#tomb of Haggemoth

[zippdementia]

Part 90 Alignment May Vary: Pieces of the Past

There is an adventure for 4th Edition called something like The Return to the Tomb of Horrors. It is an adventure centered around the infamous lich Acererak and his various Tombs of death. One of the more fun parts of the adventure takes PCs to the Tomb of Horrors... only it’s decades after the Tomb’s first opening and the tomb has been raided and destroyed by the thousands of PCs that have come to it since that time.

I mention this, because ever since I read that module, I’ve wanted to do something similar: bring players back to a place that was familiar to them. The Tomb of Haggemoth, which featured so heavily in our campaign and plot, was the obvious choice and there was at least one loose end left in the Tomb that I felt would serve as a good hook: an ancient celestial being, trapped in a rock. Around the time of this session, I had finished working on a revival of Haggemoth, bringing it into 5th Edition with its original creator, Robert Kendzie (you can learn more about that here). As we updated a lot of the final dungeon, it felt like I now had an appropriately “changed” setting to bring the players back to.

So for this next section of the adventure, we return to the past. We return to Haggemoth. 

New Waterdhavians

The set up for this return begins in Waterdeep, with Imoaza and Milosh morose after the failure at Maakengorge and the sacrifice of Ruze. Milosh especially, has lost his entire sense of identity and nearly quits the group entirely. His only consolation is that armor has been left for him by Vraath Keep’s smith, who had promised to build him a new face. It is a wonderful piece of armor that gives him a humanoid looking face shield to cover up the damage done by Dragon fire back on the asteroid. But he also saw that smith dead in the Maakengorge temple. Everything reminds him of his failure at this point. Only one thing keeps him involved: Illrastayne. 

This is the blade he took from the Abyss, the blade which contains the soul of the bard-turned-warlock Bitterberry (and his Demonic patron) and which Milosh used extensively in the Abyss but has shunned since. He decides to rid himself of the blade, almost on a whim. He is aware that it has a demon inside of it and wishes to have no connection to anything which might impede his freedom, whether it be Surveyor, Primus, or this accursed sword. But when he tries to rid himself of it, he finds he cannot. The sword will not leave him. More than that, it taunts him, telling him in a demonic voice inside his head that in his despair, the blade has latched ever more deeply onto his heart and soul and that soon it will have him completely. Determined to find a way to destroy the blade, Milosh seeks out the Shaman from the ice tribe, who survived the events at the Maakengorge and is with the refugees in Waterdeep. The Shaman tells him there is a place called Rori Rama, where the first contract between the Demon was struck and that is the only place now where the blade can be destroyed.

It is around this time that Carrick returns to the party. Yes, Carrick! If you don’t recall him, he was the prior character that Ruze’s player had created and played for many many sessions, finally losing him in the Abyss during Esheballa’s insane game. But that was only the end of the original Carrick. Carrick’s backstory involved the inadvertent merging of his soul and personality with the energy of the final Surveyor, and so when Carrick died, his soul was borne back to Faerun to awaken in the last vessel the Surveyor had left there: a final body left safely in the ruins of the Fane, whose Yuan Ti temple had been reduced to rubble by the actions of Imoaza, Aldric, and the original Carrick during the final campaign of the Red Hand.

Carrick comes to Milosh and asks him to accompany him on a final task. You see, Carrick has worked out a good portion of the prophecy and its meaning. He believes that the players haven’t actually failed to stop the prophecy. Instead, he tells them that this is what HAD to happen in order to stop it: the three had to be one. Only when together could they be defeated. To recap, according to the prophecy, the PCs will need to bring together four objects to destroy the three and halt Chaos’ advance into the world. The pertinent lines are thus:

Four things must gather to alter fate’s course The Sword, The Shield, the The Stone, The Source Then upon the throne the three must be Before they can meet their destiny

Carrick says the sword is almost certainly Imoaza’s Black Razor. The Stone he believes is a piece of the Surveyor’s Jade stone that caused so much trouble early in the campaign, years ago. He went out on a mission of his own to retrieve it (one that wasn’t played in the course of our adventures, but was occurring while the players were at the Sea of Moving Ice). In speaking with Imoaza and learning what she found out from the library on the iceberg, Carrick now believes the Source is a piece of Primus himself. Karina, before her demise, had spoken to him at length of her past adventures and mentioned that Abenthy had begun calling himself an “Inevitability of Justice” after surviving Haggemoth’s tomb. Carrick, with the knowledge of the Surveyor living within his own memories, knows of the creations of Primus, and Abenthy’s wording stands out to him: “Inevitability.” Carrick believes an Inevitable is still in Haggemoth’s Tomb and that Abenthy encountered it. The Inevitables are celestial beings, created by the hands of Primus itself in the plane of Mechanus, where Law and Order is unquestionable. And there is one being, Carrick believes, who can channel the power of that Inevitable.

“Oh great,” Milosh said, seeing the visage of the surveyor looking down at him from the alley’s entrance. “This again.”

Years ago, a surveyor had taken Milosh from the depths of failure and despair and built him a new identity. But now Milosh had remembered, remembered everything, and again he had failed. He didn’t want a third chance. He wanted to go away. He wanted the world to go away.

Carrick knelt beside him. “We’re not very different, you and I,” he said. “Both of us have experienced death. Each has had our own failures. And we’ve been brought back to do more. We have been brought back to save the world.”

Milosh scoffed. “I have no world.”

“No. You have a million. Every world is yours to protect. That was your mission. It is your mission.”

“I’ve lost a lot already.” Milosh paused. “You remember Aldric, right? Did you know Imoaza killed him? I found it out from a book we got, from this old elf in a frozen library. You trust this group to save a world? We can’t even trust each other.”

Carrick stopped and considered what Milosh had said. “We all have to answer for our past actions,” he said. “Some answer in different ways. I believe Imoaza is going through her own changes. And I... I am no longer exactly who I was before. I am not Carrick. But I am not the Surveyor, either. But I am both. Do you remember the sacrifice I made as Carrick? Sometimes sacrifices have to be made. Sometimes we can avoid them. But if you walk away here, you walk away from the sacrifices we have all made.”

“Maybe I don’t care.”

“You’ll also walk away from yourself. You want freedom? Then you need to face what it is that you are afraid of. Or else you’ll never be free from it.”

While Milosh is struggling to come to terms with what he should or should not do, Imoaza begins to investigate the politics of Waterdeep, concerned by the boast from Nazragul that he had agents in Waterdeep’s council, planted there to change the teleportation destination from Vraath Keep to the Maakengorge, which is how he trapped Karina. Her investigations, which involve her ingratiating herself to certain people in disguise and exploring the homes of certain nobles, reveals to her that Yuan Ti have infiltrated Waterdeep and are turning its citizens and lords against the cause for which Imoaza and the companions fight.

These discoveries will have importance for upcoming sessions, but for now they linger as unresolved hints of danger, for it is time for the group to head to the tomb.

Return to the Tomb

“The island was warded against dragons,” Argent explained, as the bronze dragon circled down towards the island of Rori Rama. “We knew where it was, we could practically taste the magic and gold Haggemoth had accumulated, but we couldn’t get close to the island. Like an itch you couldn’t scratch. Even now, this is as close as I can come.”

For three weeks, the companions (plus Breath Giver, Milosh’s personal healer from the ice tribe) had flown via dragonback away from Waterdeep, across the Moon Sea, and towards Rori Rama, to find the Inevitable trapped inside the old tomb. They had stopped at several locations which would have been familar to Karina. They had stopped to buy provision in Ottoman’s Docks, which had changed little in a hundred years, except that it had doubled in size. They had roosted one night on a beach of a deserted island with a huge spire rising out of its middle (the site of the LaCroix mansion, though they didn’t know it). They had flown to Celaenos and spent a night as guests of the Sisters, the Keepers of the Library, who had taken over the monastery after the Knights had been murdered decades earlier. They spent a night at the island of the Oracle, and though they lacked the money to see the ageless Oracle, the monks who protected her let them at least stay on the beach for free.

Eventually they reach Rori Rama, but the closest Argent can get them is at the base of the inactive volcano which contains Haggemoth’s tomb. Breath Giver stays with Argent while the three companions use fly spells to reach the volcano’s crater and there find a way down a mysterious shaft delved into the mountain itself. The shaft takes them directly into Haggemoth’s inner sanctum, skipping the first level of the tomb entirely (I intend this to be a revisit of this infamous area, not a full rerun of it).

This high ceiling of this long chamber is held up with stout columns and the floor is tiled in marble. The rotting remains of a pair of couches can be seen towards the center of the room, along with some long-dead potted plants. Several doors lead off of this room, though some are damaged. The space is lit by arcane-looking lanterns hung from the columns, but the far end of the hall is lost in shadow where part of the ceiling has collapsed and the lamps have failed. Strange sounds echo in the distance – sounds of movement and the occasional animal like cry.

I am not going to detail all of the explorations the players make of the old tomb. There are many little rooms and surprises the players encounter, but only a few are of key importance to the plot, and I want to focus on those, the things that have changed for the worse since the last time they were here.

First, there is a new character that makes his appearance in this ruined tomb. His original name is unknown, if in fact he ever had one, but the group comes to know him as “The Painted Mummer.” He lives in paintings left behind by Haggemoth, and takes multiple disguises, different for each painting, from a feasting king to a hunchbacked dwarf. He interacts with the PCs as they explore the Sanctum, sometimes giving them dubious advice, at other times leading them through interactions with some of Haggemoth’s left over magics. For instance, they try to make a potion of invulnerability in his old study, guided by the Mummer in the guise of a twitchy scholar in a painting in the room. This ends in disaster as the potion explodes, due to them not identifying the proper heart needed for the potion (they use a Grell heart instead of a Hook Horror heart). They do get some hints that not all is well, such as when they identify some dead bodies hidden in a painting of a snowy mountain, and occasionally even get a glimpse of the Mummer’s real persona, a gaunt, tall figure dressed in skin tight black and wearing a theatrical mask, one half of which is sobbing and the other half is giving a menacing and angry snarl. Eventually, they learn to be wary of the Mummer and start burning his paintings whenever they find him in them. This only angers him the more and he begins to stalk them from room to room, not always able to do anything to them, not always even seen by them. But he watches, and he waits.

Cliff notes: The Mummer was an idea Robert and I came up with for the 5th Edition version of Haggemoth. He wanted to do more with the Inner Sanctum and was interested in maybe using the paintings to have some effect on the environment. I was thinking of GladOS from Portal, and liked the idea of an insane groundskeeper, something which was initially built to be helpful but has become broken and corrupted by time.

Secondly, while they explore, the PCs are occasionally accosted by otherwordly purple tentacles, that seem to sprout from the air itself, or the floor. The Ethereal, they discover when Milosh tries to enter it, has been completely dominated and overtaken with these tentacles, and they attack the PCs on two major occasions, sucking out not only their life, but their spell power, draining their spell slots and destorying their magical shields and other effects. The most memorable fight against them takes place in the old dining hall, where an unnatural darkness forces the PCs to fight blind against the tentacles, all the while looking for a key to a special door in Haggemoth’s Sanctum. The PCs get very creative here, with Milosh destroying parts of the ceiling to drop on the tentacles, Imoaza using the Weave Sight to be able to locate the Tentacles, and Carrick using fire and ingenuity to set up a kind of napalm effect that he uses to keep the Tentacles away from him. The scariest part is when the Mummer causes dozens of animated knives and dishes to animate around the room and swarm the players, only to have the Tentacles latch on to this living magic and erupt from the cutlery and dishes, surrounding the players with swarms of essence draining tentacles!

Another scary room involves an illusion created by the Mummer with the aid of some hallucinigenic spores. This grabs Milosh especially, and he runs into what he thinks is a vision of his old life on Eberron, where he is at a ballroom dance. He happily joins in the merriment, and takes a bite out of a thick pastry of some kind, bursting with whipping cream and flavor.

Only, what’s really happening is that he’s surrounded by Rust Monsters, absolutely attracted to his metallic form, his addled mind showing them as laughing and dancing humans. Imoaza and Carrick see through the illusion before he does, and watch as he takes a bite of what he thinks is a pastry... it is actually a larval Rust Monster, its guts and ichor spraying across his face as he bites into it.

Suffice it to say, this is not an encounter that the PCs end up liking, but it is a memorable one. By the time it is over and they flee the room, Milosh has had half his face (just restored!) eaten off. 

They eventually discover a scrap of painting in a room which also contains the broken summoning circle Haggemoth used to summon the Inevitable of Justice, centuries ago. The painting shows a gnome, who swears he is not the Mummer, but seems terrified of the Mummer. He tells them his name is Lhu-Ee and he is the last surviving painter dweller, aside from the Mummer, who murdered all of the others. He explains that the paintings were created by Haggemoth to hold his knowledge and to keep him company. They are like phylacteries, holding the souls of creatures Haggemoth pulled from beyond the grave to shape to his purposes. When he prepared to depart this plane, he “turned off” the paintings, intending to let the souls rest forever. But something went wrong. Others (Karina, Abenthy, Xaviee, and Bitterberry) came into the Sanctum and their presence awoke the Paintings again. But with no Master to direct them, the Mummer went mad. Originally designed to entertain Haggemoth and be a companion for him, in his absence he declared that the paintings had failed their master and needed punishing. Only Lhu-Ee escaped his wrath, by hiding in a torn scrap of painting. He offers to go with the party in his scrap, if they’ll keep him safe from the Mummer. 

Lhu-Ee knows more than just the history of Haggemoth. He is an expert on the Abyss and the Ethereal, filled with Haggemoth’s knowledge of those planes. He tells them that what’s happening to the Ethereal now is a sign of a being trying to weaken the boundaries between this plane and the Abyssal plane, with disastrous results.

“Why,” he says, pushing his oversized turban back up on his head, where it promptly falls down again. “It could be the end of the world!”

* * *

This is part one of a two part post. There’s a lot that needed to be set up this time, so I wanted to break the posts up to make it a little more manageable. And ya know, maybe also stretch this blog out just a little more. We are coming close to the end.

But not quite yet! Haggemoth’s final resting place still awaits the players, and more beyond that!

[zippdementia]

Part 32 Alignment May Vary: The Beginning of the End

This is the post that will take us to the very final moment of the campaign of Tomb of Haggemoth. A year ago, I found this campaign by reading a number of forums online, looking for something adventurous and seaworthy to fill some time while I prepped Red Hand of Doom. I was originally looking for a simple set of one shot adventures with time gaps between them, but once I read the final room description in Haggemoth, I was hooked, and thus began a nearly year long side quest which has taken my players, moment by moment, up through the levels. Because we are nearly at the end and I want to catch up with them, I’m going to gloss some of the final level of this dungeon. The big events come at the end, and that’s where my focus will be.

To start us off, we found the dirge Tyrion sang for Samuel and Biggs, the fallen comrades of Twyin and Xaviee:

Homeward Bound:

A Dirge to Fallen Soldiers ​Bright shines the sun over the morning crest, A scattering of rays glistening as sparks in the valley below. The soldier’s arms capture the light, imbuing them with the power of the stars. ​Humble mortals, handed the keys of greatness.

​The road home, the road home! Always out of sight around the corner. ​The singular soldier wanders a quiet path Which always leads home. ​Whether above the ground, or below.

​We call their names, Biggs! Samuel! Their presence the eager tear through the dark. ​With them, we feel keenly their passing. ​Without them, we��d feel nothing at all. ​The soldier’s life holding true to burden.

​For no soldier stands alone. ​Each is a brother, in a line of brothers For whom the plight of a one is a plight of all. ​A wolf pack! A pride of lions! An army of ants! ​One should fear the gathering of these men against them.

​We bid farewell this day to two brothers in arms. ​Without you, we must carry on. ​Our homes aboveground lie, Our battles not yet ended. ​But Samuel and Biggs have found their home, here. ​And take thy rest.

Long ago, Haggemoth the dwarf mastered the arts of his ancestors, perfecting and in fact improving on many of their designs for armor, weapons, musical instruments, and artifacts. Then, still thirsty to learn and create, he began studying magic. His brethren discouraged him in this pursuit but Haggemoth’s curiosity soon turned to infatuation as his quick mind picked up the intricacies of first one school of magic and then another. When he began studying the school of necromancy, his tribe had had enough. Banished from his homeland, Haggemoth wandered the world, continuing his studies. He never had trouble making money, for he still knew the secret arts of his people and could make powerful magical weapons, which he sold to the highest bidder, following wars around the world like a wolf chasing sheep. His beard had been shorn off as part of his banishment and he determined never to regrow it, wearing his bald face as a sign of pride. Eventually, as grew his power so too did his reputation. He did great things, and terrible things, in his pursuit of power. He befriended great wizards, too, and his closest ally became the elf Udo the Grey, who sought to control the weather of the world.

After many great adventures, Haggemoth began to grow old and in his old age his heart began to yearn for the one thing his power could not grant him: a return to his home and acceptance by his people and gods. Determined to make amends, Haggemoth began a long and difficult process of cleansing his soul. It would take a lot: a lifetime of sins against his gods had brought him much of his knowledge, and a simple attonement spell would not save him. And so Haggemoth took on his greatest challenge: the challenge of erasing sin.

Removing himself from the world was his first act in the process. He needed time to think and to plan and furthermore he wanted to isolate himself from having any further impact on the world. Rori Rama was the perfect location, a vile jungle island at the edge of civilization. Using powerful magics, Haggemoth raised a reef in front of the island to serve as his “wall,” eventually people would come to live here (these would become the ancestors of the natives which took in Rayden after his doomed journey came to an end) but no one ever came to live on the island except for Haggemoth.

The island was isolated, but more importantly it was geothermically active. The whole island was an old volcano and Haggemoth built directly over its source, harnessing its power to build his fortress, his tomb, his sanctum, and his sin-erasing contraption. The inner sanctum was his only home during these long years. He only had a single visitor, and that was Udo the Grey, who came once at Haggemoth’s behest, to take from him a silver key and use it to lock Haggemoth forever inside the sanctum. Udo the Grey would be the last humanoid to ever see Haggemoth alive.

Still, Haggemoth did not live in discomfort. His sanctum was equipped with a magical kitchen so that food would never run out. His rooms were spacious and the furniture had been enchanted to be his servants, brooms and dustpans cleaning up after him, chairs rearranging themselves to his liking, and tables setting themselves for his repasts. Above all other treasures, Haggemoth valued knowledge and his library was filled with histories and philosophies, tales of ancient heroism and future musings. He captured the power of the volcano to light his lamps, an early form of electricity, and to heat his baths. A veritable zoo was kept in his lower dungeons, the creatures there all in some way essential to his work: an otyugh dispensed of his waste, and a cockatrice provided rare alchemical and magical supplements. A grey ooze, carefully contained, put off a chemical that was particularly useful for making magical weapons and armor. One creature roamed the sanctum more freely: a clever phasm named Lhouee whom he mostly kept trapped to talk to and keep him company.

There were also darker things down there. Haggemoth had long ago achieved the highest level of power that could be gained through study, and so he had then turned to more infernal means of acquiring it. A Herzuo demon lay trapped in his sanctum, bound so that it could never claim the soul that was promised it in exchange for its power. There it sat, roaring all through the days and nights until Haggemoth moved it outside of his sanctum into a hidden hall and cast a spell of silence over it, then locked it away, forever.... or so he thought.

With the demon bound and locked away, Haggemoth continued his work. Some of it was yet done for pleasure, works of carving and mosaics and painting, but most of his efforts were put to use at his grandiose forge, creating the things that he hoped would set his soul free. And there was the treasure, too. A lifetime’s worth of it, the accumulation of Haggemoth’s wealth both ill-gotten and good, that Haggemoth intended to put to a final use. Worth well over a million gold pieces, it was, enough treasure to buy a kingdom (or break one), to establish a line of heirs going far far into the future, enough to outlast even the most voracious spender. Or possibly, just enough to save a soul.

Day after day Haggemoth worked, forging first a set of massive scales, then gears, then a huge chain which he put runes on to make it susceptible to lightning. He ripped his soul from his body, setting it into a phylactery, and this became the very focus of the object he was building. Last he made a forge hammer, imbued by days of ritual casting with the power to activate his machine. And then the day came when it was done and he prepared to free his soul, once and for all.

But on this day, misfortune struck. There are beings known as the Inevitables, constructs built by the gods to have divine insight and truly neutral perspective, to be able to properly judge the world. Three of them, there are, and they represent the realities that all men must face. The Inevitability of Fate, that all must face the consequences of their actions. The Inevitability of Justice, that upholds divine contracts and the general laws of nature that govern the world. And the Inevitability of death, which all men must face. When a person attains such power that they are able to break these inevitable truths, these constructs activate and seek to right the wrong done.

In this case, Haggemoth’s demon was his undoing. For in breaching this infernal contract, Haggemoth attracted the attention of The Inevitable of Justice, who descended upon his sanctum via magical teleportation and sought to forced Haggemoth to free the demon that Haggemoth had imprisoned. A great battle was waged in the sanctum, then, as the Inevitable chased Haggemoth through his lair, each of them casting powerful magics upon the other. The battle destroyed the main halls and released the monsters from the dungeons. Haggemoth moved defensively, working his way back towards his final creation. He summoned Earth elementals to cover his escape, but the Inevitable nimbly darted around them. Haggemoth used a golem to attack the Inevitable, but the Inevitable had the upper hand, even when weakened. Finally, Haggemoth used a powerful spell to turn the hard rock around the Inevitable to mud and then back again, trapping the celestial inside a prison of stone.

The Inevitable let loose one final spell as it was trappeed and the cavern they fought in shook with the force of its command. Stalactites freed themselves from the ceiling and fell to crush Haggemoth underneath. Pinned, with his left side crushed and trapped. Exhausted and already gravely injured, Haggemoth could not survive the blow. He made one attempt to command his golem to help him before expiring. The golem made it to him but with its master dead, it simply knelt by his side and waited, still executing his last clear command: Expell the Intruder.

Meanwhile, the sanctum slowly filled with the creatures Haggemoth had kept for his work. Trapped here, they fought over what territory was available to them. The Cockatrice settled in the bedroom, turning Haggemoth gorgeous bed into their nest. The ooze ate the creatures too stupid to avoid it and then settled into a hibernative state. Rust Monsters ate much of Haggemoth’s forge and stash of metals, growing large and bold in the process. They dug tunnels that lead all through the sanctum, though none find their way up to the surface. A strange intelligent mold grew rampantly in its keeper’s absence, consuming the old monster cages and killing anything that dared return there. The Otyugh fought a grand battle for the magical kitchens and eventually set itself by the enchanted pantry, screaming every moment for food to fill its insatiable hunger. Eventually it grew to such bulk that it could no longer move. Filling one corner of the massive kitchen, it lived in its own excrement and filth and eventually the magic of the place became corrupted, spewing forth only maggot infested or rotted food. Lhouee the Phasm was worst off: more intelligent and self aware than the others, it recognized its predicament for what it was—an eternity trapped in a dungeon. For a while it amused itself by transforming into furniture to mock and mimic the enchanted furniture that still sought to tend to Haggemoth’s lair. When it grew tired of stomping around as a comfy armchair, It tore through Haggemoth’s books, seeking some spell or power that could free it. But his greatest books had been given to his device, and Lhouee could not reach that, as it was still guarded by the earth elementals and the golem. So it despaired, and slowly grew strange and gloomy in its solitude.

The demon, meanwhile, still raged against his prison, his screams falling silent against the spell that held him still. His contract was not completed. The Inevitable had failed. Haggemoth was dead, but his soul did not pass on, trapped as it was in the phylactery he had set in his grand device.

And there his soul waits, still, for a group of adventurers to find it and pass final judgement.

Critical Success

This large vaulted chamber is ringed with braziers that flicker with the glow of unearthly fire. At the north end is an imposing set of massive Stone doors, reinforced with Iron and covered with runes. A complex locking mechanism holds them closed.

The adventurers use the silver key they got from DenDen (Rayden), which originally was given to Udo the Grey. It unlocks the great double doors and they enter Haggemoth’s sanctum, the end destination of the journey they began months ago. Each comes with their own story, a story that has developed over the course of our adventures together. 

Abenthy, Aasimir born and once a great innocent, has switched alleigance from Lawful Good to Lawful Evil, believing himself to be the ultimate arbiter of justice, in service to his father, the fallen Angel I’afret. His once pure white wings have broken and rotted, becoming skeltal husks... though, ironically, the rest of the party has yet to see this, due to a comic level of irony. They have all been knocked out each time Abenthy has triggered his new true form, and thus are mostly unaware of their friend’s changed nature. It is worth noting that Abenthy is not a common lawful evil villain. His transformation began with self doubt at the beginning of this adventure. He put up his sword many a time rather than strike down a foe, for fear of straying from the narrow path he walked. But much death has occured on this adventure. He has lost allies, seen innocents harmed, and seen how villains will go unpunished. In this, he found the strength to strike without question—little thinking that perhaps the questining was his true strength and not his weakness.

Karina began this quest seeking answers. Instead, she has found only pain and more questions. Rayden’s mind is lost to her, forcing her to think on what her destiny might be, if not revenge. She has become hardened over the course of the adventure. Indeed, she is the only survivor from its start, back on the prison ship. Her original team was murdered by the Demon Pirate on the Moonsea and she carries the burden of survivor’s guilt. Whereas Abenthy has questioned less and less, more and more she finds her thoughts plagued with uncertainty. Was this worth it? Should she turn around? Will others be hurt because of her actions? Beginning as a Chaotic Neutral character, she has begun the slow but sure road towards Good. She is also becoming a legend: the legend of the Seeker of Callax, whose right eye shines brightly with the jewel given to her by the giant of Friezorazov. Each scar on her body tells a story that she knows the telling of, but not the ending of.

Tyrion’s change has been drastic. Once a well spoken dandy, he has morphed into a foul mouthed cantankerous lech, hungry for power, abandoned by his college, convinced by what he has survived with this party that he is destined for greatness beyond what others can offer him. The demon that he has taken inside of him fuels this desire and feeds in him an inner rage and disappointment that questing has not been as romantic or as heroic as the songs say it is. Determined to shape the world the way he shapes music, Tyrion has lost his originally Chaotic Good alignment and shifted into Chaotic Neutral, not caring for the world around him or the cosmic battle for good and evil as much as for how to best gain power. Ironically, this is the very path Haggemoth walked, perhaps why the demon that Tyrion inherited from Haggemoth has found him such an appropriate vessel (and letting him multi-class as a bardic warlock). The demon will continue to push for him to fall into evil, though Haggemoth’s Sanctum may contain the very thing Tyrion needs to cleanse his soul and remind him of the purity of music that first set him on his quest.

Xaviee, too, walks with them, a man who went from soldeir to shipwrecked to found. Xaviee has been through a hellish trial: everything he thought he had lost forever was given to him again, then snatched away, this time with a note of finality. Tywin is dead. Samuel and Biggs are dead. All that remains to him now is to survive, to serve, and to one day cross again the Dragonfang mountains to return to the land of his birth and reclaim in the name of those who are slain the old fortress of Vraath Keep, where his life first took a tragic turn.��

As these companions make their way through the sanctum they encounter many of the creatures Haggemoth kept here. Lhouee escapes in the guise of a armchair, goofily making his way past the bemused players who, not understanding his true nature, let him go without much fuss. He escapes to the surface world, perhaps to be seen again in another story. The cockatrice they leave well alone, but the Otyugh they engage in combat, Tyrion actually leaping inside of it and cutting it open from the inside, pushed on by the power (and insanity) of the cursed Battleaxe of the Brave. They restore the ktichen to somewhat working order, using Purify Food and Drink to restore the magic to the pantry, and take the magical lid to the pantry with them for possible use in the outside world. There is even some emotional growth for the party, as during a long rest in Haggemoth’s library in which they are interupted and nearly killed by the Grey Ooze, Karina grows closer to Abenthy, huddling next to him for warmth and comfort as Tyrion snores away and Xaviee stoically watches the entrance to the library.

But there are dangers, here, too, and the longer they spend in the sanctum, the weaker the party grows. They quickly discover that the weapons and armor they took from upstairs is fake and are thus left a little more defenseless and a little less powerful. The cursed weapons Karina and Tyrion weild are strong but Karina has a tendency to roll either critical failures or successes and each one now leaves her blinded by bloody tears. Tyrion, too, though made very strong by the Battleaxe, now rushes into combat headfirst and often goes down quickly. His health is detiorating rapidly as well due to a mysterious unidentified illness, his hit points dropping permenantly after long rests and leaving him with a bloody cough that worries them all. The rust monsters decimate their armor even further before being pushed away in an action-heavy battle which includes this wonderful scene:

“Tyrion!” Abenthy shouted. “There are more coming from your left!”

