergard seriously weakened for the party’s eventual return. (Or for other events to occur in the meantime.)

Second, a Fathomer named Urshnora — who had been hanging out in Jolliver’s court when the party first visited — was Invisible leading up to the ambush, and, with her awful Initiative throw, seen almost instantly which direction the battle was going before her turn even arrived. So instead of throwing herself into a lost cause, she tip-toed (more or less) away, leaving a pragmatic NPC to encounter another day …

Third, in that very final scene, it gave me a chance to introduce a new Player Character, played by my son who had been off at college prior to that time. Aldrik, one of the dwarvish guards of the Mirabar Delegation, had evidently been taken captive with them, but had broken free from Sacred Stone Monastery, and was in a very befuddled-but-aggressive state.

I think it was originally written up that he was in the tattered rags of his uniform, but if he didn’t get retconned to being nearly naked at that point, then the opportunity came up later on, thus the figurine.

I really didn’t know — yet — why he’d been captured, how he had gotten out, how he’d survived the ordeal, etc., but eventually it would work out beautifully.

Bits and Bobs

William‘s Raven trinket came to play again, using one of the Druid’s new spells, Augury. I’m not a big fan of fortune-telling spells, esp. as what constitutes “weal” and what constitutes “woe” can be somewhat challenging to adjudicate as the DM. But having the raven appear, think it over, and croak one or the other (or both or neither) made it a bit more fun.

William also got to introduce a spell he’d use reliably for the entire campaign, Moonbeam (or, as we tended to nickname it, the “orbital death laser”). Great spell for a nice, steady amount of ongoing damage to the main bad guy.

<< Session 11 | Session 13 >>