Tyrion spun at Abenthy’s words, spinning the battleaxe with his momentum, grunting as the blade cut through the legs of the Rust Monster leaping at him. The flea-like monster was mid leap as its legs were cut from under it and its final jump carried it over Tyrion’s head and into one of its fellows attacking him from the other side. They were everywhere, and he couldn’t now remember why it had felt like a good idea to rush into their midst alone. Yet he was oddly glad to be here, with the smell of blood and battle around him. Now if only they would stop chewing on his damn armor.

Behind him, Abenthy raised a fist skyward and the black gauntlet around the Assimir’s wrist began to glow red. With a roar, Abenthy spun and punched the Rust Monster closing in from behind him square in the face. The beast went flying backwards.

Karina, meanwhile, was behind the rest of them, still making her way onto the battlefield. She was just now squeezing through a gap between the two rooms, pushing past a narrow space left by a hole in the wall.

“Are you all still alive in there?” she called out. Her answer was a squeal of pain as the Rust Monster that Abenthy had punched flew into the wall in front of her, then comically slid to the ground on its back, legs pumping furiously in the air.

“Nevermind,” she shouted again, drawing her rapier and burying it deep in the monster’s exposed belly.

The biggest disaster comes in the battle with Haggemoth’s modified Earth Elementals. Two guard the chamber leading to where Haggemoth met his end and they nearly TPK the party, rolling exceptionally well and smashing through the players’ weakened defenses. With their ability to move through the stone walls and pillars of the chamber they quickly gain a tactical advantage and surround the party. In the end, it becomes a game of Karina healing Tyrion, getting knocked unconscious, and then Tyrion healing her before being knocked unconscious, with this keeping one of the elementals occupied long enough for Abenthy to reveal his true form and take out the other. Abenthy himself goes down before Tyrion and Karina can come aid him (again missing his true form because of him falling unconscious). It’s a constant game of attrition and one they only barely win. It chews up their resources and leaves all of us feeling uneasy about the Golem that still awaits them. They find out about the Golem by sending Moonglum alone into the next room, where he promptly fails a dodge roll and is crushed to death in the Golem’s massive fists.

Inevitability

I go into the Golem fight a little concerned. The Golem is a CR 10 and nothing to scoff at. It rolls a +10 to attack and hits for an average of about 25 damage a strike. It’s immune to many attacks, resistant to magic, and has an incredibly powerful ability to slow the party, drastically reducing their effectiveness. In addition, Tyrion is bound by his curse to charge it, Karina’s arrows will have little effect, and everyone is badly armored and fairly hurt (though they take a long rest after the elemental fight). I never know what will happen in Dungeons and Dragons but I know that there is a possibility for a TPK here and it would be a shame so close to the end. I have a plan in mind in case the party dies in the Sanctum to keep us in the story for a while, and I think tonite will be the night to use it.

Except I end up not needing to. Not only do I roll abysmally, but Karina comes into this fight on fire (not literally). She uses Chill Touch, which bypasses magical resistance, and ends up with a nat 20 on her first roll. As her magical skeletal hands tear at the Golem’s eyes for somewhere close to 40 damage, her curse kicks in and she started to cry tears of blood, blinding her for a couple rounds... ironcially, just as Abenthy lets loose with his skeletal wings. Yup, as fate would have it, Karina yet again missed his transformation. Tyrion sees it: but Tyrion is deep in battle rage at this point and barely takes notice. He and Abenthy move in close. The Golem opportunity attacks as they come and... totally misses, despite only needing to roll an 11 to hit either of them. It tries its Slow spell next and both of them roll 18s for their saves. Karina is stumbling around blindly but decides to take another pot shot despite her disadvantage and... rolls a nat 20. Using inspiration dice to get rid of the disadvantage the attack counts as another hit and, yup, she’s blinded some more. Abenthy and Tyrion start beating on the Golem and for a while they trade blows. But the Golem is much stronger and when Abenthy and Tyrion miss four attacks in a row, I mentally declare the battle over. The Golem fells Tyrion with a single blow and turns to finish off Abenthy.

Only Karina’s blindness has worn off by now and she rushes in behind to take advantage of sneak attack and flanking and pulls her cursed scimitar free to do battle. And Nat 20s again. With sneak attack.

The battle doesn’t last much longer than this. The Golem tries to once again rally and use its slow ability to buy it some reprieve, but the lowest save roll comes back 17 and so again this plan is thwarted. It retreats, to try and put some distance between it and the fight and Karina uses Chill Touch on it as it goes...

... and once again Nat 20s. Two skeletal hands emerge from thin air, wrap themselves around the Golem’s head, and crush it with one decisive movement, into a fine dust.

The extreme variable is one of the selling points of the D20 system for me. It doesn’t work as well for gritty realistic games, like Shadowrun or Fallout, but for a fantasy setting it gives those nice heroic moments or massive party killing disasters that the things of legends are made of. I know my players will remember this fight and Karina’s crazy rolls during it.

Speaking of legends, a while ago I gave my players a crystal orb that can show them the past and all throughout the dungeon they have been using it to keep track of the decades old battle between Haggemoth and The Inevitable. They have seen the Inevitable, a tall mechanical figure weilding a large blade and wearing a dramatic cloak, but they have not been able to recognize it for what it is. Only Abenthy has come close and then only because he grew up in a monastery, where stories of such things are common. Even so, he doesn’t realize what is trapped in the huge boulder in this room, the one that keeps shaking and moving as if it has a will of its own.

Exploration of the rest of the area reveals that Haggemoth was working on something big. The party finds giant molds for making humongous gears. They find large chains inscribed with reactive runes, causing them to explode and disintegrate upon contact with lightning. In Haggemoth’s skeletal hands they find a magical forge hammer, imbued with the power of lightning.

While Karina and Tyrion are focused on the mystery of what Haggemoth was building, Abenthy turns his attentions back to the boulder. Using his extra-ordinary senses, he perceives that a Celestial is trapped inside the rock and suddenly he puts two and two together. Not telling the rest of the group what is going on, he approaches the rock and uses his helmet of telepathy to reach inside and find the mind of the Inevtiable.

The voice that booms inside his head is beautiful and terrible at the same time. It prods at his memories, touches his fears, digs deep into his concsciousness to pull free thoughts Abenthy didn’t know were his own. And then it addresses him...

“I was sent to bring Haggemoth to justice for his crimes,” the Inevitable tells him, his voice booming inside his mind. “Release me, so that I may finish my task.”

“What has Haggemoth done that has decided his judgement?” Abenthy sent back. “I also am a follower of justice. Perhaps I would understand.”

The feeling that struck him gave Abenthy the impression of mockery, that he was being derrisively laughed at. “You? You do not understand, cannot understand. You were not built for such understanding. You think you can deliver justice? You are wrong.”

“I deliver justice,” Abenthy protested. “I have many times, in the name of my father, I’afret.”

The voice inside his head hissed like an angry cat. “You follow false gods and mete out flawed judgement. You cannot see the way I do. You think you are above the pettiness of mortals?” Images flashed suddenly inside Abenthy’s mind. He saw himself murdering pirates, sending their souls to his father. He saw himself taking patches of skin off the pirates and wearing them as badges of honor and of fear. He saw himself keeping Tywin’s blood soaked rags. He saw himself sending Targaryen to his father. He saw Verrick die as he fell from the bridge, and heard Karina’s scream of dismay again, and smiled because now he could claim her for his own.

The images slowed suddenly, and the voice returned, full of confidence and judgement. “I can see all that you have done. Even you doubt yourself. So how can you judge another? Release me, so that I may do justice.”

“No,” Abenthy responsed, his mind filled with cold clarity and a deep sense of purpose. “You are the old way. I am the new. You are obsolete. I am the new arbiter of justice. I will leave you here, old creature, and I will take your role as the new Inevitable. The world does not need your justice anymore.”

And then he cut the connection and turned, leaving without a backward glance or a word of explanation to the others, who had only seen him with a hand on the boulder, the boulder which now shook violently as if it would tear itself apart. But it did not, and Abenthy did not stop, and the world continued to turn.

On a Grand Scale

Past the golem’s cavern there is a cave lit by a red glow. The players step into it and finally I get to read the words I’ve been waiting a year to read, that first intrigued me about this adventure:

A 10’ wide stone bridge arcs into this enormous subterranean space. A mighty river of lava roils violently through the cavern 60’ below, and the roof can only dimly be seen 60’ above. Situated in the middle of this river is a significant hunk of dark, glassy stone, and upon the stone is what appears a colossal set of balance scales. The scales are a complex mass of huge gears and pulleys, but instead of rope they are threaded with sturdy metal chain, and the entire device is covered in faintly glowing runes and magical symbols. From either side of the massive apparatus, the chains support circular platforms of iron-braced marble, each 20 feet in diameter. The entire artifact is ornamented with appointments of silver, gold, and adamant, and sitting on the balances are huge piles of treasure: weapons, magical artifcts, great tomes and books, jewlery, chests of coins and gems. Too much to count, the worth must well exceed a million gold pieces.

The stone bridge extends over the lava towards the center of the scales, where a mighty anvil appears to have been built into the device. A crystal set into the top of it glows brightly, and branching out from the anvil’s sconce are bridges allowing access to the two hanging marble platforms.

This is, of course, what Haggemoth was building—a grand set of scales to balance his soul (currently resting in the phylactery in the anvil) and erase his signs. The entire device is inscribed with powerful magic, making it in essence a massive attonement spell. The treasure is the key to the spell: each side balances the other, one with magic and knowledge the other with forge items and cunning of the hands (though it also includes magical weapons). The scales need to be in balance to work—if at any point one side exceeds the other by 40lbs, the scales begin to tip. Tipped too far, the scales will rip themselves apart. 

To activate the magic of the scales, the anvil must be struck with lightning magic (like the forge hammer Abenthy claimed from Haggemoth’s corspe). If in balance when this happens... well, that’s for my players to find out.

The treasure here is truly tremendous. All of the weapons are ungodly strong, the spell books go up to level nine with rare and powerful magics, and probably the pinacle gamebreaking item is the Staff of Power tucked into the magic scale—a +2 to everything (including AC) weapon that can expend charges to do massive spell damage—which in Tyrion’s warlockian hands would wreak havoc on enemies. It’s amost too much to actually put into the game, but hey they’ve earned it. Now they just have to go get it.

Of course, there is more than just treasure here. Haggemoth’s soul hangs in the balance, too, and that in itself is a prize (albeit more of a roleplaying one) to certain members of the party...

The group knows none of this, of course. They see the scales and the treasure and are smart enough to piece together the purpose of the device, but only experimentation will tell them how it works. Karina begins using mage hand to lift items off of the scales. She gets one of the powerful spell books, a book of histories, and a jeweled harp for Tyrion (who begins to cry at the sweet heartwrenching sound it makes) before the scales tip out of balance... and also we remember that mage hand cannot lift more than a few pounds and Karina suddenly cannot cast the spell anymore today. Oops.

By now, Tyrion is walking towards the balances, a hungry look in his eyes. He halts himself just before reaching the one holding the magical items and shakes his head as if to clear it. Something inside him was yelling for him to rip, to tear, to destroy. He pulls back, suddenly disconcerted. But the hunger inside him does not go away: it shifts. He begins to think of the phylactery. If these items are the work of the soul entrapped there, then how powerful might the soul itself be?

Karina was watching him, her sweat cold despite the heat of the chamber. “Do not move any further!” she warned, gesturing towards the balances. “They have fallen out of balance. I don’t know how much more they can take. We have to balance the other side.” She looked at the balance and the thin bridge that led to it, and the 60′ fall into the lava below. Crossing would take concentration and willpower. But without her mage hand, what choice did she have?

So focused was she on the task of moving forward that she did not see Abenthy behind, standing by the anvil and staring down at the crystal phylactery, its blue light casting eerie shapes and shadows over his face. She did hear him, though, as he placed a hand on the crystal and spoke a name: I’afret. The name of his father.

A chill went through her and she turned, the plea on her lips, but Abenthy had already raised the forgehammer and, with the scales yet unbalanced, he brought it down on the anvil. 

What happens next we will discover next post.

[zippdementia]

Part 29 Alignment May Vary: Things Left Undone

Welcome to post 29 of our now year-long adventure, that has taken us from such varied locations as a prison ship, the barren landscape of Thudd, and a frozen wasteland, and finally now to the titular Tomb of Haggemoth! Last time, our players broke ground in the tomb and fought an army of undead. Now they seek to venture deeper, which means passing through a deadly spinning blade trap, all the while dimly aware that the final words of their fallen comrade, Samuel, warned of something hunting them...

There are wounds only a Bard can heal. Xaviee, their NPC companion, has just seen the death of Samuel and Biggs, marking the end of their long comraderie. With Tywin dead, he is now the sole remaining survivor of Vrath keep and the last person alive who can carry on commander Tywin’s last wishes to reclaim the keep. He now mourns, and seeing his mourning, Tyrion composes a dirge for Samuel and Biggs...

... no really. The player actually composes a dirge. It’s brilliant, but unfortunately we have lost the words to it, or I’d share them.

Regardless, it goes perfectly with our play session. I put on a random piano song in the background and every beat seems to match the words Tyrion has written, finally even concluding at the exact same time in an unrehearsed moment of coalition. Xaviee feels new resolve pour into him and gains a one time use ability to lay some decent damage on an enemy. Gone after one use.

With the party reinvigorated, they move on. Ahead looms a dark hallway, the soft sound of metal scraping ever so gently on stone drifting from it towards the players. They know about the trap, which has the dual effect of damaging them AND blocking their progress, and decide there must be a way to turn it off hidden in one of these rooms.

Now, they are correct, but if there is one thing my party does not excell at, it is wisdom and thus perception. Even our spy, Karina, leans on Intelligence instead of Wisdom, and all of them have rollen notoriously low when it comes to finding traps, secret doors, and hidden treasures. They have, in fact, missed a couple powerful magic weapons throughout the adventure because of it, but on the plus side it often leads to comedic moments and has presented a challenge for them in out-of-combat situations.

In fact, there are three major traps hidden throughout the tombs, all of them controlled by generators hidden behind secret doors. Each can be passed without turning off the traps at the source, but they are all deadly.

The players spend about a half hour (in game time) searching the rooms and finding nothing before they finally give up and decide to try and pass through the spinning blade trap.

Three Strikes and You are Out

Tyrion goes first. The bald halfling psyches himself up, gauges the movement of the blades, and sprints forward. And rolls a critical fail. He leaps when he should duck, and faceplants directly into a blade, the wet sound of his flesh being sliced from his face accompanied by a brief choking scream as his head is ripped from his neck.

Or that is what would happen, if halflings didn’t have the ability to reroll 1s. Instead, Tyrion rerolls and as luck would have it the blade trap momentarily jams, allowing him to leap safely past the danger zone and roll to a dramatic halt on the other side of the trap.

“Tyrion!” Karina yells. “Did you make it?”

“I’m okay, stop yer bellyaching,” Tyrion shouts back. “But it’s strange over here... I hear something...”

Several moments pass, but no further sound comes. Finally, Karina has no more patience. “I’m going over there,” she tells Abenthy and Xaviee. “Use caution,”Xaviee says. “I did not see the thing that Samuel warned us of, but I heard it clawing its way up on the roof. It could reappear at any moment. Be vigilant.”

“And you,” Karina says.

“No need for vigilance here,” Abenthy answers in a soft voice. “Justice is on our side. We need fear no dark creature.”

Karina then took a deep breath and made the sprint forward. Time seems to slow and had one been able to witness it her movements would have seemed a dance. She took no more movement then was necessary and when she darted around one of the spininng blades it was like a planned move of a ballet more than a sudden reaction. She did not dodge the trap, she danced with it. And then she was through.

No call of safety comes back to Abenthy or Xaviee and after a time Abenthy begins to fidget with the straps of his shield.

“Doing us no good to sit over here,” Xaviee ventures.

“No,” Abenthy says and with a sudden movement he ran forward, his shield up. The first blade cracks against its twice forged surface and he takes the sound as a sign that the time is right. He dives forward, sliding across the floor in an attempt to get underneath the blades. And rolls a critical failure.

The timing is not right. Out of the darkness there is a flash of silver. It is the last thing Abenthy will ever see as the blade slices across both his eyes. The edge of the blade is honed to a razor and Abenthy is blind before he even feels the pain. But then it is there, a red flash across his face, and he is rolling to one side, a guantleted hand pressed to his eyes, hearing a soft squelching as the armor crushes the remains of his eyeballs against his cheeks, where they have fallen. And then a sharper pain across his back as three blades pierce the Blackguard armor he stole from Moriarty and rip apart his spine.

Or this is what would have happened, had not the group had an inspiration point from an earlier session, allowing them to reroll the failure.

As it is, Abenthy sees the blade coming at him at the last moment, and swings a guantleted fist forward, catching it and for the barest of moments stopping its progress. He is up then, and jumping over the blade, darting under another, and finally charging the last ten feet towards an opening to another room, wherein he can see the shine of Tyrion’s magical light and Karina crouched over something on the far wall. Then he is there and his companions are pulling him inside, checking him for wounds, congratulating him on making it through, and asking after Xaviee.

“Me?” A voice answers, as Xaviee calmly strides forward. “Oh I just walked through. No problem.”

Such is the way with NPCs.

Set in Stone

(No I didn’t use Dark Souls creatures in the dungeon. But that’s stupid cool someone is converting that. Could not find credit for this, but it wasn’t created by me. If it was, it would be far deadlier, based on how many times those things killed me in Dark Souls.)

This part of the tomb I think is maybe the most difficult, at least psychologically. The players feel trapped because of the spinning blades behind them, and the way forward is not clear. And they know there is something hunting them.

They find themselves in a room which is described as simple stone in the original module, with three gargoyle statues at the far end holding scrolls. These are supposed to come to life and attack as soon as the players try to exit through either of the two doorways leading south or north, deeper into the tomb. I find this a little bland, so I mix it up a bit...

You find yourselves in a empty tower of a room, much higher than the hallway you came from, its craggy walls jutting up around you to a height of at least sixty feet, the roof not visible from where you are. Statues line the room, statues of demonic creatures glaring down at you or regarding you with sneers on their puggish faces. They line the walls, filling the empty spaces on the crags above you, perched like birds of prey. Across from you, on the ground floor, are three statues that seem to be of more draconic origin. They grasp stone scrolls in stone claws and there are runes carved in the stone.

Now that’s a room that will draw a player’s attention. And it does. Of course the gargoyles are foreshadowing an attack, but with my revamped room the question becomes “how many?” and “from where will they come?” In addition, while Tyrion is waiting for everyone to pass the spinning blade trap, I keep describing how he hears shuffling above him and he keeps thinking he sees something move in the shadows high up near the cave roof. This isn’t a gargoyle. It is something else...

The stone tablets are warnings, basically saying TURN BACK OR DIE, but a little more elegantly. One is written in Ancient Dwarven, one in Ancient Elvish, one in Draconic. Once everyone is there, they quickly work this out with the help of Karina’s knowledge of Dwarven runes and her spell Comprehend Languages. They debate for a time what to do next. Climbing up the room is raised, and I have added in a secret tunnel up there to bypass a good chunk of the dungeon, but they also rightfully recognize how dangerous the climb will be and the near certainty that they will be attacked during the climb and possible knocked off their precarious perches. Instead, they pick a direction and start to head North. And this is when the gargoyles attack.

I’ve never had the chance to use Gargoyles in combat before. They make for an interesting monster. Tough as nails, they can take quite a bit of damage and their own hit is nothing to scoff at, though they don’t have the best attack bonus to really challenge my party. Their most interesting feature is their ability to fly and to appear identical to stone statues, something my redesigned arena lets them take incredible advantage of. With this room’s high ceiling and being littered with statues like them, the gargoyles employ a strategy of dropping down to surprise players, then darting away to hide back amongst the statues. With successful hide rolls, they can drop down again next round with surprise advantage or, if they fail that, flank the players and get hits off that way. One of them focuses on trying to grapple Karina and lift her into the air to drop her for extra bludgeoning damage.

This arena and this strategy make the fight much more dangerous and appropriate for the current player character level, without adding any extra buffs to the gargoyles themselves. It also forces my players to think about the situation and not just blindly fight. They make a good decision and retreat down the north, forcing the gargoyles to either follow them into the hall where they lose their advantages, or to retreat to the rafters to await their return. Between Tyrion and Abenthy, they taunt the gargoyles enough to draw them forward and finally dispatch of them in the northern hallway, which will save them a bigger, nastier fight later on.

The north hallway is also where they want to go, but the design of the dungeon is clever and makes players think this is the wrong way by placing a very obvious trap in their path. So far, the players have encountered four traps: the moldly room near the front of the tomb, the skeleton room, the blades, and the gargoyles. So when they come to a damp room with a pile of bones in the middle and a strange door with a simple door handle in its exact middle, it screams BEWARE! The players figure out through investigation skill checks that probably this trap has something to do with filling the room with water, and by doing some clever manipulation with a rope tied to the strange door handle, they more or less confirm this:

“Alright,” Karina directed Tyrion. “Pull.”

The halfling gave a tug on the rope and almost immediately they heard a grinding sound and the doorway only inches in front of them suddenly was closed off by a thick metal plate that dropped down swiftly, leaving frayed edges of hemp hanging limply in Tyrion’s hand. Karina pressed her ear against the metal, listening to what was happening inside the room. She heard swooshing sounds, the clear sound of gushing water, and then nothing for several moments until with a loud clank and a final swoosh, the metal door opened to reveal the same room as before... but the walls were now glistening with moisture and a small pool of water was in the center of the room, where the bones of fallen explorers rested.

Another Way

To the south of the gargoyle room, the corridor wraps around a corner and extends into a long dark hallway. This is the path the players choose next, hoping to find another path deeper into the tomb.

Tyrion went first, with Abenthy close behind and Karina lagging near the back, turning around every so often and beginning to raise her bow, in tandem with the hair on her neck beginning to rise. Yet each time, nothing appeared, no shot was fired, and she settled back into a persistant unease.

“Wait.” Abenthy’s voice was stern, tinged with command. He pushed Tyrion back and knelt briefly, running a guantletted hand over the dusty floor, clearing a thin path of grime.

“Trap here,” he said, rising and pulling free a javelin. “Probably shoots poison darts or drops the floor out underneath whomever steps there,” he tapped the stone with the butt of the javelin to indicate. “Stand back.”

Tyrion backed up, nervously unslinging his lute, touching the magically enhanced strings, strings that were said to have the power to never snap. “Shall I play us a song for some fuckin’ good luck?” He’d taken to swearing with every sentence these days. Abenthy sometimes wondered if it was one of many small signs that his mind had snapped, much like the strings on a less magical lute.

“No need for luck,” Abenthy said, and pressed down on the stone.

The trap activated, but it was not as expected. The floor did not fall, instead it lifted, tilting suddenly downward as it rotated on an axis a littl ways behind them, tilting them towards a dark abyss.

Tyrion yelled an indistinct soud with all the fervor of a curse and leapt forwards, vaulting with all his strength towards the end of the hallway and making it by a bare margin. Abenthy was close behind, running and leaping at the last moment, crashing into the edge of the abyss and scrabbling for hand holds on the smooth stone floor. Behind him, he heard a cry of dismay. Karina and Xaviee had been behinbd them both and now they rushed to react. Xaviee was close enough to the end of the trap that he leapt backward, jumping off the lifting edge of the floor and landing unsteadily at the start of the hallway. But Karina was trapped in a bad place, moving back and forwards as she tried to decide which had the better chance of success. Too late she made her decision to run forward and instead of making the leap as Abenthy had, she tumbled and fell into the darkness.

“NO!” Abenthy yelled, and released his hold, dropping in after her.

“Oh crap,” Tyrion muttered. Thinking fast, he uncoiled his rope and flung it at the  quickly closing gap. Moments later, the floor finished its rotation, coming down over the hole like a tight plug. Again, Tyrion was left holding frayed hemp.

Karina’s fall is bad. She takes falling damage and spike damage (because of course the pit is lined with spikes). It is close to an instant kill. The spike that would have pierced her brain is stopped only by the hard stone of the eye of Callas that the Giant King of the Frozen Lands gifted her. But the spikes still find purchase in her left lung, her liver, her stomache, and the flesh of her thighs and chest. Impaled, she lets out a hollow moan before passing into unconciousness... and then screams like a banshee as Abenthy rips her free of the spikes and brings her back around.

This is a massive blow, massive enough that I decide it warrants a little mental trauma. We roll on some tables and decide that for the next hour or so, Karina’s mind is playing tricks on her. Paranoid, she may mishear what her companions say. We hook her player up to a different speaker (we play long distance, using Roll20, ever since I moved to the desert) and occasionally I feed her some lies about what the other players are saying. Some are subtle, but some are also her hearing her companions whispering about leaving her behind or even needing to kill her. The tension in the party builds as Karina reflects on the ease with which she believes the misinformation and realizes that she no longer fully trusts her companions. And why should she? She has witnessed massive shifts in their characters ever since Celaenos: Abenthy has become cold and withdrawn, still protecting the party, but seeming now to fight for a different form of justice. And Tyrion has morphed from a verbose but well spoken dandy into a foul-mouthed creature hungry for battle, relying less on flattery and cunning in battle now and more on insults laced with psychic damage and cutting things into ribbons with his blade.

The final insult of this hallway is that it leads nowhere except to the trapped door. There is nothing beyond, no hidden doors, no secret switches, no precious potions. Just (literal) dead ends. The group must go back. They must proceed through the water room.

Left Undone

So around the time of this session I’d been playing a lot of Alien: Isolation and I started to think a lot about the monster in that game, the eponymous and infamous Alien from the film franchise. I wanted to recreate the fear that the creature inspires in my game. Creating fear in a pen and paper game is a challenge. It starts with good description and setting, but it goes beyond that ultimately: you have to the players feel like the monster is alive in their gameworld, that it is thinking beyond the GM’s control, and is acting of its own volition.

It can be tempting to build a beast of a monster and then hit the players over the head with it until they are dead. Wham wham wham. Wasn’t that fun? Well, no, not really. And it isn’t frightening, either, just frustrating. Emasculating the players isn’t fun for a good GM. Instead, you have to try to build an out for them—a way for them to escape. Because once they are running, they can be chased. And it is the chase where the fear takes hold.

Think of a cat and a mouse. A cat does not immediately crush a mouse with its superior power. It lets it run, before catching it again. It makes a game of it. And sometimes, because of this, the mouse escapes. This is the game that you have to play with your group to get them to feel like they are in a world far beyond their control.

The players proceed back down the hall towards the water trap room and as they pass under the gargoyle statues, they hear a rustling above them. They prepare for battle against more gargoyles and are completely unprepared for the creature that pushes its way out of a crack high up on the wall and skitters down to meet them. It is a gigantic beast, an amalgram of all the twitch skeletons that occupied the bone room, pulled together now in a mockery of unlife—a centipedian monstrosity topped with the torso and head of a skeleton with four mandibles that click together wildly as it waves its many arms around, each arm ending in a sharp spike instead of hands. It immediately attacks, leaping for Karina and easily incapacitating her with two strokes, then using its third attack to snatch her and begin to climb back up the wall.

Holy shit. The players first reaction is one of desperation. This thing just destroyed one of the group with very little effort and now is making off with her. Desperate times call for desperate measures: they send in Xaviee with his new ability gained from the dirge and with a mighty strike he knocks the creature from the wall and frees Karina (there’s that out I was looking for). Still, the players feel desperate. With a single turn, they have seen this thing take a full health player down to unconscious. The way they look at it, they have three turns to survive and there is no way this thing has less than a hundred hit points (they are right, it has 129). So they prepare (Abenthy even says it out loud) for their deaths.

Except for the bard. Tyrion thinks fast and casts a minor illusion, forming a false wall between them and the skeleton. It makes an intelligence check... and fails! And there is the second “out” that we’ve encountered. This hideous beast hisses, it clicks its mandibles, but as far as it knows, an impassable wall has suddenly blocked it from its prey. It could rush the wall immediately, according to the rules, but then that would feel like the GM playing this creature, instead of letting it live on its own. No, instead it roars a challenge and when the wall does not respond, it skitters back and forth in a warning display. Only then, two turns after the illusion was cast, does it rush to break the wall down, sliding through it with surprise and crashing into the hallway that leads to the water room. The players are already retreating, Tyrion darting into the room just as the beast slams into the doorway, shoving its head and torso through, slashing with its bony arms at the players. But it cannot fit through, and it cannot reach them. And so we come to yet another “way out” for the players.

This is a set up I am giving them to do some massive damage to the skeleton. If one of them activates the trap here, the door will slam shut on the beast, cutting it in half and leaving them to fight the disembodied torso here, a much easier fight than taking on the whole creature. But the players either don’t think of this or don’t want to do it: instead they lob spells and arrows at the beast until finally it decides it has had enough and it pulls back, rushing back towards its hole high up in the gargoyle room.

I don’t think it has happened before in the campaign that the players have had a monster retreat from their assault and yet leave them still terrified of its return. Its the cat and mouse game again: they defeated the monster not by their own strength, but by running into a hole in the wall where it could not follow. They know they are outmatched and now they are being stalked.

Still, there is nothing for it but to move on. And a battle like that deserves a little bit of victory. The water trap room they get through with ease, activating it and having Karina ready to disarm the strange door handle which keeps the trap going. She does so easily and the players move on into the second part of the tomb.

Next time, the players are In for the Long Hall (sic) as they encounter more traps and face once more their new stalking nemesis.

[zippdementia]

Part 28 Alignment May Vary: The Rocks Speak

Welcome to post 28 of our long running adventure! We started back on the Moonsea coast with three prison ship survivors who washed up into adventure. Since then, there have been many twists and turns and only one of the original party is still alive, Karina the Tiefling Spy. Her path has taken her with two others towards the legendary Tomb of Haggemoth, where she hopes to find riches and (more importantly) answers to questions that have plagued her since she was betrayed in the war. Meanwhile, her companions have their own quests: Tyrion the Halfling Bard needs to record a tale to impress his college directors and secure his place in the famed halls of song, and Abenthy seeks the ultimate justice in the name of his father, a Fallen Angel. This post marks the beginning of the last dungeon of the campaign and will walk with the players through each room, detailing what they discover and what adjustments I have made to the dungeon. I hope players of D&D find it entertaining and dungeon masters find it helpful in running their own dungeons!

Haggemoth is a conversion from 3.5 and I’ve talked about some of my methods for conversions to 5th edition in the past. Monster conversion, in particular, is more of an art than a science, with the end goal not being perfection so much as it is to capture the correct feel for a scene or battle. One hard and fast rule to keep in mind, though, is the rule of DC. You can pretty nicely get an appropriate DC from 3.5 to 5 by taking the original DC, subtracting ten, cutting the number in half (rounded up) and then adding ten. For example, if the DC for avoiding a trap from 3.5 is Dex Save DC 19, then the conversion is

19 - 10 = 9

9/2 = 4.5 (round up to 5)

5 + 10 = 15

New Dex Save DC = 15

I use this method for every DC conversion so I want to throw it out there immediately so that it is assumed throughout the remainder of the adventure.

Anyway, the bridge across the chasm is destroyed, Tyrion is unconscious, and Karina and Abenthy are badly hurt from their battles with the Bugbears. Verrick is gone, the three soldiers are dispirited, and everyone is hungry. After eating and then collapsing, exhausted, into a long rest, the party awakens the next morning to find themselves staring at a massive door in the cliff face:

Built into the side of the mountain is an immense portico that features a pair of gigantic stone doors, each one twenty feet high and ten feet across. There is a single massive, steel-reinforced stone bar across the door, but a great deal of stone and wood debris has been piled up against the door as well.

It doesn’t take long to clear the debris, I assume this was placed there by the designer in case the players try to run past the Bugbears without stealth or fighting them: then the Bugbears can charge them, or lob arrows at them from across the bridge while the players try to clear the debris. A nasty end for anyone who thought to rush past the fight!

As it is, the players clear the door and enter the first hall. It is moldly inside, and damp and cold, with a smell like age and decay. Every so often earth tremors rock the place and bits of rock and dust fall from the ceiling:

Beyond the main doors is a large vestibule with a vaulted ceiling. The walls look like they once bore runic carvings, but these have all been defaced. Plants from the hillside have infiltrated the tomb here, and bits of root and moss hang from cracks everywhere. This chamber is filled with refuse of all kinds: plant matter, the carcasses of small animals and insects, and the desiccated corpses of several species of humanoid. As light spills into the chamber, the floor comes alive with movement.

Attacking the players are some giant centipedes. This is the first adjustment I have to make. Insect creatures are treated very differently in fifth edition than they were in third. In third, poison was a really big deal, a threat to even high level parties. It’s still not great in Fifth edition, but saving throws are all around easier and because fifth edition has done away with the touch attack (which ignores armor) creatures like this have a much harder time landing hits. So even though I can (and do) describe gross bugs falling over Karinna from the ceiling, I can’t really simulate them being “on her” as I could in Pathfinder, and as the module intends.

I compensate by bringing back touch AC for this fight, letting the centipedes crawl inside armor and up leather jerkins to get their attacks. It’s not a perfect solution, but it keeps the proper difficulty for the fight, letting the centipedes land some hits while still bring pretty tame. In the future, I’ll probably take insect fights and use swarm statistics for them, as this seems to be the way that Fifth Edition “buffs” its insects at higher levels. That said, the only rule I miss from Pathfinder is the touch AC—it just makes so much sense in certain circumstances and creates a nice difficulty balance for parties that have a mixture of speedy rogues and tankish paladins. I don’t think it necessarily needs to come back as a hard rule applied to every combat, but it would be cool to see some monsters in future DnD 5 supplements gain abilities which ignore armor and rely on pure dodging by targeting AC + Dex directly.

Mine! Mine! Mine!

Tomb of Haggemoth is my favorite kind of dungeon, in that nearly every room in it (and most of the monsters) has a reason to be there. I love dungeons that are more natural settings, rather than just endless turns and twists of caverns. My earliest experiences with Dungeons and Dragons was when my father bought Undermountain for me when I was four. I didn’t play the game, but I read through each description of every room. They were like short stories, and one of the joys for me as a player to this day is when I come to a room in a dungeon and can ultimately puzzle out the history of what this used to be and how it came to be what it is now.

There is a really interesting logic to Haggemoth that results in the first half of the dungeon being harder than the second half, but as my players aren’t there yet, I’ll talk more about that later. For now, they come to the next hallway, after cleaning bug gunk off their boots:

This hallway is similar to the vestibule. All kinds of miscellaneous debris is scattered over the floor. The doors to the south and east have been battered and smashed beyond hope of repair, but the door to the north seems to be somewhat solid. The corridor narrows to the west, proceeding deeper into the mountainside.

There are a few dead ends here. West is the actual path forward. To the north is storage, but a vicious mold has overtaken it, turning everything to poisonous rot. To the south, a Xorn has recently burrowed into the area. Originally from the Elemental plane of Earth, he covets the gold and gems in the mountainside and has stayed, slowly gathering some precious rubies and diamonds. If he ever spots Karinna, he’ll lust immediately after her “Eye of Callax,” as it is an extremely large, extremely rare, and extremely beautiful gemstone. He also knows, intrinsicially, some of the secrets of this place, and can be compelled or bargained into sharing them if treated with proper respect and offered rewards. He knows one of the biggest secrets that my players still don’t know...

My group takes the North route and almost immediately is overcome by the mold, taking massive damage as the spores tear at their lungs. Fire kills the stuff, and one of them uses a torch to light up enough of the mold to render it harmless, but the damage is done. They decide to pull back and take a rest before adventuring further. And during the night, the Xorn attacks, snatching one of the soldiers (Biggs) and pulling him back inside the tomb. The players awaken and give chase and a quick combat ensures.

Xorns are cool. Old school DnD monsters, they represent a nice bit of world building in that they come from the elemental plane of earth, thus suggesting the larger universe that the fantasy game situates itself in. They can be a tough kill in DnD 5 because of their burrow ability, in which they disappear into the earth around them, becoming completely immune to all attacks. In one round, therefore, they can disappear into the earth, appear right below someone, and get an attack off. If they wait a round and successfully make a hide check, they can get the attack off at advantage for surprise. And depending on how you want to play it from there, you can add all sorts of bonuses to their attack and/or defense because they are burrowed (DnD 5 is intentionally loose on how these things work, letting DMs adjust the rules to their own style and game). I like to add some defensive AC bonuses, but I also like to be fair about retreating: if they reburrow while they are right underneath someone, it counts as a movement and gives the players opportunity attacks. Picture all the tentacles disappearing into the ground while the players hack at them...

The players don’t seek to barter with the Xorn, but go at it headlong, getting off some very good strikes very quickly. Before long, they have defeated it, even with it burrowing and opening up right under Abenthy (that crazy high AC is helping him immensely here).

Sadly, Biggs has perished in the attack, leaving them with only two of their NPCs to carry on through the dungeon. Which brings me to another topic.

Character Cards

Our campaign has never been without allies and helpers. some may remember the half-orc barbarian woman that the group hired in Ottoman’s Dock, who lost her life to Rose of Ottoman’s Dock, or the bodyguard of the Butcher of Skagos, who perished in the Icy Wastes during a fight with Worg Riders. These early NPCs were stated out fully, like Player Characters and taken over by one of my players. I didn’t like this system, because it made a lot of extra work for us. I had to create the characters, which made it difficult to throw in improvised NPCs and companions at any given moment, and put an extra burden of roleplaying and stat tracking on my players that I felt left either the NPC or their own PC with a little less investment. At the same time, just having NPCs be “background extras” that fit into description but had no actual effect on gameplay, didn’t feel right either.

My solution was to create Character Cards. I talked about this back around the time the party was going through the Desert of Thud but since then I have refined the process. Character Cards now give a multitude of in-combat and out-of-combat options for players to use. The current cards look like this:

Xaviee, Human Fighter

Once per combat: do 1d6 slashing damage to any opponent.

Once per combat: roll 1d6. If the result is a 5 or 6, then +2 to all ally attacks and damage this round.

Reaction: Block an attack completely. Roll 1d6. If the result is 1-4, Xaviee is permanently dead.

BLAZE OF GLORY: Sacrifice Xaviee to add +4 to all ally attacks and Damage this round.

Samuel, Human Guard

Once per combat: do 1d6 slashing damage to any opponent

Once per combat: do 2d6 slashing damage to any opponent. Roll 1d6, if result is 1 or 2, Samuel dies, permanently.

Once per combat: do 3d6 slashing damage to any opponent. Roll 1d6, if result is 1-4, Samuel dies, permanently.

Reaction: Block an attack completely. Roll 1d6, if result is 1-4, Samuel is permanently dead.

You can see how Xaviee is a little more powerful, because his abilities carry less risk of dying when he uses them, representing his higher level. This is a quick and surprisingly clean way for me to represent a usable NPC/retainer with very few stats. We don’t worry about placement of the NPC on our maps, or try to simulate enemies targeting them in combat. If they die because of their roll, it’s assumed they were hit enough times by the enemy to perish. If there are certain situations where it just doesn���t make sense that they can be used, like the heroes are fighting underwater and Xaviee has been left on shore, then we take them out of use for the combat. Simple is best.

It also builds more of a connection I feel between them and the players, as these are decently powerful “items” that they do not want to lose. I am reminded of Final Fantasy Tactics, where most of your party never have a single word to say during the story, but yet you care about them simply because you use them in combat. Because they are a part of your gameplay they actually end up being more a part of your story than the actual story, as for the most part 70% of an RPG is combat and gameplay and only 30% is cutscenes and exposition. Possibly that number is even lower in Dungeons and Dragons, depending on your play style.

The character cards will continue to morph and change as we continue to play and I seek the correct balance between gameplay and function.

Halls of Bone

Progressing forward, after a brief mourning for the lost Biggs, the players come to a gigantic hall filled with bones:

This large, columned hall is replete with various carvings and relief sculptures depicting traditional Dwarven motifs: the forge, the anvil, the pick and axe, the tankard, and so forth. What was once a reflecting pool down the center of the hall now contains a thick layer of slime. At one end of the room is a 10’ tall statue of a clean-shaven dwarf, wearing a studded belt and a rune-encrusted crown with three black gems set in it. To either side, a balcony looks down on the central chamber. Phosphorescent mold on the walls and ceiling provides a dim, greenish light. What strikes you most, however, is that the floor is littered with bones – uncountable skeletons of man and beast lay scattered around the room, some still clutching to the tattered and rusted remains of armor and weapons.

“This is a trap,” Abenthy says, and the others quickly agree.

They aren’t wrong, though it is an unusual trap.

In the original 3.5 module, crossing a line within 30 feet of the statue activates the bones, which become 3d6+1 miscellaneous skeleton creatures and 1 large skeletal creature. This happens every time the line is crossed, up to a maximum of 50 skeletons and 5 large skeletons, all armed differently. These are stated out so that the little skeletons are weak hitters but very hard to kill (with damage reduction and very high AC) and the large skeletons are brutally heavy hitters and also pretty tough to kill. The design of the trap is that the players will be surrounded and overwhelmed by a bunch of regular undead who soften them up for the killing blow done by the big skeleton. When this horde emerges, some players will fall back to ranged position, while others will move up to tank and deal damage. Problem for them is, every time they cross that invisible line, whether retreating or advancing, the trap reactivates. Soon players will be terrifyingly outnumbered. Quick thinking players will realize that the statue is creating the effect and target that, but even then, the summoned skeletons don’t disappear, and players can be left in a whole heap of trouble.

Overal, the intended effect of the trapis to terrify players and set them up to be wary moving forward. They do have the option of running away deeper into the tomb, but the very next hallway is filled with spinning blades. If the players can roll high enough dexterity, they can pass the blades and effectively put a unpassable barrier between themselves and the skeletons, but it will be a tense moment, as failing the roll does grave damage and knocks them backwards, right into the waiting hands of the undead.

Translating this encounter into a 5th edition battle appropriate to six or seventh level characters is a challenge. Skeleton hordes don’t pose quite the same threat in 5th edition. In 3.5, a horde of this size could roll enough dice to grapple or trip even high level characters, setting them up for deadly coup-de-graces by the large skeletons, or weakening their AC enough to allow even the weaker skeletons to get hits off. Trip doesn’t exist in 5th edition, though, and while grapple can set up for a deadly “grapple, force player to prone” combo, it doesn’t give all the bonuses or options that exist in 3.5. I could emulate this by giving the skeletons bonuses to their grapple checks and some special abilties once they have the players grappled, simulating the “Night of the Living Dead” aspects of this encounter, but it feels like it will cause this room to devolve into a series of mindless rolls, the players rolling much less dice than me, but with bigger bonsues. That game quickly can become old, especially if they are facing fifty skeletons.

Instead, I try to figure out what frightens me. I think of the Silent Hill games and those twitchy nurses. Then I think about a room with dozens of them and I have my answer.

I design three skeletons for this encounter. The basics are below:

Twitch Skeletons

These skeletons are small in statue and their arms end in sharp points rather than hands. They gyrate as they move across the floor towards you, their jaws clicking open and closed in a silent protest of the horrors their afterlife has become.

The Twitch skeletons make up about 16 of the skeletons in the room. They have a very high dexterity and a 40 ft movement speed. They also have multi-attack, letting them get off two attempts to deal damage. The damage is not high, nor is their life, but their attack bonus is +8 and their AC in the high teens. The point is that they can close quickly and surround a foe, and after that, they can easily wear them down. As an added bonus, if enough of them are killed, the rest of them do something... interesting...

Normal Hitter

Out of the bone piles emerge skeletal warriors, wearing tattered remains of armor and wielding rusted weaponary and ancient bows. As you watch, one reaches into the bone pile at its feet and pulls free a straight arm bone, which it then nocks to its bow and fires at you from across the balconied room.

Basically regular skeletons, but I improved their attack a little to let them get off the occasional hit. These guys are truly here to hamper and physically get in the way. I also give them a little bit of an interactive option with my third skeleton...

The Minotaur Colossal

Lying broken against the dwarven statue is a large creature, tendons and strands of muscle still connecting its various bones into a humanoid shape with a massive bull’s head. The horns of the skull are stained a dull red with dried blood and across its lap lies a massive axe. As the humming in the room subsides, you see to your horror the creature stirring. When it stands, it is nearly eleven feet tall. It moves its head about and one of its empty sockets fixates on you. With a grunt, the creature begins to move forward, slowly at first, but quickly gaining speed to a charge.

This is my version of the “big hitter” in the room. I only use one of him, and as such I’ve buffed him up a little bit. He is, at core, a Skeletal Guardian as described in the monster manual, but with boosted stats and I added in a bull rush ability that can gore a player and knock him prone. His big weakness is his size, making it hard for him to manuever around the room and easy to hit, and while he hits hard he is not as accurate as his twitchy buddies. He does have the ability to heal however by grabbing a normal hitter and reworking their bones into his own, healing himself for whatever hitpoints they have left (but of course destroying them in the process).

A Clean Sweep

Unaware of exactly what the trap is, the players proceed cautiously. First, they clamber up onto the balcony, thinking that will at least give them the higher ground if it comes to a sudden fight. Then they start using Abenthy and Tyrion’s shields as makeshift brooms to sweep the bones in front of them and off the balcony as they move, trying to avoid having any behind them. This proceeds well for a good long while. There are rooms up here, too, each one leading to a small chamber carved with murals that represent the journey towards power in Haggemoth’s life. There is a depiction of him learning all the schools of magic, there is a room showing his accumulation of massive wealth (it also holds a mimic that gives them some brief trouble), there is a room showing him forging great weapons of power (including, oddly enough, a set of scales that he seems keenly interested in), and there is one showing the banishment of Haggemoth from his people and his sailing on a golden ship towards the remote island of Rori Rama.

Eventually, the players come close enough to trigger the trap. They end up triggering it twice before Karinna finally has the idea of putting an arrow into its gemstones, smashing them until she hits the correct one. This stops the trap, but not the 36 or so skeletons that have arrisen to fight them, including the massive minotaur skeleton, who easily clambers on top of the balcony to give battle.

“Hold your ground!” shouted Abenthy, placing his shield in front of him and staring down the massive bone creature that stalked the upper balcony towards him. Behind the minotaur, the masses of twitching skeletons gathered like the sea held back by a dam.

“Fuck that,” Tyrion shouted in his shrill, nasally voice. He began to play his lute and light exploded suddenly behind the minotaur, so bright that Abenthy squinted and turned away. When he looked back, the skeletons were stumbling into each other, swiping at nothing, and had stopped making any forward progress.

“They are blinded!” Abenthy called out. “Now is our chance.”

“They are distracted,” Tyrion corrected, and then followed as Abenthy moved forward, the two of them raining down blows on the minotaurian skeleton until it leapt off the balcony to escape the onsault. Even as it leapt, though, skeletons gathered below it, climbing up onto it, shifting and becoming part of it. Here, a rib that Abenthy had shattered regrew, and there the arm that Tyrion had knocked sprawling as the creature leapt was reforming out of the bones of another skeletong. Meanwhile, more skeletons were clambering up the steps to the upper levels, and they shook their twitching fellows free of their spell and turned them towards the companions. Xaviee and Samuel were the first to see them coming and the two soldiers shouted warnings before falling back towards Karinna, who was quickly disappearing inside a cloud of darkness.

Karina has used this trick before, to strong effect, in the battle against the Bugbears. The skeletons are a little more “programmed” though; when they can no longer see or hear their targets, they quickly revert to “stand by” behavior, all except the minotaur who is in a rage and goes wandering around inside the cloud of darkness, searching for the players. He finds Abenthy and takes a swing at him with a huge axe. Samuel jumps in front of the blow (using character card here) and miraculously survives, but is tossed backwards by the force of the swing, disappearing deeper in the darkness. With no hope of finding him, the players beat a haphazard retreat, making their way up the stairs towards the tomb entrance. The minotaur follows for a brief moment but after finding himself surrounded and taking some solid hits, he flees back to the bone room to recover.

Now there is a moment to breath. The players have been badly hurt. No one has fallen unconcious, but their spells are depleted (from healing, mostly) and their two companions do not seem to have made the escape with them.

“We cannot leave them in there,” Abenthy states. 

Tyrion doesn’t share his dedication to companions. “They’ll be fine,” he says in his heavy accent. “Just let’s get some sleep and I’m sure they’ll find their way back to us.”

But Abenthy is implacable and begins making his way back towards the room. The others hurry to follow, Karina’s cloak of darkness wearing off and trailing wisps of ink-black fog behind her as they descend the stairs towards the bone room.

It breathed. There in the center of the room, crouched with the other skeletons crawling over it like ants on a hill, it breathed. The creature had grown two extra arms, fashioned from the bones of its fellows. And it looked up as they entered.

“Shit,” Karina said, nocking an arrow to her bow. But Abenthy was already striding forward, his arms flung wide, roaring a challenge that was answered in kind by a shriek from the minotaur. It rose, stamped its bony hooves, and then it charged.

Karina was not sure how it happened, but suddenly Samuel was back at Abenthy’s side, and Xaviee was charging out from behind a pillar as well. The blow that would have skewered Abenthy, armor and all, instead shattered Samuel’s spine. The horn that impaled him was wide as a man’s arm and long as a spear. Samuel was lifted into the air as the beast raised its head and shook from side to side until the body of the poor soldier was flung away. Then Xaviee was there, striking at the creature’s back, and Abenthy was moving now, too. His blade shimmering with dark flame, he struck at the creature’s four arms as they reached for him to pull him apart. Behind her a mournful song was being song. Tyrion had pulled free his lute and was singing, each word soudning like sobs, like childhood, like wine spilled in rain, like sadness. She was crying, whether from the song or from everything that had happened to her in her entire life, but she was also fighting, loosing arrow after arrow at the great skeletal beast. And finally, with a mournful sound like the wind escaping a dark cave, the skeletal minotaur collapsed and was still.

Abenthy ran to Samuel, preparing a spell to heal him, but the damage was too far gone. The man was broken beyond basic healing and was taking his last breaths.

“There is another creature,” he said, blood bubbling between his lips. “One formed of the many. It escaped, into a crack in the wall. It is waiting, watching...”

Nothing more did he say. His final warning hung over them and they all felt cold.

Next post takes our players deeper into the tomb, as they encounter deadly traps and deal with the Things Left Undone in the Halls of Bone.

[zippdementia]

Part 26 Alignment May Vary: A Not-So-Random Encounter

Today's post will discuss when and how to use random encounters. It's a topic I've covered before, but the session we played highlights some of the key points. 

First of all, to catch us up... after successfully defeating the Giant Crabs and making it to Twyin’s Vengeance, the party sets sail for their final destination, the long lost island of Rori Rama. After a week or two of uneventful travel, they come to a narrow island blocking the passage forward. The island is shaped like a crescent, with its horns pointing away from the ship. It slopes upward from the beach to a massive cliff that fills the entire ring, creating the impression of a great curved wall protecting something beyond it. Making shore here, the party explores the island only briefly before being greeted by a fat, tanned, islander with a key around his neck. He seems to be a simpleton, but he introduces himself as “Den Den” and offers to take them to the village chief.

The chief tells them that beyond this reef lies the island of Rori Rama but that no one ever returns from it, save one. Karinna guesses this one is Raiden, her old commander who betrayed her during the War of Seven Sorrows, and the entire point of her quest. The chief confirms this, but tells her cryptically that the man who returned from Rori Rama was both Raiden and not Raiden anymore, that the jungle burned away what he once was. Slowly the clues dawn on Karinna: a man calling himself Den Den, a silver key around his neck, the glowing of the pendant Zennatos gave her to find Raiden... the simpleton that greeted them at the island’s gates was Raiden, or what is left of him. His mind has been burnt away by jungle fever and the answers she seeks as to why he betrayed her may be forever lost in that mind.

Karinna has to decide what to do. As GM, I expect there are two options: either kill Den Den, knowing that he was once the man who betrayed her, or move on—unsatisfied, but perhaps empowered by knowing that satisfication is not required, that Karinna could allow herself to let go of something without resolution. Instead, Karinna creates a third option: find the truth no matter what, even if it means tracking Raiden’s steps in the jungles of Rori Rama. And since I strongly believe that a GM should listen to their players and think about the kind of game their players want to be in, I decide to run with it and start working on a way for her to access Raiden’s memories.

Karina, Abenthy, and Tyrion head into the jungle, leaving most of the crew back on the Gate Island. They do take Tywin’s old shipwrecked companions, Xaviee, Samuel, and Biggs, and Verrick of course refuses to leave Karina. Several days of travel ensue, with some encounters I’ll describe later.

Then, a little ways into the jungle, Karina decides to make use of an item I invented a while back and added to the Pit of Thudd treasures. It is like a crystal ball, only it shows events from the past as ghostly re-enactments of these events (if the emanations of the event are strong enough, ie. they have a strong emotional significance attached to them AKA I’ve got some history to share on that area or some story to tell there). I don’t actually have anything planned where Karina uses the item, in the middle of a large lake fed by two jungle rivers, but I decide to make up something on the spot to push forward the Raiden plot. So she sees a ghostly boat manned by Raiden and a strangely dressed man. The image makes no sound, but it looks like Raiden and the man have a fight and Raiden cuts the man’s throat and drops the body in the lake before rowing to the far shore.

This is meant to set them up to find Raiden’s camp (which I’ve just invented), a journal he’s left there (also just made up), and a special hand crossbow for Karina (spoiler: improvised on the spot) which will let her use her reaction to shoot projectiles out of the air as they come. But what I don’t expect is that Abenthy will leap off of their raft and dive into the water to search for the corpse and loot it.

Random made Reasonable

Random encounters are best used to either break up monotony or force the team to action. Instead of using "random" encounters, I suggest DMs make a list of monsters that they would be alrite using in their environment (and based on the level of difficulty they wish to present). If you are using a campaign module, like I often do, and it has random monster tables, then half the work is done for you: pick and choose from that table what seems most interesting. You don't have to use every encounter. If you can't decide, roll a few times on the table and use the results. Stat these encounters out as "just in case" encounters, then use them as you best see fit. 

In our session, we had several. The first day on the river, I throw some  Stirges at them. I knew they wouldn't be too difficult of an encounter, but I liked the way it fit with the theme of the jungle and would break up the monotony of travel. I make it a little more exciting by having them carry disease, jungle fever that gets contracted when they bite.

Next up is a T-Rex encounter, occurring when they try to ford a waterfall. The T-Rex encounter I knew was probably going to be a tough fight. But it was listed on the random encounter table for the campaign and I thought it too cool to pass up, so I worked it in as an escapable combat. In this case, the players hid under their boat and the T-Rex, on the prowl for big game, overlooked them. They didn’t end up fighting, but they didn’t have to to leave an impression. It was one of those "what the hell are you going to do?" situations where I genuinely did not know how the players would respond. If they had a good plan and good rolls, they could escape notice. If not, they would fight. And who knows? Maybe Tyrion would use his animal control spell to make it his pet for a while, ride it into combat or something. In general, I keep my eyes open for encounters that I, as a player, would like to be a part of. If I see one, I usually mark it for inclusion in the game. And in addition to the fun of meeting a T-Rex, the monster serves as a great way to push players forward. If they rest too long, or don't seem to want to move forward, I can have the T-Rex show up to nudge them in the right direction. It's in the category of Big-Frickin'-Monster. They are useful tools.

Lastly, when Abenthy decided to unexpectedly dive to the bottom of the lake to search for treasure, I felt there had to be a guardian. So a Giant Alligator shows up, tracking him through the water, pulling him into the lake just as he reaches shore, and forcing the players to deal with trying to free their friend in an environment (the water) that they are not accustomed to. The Alligator was also on the random encounter table supplied with the campaign and simply made the most sense for the situation. I had thought it a cool encounter, so I’d stated it out before the session just in case I needed it. Didn’t know I would, yet out of it came one of the cooler fights of the session. Unplanned, but prepared. That's the key to a good random encounter. They are set pieces you can throw in to make your game better at key moments.

In the last case, Abenthy is pulled under water by the alligator and has a difficult struggle ahead of him. Tactically, he is grappled and drowning and without his armor (which he left in the raft). Breaking the grapple means he still has to swim to the surface of the lake to breath, and that gives the alligator a chance to use an opportunity attack—which, if it hits, reinstates the grapple. Abenthy is a tough son of a gun, so he can take the hits, but he can’t survive drowning. Meanwhile, his companions on shore cannot do much. The alligator keeps diving underwater to hold Abenthy down, and that means Karina’s arrows won’t hit it and Tyrion can’t target it to cast most of his spells.

Eventually, Abenthy manages to break the surface of the water just long enough to attract the Aligator within line of sight of Tyrion, who quickly casts Hypnotic pattern, freezing the alligator long enough for Abenthy to power swim towards shore and for the party to flee before the spell wears off.

Abenthy surfaced, spluttering and thanking the gods (chief among them his father) for blessing his body with a resistance to disease. He had no idea what sort of filth or amoebas he had swallowed during his battle in the lake and he didn’t like to think long on it.

“Well, fucking hell!” Tyrion exclaimed. The halfing had become more excitable since the monastery and much of his music had been replaced by shrieks and curses, though the magic of his voice still seemed to have the desired effect on his enemies. “I hope that was worth the little side trek.”

Opening his hand, Abenthy looked down at the strange circular device he had retrieved from the bottom of the lake, where he had found the body they had seen in the vision. “We shall see,” he said.

Raiden’s Demise

Beyond the lake lies an abandoned camp. A quick search among it surprises a young lizardman, who cries out in fear and goes racing off into the jungle. Karina and Abenthy give chase and after a short time succeed in rolling high enough to cut the lizardman off, tackling him to the dirt and threatening to kill him if he does not tell them what he was doing there. Fortunately, Karina has comprehend languages as a spell, and casts it.

The lizardman (naming himself as “Small Threat”) doesn’t know what happened at the camp, but he is surprisingly forthcoming about his tribe, who lives in the jungle by a second lake and knows the true paths of the jungle. He offers to take them there, and they agree, setting us up for the Next Session: Tinkering.

He also gives them a backpack he stole from the campsite. In it is Raiden’s journal, and as Karina studies it over the next few days, it tells the following tale of Raiden’s fall, filling in the gaps of what he did before his mind was burned away, leaving him the witless Den Den on Gate Island:

“I will take the job, for Karina’s sake.”

Raiden’s diary begins with a summons to Zennatos, his old comrade during the war of Seven Sorrows. Zennatos tells him roughly the same story he will later tell Abenthy, Karina, and Tywin—of his search for the Tomb of Haggemoth—but also elaborates on the curse that will kill him if it is not found. Raiden agrees to take on the job. He does not elaborate on what he means when he writes he will do it for Karina. He also writes of another woman, Monita, but briefly and sadly. Though the name seems familiar to Karina, she cannot place it.

Raiden’s journey mirrors the players’ in intent, if not in content. He does not go to the oracle. Instead, he heads straight for the monastery, Zennatos having told him that he stole the book about Haggemoth from the monastery. There he disguises himself as a scholar, gets access to the library, hides until eveningfall, and breaks into the secret room, getting the location of Rori Rama and of the Pit of Thudd, which he realizes contains the key to the tomb.

His trip to Frezerazov is also one of secrecy and stealth, and he manages to find the back way into the giant’s cave and catch a look at the star map while the lord of the snow snores in his chambers. Raiden also manages to hire on three dwarven adventurers here, enticing them with tales of Haggemoth’s tombs and discovering their ancestor’s riches.

Next is the Pit of Thudd, which he clears and gets the key to the tomb—but unlike Karina, he does not take the Rod of Storms, leaving it in place and thus keeping the desert as it was. Owing the leader of the Oasis a large sum of money as part of his ploy to get into the desert, Raiden pretends he has perished—sneaking away at night with his Dwarven companions by enticing a merchant ship to his cause.

With the last of his money, Raiden pays the merchant ship to take him to Rori Rama. He also takes on the services of a tinkerer who is traveling on the ship. The tinkerer claims he can make periapts of health, which will protect against any disease that may lie in the jungles of Rori Rama. Raiden sets him to work making the devices. During the voyage, Raiden has nightmares, always of Karina, that she has returned to murder him for his crimes against her.

At Rori Rama, Raiden and his men are attacked by Stirges and one of the men falls ill, despite his periapt of health. The Tinkerer saves his life, but the dwarf’s mind is gone, burned away by the fever. The Tinkerer claims he can save him and designs the circular device Abenthy found on the bottom of the lake. The Tinkerer proposes that through blood magic the device, which he calls an Essence Recaller, will let them enter the man’s essence and free him from his trapped mind. Raiden, fearing the dwarves will turn on him if he does not try to save their nephew, agrees and they all participate in the blood ritual. Nonetheless, the device is flawed and the ritual fails. Shortly after, the other dwarves fall ill.

One of the dwarves catches the Tinkerer at work on the device and realizes that when he said blood magic, he literally was taking blood from the sick man and mingling it in the rations of everyone. When confronted, he says that they all had to imbibe the man’s blood to enter his essence, but the dwarves are furious, knowing this is how they have contracted the fever. They mutiny, and Raiden and the Tinkerer flee on board a raft, heading out to the lake and leaving the dwarves to die in the jungle.

Here, the tinkerer admits he is only an apprentice, and that he never knew how to build the periapts of health properly. Raiden, in a fit of anger, murders him and throws him into the lake with his final, flawed device. Rowing to shore, he sets up camp and plans to head back to civilization, hire a new crew, and try again. He thanks the gods he has not caught the fever.

Alas, he gives thanks too soon. The next morning he wakes up ill and realizes that while his took longer to gestate, he is nonetheless sick as the dwarves were. He begins to hallucinate and his entries become more erratic and less precise, many of them describing events as if they are still in the War of the Seven Sorrows, and he often speaks of Karina coming for him through the Jungle. His final entry regains some clarity:

“How fitting, that I have been abandoned here, the same way I abandoned her. I would tell her everything, if only I could see her again.”

[zippdementia]

Part 25 Alignment May Vary: Shattered Expectations

Today’s post talks about making sure there is tension in your scenes, so they don’t devolve into just rolling dice to hit a target number. We also resolve the Celaenos situation and move our players onto their final destination in this campaign.

As a GM, I am always asking the question, “where is the tension in this scene?”  A scene without tension is just players rolling dice until they hit a target number. I talked about this a little bit before during the desert expedition, which can easily devolve into rolling numbers on a chart until they either die of thirst or make it through to the Pit of Thudd. In that instance, we broke up the monotony with some infighting amongst the characters and some roleplaying. The tension there was between the characters themselves. I’ve also touched on it a bit with random encounters (and we will talk about this aspect of it more next time). Battles make up the heart of the excitment in Dungeons and Dragons and yet even they can get old if there is no deeper tension behind the fight. That’s why the most memorable battles have some extra piece to them, something at stake that is forcing this fight, whether immediate (the princess is slowly being lowered into a pit of fire while the players fight the Baal Demon guarding her), or eventual (they have to take this cutthroat alive if they are to interrogate him as the whereabouts of the secret hideout of the Shadow), or a culmination of past events (after many adventures, the heroes are finally fighting their dreaded foe, the pirate Testain, who killed their friends Targaryen and Shando so long ago).

One of my most memorable battles as a player was during the new 5e Elemental Evil campaign, where we went off book by leaping out of the stained glass window of a boss chamber, only to be followed by the boss and his henchmen! We had an aerial combat as we fell down the humongous tower, the ground getting closer each round as we traded blows back and forth mid air. That was a very immediate tension, as we only had so long to complete the fight and cast feather fall on ourselves. I still remember nearly every move of that fight, and it was well over a year ago.

When my players completed the battle at Celaenos, I had the option to have them move at their leisure, find the information they needed in the library, and push them forward in the plot. But I wanted there to be tension in that progression, and I wanted their actions to have an impact on the world. That is why I devised the plot about the Justicar coming to mete out punishment on them for defiling what the world viewed as an incorruptible holy order. It (a) shows that their actions have been noticed in the world and are being judged by its inhabitants; and (b) gives them a time limit that is pushing the action forward, so that searching the library suddenly has pressure behind it.

With this time limit, rolling every day to see if they can find the information they need becomes a lot more exciting. A few other events occur in the meantime, the biggest being that Tyrion gets a summons from his college, saying they are revoking his bardic license and asking to reclaim their property, his magical lute, until such a time as they can judge his actions at the monastery and determine them to be for good or ill. If he does not show himself before them within 60 days, he will be seen as guilty in the eyes of his college and lose his right to a hearing.

This puts Tyrion in a foul mood and his alignment begins a slow shift from Chaotic Good towards Chaotic Neutral. “Every man for himself,” becomes his new motto, and spurred on by the fact that he saw his party nearly die at the hands of the knights, he makes a vow to do WHATEVER is necessary to stay alive.

Just Claws (for using low CR enemies)

The players know they have to get the heck out of dodge before the Justicar arrives, so they plot with Clem to meet them outside of the monastery sea cave, which they know was used to transport the slave girls in and out of the monastery and thus is a back door to freedom. The caves turn out to be unexpectedly dangerous, however.

Blackness in front, blackness behind, and all around them the scent of salt and the sound of the sea. Abenthy sniffed the air, but it gave no further clue. He listened carefully, but could not tell the direction in which their exit might lay. The sea is close, his senses said, but how close? The sea is around the next corner, they said, but damned if they hadn’t passed two dozen corners without finding it. His eyes could pierce the darkness, but they could not tell him where to go. So focused was he on leading his companions to safety that he never saw the quiet shape floating down towards him, tendrils silently pulsing in the air like a spider spinning silk on the wind. All he knew was that the blackness grew darker, the sound of the sea was muffled, and a heavy thickness pressed against his lips, choking him as if a wet cloth had been forced into his throat.

GMs take note: if your party is getting too powerful to find your adventure challenging anymore, consider throwing some conditions at them. This happened quite unplanned in my campaign: if you go by CRs, then a handful of Darkmantles should not pose too much of a threat to level five and six characters (especially Abenthy, who has AC 24!). But all it took was one critical hit and Abenthy was grappled, suffocated, blinded, and made deaf. The same thing happened to Karinna, and not much later to Tyrion. With spellcasting cut off (because of the silence), it left the party with little options to fight back. But fight back they did, and eventually they won through, though the ordeal nearly killed them.

Next they encountered two giant crabs (boosted a little from their stats in the Monster Manual to match the creature suggested in the 3.5 module) as they tried to swim out from the sea cave to the waiting Tywin’s Vengeance. This encounter saw some clever use of Tenser’s Floating Disc to carry Tyrion as an archer hovering above the water, and Abenthy threw himself into combat like a madman, leaping from the disc to downward strike one of the crabs. But once the party is in the water, it’s like having a constant condition. The crabs grapple and then try to drown them, diving down towards the bottom of the sea with the players held in their claws and at risk for getting regrappled every time they try and swim away. Ultimately, Abenthy wins this one with some fun use of Thunderblade, whose sonic boom pushes him backwards towards the surface of the sea and lets him pull himself and Tyrion to safety before they can drown.

Anyway, it’s a good note to taking easy CRs and making them still exciting to fight, and the whole notion falls in line with what I was talking about earlier in the post, about making scenes TENSE rather than just rolling dice back and forth. For instance, in the fight against the crabs, you could run this as a simple back-and-forth roll fest: with the players unable to move much in the water, especially once grappled by the crabs’ claw attack, and the crabs unwilling to retreat. But having the crabs act more dynamically, using their grapple to pull the players deeper into the water, makes this more than a fight, it makes it a situation where the environment is part of the fight, too. As much and as often as you can, make the players think about more than one thing in a fight. Those fights will be more memorable for it, and you can do this with almost every fight in your dungeon/game. It doesn’t always have to be as crazy as fighting while steering a boat down a waterfall—in fact, doing this for too many fights in a row will end up fatiguing your players and put you in a space of constantly one upping yourself. But for every fight you think the players will get into, try asking yourself the following:

is there something about the environment that can make this fight more interesting or tense, something about the environment that threatens the players outside of the enemies? Examples: it takes place underwater, or on a narrow mountain ledge, or in a dungeon room filled with a dangerous fungus that reacts to sound.

can you create a mixture of enemies that makes a fight more exciting and gives your monsters more options in combat? Examples: instead of a troop of thirteen goblins, make it a troop of five regular goblins who will charge, three goblin archers who will hide and shoot with sneak attack damage, one goblin mage who will buff his allies, a goblin boss who hits hard, and three goblin riders mounted on their wargs who will dart in and out of combat for flanking attacks (now that’s a battle to write home about!)

can your battlefield be adjusted to let your monsters use interesting and clever battle tactics? Examples: a dungeon room filled with spiders is thirty feet high, letting them climb down from out of sight; a group of slimes is encountered in an old well with lots of cracks in the walls that they can disappear into.

can you add something unusual to the fight to make it stand out? Examples: your party fights a dragon while riding ON TOP OF the dragon; your party fights giant spiders while climbing a giant’s castle, 100 feet in the air; your party is trapped inside an impenetrable magic shell with an angry demon, and the shell is floating down a volcanic lava flow towards a portal to the elemental plane of fire.

can you add a time limit to the fight to make it more tense? Examples: you are fighting undead in a locked room, while a spiked ceiling slowly descends to crush you all; you are fighting gargoyles on a damaged airship that is going to crash into a mountain unless someone gets to the controls; you are trying to break through a horde of hobgoblins to shut down a portal to the nine hells before Tiamet can get through it.

is there a sensical way the players could end this fight without combat, or at least tilt the odds in their favor by bringing something new to the fight? Examples: an assassin sent to kill them is willing to turn around and kill the guy who hired him, if they pay him double; the giant territorial ape they saw in the woods earlier can be tricked into attacking the bugbear fortress, distracting both forces while the players sneak inside; a blue dragon, having just fed on an entire cavalry, is open to bartering for some of the party’s magical treasure instead of murdering them for tresspassing on her desert.

You can also mix and match some of the items off this list. For instance, if the players are going to encounter Treants in the woods, you could make the battlefield AND the enemies more interesting by having the woods be old, dead, rotted woods (maybe destroyed ages ago in a fire) and make the treants undead, hiding amongst the ruined and petrified trees. A much more atmospheric and interesting scenario!

You can find examples of this kind of combat adjustment all throughout the campaign, going at least as far back as the Dire Shark encounter. Keep your eyes open for these opportunities in your own campaign, and you’ll have something to write about, too!

[zippdementia]

Part 20 Alignment May Vary: The Red Eye Watches You

Welcome to the ongoing adventures of Abenthy, Karina (Seeker of Callax), and Tyrion, as they hunt for the fabled Tomb of Haggemoth in order to save Abenthy’s friend Zennatos, to find and bring to justice Karina’s old commander who betrayed her, and to create an epic song for which Tyrion will forever be remembered. Last time they were about to leave the newly rejuvinated desert of Thud with their bounty from the Grey Tomb and head for Celaenos, a monastery of good knights where, in a library, there are to find their last clue to the location of Rori Rama, the final resting place of Haggemoth.

As GM, I’ve pulled back on rolling for random sea encounters. We are late in the adventure now, and there is good momentum built up. To throw in another encounter will, at best, slow us down and, at worst, accidentally kill the party, which is something that at this point I’d like to reserve for the remaining two main locations, not some random fight against a sea siren.

I was, in reading the possible encounter list, intrigued by one of the possibilities: a friendly bronze dragon. Encounters with dragons are going to be a big part of Red Hand of Doom and I thnk this would be a nice lead in to that. Also, Bronze Dragons are enamored with rare and unique treasures and as it happens Karina is carrying around the Rod of Storms.

The Dragon slides into the water, its gigantic body pushing through the water with slow deliberation. In only a couple strokes, it is at the Ghost Ship (now named Tywin’s Vengeance) and only now do the adventurers realize how truly huge the creature is. It leans in close, its head tilted so that one gigantic eye, large as a horse cart, stares at Karina.

“I smell the magic on you, little one,” he says.

The Rod of Storms is a cursed legendary item, one of a kind, meant to give Udo the Grey control over the weather. With it, he altered the atmosphere of the green land of Arctavia, slowly transforming it into the desert of Thud. He never had full control over the Rod, though, and it comes with a heavy curse, ensuring that any who carries it will never be free of the damp and the cold. In addition, using the Rod is difficult and can backfire, releasing powerful uncontrolled lightning, wind, and thunder magics. Only a legendarily powerful mage could hope to control it... or something which had direct communion with the weather, like a Bronze Dragon.

Karina is not fully aware of the Rod’s curse, but she does remember the warning in Udo’s tomb: “Beware the Rod of Storms, I created it but was never its master.” I decide this is an interesting opportunity for her to steer the course of the game. The Bronze Dragon, Sauros, wants to trade the location of one of its treasure stashes for the Rod of Storms. Meta-game, the decision is this: keep the Rod of Storms and both the power and risk that comes with that, or trade out a very powerful weapon for the promise of future riches (which I will create as a side adventure at some point after they find the Tomb of Haggemoth).

Karina chooses to give up the Rod. It’s the safest choice, actually, and gives me a little more control over the adventure, as the Rod is one of those wild card items that can turn the tides massively either in favor of or against the players. It forces bad weather, too, which can affect future scenes. On the downside, it is always fun to play with legendary items and tons of side adventures can come out of the mahyem they cause. For a little fun, and to share my pain, I give Karina a flaw: Having given up this powerful item, she feels its loss palpably, and believes she has made the wrong decision. She becomes obsessed with finding another powerful item like it, to replace its loss.

Sauros gives one more cryptic clue before departing. He tells Abenthy that there is a Red Eye watching over him greedily, that the Eye symbolizes great power and a dire destiny, and that Abenthy can learn more at the Monastery.

With that, the players move on to Celaenos.

Shackles of Gold

The Island of Celaenos is a rather austere, craggy piece of land jutting sharply from the ocean. There is barely enough vegetation to support the goatherds who live there and the place has a shabby, drab air about it. There is a small rocky harbor and a single impoverished village. Looming over the harbor On a nearby hill is the fortified monastery of Celaenos, where the Knights of Celaenos dwell. Their flag—a black field with a Red Half-moon and two stars—can easily be seen by any approaching ship. The harbor has a tiny dock, which can only be approached by Jollyboat or Dinghy. There are two tatty-looking vessels in the harbor, and one of them looks familiar to the players who have encountered the Ratzotto pirates before.

The people of the village respect and fear the Knights of Celeanos, and they are generally furtive and close-mouthed around strangers. The Knights are putatively in control of the island, but it is rare for them to ever leave their monastery.

The players make their way to the monastery, Karina using her magic to disguise herself as a tall Amazonian woman. They gain admittance to a vestibule which—with the doors closed behind and in front of them—seems like a deathtrap. Above them, through a glass window, two knights stare solemnly down at them. They wear white half capes, capes which cover only their right side, leaving the red and black doublet underneath visible. The crossbows they hold and the swords on their backs are of the finest make.

“Who are you? Why do you come here?”

The voice comes from a newcomer to the room. Opening the door and speaking before even fully entering the room is a young, blonde knight. His eyes, a bright blue color, hold no love or joy in them, and he stares at the players suspiciously, waiting for their answer.

This is Dickon, and he will come to play a strong role in what happens to the party at Celaenos. For now, after hearing they wish to use the library, he begrudgingly takes them to the Abbott. The Abbott, a powerfully built knight named Mordekai who looks younger than fifty years of battle hardened life would usually leave a man, is friendly and eager to banter with the party. His mood shifts, though, when they mention Zennatos.

“Scum. Thieving scum,” he hisses.

Turns out, the book that began this whole quest was stolen by Zennatos from the Celaenos monastery. The book had a curse on it, and this is what has compelled Zennatos to find the Tomb of Haggemoth, for only by doing so can he be cured. Not only is Mordekai not inclined to help anyone associated with Zennatos, he also warns that the quest for Haggemoth rings of a cursed, evil, thing:

“Think about it. A quest that is started by reading a cursed book, compelling good men to die for cursed men, sending them to a place rumoured to exist, to a tomb of a powerful mage, one who was banished from his own people... what sort of creature, tell me, would lure good men to their deaths?”

While they are debating this. A servant comes in, and Karina happens to recognize the bracers she wears: the same ones, at least from the look of them, that Rose used to control her servants back in Ottoman’s Dock. Karina bristles and accuses the Abbott of keeping slaves. 

Aaaaaaand... shit. It kind’ve goes downhill from there. The Abbott, as might be expected, does not appreciate being accused of slavery by strangers who are known associates of a thief. The party, for their part, is vastly suspicious based on seeing the pirate ship in harbor and the bracers, but willing to concede that a conspiracy could be going on under the Abbott’s nose. Abenthy uses his powers to try and detect evil on the man, gain some insight into his motives, but the Abbott only exudes an aura of good. 

The end result is that the Abbott refuses them access to the library, but says he will consider their words, and will send a verdict for them in three days. Dejected, the party heads to the only inn in town.

Cover Bands Suck

“How about some music?”

Tyrion looks around at the few sullen customers in the rugged tavern, the wood exuding the smell of sea, salt, and stale ale, and decides that livening up the place can only gain them favor. He gets up from the party’s table and heads to the corner of the barroom, passing three disheveled men with familiar Rat Tattoos on their necks.

“This is a cover of an old song, hope you know it, hope you like it!” he says in a chipper voice, and begins to play.

The Ratzottos are not impressed. They almost immediately begin calling out expletives and taunts, challenging him to “play faster!” or “play better!” and “cover bands suck!” Finally, one of them picks up a full bottle of rum and chucks it across the room.

And I roll a critical hit.

The bottle karoooms off of Tyrion’s head with a dramatic spray of blood. The music ends in a haphazard jangle of notes and piratey “yar har hars!” Tyrion is nearly killed, taken down to one hit point. And then all hell breaks loose.

Abenthy launches himself at the pirates, fists out and slamming into flesh. He takes on two at once: one a scraggly scrapper who first threw the bottle, the other a hook-handed man who uses his disability as a boon, scratching and clawing with his metal hook. A third, a hulking black man with a braided beard, charges him from the side. Karina tries to launch into combat as well by getting fancy with parkour (one of her flaws), but only succeeds in dramatically flinging herself unceremoniously over the bar and into a shelf of bottles. 

The tide turns when Tyrion uses his dissonant whispers to send the scrapper into a fit of brain bleeds, breaking his spirit and turning him into a slobbering mess. Abenthy uses COMMAND to halt the other two, and Karina puts the icing on the cake—trying to be dramatic again, she flourishes her blade, accidentally rolls a critical hit, and tears out hook hands’ eye. After this, the pirates are ready to talk under the influence of Abenthy’s Zone of Truth. What they learn distresses them.

Seems that these pirates are part of a slave ring being run from within the monastery. No mention is made of the Abbott, instead it seems that a man known as “The Seneschal” is behind the slave ring and coordinates it from within a secret cave underneath the monastery, accesible from the sea. And in three days, they are to meet the Seneschal there and prepare for “a special shipment.” Three days... the significance of the number does not escape the attention of the group. Three days is how much time the Abbott gave them before a promised response to their problem. Seems like someone has overheard of this and decided to act first.

Abenthy rewards his informants with a trip to hell—murdering the pirates and sending their souls to a master he himself does not fully understand. But this time, it feels more right than ever, like he was meant to do this. Karina and Tyrion look on, nervously, not altogether comfortable with their friend’s newfound bloodlust.

Then the players prepare for sleep, feeling that they have enough information to get the drop on their foes, not realizing how powerful the evil is that targets them, not knowing they are already one step behind in a game being played out by experienced schemers.

Next week, Weave a Song for Me.

[zippdementia]

Part 13 Alignment May Vary: Combat and Character Hooks

Welcome to another Journey Log! This week takes my three players through an intense combat as they wrap up some loose ends. It is the climax of the first act of Tomb of Haggemoth, after which they will truly strike out across the Moon Sea to follow the Oracle’s cryptic instructions. In this post, I’ll be focusing on how to build effective encounters in D&D 5th Edition and also the importance of using character hooks in your game. But fist, some catch up with the story...

Return to Ottoman’s Dock

The Butcher of Skago now considers the players to be his “investment,” and he intends to ensure that they make good on their promise to bring him the treasure of Haggemoth. So he decides to sail alongside their ship, while his sniper (Haymish) sails onboard the Mankey Bastard with the players.

The journey to Ottoman’s dock has one event: Abenthy has not been feeling well ever since leaving the LaCroix mansion and now the players discover why. The key they picked up from the Ooze house was actually the last piece of the Ooze and has been hiding on board their ship disguised as Abenthy’s belt. From there, it has been slowly draining him of his life! The group works out what has been happening and destroys the Ooze, once and for all, completing a sidequest and ending a possible plotline if the ooze had made ity back to civilization...

At Ottoman’s dock, the players discover that Marcus, the priest they had left to deal with Rose the Slaver, has been murdered. They are presented with a plan for revenge by Lisa, one of the slave girls they freed last time who was living with Marcus. She tells them to either help her burn Rose’s establishment to the ground, or enter by stealth and try and find evidence of Rose’s wrongdoing to present to the mayor of Ottoman’s dock.

The group vacillates over what to do. Twyin and the half-orc Rhazel are in favor of the burning—it’s simpler and, to Twyin’s mind, cleaner. But Karrina thinks it is riskier and when Abenthy realizes burning will mean the death of the innocent slaves who are still working the establishment he refuses to go along with that plan. Majority rules, and they move in via stealth, through the basement passage they found last time.

This doesn’t go quite as planned. Rose is transporting a special “guest” this evening, and so has the basement under guard by Ratzotto pirates. The players try to dispatch them quietly, but let one get away. He instantly runs upstairs to warn Rose. Worse, they try to take the special guest, a young girl, with them. This goes incredibly bad when the girl suddenly turns on them (Rose’s mind controlling orders) and attacks them with the power of her mind, killing Rahzel (their half orc, colorblind mercenary) in the ensuing fight. During this, Rose arrives with reinforcements and a massive fight breaks out that nearly kills Twyin (he becomes the target of Rose’s imp, who takes spider form and continually bites him, while Rose holds Twyin still with her spells). This battle also presents a problem for Abenthy: Rose sends her enslaved bodyguards at him. He knows these are innocents under mind control, so he tries to hold back and knock them out, but thanks to a couple HUGE damage rolls, he accidentally kills one of them, cracking his skull open like an egg. Falling to his knees in the midst of combat, Abenthy begins to pray for his salvation while the others desperately try to fight off Rose (for two whole rounds he prays, an excellent bit of roleplaying)!

In the end the players persevere and force Rose to flee in the form of a dark green magical mist (she quaffed a potion of mist form). Where she departs to is unknown to the players. In fact, she makes her escape to a ship that is waiting for her and from there across the sea to answer to her master, a person far more devious than she. How that goes you may discover in a future blog.

Defeating Rose breaks the spell on the psychic girl, a mysterious young human named Jade, who has come looking for her brother, Targaryen. Remember him?

This unexpected revelation gets more complicated when the players head back out onto the open seas, searching for the ice land that the oracle hinted at. Halfway there, they are attacked by Ratzotto pirates, and they seem to have a new leader—Targaryen himself, revived from the dead or saved from its brink, commands the pirates from the bow of the ghostly Red Hand ship Karrina helped sink over a month ago. Holding the Jade Figurine Karina recovered from the watery temple aloft, he seems to use it to gain control over some monstrosity of the deep, a tentacled horror that tears apart the Butcher of Skago’s ship while the players fight off an attack of pirates.

The battle ends with Haymish gripping the rails of the Mankey Bastard, watching his master’s ship sink below the waves as the players make their escape from this frightening new Targaryen. 

Lesson: Building Encounters in Fifth Edition

Despite its dual emphasis on story and gameplay, D&D has never truly left behind its roots as a one-shot tactical battle game. Which is great, when you play out a battle and then go home at the end of the day with a winner and a loser, back to do it next time y’all meet up. But when you mix character and story into that mix... well then things get a little complicated, don’t they? There are times you don’t WANT your party to die, because it would wreak havoc on your story. Yet, if every battle is a guaranteed win, then your game suffers, because there is no more risk.

I struggled with this for years as a GM, until one day I came to a very simple conclusion: it is okay to let your players die. In literally any situation, it is okay, because you can’t predict what those players are going to do. This is a roleplaying game, which means if your players are doing it right, they are following an internal narrative you won’t always have access to. That narrative may dictate they run head first into certain doom (”Barbarian smash!”), or that they do not take an opening to escape when they have the chance (”My creed is that I will never flee from justice!”), or they bring the proverbial knife to a gunfight (”Die fire elemental! Fear my fireball!”), or they provoke the Brass Dragon into eating them alive (”Damn, but you are hideously ugly!”). Your job isn’t to hand hold the players, improvising ways for them to survive against all odds. Leave that to the natural 20s they roll!

However, it is your job to roleplay the monsters as well as they play their characters. Do that, and you will find that instead of your story coming to a dead halt when you unexpectedly get a total party kill, it will feel like a part of the story. When your monsters act like monsters instead of figurines with the knowledge of the Dungeon Master, it won’t feel unfair if your players fall to them. This also lets you change the difficulty of encounters on the fly.

In the pirate battle in our session, for instance, Abenthy leapt immediately onto the pirate ship and taunted all of them. They chose for many rounds after this to focus their attacks on him, even after he retreated—which worked in the party’s favor because Abenthy is a tank who is hard to hit and can soak up damage even when he is. The players took further advantage of this and used clever positioning to keep Abenthy in front while Karrina gave rear support as an archer and Twyin came in from the side, doing devastating damage with his multiple attacks. 

The pirates lost that battle, badly, but things could have gone differently. What if I had rolled well enough to take Abenthy down and suddenly the remaining players were faced with overwhelming odds? If I felt the battle was no longer fun, I could have used in world explanations to slightly make things easier—given courage by their success, perhaps the pirates split up and start rushing heedlessly into battle, spreading out where their sneak attack damage isn’t as useful.

In fact, I did use tactics to make things harder: once Twyin started taking down a pirate each turn, they started focusing their attacks on him, which did make things more tense. By doing this, I was able to break away from pure statistics and use changing tactics to keep our battle balanced throughout the fight.

To go along with this, here is some mechanical advice I have found in the last two years of tinkering with the D&D 5 system:

Go harder than you think: The Unearthed Arcana encounter builder does a much better job of giving appropriate challenges than does the complicated CR calculator that the DMG provides. That said, any kind of guideline someone publishes is based on average characters. It can’t take into account a player who rolled above average stats, or who selected powerful feats, or who took the best options their class has to offer, or is playing perfectly in synch with the rest of their party. It also can’t take into account items, magical weapons, and improved armor. Thus, I find that players tend to outperform these charts. It has often happened that combats I thought, on building them the day before a session, are far too deadly for the players to take on end up dealing no damage to them at game time. So, don’t be afraid to make combats hard! If the fight comes about and it is truly brutal, you can always use the above mentioned “change of tactics” mid fight to tone things down. Don’t underestimate the tendency of your villains to stop and give mighty speeches on their turns instead of attacking, when they realize they are wiping the floor with the players. After all, what villain can resist a good taunting of fate? In all seriousness, though, it is easier (and more acceptable to players) to describe how some of the goblin horde they are fighting back off because things got too hard (”a hush suddenly falls over the goblins as their champion comes forward, chuckling darkly that he will take down these fools himself”) then it is to scramble to roll up reinforcements when the players are making what you wanted to be an epic fight too easy. Oh, by the way... if they do make the epic fight too easy, don’t try to “fix it” and take that victory away. Just make a mental note that future fights will probably need to be tougher because you underestimated your players, and prepare the next session accordingly.

Action economy is king: I say it, designers say it, players say it, and it is worth saying again—in D&D it is the character who gets to strike the most who will win the most. Not all bonuses are built equal. High health points don’t matter much when a team of players can easily dish out 60 damage a turn. The damage your monsters can deal doesn’t matter much when the players can heal it all in a single cure wound spell. And the players will eventually get these powers, if they don’t have them already. But what never stops being powerful is when one of your monsters gets six attacks per turn. Do you want TPKs? Because that’s how you get TPKs. D&D 5 does a great job of making it harder for players to get seven attacks a turn (in Pathfinder, this tendency led to many monsters having ridiculous resistances and ACs just to stay alive) and instead gives such powers to the monsters. I’ve talked in the past about how doing this effectively brings back the “boss monster,” meaning that a single higher CR monsters can take the place of what in older versions would have been a horde of high CR monsters. I like this a lot, as I think it lets individual monsters have more personality. Some DMs dislike it, because it gets harder to build hordes with higher level monsters. And that is fair, because it does get much harder. And so, that is my advice—as you start to look at higher level monsters, just keep in mind that their multi-attack ability, if paired with high damage, can wipe a party in the first round of combat. As your monsters get more attacks, things are going to start scaling upwards in difficulty exponentially. So pay attention to these monsters when horde building. Similarly, remember that your players have access to extra attacks and will get exponentially tougher as they get them. If you have a party with a lot of fighters or other classes that grant extra attacks, you may need to adjust your difficulty higher.

Magic is a wild card: Somewhere on Reddit I read a great thread about all the ways a CR 5 enchanter could kill a party of higher level adventures without ever entering combat. Once you start getting into enemies with spells, you can really start messing with your game’s difficulty. On its basest level, magic in combat can buff your monsters, debuff the players, or deal damage. But think outside of the box, and the possibilities become far more interesting—and deadly! Picture the mage who follows after the players, taking on their appearance using disguise self, and visibly killing guards in every city they are to visit, so that when they arrive, they are immediately targeted by the King’s best men. What about the divination mage, who scries out the seas the players are sailing on, and uses her powers to summon a storm the likes of which hasn’t been seen on those seas in ages? There is the warlock who plants an item in the bag of holding the players carry with them, an item stolen from a powerful demon, a demon which will kill anyone who it thinks has the item... there is the illusionist who makes it look like the bridge across the chasm of doom didn’t collapse last week... there is the crazed evoker who has placed a rune of blasting on every door in his tower, and who has rigged the entrance to be one way only, emptying players out onto the elemental plane of fire when they try to leave...  Some of these possibilities go far beyond simply rolling a dodge in combat and using your massive reflex score to avoid damage. Magic is unpredictable. Because of this, there is really no good way to give a CR rating to a magician based purely on what magic they have. More important is to think about how they will use that magic in your game. A magic who is going to stand in one place casting fireball... well, you can easily factor in their added damage per round to their CR using the DMG and figure out their difficulty rating is. But far more deadly may be the mage that the players don’t even know is targeting them...

Lesson: When to Use Character Hooks

Short answer: whenever possible.

Anyone who has ever been a player in D&D knows that there are two characters you build when you make a new character. The first is one of stats and numbers, a list of abilities. The second is a story, a reason to journey, a purpose, a personality. The first is easy to bring into play—any time there is combat, or an obstacle requiring a roll, you get to use this character. When you level, you directly affect it, adding to stats and gaining new abilities. The second is harder. It doesn’t level up at specific milestones, or gain experience from killing monsters. There aren’t monsters that are weak to it, or campaigns pre-built to favor it. The first character will never go away. It will always be there on paper, easy to access and analyze until it falls beneath the axe of some crazed Drow. The second character, if not tended to, often is dead long before the axe falls, forgotten after a session or two of not being used.

This second character, the story of a character, is often what has separated memorable games from forgettable ones in my player experience. When I build a character, I am building a set of hooks and suggestions on the kind of story I want to play out. If I say I am a gunslinger searching for his father, then I am telling you (a) that the easiest way to get me to go anywhere in your game is to drop a hint about my dad, and (b) that I’m hoping this search will be a part of the game. Maybe not a huge part, but at least get enough of a focus that I will feel like I’m really playing a man on the hunt for family. Because obviously I have some interest in that, if this is the story I’ve come up with. Here’s an example...

I remember one game I played where I built a thief (Xaviee) whose village had been burned down by werewolves. One of the werewolves Xaviee remembered, because the beast had bitten his mother and turned her into a werewolf. It was a simple back story I just came up with for fun, in the hopes that if we ever ran into werewolves or any supernatural creature, I could roleplay treating them with extreme prejudice, maybe even attacking them on sight. I figured, too, that my mother might be used sometime as a hook—for instance, if the GM needed us to go to Phandalin, maybe a werewolf attack would be reported in the area. My player would easily agree to go, just on the off chance that the attack involved his now lupine mother.

With all this, I was pleasantly surprised to learn the GM had actually selected a werewolf campaign for us to play. Good fortune! Except in twelve sessions of the campaign, my mother was never mentioned. I mean, we FOUGHT werewolves. We came across tribes of them. At first, I just waited for the GM to throw some hint in, like “that werewolf over there, you recognize from the attack!” As time went on without any of this, I started asking for it: “Xaviee asks the tribe leader if he recognizes the name of his village or of his mother...” without hesitation the DM would say, “nope.”

We had fun at the table. It was a good game. But by the time it was over, I had stopped caring about Xaviee’s werewolf mother and, in doing so, stopped caring about him, too. When he eventually was killed by a quagmire troglodyte, I rolled up a dwarf who hated elves and liked getting drunk a lot. The DM seemed much more comfortable working this into the game.

This is why I like to work in as many of the hooks my players have given me as possible. I will add new scenes to bring their bonds into the campaign. I will replace blah NPCs with people from my players’ history. And I can’t think of a reason NOT to do this. It doesn’t take much time, and the sense of involvement it will bring your players is incredible. Otherwise, you really might as well just be playing a tactical battle game with their stats.

Stats are fun to play around with. They are what make your character feel powerful. But story is what makes your character feel alive.

And now, some news. This post will mark the end of the adventure blog... for a while. The game continues, but I am currently trying to design and publish the Ooze adventure for DriveThru RPG and I want to devote my attentions to that in the free time I have for writing. When I complete it, I may well return to the blog—either weekly again, or as a once in a while thing, if I think a session has some particularly good lessons in it for GMs. Until then, happy gaming!

[zippdementia]

Part 30 Alignment May Vary: In for the Long Hall (sic)

The water trapped room slams shut behind them as they exit, Karina’s tampering having disrupted it for now. They cannot go back, so the players must go forward. But first, they decide to add a new member to the team.

Long ago, the players defeated an enchantress known as “Rose,” and Karina stole her magic book, setting her on the path to multi-classing into wizard. Now, Karina decides to cast one of the spells she studied so long to learn. She casts find-familiar.

Guts of Barghest. Ground bone dust. A hot fire. Blood of a demon. Purified water. Such were a few of the items in the list of components needed for the spell. Karina did not know where she would have found the guts of a Barghest, but she had seen plenty of bones in her journey, and she happened to have a steady supply of demon’s blood, being a Tiefling. Anyway, Rose’s component pouch (which she had also stolen) had the remainder of the items (at least she guessed the dried out entrails which looked like fat worms were the guts of an unfortunate Barghest).

The rest of the instructions were as complex as the ingredient list, but Karina had studied them for weeks and found, as she did with most things magical, that understanding seemed to come to her less than a gut feeling that led her movements and gave the words she spoke power.

The ritual took an hour to complete, while her companions rested on the landing as best they could, their armor loosened so as to give some relief from its weight.

Near the end of the ritual, things became loud. Booming laughter echoed from the circle she had drawn in chalk on the floor. Smoke exploded in small puffs with sounds like the cracking of skulls. And then, in the midst of one of the puffs of smoke, a shape formed.

It was small. It had wings and also a tail. Its body was humanoid with a few distortions that made the whole thing seem wrong somehow, a hodge podge of elements like the tail and the horns and the flat pig nose and the sharp row of needle-like teeth that lined the too-large mouth.

“Mistress Rose?” the small creature asked. “Moonglum has come back to answer your call!”

It takes a little explanation to get the imp caught up the speed and a little cajoling to get him to agree to work with the party. Then, with her new imp familiar, Karina begins to scout out the remainder of the dungeon, as they plan their next move. Their goal: find the end of the tomb. The obstacle: this isn’t the real tomb.

Haggemoth always knew that his legend would attract tomb robbers and he needed to be left in peace to complete his master plan, his life’s opus. Furthermore, because of the many blockades he had put in place to actually finding his tomb, he knew that anyone who did come would be either (a) a powerful and hungry monster from the jungles of Rori Rama, or (b) a proven group of adventurers who likely had experience in traversing deadly places deep under the world.

Because of this, he built two tombs. First, he dug out tunnels inside the mountain and layered these halls with traps and the trappings of a crazed wizard, hoping to frighten adventurers away (or kill them) before they could get to his real tomb. Only this wasn’t meant to be a tomb. Deep beneath the mountain, Haggemoth has his true home, a place of magical comforts and research, only dangerous because Haggemoth’s final preparations didn’t go as planned and chaos ensued as a result. But more on that later.

For now, the players begin exploring the second part of the upper levels, rooms 17-25 on the map below. With Moonglum looking for traps and dangers, they soon discover that there are dangers all around them, including walls that slam together and a strange fungal growth breaking through the secret door leading to room 19. Room 20 controls the water trap, but there is a dead man here with his face burnt off from steam. They take his helmet of telepathy and some unidentified healilng potions he had on them, which they get very nervous about when I tell them (innocently) to record them as “Dead Man’s Potions” (note to self: if you want your players to drink a potion, maybe don’t put “dead” in its title).

The biggest threat comes from the shaded hallway to the east, amrked 23 on the map. This is a complex conveyor belt trap whose function they discover by using the crystal ball from the tomb of Udo the Grey and some experimentation. When activated, it  turns the floor into two conveyor belts that run towards the middle of the hall, depositing anyone unfortunate enough to be caught on them into a set of industrial strength grinders that can easily be an instant kill (or at least a permanent loss of a limb). This terrifies them, rightly so, and they decide they need to find a way to turn this trap off before proceeding.

Eventually the players proceed north, which they deem the most safe passage, taking a winding set of stairs down to a large room with a single solitary statue...

Cloaked

“That has to be a trap,” Karina said to the group.

“Oh most certainly,” Tyrion said.

“It would seem to make sense,” Xaviee added.

“Why would it be trapped?” Abenthy asked, the one voice of dissent. 

The statue in question was tall and seemed very old, judging by the battered feet and the areas where paint had peeled away and become mildewy in the cold damp of the chamber. They couldn’t see much beyond the feet, for draped over the statue was an old leather cloak, large enough to cover most of its features.

Karina’s mind went through a half dozen possibilities, none of them good. Was the statue a hibernating gorgon, having been defeated at last moment by a cloak of slumber wrapped over it? Would they release its terrifying gaze when they removed the cloak? Or was this the sign of a lurking basilisk, who waited for adventurers to wander into its lair and then trapped them here? Karina quickly looked over her shoulder at the one entrance to the room, almost sure she could hear soft padding footsteps descending the stairs towards them. Maybe the cloak was magically cursed, set here to entice adventurers, and then  draining them of their abilities the longer they wore it.

“Let’s leave,” she said. “This is too obvious, too easy. We need to leave this room now.”

If Abenthy heard the panic in her voice, he ignored it. “We leave no stone unturned. It’s the only way we will find Haggemoth. Justice will protect us.”

And saying no more, he reached for the cloak. They had a glimpse of the statue underneath, the face either worn smooth by the years or left blank intentionally by its creator. Either way, it was non descript, and it did not come to life to attack them. But the cloak shifted in Abenthy’s hands, wrapping itself around his arm, his chest, his face. Before any of them could react, it was pressed tight against him and they could hear a terrible grinding and gnashing, accompanied by a muffled yell of dismay, as something wet and messy happened underneath the cloak.

Xaviee ran forward, but suddenly a whiplike tail emerged from the folds of leather and its spiked end caught him in the chest. He coughed once, then collapsed in a crumpled heap. Tyrion ran to help him.

Karina lowered her bow and instead conjured up a skeletal hand, which clawed and pulled at the cloak, leaving dark red splotches where its necrotizing touch damaged whatever the thing was, but it was unable to break it away from Abenthy.

Abenthy fell to one knee, making a deep choking sound.

“It’s suffocating him!” Karina yelled.

“Working on it,” Tyrion mumbled, as he drew his lute and began to strum madly at the instrument. The melody that came forward sank deep into Karina. It raised the hairs on the back of her neck and made her feel ill, like the world was tilting madly. The sensation passed quickly, thankfully, but that was because it wasn’t targetted at her. The creature left Abenthy with a deep sorrowful moan, peeling away to reveal a wingspan like that of a Manta Ray, and a pale underbelly with a gaping fanged hole. The creature drifted into the air as if on an unseen wind and gracefully floated from the chamber. Karina darted forward behind it and slammed the door shut.

“A Cloaker!” Karina said. “We have to hold the door!”

“What in the bloody hell is a cloaker?” asked Tyrion, running to join her. Xaviee limped after him, to add his weight to the door.

“What we just saw—that’s a Cloaker. Abominations, they inhabit the old places of the world. Not very common to see one anymore. They live on rodents, mostly, but aren’t adverse to a larger meal when they can get one.”

The door suddenly shuddered, as the fear spell wore off and the Cloaker came back, seeking its prey.

“For something that seemed made of cloth, it certainly packs a punch,” Tyrion said as the door shuddered again and cracks appeared in the thick wood.

“Open them, and I will tear the beast in half,” Abenthy growled, getting to his feet. The Aasimir’s face was a hideous red color, punctured in multiple spots by deep circular wounds from which blood flowed freely. He staggered towards the door, drawing his longsword with a schinking sound that hung in the air like a spell. He flung open the door and raised the blade... but nothing was there.

“Tricky creatures, cloakers,” Karina said quietly. “We have to be on guard. They can disguise themselves in the most clever of ways. I read about them in that book from Celaenos. One man, Vollo, describes how a Cloaker settled over a pit trap, looking just like the floor. When Sir Griswald stepped on it, it dropped him onto the spikes and then floated down while he was impaled to feast on him. It kept him alive while it ate, and left him ultimately to bleed out on the spikes. We need to keep our eyes open.”

As she talked, the four companions had begun to ascend the spiraling staircase out of the room, keeping their eyes everywhere: ceiling, floors, walls, cracks in the walls.

Then, as they came to the top of the stairs, they saw in front of them a hanging leathery curtain. It definitely had not been there before and its level of conspiciousness in the setting of the tomb was ridiculous.

“Clever, huh?” Abenthy said, and strode forward to rip the Cloaker in half.

And that’s what happens when a Cloaker rolls a critical failure on a hide check.

The Long Hall

“We are not alone.”

Moonglum was shaking as he said it, the tiny imp looking over his shoulder and biting his long fingernails in a display of fear that would be comical if they weren’t inside a deadly tomb.

When he described the creature that had pulled itself from a crack in the ceiling back near the water room, the three companions knew that the skeletal centipede-like monster had caught up with them. They stood in the place where the four corridors came together, the only light Tyrion’s magically illuminated hand. Their voices were soft but still cast unsettling echoes all around them.

“We are dead,” Abenthy said.

“Not so,” Tyrion chided. “What if we run? We have the headstart on it? We could lock ourselves in the statue room and hold our ground, or run through the long hallway.”

Abenthy scoffed. “So we either make a last stand or sprint over a deadly trap? Doesn’t seem like that would improve our odds.”

“Where is your optimism?” Tyrion asked with a grin that was more than half manic.

“I am practical, not optimistic. False optimism only leads to grave dissappointment.”

“I believe you about the grave part, certainly.”

“Quiet, all of you,” Karina said, who had been studying the hallway in front of them with rapt attention. “We have only moments to pull this off.”

In seconds she explained the plan. They would bait the creature, using her illusion magic to create a false image on the trapped long hallway of the party. If the skeleton bought the illusion, it would hopefully charge and then be caught by the trap. There was only one catch...

“To cast that spell, you have to be within sight of the hall,” Tyrion said. As a fellow student of magic, he knew the restrictions. “Which means it will walk right past you.”

Abenthy looked from one of them to the other. “Can you drink our potion of invisibility?”

“No,” Karina responded. “The casting of the spell will cancel the effects of the potion. I will have to trust that it is more interested in the illusion than in me. I have my boots of Elvenkind and my cloak, I may be able to—”

“No.” Abenthy’s voice was firm. “No, we will come up with another plan. We will make our stand in the statue room. I do not like this. It puts you in too much danger.”

Karina tilted her head slightly and regarded Abenthy with the deep black pools of her eyes, hearing somethign in his voice that she had never detected, or suspected before.

“I don’t like it either,” she said gently. “But we cannot stand against that thing, nor run from it. We are weaker and slower. But we may be smarter. It is our only chance.”

Before she could say more, Xaviee emerged from the darkness, breathing heavily. “I saw it. And it saw me. It’s coming. We have moments to run.”

Abenthy looked sideways at Karina. “We are not running,” he said. “Karina has a plan.”

Thirty seconds later, Abenthy, Tyrion, and Xaviee had disappeared down to the statue room, using the helmet of telepathy to keep in touch with Karina, who was now alone at the crossroads. Down the hallway, an image of Tyrion and Abenthy sat with their backs against a wall, seeming to sleep. She hoped it was enough. The image seemed distorted to her eyes. There was a limit to this kind of illusion, and she was pushing it past its boundaries. Abenthy was squatter than in real life, Tyrion’s clothes less colorful. They made no sound—she wished she could make them make sound—and altogether she felt that if she were to see the image in the hallway, she would question it. But then, these were her companions. To her they meant friendship, comraderie, and life. To the monstrosity they were food, perhaps, or maybe just interlopers in its world, something to be killed. To such a beast, the details might not matter.

She heard the sound of bone scraping against stone as the creature emerged into the fourway corridor. She pressed herself back against the wall, not daring to breath, trying to control her shaking. It was huge. It didn’t have hands. The bones that made up its arms and legs were sharp and stunted into tusk-like appendages that it slammed into the floor and wall to steady its bulk as it moved along the corridor. This close, she could see the dried blood on its front arms. Her blood, she realized, from when it had attacked them before.

The creature pulled itself along the corridor, barely ten feet from her. Its skeletal head turned back and forth and she heard a raspy sigh emerge from it. It looked at her and paused. But it was only an instant. Then the head moved on and saw what she had put down the hallway. It rasped again. Its four front arms lifted up like the mating sign of a praying mantis. It tapped the bones against the walls in a stacatto beat.

And then it turned back towards her hiding place.

No, she thought, and it was all the time she had before the thing was moving. But it wasn’t moving towards her. Its head snapped back to center as it screeched and charged the illusion she had made. And a moment later the hallway was filled with noise as the floor came alive. The floor stones lifted and sunk back into the wall, pieces of granite and an ocean of dust cascading off of it as it shifted. Underneath the stone was a moving belt. The floor tilted downward slightly and the belt was pulling the creature forward towards the grinders at its center, massive metal discs that cracked together like the teeth of some angry god. The skeleton’s own momentum was its downfall. It tried to skitter to a halt, but its speed was incredible and its body whipped around on the belt, turning it to face Karina, pulling it backwards until it got caught by those teeth and with a scream began to be eaten by them.

Karina watched in fascination as the bones exploded into fine white powder as half of the skeleton’s body was pulled between the grinders. Only briefly did they seem to halt under the enormouse beast being fed them. But they never truly stopped and the speed at which they decimated the bone was shocking.

But then the beast was moving, pulling itself up. Appendages dug into the stone walls and it ripped itself front half free from the lost back half. The torso began to climb up to the ceiling and then back towards her. She tried to raise her bow, but fear had finally taken hold of her mind. It was coming, so fast for something so injured, and she could do nothing, and her plan had failed afrer all.

Not failed, a voice in her head said.

Abenthy was there beside her, then. He tapped the telepathy helmet on his head knowingly and smiled for the first time in weeks. A flash of light erupted near him as Tyrion cast spell after spell at the creature, his bardic voice singing out the words to the spells. Xaviee was firing arrows at the beast. And then Abenthy cast his own spell and a massive spectral greatsword appeared in front of the creature. It sliced and the bones came free from the ceiling. It fell with a cry and was carried backwards again, into the grinder, into its doom.

And then the halls of Haggemoth echoed for the first time in their history with the sound of cheers and victory.

Noxious Growth

The companions cheer does not last forever. They have just seen a massive beast get chewed to dust by the trap in front of them and are understandably wary of approaching it themselves. They know that there are devices in this dungeon which shut down traps and so they determine to find the one for this hallway.

On a (correct) hunch, they head south, to the room where they found a secret door with a fungal growth coming through it. Abenthy, immune to disease, opens the door, enters room 19, and...

Even knowing that whatever spores or infection lingered here could not hurt him due to his divine background, Abenthy could not help but cover his mouth and nose as he entered the room, as if it could actually help protect him.

The room was thick with fungus. Every spot of the floor and walls were covered in a violet tapestry of interwoven strands of mold. Every step he took, his steel clad feet crushed the delicate rug and sent up explosions of a violet dust—more of the spores, he knew. It was impossible to tell what the room’s purpose had once been. Its only decoration now was a body.

It was a curious corpse. It hung suspended at the far end of the room, wrapped in a thick web of the mold strands. It was definitely humanoid, but its features had eroded, leaving fungal growths where limbs should have been. The feet were still barely discernible, though melded together into a fleshy mass. The head lacked most features except a gaping, too-wide hole where perhaps the mouth had once been.

As Abenthy stared, that mouth suddenly closed and then opened and a clicking sound began to emerge from it, like a tongue rapidly tapping against the roof of a mouth. The body began to gyrate madly in its prison. Abenthy raised his shield and only this saved him from death. Acid spewed forth from the mouth in a projectile vomit that went fifteen feet across the room, splashing against the shield. Even so, the air around Abenthy suddenly shimmered with heat and his lungs burned as spores began to burst into small explosions all around him. He grabbed a javelin from his side and threw it, cleanly impaling the gyrating corpose. It clicked at him in response and continued to push at the confines of its webbing. Abenthy backed up and bumped into something. He spun, ready to see another of the creatures having snuck up behind him, but it was Karina, her eyes wide at the sight of the horrendous room.

“Out!” she commanded, and then she pointed a hand at the creature. A skeletal hand ripped at its chest and the effect was terrifying to see. Where the claws touched, the fungus rotted and died, almost instantly. A gaping wound was left in the creature’s chest and it screamed for the first time, a horrible half human sound like a man trying to cry for help from underwater. The creature strained again and this time the webbing broke and it fell to what passed for its feet. Then it was charging them...

This is yet another time I have dipped into Kobold Press’ Tome of Beasts. It really is the second monsters manual I always wanted from DnD 5 and my most used third party supplement. First of all, it has some tough monsters, nicely filling out the later level gaps left by the original MM. Also, each encounter, whatever the CR, is simply interesting. Each monster has a mechanic that adds to the tactics of the system, whether it is dealing with poisons, grapples, pushes and shoves, or diseases (as in this case). I drew inspiration from this book to create several of my own monsters, including the Skele-Pede and I can’t recommend it highly enough for 5th Edition DMs.

This particular beastie is a Mindrot Thrall and I cannot detail exactly what its infectious spores do, because it is very possible that at least one of my non-Aasimir players has become infected by it and I don’t want to spoil the surprise when they read this.

Suffice to say, they do end up defeating the creature, as it vomits forth acid and spores and makes a mess of the rooms. They then push on, find the trap mechanism, and clear the way for next time’s post: Ever Deeper.

[zippdementia]

Part 12 Alignment May Vary: Prophecy of the Tomb of Haggemoth

Starting with this week’s session (post 12) I’m going to mix up my format a bit and do quicker synopsis and more DM analysis, rolling a lesson or two into each session for the enterprising or novice DM. As always, this is for my 5th edition group of three players who have completed one story arc from the Rise of Tiamet adventure path and have since embarked in earnest on a side adventure, the wonderful Tomb of Haggemoth adventure from 3rd edition.

Leaving behind the island of the Ooze, the party sets sail for the Island of Alcazar, the island where the oracle resides, and they arrive without further mishap in a couple of days. 

Much of this section of the adventure is meant as set up. The idea is that the party sees the oracle, she gives them a riddle that lists three places they need to go and three things they need to find before they can access the Tomb of Haggemoth. She also rambles on for a bit about character-specific back stories and anything else the GM wants to set up. Since she can see the future, she is the perfect tool for the GM to use as foreshadow. I use her to tell the players that the priest they left in Ottoman’s Dock to take care of the Rose situation (the woman who was selling sex slaves there) has met with misfortune. It’s a set up for next session. I also drop some hooks for each of the players. For Karrina, I foreshadow her quest to find Raiden, mentioning that what she will find is not what she expects and that he believes he did not betray her. For Abenthy, I mention there is one with a great red eye searching for him, whom his father was killed by and against whom Venthusias strives to keep him hidden. For Twyin, I talk about his dead son and hint that there is something darker to his past the others do not know.

There are some other hooks here, as well—for instance, one of the other characters here to see the Oracle is a wizard named Shelackar the Vermiculate (don’t laugh). He has already seen the Oracle and she’s given him some bad news: he done effed up. How? Well, he bet his life against the hand in marriage of a sultan’s daughter that he could make it rain in a place called THE GREAT DRY DESERT. That didn’t work out so well. So he came to the Oracle to seek advice and she told him that he will die if he ever ventures into the desert. But he’ll also die if he doesn’t. This is all build up towards an adventure later in the campaign. 

Other characters here can be used by the GM as desired. For instance, there is a warrior here whose lands have been overrun by orcs and he is here to see the Oracle about it. He doesn’t show up again in the pages of the campaign, but Twyin seemed pretty interested in him, so he may very well find a place yet in my version of the campaign or in some future one.

There is a twist to this part of the adventure, too. The unique coin the players have (from their patron Zennatos) which will gain them access to the Oracle is a forgery. Worse, the day they are to see the oracle, the person carrying the real coin shows up, and he is none other than The Butcher of Skago, a plantation owner with enough money and power to buy a small city. When he finds out that someone is using a forgery of his coin he flips shit and demands they be brought before him. Keep in mind this is all before they’ve actually seen the oracle, so the players have to figure out a way past this obstacle. Do they try and fight the Butcher and his men? Do they try to bribe or sweet talk him into giving him the real coin? Or do they slink away and then sneak back to the island at night, determined to force their way into the Oracle’s chambers? In our case, Abenthy tells The Butcher the truth of why they are here to see the Oracle and agrees to pay him HALF of the treasure if they get it. To watch over his investment, The Butcher sends one of his loyal men, a killer named Haymish Hardwicke, to go with them and make sure they keep their word.

Lesson: A Session of Roleplaying

There wasn’t a single roll this session aside from a couple investigation and perception checks. Everything was handled and resolved by roleplaying. Which raises a good question—how do you handle a session that’s entirely roleplaying, while keeping everyone at the table involved and engaged?

It happens to all of us. Whether because of luck, or because they’ve hit a big city with lots to do and no encounters, we all encounter sessions with no combats and not very many rolls. It is easy to write these sessions off by saying “I promise next time there will be combat!” and just gritting your teeth and getting through it. But is there a way to make these sessions exciting and memorable?

First of all, it should be said that roleplaying should be a small part of every session, because it encourages a player to get inside their character’s head (which in turn makes them more engaged in the game) and because it offers a break from tackling every obstacle by rolling dice and checking numbers on a sheet. After all, what sounds more memorable in the following scenario? You come up against the Butcher of Skago and successfully roll a 15 to convince him not to kill you for stealing his coin, or you come up against the Butcher of Skago and over the course of a conversation come up with a way to weasel out of having stolen his coin. Any player will feel more accomplished by the second, for they actually did it.

But despite roleplaying being rewarding, an entire session of it may sound like anathema to you and your players, and with good reason. Roleplaying an entire session of NPCs means coming up with multiple personalities, voices, and being ready to improvise a wealth of responses to things the players might say or ask. It means making judgement calls on how “well” the players are roleplaying their cause, rather than relying on numbers to tell you how things are going. Finally, not all players like roleplaying, and keeping these memebrs of your group engaged and entertained is challenging.

Here’s my tips, with examples from this past session, on how to keep your game flowing and cut down on your work load during such a session.

Make your conversations conflicts. A lot of times the big complaint about roleplaying is that it is “boring.” Players are here to play D&D, after all, and D&D is at its heart a battle game. Character abilities and traits have mechanical effects on dungeons and battles, not usually on conversation. Often times, though, it is not the roleplaying that is boring, it is the situation. It’s simply not fun to talk through a conversation with a shopkeep where you are trying to find the rowdiest inn in town, or buy a pair of nice pants. On the other hand, a conversation with a Dwarven miner who thinks you are after his gold and is about to bring the mine down on the both of you if you can’t convince him otherwise... that is a conversation worth having. If you are afraid your players are going to get bored, then try limiting your conversations to those that have real risk, or add some risk to your smaller conversations. In my session, one of the first NPCs they met was a steward of the island who wasn’t all that interesting but who was the gatekeeper to the Oracle and thus the only way they were going to get to see her. I had him act incredibly suspicious of the players so that the whole conversation was put on edge—so much so that when he finally asked them to turn over their coin, Twyin didn’t want to do it! He felt they would be betrayed. This took what was a necessary conversation and made it tense and thus more exciting.

Use humor. Another good way to liven up a roleplaying session is to use humor. People like to laugh and (hopefully) you are friends with all your players, so that means you (hopefully) like to laugh together! Make one of your NPCs a little goofy, or add in a funny quirk to them. After the players had met two stewards and had similar conversations with them, I was afraid things might get dull. So the third steward they met I turned into an over-zealous, over-the-top salesmen of “Oracle Trinkets.” Little wooden swords with your name engraved on it! Mugs that say “The Oracle saw my future and I was drunk!” In addition, this steward believed (wrongly) that he was good at guessing names, and jumped into conversation by guessing ridiculous names for the characters. Just be careful not to let things go overboard. If one or two characters in your town/island/castle are silly, then that makes your world a little more lively. But if every character is goofy and funny, then your players have stumbled on the Island of Misfit Toys and aren’t very likely to take anything that happens this session very seriously.

Watch and listen to your players. The simplest way to know how to set your pacing is to just pay attention to your players. Look at their body language. If they are building dice towers and nodding along dumbly to everything you say, it’s probably time to skip a few conversations and bring them to your Big Scene (see below) or to start upping the stakes dramatically (see above). Similarly, if your players seem to be asking for MORE roleplaying, don’t be afraid to give it to them. In our session, I had only intended to roleplay Shelacker out of the oracle groupies, because he is the most important, but my players wanted to split up and talk to as many of them as they could. Everyone was eager for this, so I jumped in and played out more of the conversations. I kept them brief, to save us time for the Big Scene, but I wouldn’t have done it at all if I thought my players were getting bored.

Bring in your absentee players. There is one or two players in every group who dominates in roleplaying situations. They have something to say to everyone, a witty comment always ready. They have +5 to jumping in when another player is asked a question and answering it themselves. They walk all over the dice-tower-architect described above, not to mention the shy guy who likes to roleplay but also likes to think about what he says before blurting it out. Plan some things before the session to make sure you are giving these more contemplative players some focus. In one conversation, point dramatically at your dice-tower-architect and have your NPC say, “I saw your picture on the Wanted poster at the bar! You have a price on your head!” This will make them the focus for a while. Or have an NPC set a time to meet your shy guy, and them alone, to give them some information. Don’t let the other players come. This splits the party, but it’s worth it to give some shine to players who aren’t as rambunctious and animated at the table. In my game, all of my players are good roleplayers and pretty strong personalities, but Karrina's character is naturally more silent and withdrawn. So I like to make sure that at least once during a session I put her in a place to be the focus of some important conversation. In this case, it was with Shelacker, who is one of the most interesting characters on the island. Twyin even jumped in at one point—before remembering he wasn’t at the fire where they were conversing!

Find your Big Scene. Before you go into your session, think about what is going to be accomplished during the session. Are the players going to end up with a key piece of information? Are they going to be solving a political crisis? Are they going to be talking their way out of a death sentence, or into the trust of a powerful criminal lord? Once you know this, you should also know what your big obstacle to gaining this will be, and how that obstacle will be bypassed with roleplaying. The scene where this is done is your Big Scene. There may be more than one, but these represent the “action” of your session, the moment when the stakes are highest and each word spoken could make or break the characters. Think of this as the POINT of the session. Steer your players towards this moment. If things get dull, speed them along to it. And when the Big Scene is resolved, start moving them towards the next one, or wrap up the session (if that is the last Big Scene). When preparing for your session, don’t spend too much time on the incidental bits—focus on the Big Scenes. Prepare some things your NPCs in the scene might say or want. Think on some ways the conversation might resolve and what will happen next. In my session, there were two Big Scenes. The first was when the Butcher of Skago turned up. This moment has the potential to change the entire campaign. If players decide to attack the Butcher, that makes a powerful enemy. In addition, I had to be ready to launch into combat if this happened. Instead, they chose to barter, but even this has a big effect: a new NPC added to their party and a big promise they will be expected to keep after the adventure. The other Big Scene is with the Oracle herself. The campaign suggested playing this out in fifteen minutes of real time, with players asking questions and the Oracle answering. That was a lot of material to prepare, but I was glad I did. When we got to that scene, my players seemed stunned and unsure of what to ask, so the first ten seconds or so were spent in silence. I had enough material prepared that I was able to talk for most of the fifteen minutes and steer them towards questions for the rest.

Assign a "Difficulty Class” to the roleplay. Some DMs, especially newer ones, have trouble deciding which way a conversation has gone without a dice roll. An easy way to bypass this is to make up a conversational difficulty class for your Big Scenes before the session. Think on what goal your characters have and come up with some set things they will have to say or mention in conversation in order to achieve this. Each one they say gives them a success. Then decide how many successes they need to win over their opponent, or get their goal.  This number is your conversation DC, and it best ranges from 1 (easy) to 4 (very difficult). You may also wish to assign certain things negative points, and if they say those things, then you subtract them from their successes. In the Butcher of Skago scene, I had predetermined that the Butcher was going to be better disposed towards anyone who told him about the treasure hunt, anyone who played off his arrogance, and anyone who seemed actually interested in cows, while he would be very ill disposed towards anyone who made threats. During the conversation, Twyin kept throwing the Butcher intimidating looks, so I lowered the number of successes they were getting in the conversation otherwise. The end result was a decent success, so he jumped right to negotiations. I had already decided he would be willing to accept as little as 10% of the treasure as payment, but the party didn’t argue with 50%, so he happily ripped them off.

Hopefully, identifying the Big Scene will help give you a landmark to steer by when running a roleplay heavy session, and the other advice helps get you through without losing your players.

I know that last time I said I would be discussing monster/encounter building in this post, but I’m going to save that for next time, in Return to Ottoman Dock (when they are far more likely to have some encounters).

[zippdementia]

Part 21 Alignment May Vary: Weave a Song for Me

This is the second part of my group’s Celaenos adventure, which began with them uncovering a conspiracy amongst the knights of the monastery to support a slave ring made up of the servants of the Monastery, the sisters of Celaenos. 

Here’s what the players know: the Abbot, Mordekai, seems to be legitimately unaware of what's going on in his monastery. He is debating what the group has told him and plans to contact them in three days.

Meanwhile, The Seneschal, the Abbot's second in command, has been pretty conclusively implicated. In addition, there is a "special delivery" supposed to be scheduled for him in three days. Probably this delivery is the players themselves! Karina intuits that the Seneschal, upon hearing of Mordekai's three day window, is planning to strike before this and thus end the Abbot's suspicions by getting rid of those who have awoken those suspicions.

The players have retired for the night, thinking on the dark plots unfolding around them, yet feeling they have a handle on things to come.

The Night is Full of Terror

No! Let me go! I don’t belong here! I am not supposed to die here!

Karina wakes from her dream with a start, feeling for a brief moment that she is still onboard the Red Hand’s ghost ship (now Twyin’s Vengeance), with the hands of the villagers pulling her down to the deck while the ship is engulfed in flames around her. But no... she is in a room at the inn on Celaenos, the cool breeze coming in from the sea a blessing on this late summer eve.

Cool breeze? She hadn’t left the window open.

Karina rolls to the side and ungracefully off the bed as two knives plunge into the pillow. The screams of her assailants are otherworldly, their language incomprehensible, but their intentions all too clear. The shades standing over her bed turn to her and her skin gets clammy and cold. One of them is Rose, the madame whom they stopped back in Ottoman’s dock. But it is not a Rose who still walks among the living. The shade floating in front of her is wrapped in a black guaze that hangs and sways in a fierce wind unfelt in this dimension. The face is deathly pale and the hands that reach out for her are opaque, through them can be seen the woman’s skeleton.

Karina tries to back away, but the skeletal hand latches onto her shoulder and she feels her strength sapped away. She desperately cries out for help, but even her voice cannot keep its strength and her call withers on her lips.

These Shadows are an excellent example of why you cannot treat CRs as an exact science as a GM. They are 1/2 of a CR, a supposedly easy fight for a party of any size (let alone three level 5 characters). But their Strength draining attack has the potential to no-save-kill Karina in two hits (indeed, I roll a 3 and a 4 on my first two strength hits against her, dropping her Strength score to ONE). In addition, they have them in a bad spot, blocking the door to Karina’s room and getting a critical hit on poor sleeping Tyrion, almost knocking him unconscious in a single blow. Oh, and none of them have had a chance to get on their armor.

It serves as a good reminder of how you can breath new life into lower CR encounters by simply adjusting the situation. Surprise attacks at night by Assassins, Kobolds that lay traps in narrow caverns as they flee, Goblins who inhabit a volcano filled with pitfalls into lava, Werewolves who attack a fesitval where the crowd becomes a moving panicking blockade.

In this case, the Shadows also have a barrier themselves—they have been instructed not to attack Abenthy. Because of a lot of bad rolls on my part, Karina is able to survive long enough to get Abenthy awake and into the fight. Abenthy rolls a couple critical hits and manages to dispatch the Shadows, noting, like Karina, that Rose’s presence here means that she has been killed since their last meeting. By whom? Unknown. 

The fight is vicious. Karina and Tyrion both almost lose their lives and take the next day to rest. While they are resting, Abenthy is sent a visitor by the Abbott. The charismatic white-haired Berthold is a knight very loyal to the Abbott and he informs Abenthy that he and the Abbott discovered an object used in a Dark Ritual, one they think was meant to summon the dead and turn them to dark deeds... like killing pesky adventurers who ask too many questions. Berthold says that it was the evidence the Abbott needed to be convinced of the conspiracy.

Abenthy, after a few insight rolls, feels that Berthold is uncomfortable and knows more than he is letting on. He decides to press him for more information, and slips in that he knows the Seneschal is the one leading the plot. This seems to do the trick: Berthold becomes silent and pensive.

“I am sorry for keeping silent on this matter. We had our suspicions but... well, you do not want to believe your brothers in arms have turned on you, but the seneschal is a man named Athos. He has long been a member of the Monastery. He is the librarian there, the Keeper of Secrets, they call him. He and Dickon—you met him I believe?—they are also in charge of the sisters of Celaenos. Gods, it all comes together.”

And with this, the plan is formed. The Abbott will set up Dickon to be on watch by himself, then will smuggle the players in through a back door. They will corner and silently kill Dickon, then head to the library to wait for Athos to come “tend to his secrets.” There they will kill him and end the slave ring. The Abbott and Berthold will work on a way to free the sisters.

Well Intended

“Alright, I think we are ready,” Abenthy said, nodding to the slender young woman in front of him. She was attractively non-descript, a girl who would strike you as pretty if you saw her, but whose face you would not be able to recall later. Her hair was corded in the fashion of the sisters of Celaenos and on her arms she wore the tell-a-tale bracers that had first alerted them to the conspiracy going on here. Karina hadn’t bothered to name her disguise, she honestly hoped that she wouldn’t be seen at all. But it was a good precaution.

Karina (or rather the skinny sister of Celaenos that she had crafted to hide her appearance) nodded and looked over their group. Tyrion stood out in his bright bard colors, his fingers twitching in the air as if he yearned to play his lute even in their need for silence. Near him Verrick lurked like a misplaced shadow, his black eyes revealing none of his thoughts. Two mercenaries they had picked up in the desert oasis had joined them, a pair she found intensely dislikable: two half-elf brothers, one with a myriad of scars and tattoos defining the hard lines of his face and muscles, the wrinkles at the corners of his mouth suggesting a lifetime of grimacing and smirking rather than smiles and laughter; the other silent but burly and menacing, half of his badly burned face hidden behind a wooden mask painted as monotone and neutral as his personality. A rag-tag band, to be sure. And leading it was Abenthy, a half-angel with a crazed vengeance that scared her, a half-demon, more and more often.

The plan goes awry almost at once. Karina botches her very first stealth roll, so she opens the door directly into the face of Athos, Keeper of Secrets, a white haired older knight dressed more like a monk than a warrior, yet if rumors are to be believed he is also the master of the slave ring being run here. Thankfully, Karina’s disguise and a decent bluff roll convinces Athos that she is naught but a lost sister, and he lets her go without much concern.

The group makes its way to Dickon’s tower and here is where things really fall apart. The group gangs up on him almost immediately, earning his distrust. Only Abenthy’s use of the Command spell and Karina’s arm around his throat keep him from crying the alarum. The problem comes from the fact that the group is torn on what to do here: Tyrion is all for killing him and moving on with the mission. Karina wants him to tell them more of the plot. And Abenthy wants to get him to confess to the Abbott and let the knights deal with this... he doesn’t want more blood on his hands if he can avoid it.

But this is all turned on its head when, after casting a truth spell on the young knight, Abenthy tells Dickon that they know of his plot with Athos, the Seneschal. Dickon replies:

“The Seneschal is not Athos. The Seneschal is Berthold.”

The hairs on the back of Abenthy’s neck stand up as he hears this, and realizes that Berthold may, at this very moment, be moving to assassinate the Abbott. He says they must go to the Abbott at once! He is so eager to get there that he even agrees to leave his weapons in the tower (the rest of the party obliges as well). Dickon, no longer sure who to trust, agrees to lead them to the Abbott. Clearly, Abenthy thinks, this was a plot to get rid of Dickon, Athos, and the Abbott, probably the only opposition Berthold has.

Sing me a Song, Bard

“Abbott, we have reason to believe your life is in immediate danger.”

Abenthy, breathing heavily from their hurried journey to the Abbott’s chambers, watched the black haired man casually settle himself behind a large desk.

“Dickon, go fetch Berthold,” Mordekai, Abbott of Celaenos, seemed infuriatingly calm in the face of the danger that faced him. “We will work out this matter right now.”

Dickon left, and Mordekai indicated that the others should sit. 

“You’ve brought quite the army,” he said, indicating Verrick and the two half-elves. 

“We thought we could use them,” Karrina said. Mordekai nodded. He had clearly been preparing for sleep and was only wearing a simple shirt and breeches, though he had wrapped a dark cloak around his shoulders to ward off the evening cold.

“Sing me a song, Bard,” he said. Tyrion obliged, beginning to play a jaunty tune, but Mordekai stopped him. “Something quieter, more somber. Do you know the Rains of Castamere?”

As the doleful melody began to play, Abenthy caught sight of something on Mordekai’s desk: a framed photo of a woman, strikingly beautiful and instantly recognizable. Another chill went up Abenthy’s spine.

“Let me tell you a story,” he said slowly. “It involves a woman who thought to keep slaves, in a port town called Ottoman’s dock. What she used the slaves for, outside of basic chores, was unknown, but through magical means she kept their minds enslaved, kept their free will in check. Rumor had it someone else was involved in helping her with this task, and that sometimes the slaves would disappear, go to this other person.

“Eventually this woman’s hubris cost her her business. Her plot was discovered, her slavery ended. She fled, maybe to this other person, maybe to somewhere else across the sea. Regardless, she showed up in my rooms last night, or her spirit did. I wonder how such a thing could come to be.”

Mordekai picked up the photograph and ran a loving finger over it. “She was beautiful, was she not?” he said. “Poor Rose. To think that she let you three get the better of her in Ottoman’s dock, well, we couldn’t allow that failure to stand, could we? Such a waste, cutting her throat.”

At that moment, the door opened, and Berthold entered, led in by Dickon.

“Ah, Berthold,” Mordekai said. “Let’s dispense with pretenses, shall we?”

Without a word, Berthold stabbed two daggers through Dickon’s neck. The young knight’s eyes went wide and then they rolled back in their sockets. Blood flecked his lips as he gave a single cough and expired. Berthold led him to the floor, then drew two new blades as Mordekai stood, pulling a mace and a dagger from under the desk. Darkness billowed out from his cape. He removed a ring from his finger and the sudden sensation of an evil presence washed over Abenthy.

“Now, let us begin,” Mordekai said, as darkness swallowed his form.

Next week we will see if the players survive this deadly encounter, and I’ll talk a little bit about how a GM can successfully navigate a difficult “living” set up like the Monastery of Celaenos, where many NPCs with different motivations reside and are interacting with each other and the players. It is a scenario that comes up often in 5th Edition modules, so it is good to talk about!

[zippdementia]

Part 17 Alignment May Vary: Old Debts

As the party makes the final descent of the dungeon, they begin to worry a little about Abenthy, who has shown a sudden bloodthirsty zealotry towards his Deva and is suddenly doing Justice in the name of Tyr and Venthusias.

Abenthy knelt over the bodies of the two reavers, wiping the salt water off his brow as he stared at the corpses. The Fathomer had died nearly on top of him, its serpentine body dissolving back into the stuff of the sea as it did. He made a mental note to air out his chain mail that night; he didn’t want the links rusting.

These men, these reavers, these murderers... they had met their end at his and Tywin’s blades and a month or two ago that would have been enough for him. But now Abenthy felt the displeasure of his patron, Venthusias. What had the angel in his dream told him? Mete out justice to his enemies. Make them fear his blade.

Resolved, Abenthy drew a hunting knife and began to carve away the neck tattoos of the reavers, affixing the flaps of skin with blood and matted hair to his chain mail. Oh, they would fear him, he who wore the signs of his work openly...

But thoughts of this and what it might mean are driven from their minds as they enter a pristine white chapel, at the far end of which Targaryen sits at an old piano, playing a melancholy song. Beyond him lies a massive statue of an angel, and in its hands sits the many-headed Jade statue from so long ago. Nearby it, there is a door leading, presumably, to the harbor where the Red Hand ship is docked.

“Karrina,” Targaryen says. “You came back for me. I am so glad you are here.”

Old Debts

Karrina begins to engage her old ally in an uncertain and uncomfortable discussion. Why is he here? To pass on his knowledge to his sister. What is his goal? To remake the world as it should be. Why is he working for the Red Hand? He is not. He is working for the Drowned God. How did he know she was coming? She wears a piece of the Jade statue around her neck, the piece she took from the Shaman on board the Red Hand ship the fateful night that Targaryen’s “eyes were opened.” She needs to give it to him, and join him. Her companions are welcome to join as well.

Throughout the conversation, Tywin and Abenthy seem to be sitting patiently on the pews in the chapel, listening intently. In reality, this is an illusion cast by Targaryen into Karrina’s mind. Their conversation is a telepathic one, and it is this illusion that makes the chapel seem so untouched. In reality, Abenthy and Tywin are already locked in deadly combat with Targaryen, who runs up and down the pews with a gigantic black scythe, blocking their blows with a mental shield that slows their attacks and seems to turn the very air around Targaryen into an invisible wall.

The chapel that Tywin and Abenthy see is a water logged ruin whose very walls and ceiling ooze mud as the swamp around the tower actively forces it deeper into the earth. The piano is long decayed, though its haunting melody still plays, and the statue at the back of the chapel is not of an angel, but of a headless demon, clutching in a stony, clawed grip the Jade statue.

Targaryen is a tough opponent who attacks with his scythe, his mind, and with spell-like abilities (though he never did get good at aiming his ice attacks). He pounds Abenthy and Tywin over and over with his mind, but the two prove too resilient for him. Abenthy in particular is enraged by Targaryen, whom he blames for the death of the Butcher of Skago and for all of his men. His sword alights with the flames of justice and he gives back as much as he takes until finally he shatters Targaryen’s shield and deals him a blow that sends him retreating out of the chapel. Karrina’s illusion is shattered and Abenthy follows Targaryen to deliver the final blow.

“Wait!” Targaryen shouted, gripping his side where Abenthy’s sword had cut into him. “If you kill me now, it will not end. My power will only grow in defeat.”

“I have no reason to trust you,” Karrina retorted, striding forward and notching an arrow to her bow. “You are not the Targaryen I knew.”

“Am I not? You made me what I am, Karrina. You left me to die.”

“No! The Targaryen I knew stayed behind to save me.”

“You would kill me again, Karrina?” Tywin whispered, ignoring her.

“Not her, me,” Abenthy said, and slid his blade across the psychic’s neck.

My Power Grows

Tywin stumbles back, clutching at the hole that was his throat. Blood cascades through his fingers, but it is soon followed by a gush of water. More and more water comes and an evil voice is heard chuckling:

“Did you think I would leave my disciple without a way to revenge himself?”

The water coalesces, turning into a huge two headed beast made of liquid and spray. It rises above Targaryen’s dessecated body and roars. Abenthy does not wait: he flies forward on his angelic wings and cuts the two heads off immediately. Only, his weapon is no longer flaming, and almost as soon as the heads are gone, four more sprout from the stumps.

The hydra then counter attacks, tearing Abenthy from the sky in a rush of fangs and tossing his limp body to the ground, where he lies, unmoving. The beast then turns its wet gaze on Karrina, and even though it is only an approximation of eyes, the barest suggestion of them, Karrina feels the hatred there.

Karrina retreats to the far end of the room, the beast following with a roar. She unleashes arrow after arrow at it and each blow seems to deal it damage, but it does not halt its charge. Then, just before it reaches her, Tywin is there.

“To me!” he cries, brandishing a saw-toothed longsword in one hand and a ball-and-chain in the other. “Come at me, you beast!”

The beast complies, rushing at him in a watery blur of motion, the four heads darting in and out as they focus their attacks on the grizzled general. Tywin fights with a ferocity that matches the Hydra’s, dodging and striking with precise timing, parrying blows and dealing such a devastating strike that the Hydra is thrown into confusion and even fear, its attacks hesitating long enough for Tywin to press his advantage.

Karrina meanwhile, is stuck, pressed against the demonic statue by the Hyrda’s bulk, unable to dart around it. She begins to climb the statue instead, seeking to get over the Hydra and jump past it, hoping to make it to Abenthy’s prone form and revive him with her last potion. She makes the jump, lands awkwardly, and the Hydra’s heads swivel round and focus on her.

“No!” Tywin shouts, but as he darts forward he finally takes a misstep and one of the heads grabs him around the middle. The creature may be made of water, but its fangs are sharp enough to pierce Tywin’s shift (he had to remove his armor due to the acidic black ooze) and throw him to the ground. Karrina stares in shock at him, torn between going to him or Abenthy. She only has one potion.

“Go!” Tywin shouts. "Save Abenthy and run!” He gives her no chance to argue, slamming his ball and chain into the Hydra’s face, enraging it. With a deep growl it turns all of its heads to Tywin and begins to tear him apart. Tywin’s shouts never quite become a scream: his last breath is spent cursing in defiance of the creature. His last thoughts are unknown, but perhaps they are of his family and of finally reuniting with them.

For Justice

Trying to ignore the sounds behind her, Karrina sprints to Abenthy and pours her healing potion, her last, down his throat. He takes a shuddering breath and his eyes open. He gets to his feet and takes in the scene quickly.

“Going back is pointless,” he says. “And the way forward is blocked by that beast. The only way is to kill it.” He draws his blade.

“I’ll cover you,” Karrina says, and backs up, drawing her bow.

Abenthy runs forward to the Hydra, still distracted by its meal. Before it can react, Abenthy has stabbed it twice in the chest, his magical blade sizzling as it pierces the seawater carapace. Karrina’s arrow flies, entering one of the heads (to her relief, it does not die and spawn more). The Hydra falls on its haunches, clearly staggered by the attack. But the battle is not yet won. It strikes Abenthy, throwing him back into a pew, where he groans and lays motionless. And then it starts to look for Karrina...

Karrina saw Abenthy fall and instinct pulled her behind the nearest pew, where she crouched, breathing heavily and trying to think past the roar of the Hydra. She checked her quiver: plenty of arrows, but it might as well have been one. There was time for only one shot. Then the creature would see her, charge with giant strides across the room, and after that... well, she was realistic about her chances against a five-headed Hydra. She had made up her mind she would not run from this fight. She would not once again leave her allies to die while she survived. She was fighting, right now, the results of the last time she had made that choice. Her past either caught up wtih her now, or she fought past it.

Stilling her breath, she rose, pulled back her bow and, without thinking more on it, released.

The shot is a critical hit. In addition, Karrina was hiding, so she gets her sneak attack damage. The result is just enough to drop the Hydra.

Karrina is able to revive Abenthy and both of them stand over the mangled remains of Tywin, silently mourning the loss of their friend. Abenthy, in rage, walks to Targaryen’s corpse and calls out a terrible condemnation, sending Targaryen’s soul to one of the nine hells, pronouncing a dark name that he doesn’t remember learning. Karrina, with her demonic background, understands something of what he has done: he has barred Targaryen’s soul from moving on, forced it to an enternity of torture in the pits of hell. She shudders and feels the loss of two allies—Targaryen and Tywin both—and wonders if Abenthy’s behavior portends the loss of him, as well.

The rest is quickly told: Karrina takes the Jade statue but does not reunite it with the piece she wears around her neck (which burns a mark into her chest as it draws near to its “mother”). Then, past the door is an underground harbor. There the two find and commandeer the Red Hand ghost ship, taking it back to the beach to pick up their comrades. The soldiers are distraught at the loss of Tywin but pledge to carry on his memory by returning to Vraath Keep one day and reclaiming it from the giants in his name. Abenthy swears to this quest as well. Karrina eyes him uneasily, no longer sure of his true intentions... or sanity.

They do not find the sister of Targaryen, the girl known as Jade.

How long will it be before Karrina and Abenthy have a confrontation over his actions? Which of them is right? Does justice demand vengeance or deserve forgiveness? This and more next time, in to Build a Desert.

[zippdementia]

Part 79 Alignment May Vary: Safety in Numbers

We are more than three years into the game, now. Maybe it’s time for a little recap?

I envision our adventure as taking part in multiple arcs. The first arc Preludes and Portents was mostly set up for the story, taking Karina, Shando, and Targaryen/Daymos up through the death of Shando at the hands of Reeves Testain.

The second arc An Unintended Quest follows Tywin (renamed Lorin in our podcast), Karina, and Abenthy on the first part of their quest for Haggemoth’s tomb, ending with the death of Tywin.

The third arc The Forgotten Past follows Karina, Abenthy, and crowd pleaser Tyrion (to be renamed at a later date) through the desert of Thud and up until the reveal of Abenthy’s demonic father at the monastery.

The fourth arc The Hidden Hoard follows the same party as they finish the quest of Haggemoth, gain Trakki the elven monk as a companion, and lose Abenthy to his own machinations. With Reeves Sar Testain finally defeated, the third arc ends, and Karina finally leaves the party to pursue her own destiny.

The fifth arc Into the Maw involves a new party of Tyrion (for our story, renamed Bitterberry), Trakki, and Nysyries as they pursue the Red Hand into the lands of Rhest. It ends as they become infected by the will of Nazragul.

The sixth arc Redemption takes us through the evil arc, ending with the death of Tyrion and the arrival of Aldric, and concludes with the purging of Nazragul from Nysyries.

The seventh arc The Fall into Night covers the battle of brindol, sees the newest party formed after the death of Nysyries: Carrick, Aldric, and Imoaza, and goes up through the party blasting (unintentionally) into space.

The eighth arc Hellspawn covers the party’s adventures in Hell and the elemental planet of air..

The ninth arc Crossing the Void begins with Aldric’s death. It covers the githyanki fortress and will end with what is about to come next, described in this post. Because there are a planned total of eleven arcs (after this there is Tears and Torments, and finally The Coming of the Three), this really brings us close to the end. It’s been a huge, epic adventure, but now it’s time to start pulling all the players together for the inevitable endgame, which is why we are going to start with the return of a character from long ago...

The Return of Daymos

Centuries ago, Daymos was killed on Faerun by Lorin, Karina, and Abenthy, and Abenthy sent his soul to Ia’fret to be tortured for eternity. Only, eternity didn’t up being all that long in the grand scheme of things. Ia’fret was called by Asmodeus to do battle in the final days of the blood war and so Ia’fret took his cavernous domain and transported it like a giant arc into the Abyss, using his souls to power him as he cut through swathes of demons alongside Asmodeus. However, while this gambit ultimately won the war, Ia’fret himself was cut down in battle and his “arc” left abandoned, sandwiched three quarters between the 9th and 10th layers of the abyss, the wayward souls he brought with him exposed to the depravities and hunger of an entire population of demons now cut off from the material realm.

Many of the souls perished in those early days, but Daymos was not among them. He hid through most of the initial carnage and when that was over, he emerged and made the now empty cavern his own lair. He could not command it the way Ia’fret had, but he could use it as a secret refuge. He wanted to get back to Faerun, to find his sister, Jade, and to restart his life. But he could not find a way out of the Abyss: it seemed shut off from the outside world completely. So he bid his time and wait, and in his waiting, he hunted. What did he hunt? Demons.

It may have been sixty years. It may have been a hundred. Time is... difficult... in the Abyss. Daymos aged, but he kept himself young by locating caches of potions of youth and using them. This was somewhat dangerous: sometimes the potions backfired and aged him. Other times, they deaged him too much and once he had to hide out until he grew back from a child into an adult again. Overall, though, he managed to keep himself in his young 20s and 30s. And he hunted demons, stalking them through many layers of the abyss, learning their secrets and building his psychic powers back. He quickly found that his powers were growing beyond his ability to control: he needed a focus. In Ia’fret’s lair he found a demonic spellbook and he poured his energy into this. This meant that he needed the book to cast most of his psionic powers but it removed the threat of his powers tearing his mind apart. He acquired other items during this time, such as a robe of stars, a ring of cold resistance, and a baleful dagger that he used to slit the throats of a few demons, but his greatest power lay in ranged ambushes, using his mind to dominate lesser demons and then slay them. He remained physically weak and would not long stand up to the direct attacks of even a mid-tier demon.

And so Daymos learned to be clever, and he learned to be silent, and he learned, above all, to be patient, while he waited for his opportunity to escape. And then, suddenly, it came. He felt the Abyss expand, reconnect to the outer world. And so he left Ia’fret’s cave, following his psychic senses to a newly opened portal. He leaped in, and escaped.

Not the Expected Homecoming

"What’s that?” Imoaza pointed through the frozen air and pounding sleet. Carrick, next to her, squinted towards the sky but it was like trying to see through a physical object.

“You’re going to have to describe it,” he said.

“It’s a light, human shaped, and it’s moving fast back towards the camp.”

“Could be trouble. We should head back. This hunt for a sabre-toothed tiger hasn’t done anything except make me colder.”

“Don’t mention the cold.” Imoaza was trying not to think about it. Her metabolism was not built for cold climates.

Heading back towards the camp, the two find Daymos waiting for them. He tells them the light they saw was him, that it is a way he can choose to travel when he has “a mind” to.

Daymos is mostly excited to be out of the Abyss and back on Faerun, but he is disturbed when he learns from Carrick that he has landed in the Sword Coast.

“Last I checked, the sword coast wasn’t frozen,” Daymos says. “How long has it been?”

But Carrick and Imoaza aren’t the best source of information, as they are new to this Faerun as well and can only tell Daymos that the last time they set foot on Faerun it was DR 1475. Daymos nods at this, telling them that he died in 1474, and he knows that was at least a century ago.

Ultimately, Daymos decides to travel with the group. The other travelers who are leading this pilgrimage don’t mind, they say anyone is welcome to “visit the lady.” He spends the evening gambling with Carrick, and using his psychic powers to turn the dice to his favor, a trick Carrick eventually catches. Carrick lets him keep his winnings, saying that he has paid to learn something about Daymos.

Milosh spends the evening weaving leather armor into his body, patching himself up, though he remains looking like a Frankenstein-ian monster. Imoaza curls up as close to a fire as she can and watches the strange and unfamiliar weave that the magic in this time creates in the air, visible to those who know how to seek it.

The morning is wet and miserable. The caravan soon comes to an inn outside of Baldur’s Gate and the players are warned it is haunted. But Daymos is keen to explore it and Carrick sees his paladin friend from the ship inside, his head bleeding from some kind of wound. The party as a whole decides to investigate, running through the rain and inside the arch of the inn:

The main doorway is unbarred, and the archway is as silent and gloomy as the exterior of the keep. Any wafting mists or ill weather seems to halt abruptly within 10 ft. of the open doors. There are no sounds of clattering dishes nor the bustle of inn keepers. Rain drips upon you as you pass under the keystone of the arch. From the glow of hundreds of candles that are lit in the lobby, though, you realize this passing has instead anointed you in red, dripping blood.

 The lobby is an expansive space, broken up by a dozen hearth stations, and the dual stairway across the room, which converges into a landing and slopes to the floor. Once you are all inside, it’s as if a veil of shadow has been lifted from your sight, and you see a vast array of strange, stirring shapes around you. The scene has the aspect of a monstrous court of deformed demons dressed to nobility. Your nose warns of the unpleasant possibility that human blood is being used as perfume, and flesh is being roasted or consumed raw from the many spits planted over the hearths. In the air, there rises a crescendo of guttural chortling that you cannot comprehend.

A woman of undeniable beauty makes a dramatic entrance down the stairway. Her footsteps echo with the clack of thigh-high, studded leather boots and she carries an immediate air of dismissive authority. She is showing a generous amount of skin between silver plating that has been polished to a mirror surface, adding a shimmering effect in the firelight. She is wrapped in a shawl of white fox fur, and although she appears youthful and walks with a brash, flippant strut, her shortcropped hair is white and her unnaturally blue eyes betray some sort of ancient malevolence. She takes her place by the grandest hearth and reclines against two huge, muscled men in chained collars who kneel to form her chair. Her baleful gaze has never parted from all of you as she made this fashionable entrance.

The woman is a Demoness, really a Demon Goddess, named Eshebala and she explains that this isn’t Faerun, but rather a good possibility for what Faerun could look like if they ever return, based on what she has taken from the minds of the players and from Milosh’s prophecy, which is still buried inside of him and which she claims to understand better than he does. She offers them a chance to see for themselves by returning to Faerun, but first they have to play her game. Eshebala doesn’t mention her true motives yet, which are... well, no, I shouldn’t say now. My players could be reading. We’ll get to that in a later post.

In any case, her game is simple: the players have arrived on the 193rd layer of the Abyss, a place called Vulgarea. Now they have to survive 20 of Vulgarea’s most deadly locations. All the demons chant as the room goes dark, “...all will enter, one walks away…all will enter, one walks away…”

This is the beginning of a new dungeon, one created by a third party designer and illustrator, Ryan Durney. It is called Mirrors of the Abyss, and it is intensely interesting.

I choose Mirrors because it is the only campaign I’ve ever read that actually captures the chaos and insane deadliness of the Abyss. It is a player killer dungeon, make no mistake about that, but with enough personality that an enterprising DM can easily adjust the difficulty down simply by playing the personalities up; a haughty demon might not use all of its powerful attacks on a party it views as too weak to harm it, allowing them to gain the upper hand, bargain with it, or escape it’s grasp; a obsessive compulsive demon may have powerful melee strikes but will refrain from approaching a human because “they are gross and full of germs.” And there are lots of nooks and crannies in which to fit long rest options.

Regardless, the descriptions, the illustrations and handouts, and the sheer ambition of the dungeon makes for a truly unique experience for anywhere from 3-12 players and the dungeon has a ton of randomized elements that make it replayable. You can insert this into your own story (just make sure players are at least level 15) or run it once a year as a special grindhouse game for a big group of players. There are even rules for continuing to play if you are killed, at which point you become a wraith who is given a chance to get their life back by screwing over one of the party members. It makes for a memorable experience, to be sure.

The way the dungeon is laid out is that there are 21 rooms. The 1st room is always visited first and sets up the rest of the game, but after that the room order is randomized. Each room represents one challenge or series of themed challenges which the players have to solve or survive in order to progress. Along the way are hidden rooms and treasures and some of the deadliest (but avoidable) encounters I’ve ever seen penned in Dungeons & Dragons. And at the end... well, that’s another thing we’ll have to get to later.

For now, the players are left in the dark as the inn collapses around them. When the dust settles, they find they are in a dark cave, with a riddle and a clue and room #1: the start of Esheballa’s Game. Next time, Welcome to My Game.

[zippdementia]

Part 36 Alignment May Vary: Finale

Thirty six posts and over a year ago we began this crazy romp with three prisoners on a ship in the middle of the chilly Moon Sea. Now we come full circle. Karina has found and forgiven her mentor, Tyrion has cured his affliction, and their new companion Traki is about to become wrapped up forever in the machinations of the red hand...

Why did he join this group of travelers? The question hits Traki like a stone. The night before agreeing to follow the Tiefling into the mind of her mentor, he had had a vision, a true vision, the first one since he had crashed on the accursed island. In it, he had once again seen his brother Falco, who told him that the elves of his homeland had felt his presence as soon as he had left Rori Rama.

“I am coming home to you, brother,” Traki had said. But Falco had told him that no home was left. Dragons had come to the woods. Dragons had pierced the secret places, found the valley, burned it and anyone who dared to stand against them. Nor had the dragons been alone: A goblinesque creature had ridden one, a great Black Beast of a Dragon, and on his chest had been painted the symbol of a Red Hand. Home, which had existed peacefully in the forest valley for thousands of years, was gone.

The Red Hand... Traki had seen the Hand clawing at the earth in fevered visions, had seen it spreading fire across the trees and forests of the world. He had also seen three figures, indistinct in their features, stride towards the hand, bringing with them light. Three figures he had seen, and three he had found, two Tieflings and a halfing. Inauspicious heroes to be sure, but he had told his brother he could not return to him yet, that he had to go chasing the Hand. And then he had followed the female Tiefling into her dream world. The Gods had repaid his gumption by taking his eyes.

But they will not take my world.

Determined, Traki told himself he would train; every day until the exhaustion tore him into sleep he would train to learn to rely on his other senses. Blindness would not be a disability but a boon. He would not be distracted from his purpose. His enemies could hide their bodies but not their smells, their breathing, their sighs of fear as he came for them. He would follow the three of his vision and the Red Hand would fall.

First, though, there are bills to pay.

Returning the Favor

Clem and the other crew members of Twyin’s Revenge approach the companions shortly after their return from Rayden’s mind.

“There is the issue of payment,” Clem explains as they all gather. “Our crew put nearly a year of their lives into this and expected 50% of the treasure in return, as Abenthy promised Captain Krisp. We are guessing that treasure doesn’t exist...”

Clem and the crew end up demanding several things: all of the party’s gold, the ship Tywin’s Revenge, and the eye of Callax from Karina. The party is willing to give up the ship, but they are not happy about the gold and Karina refuses to give up her most precious item, so a bartering ensues. It becomes heated once, when Tyrion casts Hold Person on Clem, but quickly the party realizes they will never make it back to civilzation on their own. The crew has them in a bind.

Ultimately they settle on giving up their masterwork weapons for resale, as well as several magical items—most prominent among them Haggemoth’s Band of Intellect and Belt of Defence, Tyrion’s Ioun Stone, and Karina’s Elven Chainmail. They are hard bargains, but as the crew puts it, they were owed much much more.

It is a sullen party, thus, that makes it way back to Ottoman Docks. Rayden and Xaviee depart at the Desert Island of Thud along the way, Rayden to await Karina’s return here (she still has to claim the portion of the land that the Fuzwah of Thud gifted her) and then assist her in whatever she decides to do, and Xaviee to catch a ship back to the Elsir Vale.

“Better men than I took on this quest and did not survive,” Xaviee tells them. “I can only imagine that the gods are not done with me yet. But I also know my path no longer matches your own. Abenthy showed me that. If I see him... well, best not to dwell on it. I will return to my homeland and prepare to finish what Twyin started.”

His parting is bittersweet. He leaves a friend, but a distant one, hurt deeply by Abenthy’s turn to his demonic father.

The group arrives at Ottoman’s dock in a late afternoon turned to night by a building storm. They make their way past the docks and Rose’s old tavern (now seemingly a gambling hall) and arrive at Zennatos door. Karina pauses here. It is almost too painful to open that door. The last time she did, Abenthy was here, and Tywin with his smarmy smile and callous manner. Both gone now. No, Abenthy is not gone, only changed forever. The thought comes as she gathers her resolve and pushes her way inside.

And finds herself staring into Abenthy’s cool eyes.

“Karina. I thought we might meet here. I was just explaining to Zennatos what must happen next, and why.”

Zennatos and Abenthy sit in the crowded sitting room, facing each other from the depths of large plush armchairs. Zennatos clutches a cup of tea like it is a magic shield of protection, while Abenthy sits calmly, unmoving as a statue except for the slight turn of the head he gives to look at Karina. His skin is like a statue’s as well, deathly pale, though with a strange dullness to it. His eyes, too, once so bright, are now strangely dead. He has lost his shine.

His life. Karina thinks. He is drifting away from all that made him cherish life.

Tyrion’s thoughts are more direct: I will kill this bastard. He had not forgotten the power lost when Haggemoth’s scales were destroyed, nor the way Abenthy had blithely brushed off his attacks afterwards. It was past time for a rematch.

Traki, on the other hand, sees nothing but feels the tension in the room and decides to leave well enough alone, at least for the time being. He says nothing but listens intently as Abenthy begins to explain why Zennatos must die.

“He stole the book,” Abenthy says. “And that in turn led to death and destruction for everyone. The people of Friezorazov, enslaved now by the Giant. The paladins of the monastery, dead by our hands.”

“The Desert Island of Thud,” Tyrion shoots back. “Saved by us.”

Abenthy stared at him. “One good deed does not erase the bad.”

“And one bad deed does not erase the good,” Karina counters. “This is wrong, Abenthy. It is not for you to punish Zennatos or judge him.”

“It is for me. I am the inevitability of Justice. There is no other more able to judge.”

Karina moves suddenly and stands in front of Zennatos. Quickly, Verrick moves to her side. Abenthy looks at him, and there is a touch of sadness in his eyes.

“I see you have reunited with your lover.”

“He lives, yes.”

“Move aside, Karina. I don’t wish to hurt you. I won’t hurt you.”

“And you won’t hurt Zennatos, either.”

“That is where you are wrong.”

“Can we talk more about bringing rain to the desert?” Zennatos chimes in with a quavering voice. “That was a good topic. All the good that came from my quest, yes?”

Wings burst then from Abenthy’s back, great skeletal wings, and his eyes glow a dark red. Fear washes over the room and Zennatos yelps in fright. Karina barely manages to contain herself in time to activate her cloak of Darkness. Abenthy’s fearful visage is lost in darkness. She reaches out through it, touches Abenthy’s face. “Come back to us. Don’t choose the path of your father. Don’t do this.”

“I must,” he says, and flings her aside.

What follows here is a surprisingly even fight. Abenthy is level 10 at this point, to Karina and co’s 7 (almost 8). But he refuses to hurt them, while they can barely hope to hit him with his AC of 24 (magical items boost it). Tyrion is full of rage, attacking Abenthy over and over to little effect until he finally switches to picking away at his health with psychic damage, for one or two or three points of health at a time. On top of this, everyone is rolling at disadvantage for the darkness and so consistently ends up with less than 10′s on their dice, except for Traki who keeps punching Abenthy in the back of the head, Karina who rolls her usual natural 20s, and myself who doesn’t roll much lower than 17 for Zennatos. This leads to some very amusing situations where Abenthy continually tries to get past Karina and repeatedly gets overwhelmed by her paltry 8 (or somewhere around there) Strength and finds himself on the ground with Karina pinning him... only to shove her off and start again. Meanwhile, Zennatos is blitzing through the darkness like an idiot savant, eventually getting the idea to smash a window to make Abenthy think he has fled.

It is not quite the dramatic encounter I had hoped for, but it does speak nicely to the conflicts plaguing the party. No one really is invested in hurting each other, except Tyrion who doesn’t yet have the power to go it alone, and so the battle devolves into a depressing and uncomfortable stalemate. Karina does try to talk Abenthy out of his path by insisting that Zennatos should spend his life in attonement rather than pay for his crimes by wasting that life, and Abenthy’s player allows her one roll to try and persuade him, but as luck would have it, it’s the one low roll of the night for her, and the attempt badly fails, only strengthening Abenthy’s resolve.

In truth, I had expected that Abenthy and Tyrion would clash like Titans and Karina would get caught in the crossfire, or else Zennatos would actually be murdered before the party could stop Abenthy. Instead seeing the stalemate continue on, I decide to step in and move us along to the next part of the finale...

I Hear Bells a Ringin’

Alarm bells begin to sound all over the city. Traki, having some background as a sailor, knows the sound and what this particular peal means.

“Pirates,” he says. “Marauders attacking the docks.”

“It is the Red Hand,” Karina says from the darkness.

“The Red Hand?” Traki’s heart leaps at the words. The prophecies were true!

“Reeves,” agrees Verrick. “He has followed us around the seas and back again.”

“The pirate captain who murdered your companions?” Tyrion asks.

Shando. Targaryen. Their names plague Karina’s thoughts. “Do you hear that, Abenthy?” she asks. “It is the men who murdered the Butcher of Skagos, who worked with Rose to kidnap women and enslave them to her will and the will of Mordekai.” Whoose armor you now wear. “There is your evil. Will you fight it? Will you bring them justice?”

The silence stretches on.

“Zennatos has fled,” Abenthy says at last. “Justice will find him, but today my strength is needed elsewhere. Yes. I will fight.”

Only then does Karina let her darkness fall away. She is face to face with Abenthy again. Their eyes meet. The look that passes between them carries the weight of lost possibilities. And then he turns and is soon gone, sweeping from the room like a light extinguished.

Zennatos momentarily emerges from his hiding and stammers out a thanks, begging Karina to continue protecting him. She tells him that where she is going it is not safe. He needs to flee this place, disguise himself, and above all do good. Only attonement, she believes, will save him from Abenthy’s justice. Zennatos agrees, handing the team over 300 gold pieces to thank them for their efforts.

The players then move out into the storm. The city is alive with shouts and screams, the noise carrying over the sound of the clanging bells. In the distance a red glow signifies fire—it looks to be coming from the Lord’s fortress. They move down the street towards the docks, stopping to fight ten Ratzotto pirates and their captain in the city center, dispatching them fairly easily (proving how far they have come in the course of this adventure). By the time they reach the docks, the storm has turned into a gale, sending waves crashing over the docks, where men are fighting to the death. From one dock three pirate ships have landed and men are swarming towards the city, but there, too, the companions can see the towering figure of Abenthy, cutting down enemies as they come at him, taking on eight pirates at once, rallying the city guard to move in and handle the others. Soon, he is lost in the mayhem.

The companions head another direction, towards a ship Karina knows well. The Audacity sits at dock as she remembers it, a low sleek pirate schooner, built for speed and stealth. It is not bothering with stealth now. It has crashed itself into the docks and secured itself with grappling hooks. It rides the storm easy, as if the storm is its horse. The deck has more than a half dozen pirates on it, though these are little like the Ratzotto’s the fought in the square earlier. Months ago, Karina watched as her former friend Targaryen murdered her new ally, General Tywin of the Elsir Vale, in a drowned tower while they tried to rescue Targaryen’s sister. Targaryen and the pirates that assisted him had been changed by the power of some God of the deep, morphed into beings that seemed more at home in the ocean than on land. These pirates now reflect that same change. Some are covered in barnacles. One has blue skin. Most grin to show razor sharp teeth and some even have claws instead of fingers. And at their head stands Captain Reeves Testain, his black beard encrusted with the salt of the sea and interwoven with stalks of seaweed. His jacket is open, leaving his chest bare, his pale skin slick with rain that seems not to bother him. His smile is manic, his stare one from beyond the grave. He sees Karina...

... but before anything else can happen, Twyin’s Revenge, manned by Clem and the rest of the crew, crashes into the Audacity, knocking several of the pirates into the sea. Crossbow bolts fire across the deck, taking down several more pirates. For a moment, the battle seems won, but then the sea opens up underneath Twyin’s Revenge and a monstrous mass of tentacles wrap themselves around the Ghost Ship. Clem and the others are dragged away from the Audacity, the men cutting desperately at tentacles as thick as masts. Reeves turns his attention back to the companions and gestures, and five pirates, four men and one woman, leap off the Audacity to meet the companions on the final dock leading to the Audacity, the final bridge between the players and their destiny.

This is a fun fight. I use enemies from the Princes of Apocalypse campaign, two reavers, two dark tide knights, and one fathomer. It’s a bit of a test, too, to see how the players will do against more varied enemies and groups in the upcoming campaign. Tomb of Haggemoth has a lot of Boss Monsters (tm) and Red Hand of Doom is much more about a mixture of enemies with different classes and abilities supporting each other to make combat harder and more tactical. I want to see how that plays out here.

It is a tough fight. The reavers go down pretty quick, with Karina “leaving her mark” on one of them in the form of a bolt through the eye. But their point is to blockade, not kill: they block the bridge long enough to give the fathomer time to cast spells from afar without being harried, and he rolls three critical strikes, severely cutting down the health of Tyrion. When Tyrion faces off against one of the knights, he is quick to be knocked unconscious. And then things get interesting.

Seeing that the blind monk is battling effectively despite his condition and that Karina is a good shot, the knight tries a different strategy. He kicks Tyrion’s unconscious body off the dock and into the sea, forcing the players to split up if they wish to save him. Karina takes the bait, leaping off into the ocean and making some very harrowing spot checks to see if she can find and save Tyrion. Left alone to face both the knight and the sorcerous fathomer, Traki is soon overwhelmed on the dock and goes down.

Now, as far as the enemies know, they have won the fight. The fathomer starts walking the dock to check the waters, make sure the heroes are down. The dark tide knight goes to work on searching Traki’s body--they are pirates after all, and this gives the players a turn to make a plan before the knight tosses HIS body into the sea as well. The players take the opportunity: Karina, having pulled Tyrion to shore without being seen, revives him and together they launch a sneak attack against the knight, killing him.

Left alone to face three heroes, the fathomer changes tactics, turning into his serpent form and trying to drag Traki into the sea to drown him. Traki avoids this attack and the fathomer tries one more desperate ploy: turning invisible, he dives into the sea and waits for the players to cross the bridge. Then he gets behind them and sneak attacks Karina with vampiric touch, draining her health and restoring his own. It doesn’t save him, Karina is quick to reverse the hold and cut him in half with her scimitar, but it leaves them all shaken and injured for the final battle, out of potions and running low on spells.

And it does illustrate that the players are ready to face the Red Horde and gives me some direction on making some final touch ups to the Red Hand campaign before we begin. But first, there is an old foe to face...

The Final Battle

“The little bird returns!” though he stood on the prow of Audacity in the midst of the storm, the companions could hear Reeves Testain as if he stood directly next to them. For Traki the experience was the most surreal as he could not see the man to show the lie.

“I have followed you across the oceans, girl,” Reeves continues. “I used my scrying magic to see your path. I lost you once, recently, when you went to an island where I could not follow. But now I have you again. And I see you have hatched more companions, girl. Do they know how your other friends died? If they did, perhaps they would not be so eager to stay with you.“ He spotted Verrick standing next to her. “And you have brought your manservant, too. Traitor! You betrayed the Many Headed Goddess. But her power has not stopped growing. I will murder you, destroy this pitiful town, and then move on to the East, where she amasses a great army. The Red Horde shall fall upon the land like locusts. The Vale shall be the first to fall, but not the last.”

“You speak of the Red Hand!” Traki called out. “But I have seen another prophecy. I have seen their fall.”

“If you have seen anything it is because the Queen willed it. She shows you hope in order to sweeten the victory when she takes it away from you.”

“This is the one who killed the others? Who killed your friends?” Tyrion asked.

Karina nodded. “I cannot ask you to join in this fight,” she said.

“... and you won’t have to,” Verrick answered. “Let us put an end to this.”

And so the three climbed on board the Audacity and found its lord waiting for them. Reeves attacks viciously using magical ice storms to halt the heroes and hold person to freeze them in place. Tyrion takes him on directly but even his magical axe seems only to be partially effective. Meanwhile, Reeves wields a relic of the deep, the ancient trident Drown, pulled from the tower of the Drowned God in his quest for power.

There is another one here, as well. Behind Reeves, huddled by the prow, is a young girl who Karina alone recognizes: it is Jade, Targaryen’s sister. She is in a kind of trance and Karina correctly guesses she is controlling the tentacled beast attacking Clem and his men. However, all attempts to attack the girl fail as a powerful psychic shield deflects all arrows and Reeves is between her and the other party members. The same shield seems to protect him, as Karina’s attempts to loose arrows at him all end with the arrow stopping feet from him and falling harmlessly to the ground. She even tries a silver arrow but this fails just the same.

This fight is meant to be very hard, possibly outside of the player’s ability to handle. The reason is that there is another way to fight Reeves rather than head on, a way that exists because Karina managed to reclaim the Undersea Effigy back at the Tower of the Drowned God. The effigy begins calling to her from within her bag of holding. It wants her to touch it, to use its power. Doing so will allow Karina to engage in a battle of wills with Jade over control for the Kraken.

Unfortunately, Karina doesn’t trust the voices! This almost leads to the annihilation of the party but for once I step in with a pretty heavy hand to push Karina towards using the effigy. When Reeves freezes her in place with his hold person and prepares to slaughter the rest of the party, she finds that only her right arm can move, and then only towards the bag of holding. Yes, it is remarkably heavy handed, but I think it’s okay considering this is the final fight and a very big moment. Looking back on the campaign as a whole, if I had given the players a book or scroll earlier, detailing how “the many headed statue controlled the denizens of the deep,” the forced hand could have been avoided, but honestly this final battle was not fully developed until a few sessions back and I didn’t see a place to squeeze that in. So instead we get forces outside of Karina’s control taking over a little. Which, considering that part of the campaign has been about otherworldly powers, I think works out just fine.

Karina reaches inside the bag, knowing what she is searching for, reaching for it  despite her fears, despite promising herself that this relic would never again see the light of day. Then her hand closes around cold jade stone and the world disappears.

She is huge. She is powerful. She is hungry. She is ancient. She opens her jaws and the ocean pours in. She stretches and her tentacles break bones, crush wood, move waves. She focuses and sees the ship at the docks, the figures fighting on it, and the one who she must kill.

NO.

The voice is an intrusion, a blot on her mind.

I RULE THIS CREATURE. YOU MUST LEAVE.

Karina. Her name is Karina. But the voice, the voice was not her voice. It was...

LEAVE NOW OR I WILL HURT YOU.

... Jade. The little girl. The psychic. Karina pulls herself free for a moment from the Krake Spawn’s mind and sees the girl, or at least feels her hovering nearby, her power palpable but weak, spent, drained.

“I can overpower you,” Karina says. And then she dives back inside the Kraken.

This is a battle of wills, and really the final battle of the campaign. I don’t pull any punches here. For every roll Karina wins versus Jade, she will get to make an attack on Captain Reeves for massive damage, maybe enough to turn the tide, maybe not. The real power comes if she can make three in a row.

And by the gods, that is exactly what she does. This is a huge accomplishment, considering that Jade rolls Will at +2 and Karina at -1 (I think... it’s low, anyway). But Karina, staying true to her character, rolls well in a crisis and she pulls out that natural 20 as the final roll of the campaign, kicking Jade from the creature’s mind and bringing its full power to bear on Captain Reeves.

Tyrion leaps back as the tentacles smash into the deck of the Audacity. Reeves throws his hands up, blocking his face and eyes from the splintering of wood. Before he can lower them again, he is wrapped in the thick wet tentacles of the Krake Spawn, the beast lifting him high in the air. Reeves fights for a moment, but the tentacles tighten and he all but disappears beneath their slimy folds. Then the sea opens up and a massive maw fills the space where water once was. Reeves calls out a final condemnation of the party: “My Queen will revive my Soul! All that die in her service will walk again! She will reap this world! She will—”

He does not get to finish. Reeves is dropped into the maw and disappears amidst rows and rows of razor sharp teeth as the jaws close and the creature retreats back into the depths, hopefully never to be seen again.

Aftermath

With the Kraken defeated and Reeves dead, the rest of the pirates are easily routed, without the players’ help. Karina comes back to herself to find the Jade statue destroyed, a true signifier of the end of the campaign as the first adventure we had was retrieving the thing from the depths of the Moonsea, over thirty sessions ago. Jade (the girl, not the statue) comes back to herself as well and thanks Karina for saving her mind from the creature of the deep. “Had you not pushed me from it, I would have been lost to the deep forever.” She asks after Targaryen but all Karina has the heart to tell her is that he is at peace. The lie makes her think of Abenthy, who condemned Targaryen’s soul to his father’s hell, and she feels a great pang in her heart. I lost him too, she thinks. Maybe not to death’s embrace, but he is gone all the same.

They do not find the Aasimir after the battle. He has disappeared, they assume to hunt his quarry. Zennatos, too, has disappeared, they know not where to, though Karina hopes it is to take her advice and do as much good as possible. Whether it will appease Abenthy she knows not, but it is worth trying.

With the battle finished, the companions look out upon the town of Ottoman’s dock. The lord’s manor is aflame and it is said he was murdered by pirates in a raid on his fortress. The town has much rebuilding to do, a new leader to elect. But for once, this is not a task the companions feel they need to take on. They have their own paths to follow.

Karina, the Seeker of Callax, says farewell to the group. “I have had enough adventuring for one lifetime,” she tells them. “I have found the truth I sought and avenged the ones who I called friends. Something tells me this is where I should stop. I have a reward to collect and a school to build. Traki, I hope you find what you are seeking. Tyrion, do not lose your music.” And with those words of parting, she and Verrick leave, catching one final ride on Tywin’s Revenge as Clem and the crew take them back to Thudd, where she collects her reward from the Fuzwah, the promised expanse of land to do with what she pleases. Aided by the Fuzwah, she builds a school here to teach adventurers how to defend themselves against the dangers of the world. In return, they give the school a cut of their treasures from their hunts. It is a small percentage, but it adds up, and eventually the school grows in power and reputation. Karina never forgets Abenthy’s journey, and she picks her students with an extremely critical eye, never wanting to turn out a student who starts on the path of good, but falls to their own search for justice. She uses the spell book of Haggemoth and his histories to aid her studies, and in doing so, feels that she is keeping alive the old dwarf’s knowledge and setting it to good. Maybe she could not save his soul in her journeys, but in this small way, perhaps she can help him offer pennace.

Jade trains at the school for a time before eventually leaving on a mission of her own: find a way to free her brother’s soul from the clutches of I’afret. Verrick and Rayden remain, growing old with Karina, being her truest guides and mentors, and ready to lift their blades again the day the Seeker of Callax ventures forth again.

Abenthy had planned to return to Thudd as well, to claim his prize and build his own school, a school of justice and punishment, but fate and his father push him onto another path. “There are men and women in this world whose hearts are pure,” his father tells him. “They are ready to follow you and be soldiers in the war which will come. You must collect them, test them. Those you find worthy make your companions. Those you find lacking, send to me.” And so Abenthy sets forth and slowly gathers an army of fanatics. Insanely loyal to him, they travel the world as mercenaries, choosing their causes as Abenthy sees fit. Under his command the group becomes known as the Inevitables, and it is said that they only serve those with just causes. Before long, their numebrs have swelled to massive size and then Abenthy turns his sights towards unfinished business with a certain giant on the isle of Friezurazov…

But these stories unfold over the course of years, and there is yet more to be told of the here and now. Traki’s prophecy tells him to head East, to find the Red Hand and stop it before it crushes the life out of the world.

“Is this a journey you intend to continue?” Traki asks Tyrion.

“My story is not yet over,” the Halfling answers. “And East is as good a direction as any. The Elsir Vale, Reeves said? I know tell of the land. Ancient place. Perhaps some old magic survives there, something worth finding.”

“Three companions are meant to fight the Hand,” Traki tells him. “But we are now only two.”

“I find these prophecies tend to work themselves out,” Tyrion says, adjusting a string on the golden harp he retrieved from Haggemoth’s tomb, the last surviving treasure of the mage dwarf’s hoard. He strums a chord as a test and smiles, pleased with the melancholy sound. “I have a feeling someone will come along.”

“What Karina said about losing your music… what did she mean by that?”

“Just the woman’s way of saying goodbye,” Tyrion says, and strums a new chord, this one as discordant to the first as the halfing’s lie was to truth. “This Red Hand thinks it is powerful. But wait till they get a load of me.”

Next session will show the start of Season 3: The Red Hand of Doom. From here on out we will be converting the Red Hand of Doom from 3.5 to 5e and each post I’ll talk a little bit about how the conversion was handled and why I made the decisions I did. With Red Hand of Doom being played every week, it seems, by some group somewhere, it will be fun to add our little oddball party to the mix. Karina’s player will be back, too, but not as the Seeker of Callax. She has retired the character to live out her days in relative peace, a just reward for her incredible survival of the massive and deadly Tomb of Haggemoth campaign. Instead, a new character will emerge to join our heroes as they make their way to the Elsir Vale and into a darkness that they do not yet fully comprehend.

[zippdementia]

Part 31 Alignment May Vary: Ever Deeper

This post takes us to the second part of the tombs. My group is fast approaching the end and has gotten ahead of the posts a bit, so I’m going to not be as descriptive as the last post, in order to do some catching up here. See the map below for reference of movement around the tombs.

Cursed with a Purpose

Having cleared the trap in hallway 23 and having explored the rest of the tomb, room 24 is the next destination. I’ve made some changes throughout the tombs to better fit the high level of my party and some of the changes between 3.5 and 5th edition. For instance, last post I talked about the Mindrot Thrall in the fungal room. In the original campaign, this room is simply filled with violet fungus, a plant monster. Using this monster would have not really challenged my players nor would it have delivered (I feel) on the promise of the room’s premise, that you will be dealing with some serious infection in here. So I used the Mindrot Thrall to keep to the nature of an encounter, but with the added element of a risk of disease.

Similarly, room 23 was designed to be a fight against a couple stone guardians, a last minute drain on the party before they encounter the dungeon’s mid-boss, but it is not a very interesting fight and not one that would be enough of a challenge for my players to keep them engaged. So I turn once again to Tome of Beasts and keep to the nature of the original while putting in something a little more interesting:

This room is tall, with vaulted ceilings. A set of large double doors is set into one wall and next to it and across from it are two gigantic statues, one of a stout dwarven warrior, the other of a fanged wyvern, snarling at you with claws raised. Surrounding the staute of the warrior is a small treasure trove of weapons, over a dozen of them lying there in a pile. Karina, with your detect magic, you can see that three of them are putting off an aura of magic, as is the statue near them.

Tome of Beasts has a Guardian Statue that I borrow and tone down a little bit to make it not too deadly for my players. The big piece of it that I’m interested in is this interesting mechanic that activates when metal weapons hit the guardian. Its body is magically magnetized and players have to succeed on strength rolls after hitting it or lose their weapons.

Because I get bored with just using encounters to take pot shots at player’s health points, I am using the Statue Guardian here to accomplish something else. It is clearly a creature that is resistant to regular damage and so those three magic weapons laying around its feet become very enticing to pick up and use. But two of them are cursed, only the third is a normal magic weapon: 

The Weeping Moon +1 Magical Scimitar, requires attunement, cursed When the person attuned to this scimitar deals the final blow to any creature, or when they roll a 1 or a 20 on an attack roll, they begin to weep blood and are blinded for 1d4 rounds. The attack does not have to be with this weapon in order to trigger this effect. The Weeping Moon was the scimitar of a desert prince who murdered his brothers in order to claim the throne of his land for himself. Afterwards, distraught with his actions, he cursed himself to cry tears of blood for the rest of his days, so that he may never forget the sadness of slaying his own kin. This scimitar bears the prince’s mark, that of a crying moon.

Battleaxe of the Brave +1 Magical Greataxe, requires attunement, cursed While attuned, the bearer must use only this weapon to attack when making a melee attack. The bearer will never use a shield and he must start his turn by using a movement action to move within 5 feet of an enemy or as close as possible. While he is attuned to this weapon, he is immune to fear. This mighty axe is shaped so that it looks like the blades are erupting from screaming mouths. Barbarian Kings of old passed down the secrets of forging these axes through their descendants, with strict instructions to never reveal the secrets to any that were not of the bloodline. These instructions were magical in nature and when eventually one of the bloodline betrayed the secret, the power of the axe turned to a curse, forcing those who wielded the axes to dive directly into combat, where many of them died against impossible odds. It has become a badge of honor to wield one of these axes for a long time, as it shows that without a doubt the bearer has survived the greatest odds.

Runic Spear Magical Spear, requires attunement by a class that can cast magic While attuned, the bearer gains one extra level one spell slot. When used against Demons, the spear gains +2 to attack and damage. This spear is covered in archaic runes and designs. It and its fellow spears were forged by the Wizards of the Brotherhand of the Crystal Star during the Magi War, when the demonic Helghast infiltrated the lands of men and disguised themselves in positions of political power throughout the land. These weapons were instrumental in scrying the demons out, as they could not abide even the touch of the cool steel.

I liked cursed weapons which trade power for pain—forcing players to change strategies or work around status effects in order to keep using these power house weapons. The purpose of these weapons is to mix up our game a bit, force them to think differently about combat, and also to potentially make one of my more fighter-focused characters (Abenthy as a Fallen Paladin or Tyrion as a Battle Bard) to drop their shield. Both of them have ended up through a fortunate combination of magic items with high ACs, and this is part of an unobtrusive strategy to lower this just a bit to make some of the upcoming fights a little more even sided.

Interestingly, they almost skip the fight altogether! When they first encounter the Statue, Tyrion casts dispell magic on it, and it critically fails the save, sending it into a torpor for ten minutes. They could, at this point, skip the magic weapons or grab them and run to the next room, but I play a very gritty fantasy game with a lot of potential danger and the players have taken this to heart. It’s a cool moment: in-character, they decide that the risk of moving on is too great, and they fear that the weapons may set up another trap, so they leave the area, take a long rest, and then return. This time, the dispell magic spell fails and they are forced to fight. They win by taking the magic items and using them, ultimately becoming cursed as above: Tyrion grabs the axe, Karina takes the scimitar, and Abenthy takes the spear. Tyrion, in particular, sees a cool character change because of this, more on that coming.

Overall, it’s one of those awesome times where the players are as wary as their characters and the result is a melding of player reaction and character reaction. The decision makes sense, then, not as a meta-decision made by players trying to break the game but as characters reacting to a situation that feels like it contains very real danger of death.

Vulnerability is something I like in Dungeons and Dragons. As a player, it was part of what kept me connected to my in character, because I was feeling the same trepidation they might feel wandering into an unknown forest/dungeon/haunted castle/what-have-you. I’ve tried to maintain that feeling of vulnerability in my games even as the characters have leveled. It’s a tough balancing act: you don’t want your players to feel forever powerless, as if levels don’t matter, but you don’t want them to feel like gods curb-stomping every dragon they come across, either. The challenge has to increase as they level or else the game (at least its combat) becomes bland and predictable. It’s like a video game: the hardest levels are often at the end.

I try to keep that balance by throwing in a mixture of enemies from various CRs and by creating overly hard fights with some easy outs to be discovered (like Dispell Magic to quell the statue, or the traps being used against the Skele-Pede). My philosophy is that a fight should never just be easy to roll your way through. It can be made easy by intelligent and clever use of character abilities, though. Because isn’t that the point of leveling? Not that you outclass your opponents by nature of being a higher level but that you gain skills and abilities that give you more options in combat, thus allowing you to outclass your opponents by nature of what you can do (like Karina’s use of Cloak of Darkness, or Abenthy casting magic weapon on his sword to bypass resistance). At least, that’s what I think makes leveling interesting. Increased damage and all that is already built into the system, but it is the abilities and new tactics that I think make the game stay interesting. A higher level game should get more complex, perhaps even more deadly, as the players take on greater and greater threats and have to use everything at their disposal to conquer them.

As for seeing how far they have grown, well, I have a scenario planned after this dungeon for the players to truly see just how far their levels have actually taken them, when they are tested against some old foes... but let’s keep that secret for now.

Dead Asleep

This room is covered in runic scribings, dwarven writings etched into the walls. A large stone dais in the center of the chamber bears an ornate sarcophagus, and three huge stone chests are placed around the walls. The chamber is extremely cold, however, and frost clings to everything. The chill goes right down to your bones, filling you with a vague unease.

The final room of the false level of the tomb is room 25. Here, Haggemoth has trapped the soul of a Dwarven warrior to act as guard to his real tomb and to make anyone who makes it this far believe that they have defeated Haggemoth and claimed his treasure! Unfortunately for them, the treasure is fake—bits of rusted iron and copper and bronze set with a powerful illusion spell to appear to be +2 and +3 magic weapons, shields, and coin. The scrolls are all rotted blank parchments, similarly illusioned, and the potions are rancid vinegar. The Dwarven Warrior is under a geas to not speak his true name and to force back all who would come here. In the tomb’s history, no one has yet made it this far, and so the warrior has been asleep for a very, very, long time. He is not happy at being awoken, which entry into the room does.

His first action is to use his terrifying howl to age the characters with pure fear. This is an “interpreted” version of the ghost’s ability out of the Monster Manual: it frightens the players if they fail the roll. Now, if the players fail the roll by too much, then they age rapidly. I love DnD 5, but I miss a couple things from Pathfinder, like touch attacks, and ability score hits. As a pathfinder player I remember nothing struck terror into me quite like having an ability score drained (not least because of all the math it forced me to redo on my character sheet). One thing I do love about 5th Edition, though, is that it leaves itself open to interpretation in many areas. Like, what does aging actually do? Well, I decide it does ability score damage: -1 to all ability scores for every certain amount of aging inflicted. And as it happens, Tyrion and Abenthy both fail the roll, Abenthy almost critically so.

“Oh father below,” Abenthy says, invoking his devilish dad, as he stares at that critical one.

Now that Tyrion has his Battleaxe of the Brave, he is immune to fear effects, so he is safe from this aging. But they watch as Abenthy suddenly ages forty-five years in a moment and his stats drop by two for each ability score. The players spring for an inspiration die to reroll the save and this time... well, Abenthy is still frightened, but the aging effect doesn’t occur. It shakes everyone up, though, which is perfect for a ghostly encounter. A moment later, the dwarven spirit rises from the sarcophagus, a vengeful spirit tasked with defending this place, and attacks them.

The battle is nicely cinematic. The ghost uses its flight ability to hover out of reach and pass through objects while still trying to frighten the companions into submission and drain their life with his icy touch. Karina uses her scimitar and her height to slice at the ghost as it flies over her. Tyrion uses his magic and leaps all over the place, getting in strikes where he can. And Abenthy uses his magic spear as a javelin, throwing it and briefly impaling the spirit against a wall as the magic of the spear locks him briefly in the material realm.

Ultimately, despite the rough start to the fight, they defeat the ghost without too much trouble and believe that they have accomplished their goal and beaten Haggemoth!

Stairway to Hell

... of course, they haven’t. Karina is the first to question the deed: “That ghost had a beard,” she says. “Haggemoth didn’t. He was known as the beardless dwarf.”

“Maybe he regrew it as a spirit,” Abenthy says.

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Karina answers.

Moments later, Tyrion finds the secret passage behind one of the chests and the stairs heading deeper. It is not an easy roll and frankly I’m glad the players make it, because the other option is they cart all that loot back to the entrance of the tomb where it all turns to rust and dust and then they have to walk back in.

Seriously, in that case I might have just had Xaviee find the tomb entrance instead. Or called the adventure over and moved on to the next phase of the adventure. I like the story behind these false tombs, that they are the ultimate trick to turn raiders away, but in practice it’s not very satisfying, at least not for the main quest dungeon. I didn’t like it in Tomb of Horrors, either. At best, the players feel like they beat an underwhelming dungeon and final boss. At worst, they leave, and then have to travel the dungeon again—either frustrating, if it repopulates with monsters, or pointless, if it doesn’t.

In any case, the players move on and descend. Behind them the door closes shut and locks them in the second part of the tomb. They have left behind some of their weapons and armor, trading them out for the +3 and +4 shields and armors and weapons they found. Of course, these are actually just rusted pot metal disguised to look like magic items, and they will find this out soon enough to their dismay during their first combat in the lower half of the tombs. This is a trick I’m okay with—for one thing, it rewards caution. Had anyone thought to “identify” the items as they took them, they would spot the trick. And if they stopped to think why +4 weapons might be guarded by a relatively weak guardian, they might be more wary. But it is also very in character to take the items. I suspect Abenthy’s player may even have caught on to the trick, but as he has said a few times in the adventure, “Abenthy is not very bright.” He plays him accordingly—gullible and singleminded to a sometimes severe fault.

As they descend, Tyrion suddenly hears a voice whispering his name. He turns to the others and asks if they said something, but they just look at him strange. Xaviee, still with them, asks what he heard, but Tyrion just shakes his head. When they reach the bottom of the stairs, a passage extends to the north and the south. And coming from the south, Tyrion hears the call again. This time, he chases after the voice, ignoring the calls of his companions to halt or come back.

His chase brings him to a door, a door which emanates an aura of power and which is carved with runic devices and (his bardic training easily translates them) warnings in multiple languages. It’s a big “DO NOT ENTER” sign. Tyrion kicks open the door and strides into a strange room.

The room is small, and unnaturally silent. At the north end of the room is a crystalline case containing some kind of parchment, while to the south there is a huge hunk of obsidian, taller than a man, floating within some kind of magical circle inscribed on the floor in adamant. In the center of the room is a small pedestal upon which sits a brass bell hanging in a wooden frame. A small mallet is chained to the bell’s frame. 

Karina, Xaviee, and Abenthy soon catch up. They try to shout at Tyrion to come out of the room, but their voices will not sound in the soundless room. 

“We need to pull him out,” Abenthy tells Karina. She agrees and goes in. Tyrion is standing by the crystal case, looking intently at the scroll inside of it. Karina sees it and her eyes go wide, as it is written in infernal. “It is a contract,” she tries to say, but of course her voice will not work here. But she is right: she has recognized the writing of a demonic contract between Haggemoth and a Herzuo demon by the unpronounceable name of Uhr’khcorgh’hyacch’kc.

Tyrion is already moving. He goes over to the table and strikes the bell with the mallet. It shatters the silence spell in the room with the bell’s sharp DING, which continues to echoe around the room but which is quickly drowned out by the horrendous screams of rage coming from the obsidian. Karina clasps her hands over her ears and screams at the halfing: “TYRION! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

In answer, Tyrion steps up to the magical circle and casually wipes away a chunk of it. There is a mighty crack and the obsidian shatters. Something black and ponderous emerges with a smell like all the garbage in the world was trapped with it in the rock for a hundred years. It bellows...

WHERE IS HAGGEMOTH? I WILL KILL I WILL TEAR I WILL RIP I WILL EAT HIS SOUL

But Tyrion smiles, and then he pronounces the unpronounceable name. 

The others are not sure exactly what happens next. The half formed demon grabs Tyrion in huge hands and lifts him. Xaviee draws his sword. Abenthy steps forward. Karina backs away, back towards the crystal case. And then the shape is gone, Tyrion is kneeling on the floor inside the magic circle, and there is a smell like sour sulphur in the air. Karina looks back at the case and sees with horror a new name being added to the contract: Tyrion.

In truth, my player has just won a mental battle with the Herzuo, forcing it to lend him its power. This is part of a planned multi-class that Tyrion wished to do, becoming a Bard/Warlock. As it happened, the inner sanctum of Haggemoth included an optional room with this demon encounter. It is supposed to be something the players have to work hard to get into, and then should avoid like the plague after finding it. It is more there for fleshing out the setting and history building of Haggemoth than as a prize—more on that next post—but it is such a good fit for where my player wants to go that I commandeer it for the level up purpose. The mental battle I improvise on the spot, and it is mostly a set of wisdom rolls. Looking back now, if I were to do it again, I would actually have the players fight the Herzuo to have to subdue it, or at least weaken it enough for Tyrion to conquer and force to do his bidding. That would be more dynamic. But at the time, I decided I didn’t want to impede his progress at all towards a level up and anyway Herzuo have the bad habit of making a party very dead, even one as strong as my players. A couple unlucky rolls and he would have them, especially as the armor they are wearing is secretly rusted junk. Except Karina, who kept her Mithril Chain Mail shirt. Abenthy still has his blackguard armor, too, but his shield is gone, discarded in favor of a +4 tower shi—well, it’s actually a big pot lid, but he doesn’t know that.

In any case, now that Tyrion has joined them in a level up, the party moves on, heading back north along the passage until they come to a set of massive double doors, doors that can only be opened with a certain key taken from around Raiden’s neck, which he himself stole from the Tomb of Udo the Grey.

The doors to Haggemoth’s inner sanctum open for the first time since he himself closed them, ages ago. And far away, in Ottoman Dock, the curse on Zennatos is lifted and the old adventurer suddenly sucks in a breath of fresh air and realizes that his strength will return to him, at last.

Next time, the conclusion to the mystery of Haggemoth, and the beginning of the end.

[zippdementia]

Part 27 Alignment May Vary: Tinkering

By now my players are a pretty formidable three person fighting force. Abenthy is a power-tank, with AC of 24 due to the full plate armor he got from Mordekai, a magic shield he picked up... somewhere, can’t remember... some more magic AC items (which bring him to his maximum attuned) and some of his class abilities. Tyrion is very dextrous, plus he wears half plate and carries a shield, giving him 20 AC when he has the hand free to use it (18 when not). Karinna is fast, too, and with her elven armor she is not easy to hit--she has the lowest AC of the bunch at 17, which is still decent.

Monsters at this point are still rolling +4 to hit in most cases, meaning that they have to roll at least 13 to hit Karinna (doable), 14-16 to hit Tyrion (tough), and they have to critically hit Abenthy to get through his defenses. So how do you still challenge this team, as a GM? It’s a nice puzzle to solve and the next section of the adventure requires me to start solving it! This post talks through the remainder of the island of Rori Rama, covering DM tactics for changing encounters to make them fit your players without taking away the powers they have worked hard to attain and the play style they desire to stand by.

Reaching the Lizardfolk village, led there by “Small Threat,” the players are taken to the Lizardking ruler, a great beast of a creature who at first seems likely to eat them as much as parley with them. But he is impressed when Karinna (aided by Comprehend languages) manages to communicate with him in the lizard tongue, and shortly he tells them of the island, the location of the tomb, and the danger facing his people.

Ages ago, Haggemoth built his tomb here, protected by a great fortress manned by automatons and beasts of his creation or culling. Then, one day, he disappeared inside the tomb and was never heard from again. For many generations, few would dare to even approach, for fear of his guardians. But little by little, the Lizardmen’s courage grew and eventually they discovered the fortress abandoned. They then went to explore the tomb, and the things they found have kept even their children’s grandchildren from ever venturing back. The tale of the tomb’s horrors has been passed down without details through the lizardfolk. But now, circumstances may force them to reconsider, for a group of Bugbears, come here who knows how, have taken over the fortress and have begun launching raids on the lizardfolk. They strike at night, take children and kill warriors, steal food and burn homes. The entire civilization of these lizardfolk is at stake, yet the bugbears have too well fortified a position in the old dwarven fortress. The leader, Ruth’Nek, has hesitated to strike for fear of dashing his people against its battlements. Not only that, but the journey overland to the fortress is long, and riddled with dangers. Whispers speak of the “Heart of the Jungle” coming to take those who venture past the river.

Karinna uses her ability for flair and sympathy to earn the lizardking’s trust, and he agrees to send a handful of his warriors with them to the tomb, in the hopes they can drive out the Bugbears as part of their goal. He also gives them boats to take the river as far as they can, in hopes of avoiding the Heart of the Jungle.

Obviously, this all has a lot of set up and the purpose is to give the players a sense of both foreshadowing and preplanning. They will ultimately end up facing the Heart of the Jungle, and the bugbears, but the way they approach both situations ends up having a huge impact on how well the group fares. It also illustrates what I want to discuss about various options for challenging players.

This post covers about three or four sessions worth of information, so it’s going to be a big one. Might even break it up into two parts. In any case, ready? Let’s do it!

Big Heavy Hitter

Bad smell. 

That was what the lizard warriors were saying. Karrina’s spell gave her mastery of the language, but not an understanding of the meaning behind the words. She could see their unease, it had been present ever since they had entered this swampy part of the jungle. But now the lizardmen were practically shoving the group forward in their haste to leave the area. Karinna started towards one of the nearest ones, a scarred lizardman she believed was named “Two Tails,” or “Tooth and Nails” (sometimes the words slurred together, even with her spell). She intended to calm him and get an explanation, but suddenly she found herself unable to keep moving. Something had wrapped itself around her leg. She looked down and saw her leg was caught in a tangle of vines and weeds. Sighing, she knelt down to cut the vines and suddenly was on her back as the forest came alive around her, the vines whipping upwards and throwing her down as they did, then beginning to drag her towards a gap in the trees, where a large mound was rising up, horribly, out of the swamp...

Soon after leaving the Lizardfolk camp, the players are given a choice: continue on the river and end up in a lake that is known to be the home of a territorial monster, or cut through the center of the jungle. They chose the latter, and end up meeting the proverbial Heart of the Jungle, a Tendriculous. The Tendriculous is a third edition plant monster, notable for its weakness to acid instead of fire, its regeneration, and its swallow ability (which can put a real time limit on a battle, as they grab a player character, pull them from an entire battle, and restrain/blind/deafen them while they slowly get digested inside its belly). It is hampered by a very slow movement speed and poor AC. It also wasn’t stated out for fifth edition, giving me the opportunity to create it from scratch. I end up using Demongnomes Guide to Monsters as a base and then tweak things a little, mostly tuning down its swallow ability a bit, from working on anything that is grappled to being an action it has to take against something that’s within five feet.

The Tendriculous is a heavy hitter, a little bit like the Tyrannosaur I described last post. The idea is that it is a big honkin’ monster, probably just beyond the player level, but fairly easy to run from, and actually pretty beatable if they can learn its weakness.

Or, as the case turns out, if it doesn’t roll higher than an 8 more than four times in the entire battle. That is a lesson in itself. See, the Tendriculous is an example of one of those monsters where the answer to the question of how to threaten to players is to just make it hit goddamn hard, with big attack bonuses (+10 in this case) that can bust through even Abenthy’s AC. You want to use such monsters sparingly, or else it makes your players feel like you are just over leveling everything to always be one step beyond them. They are perfect for fights like this, against impressive boss monsters. But you also have to be willing to let such creatures not be impressive, if the dice dictate it. And in this case, even a +10, three times a round, doesn’t help much when I can’t seem to roll more than 8. The big honkin’ monster becomes a big honkin’ dud, but it doesn’t matter. The few hits it does get off are scary and, more importantly, the players feel like badasses for beating the Heart of the Forest into oblivion. They are a little shocked by how much experience it gives (”Really? For that thing?”) but happy to get the exp nonetheless. 

Monster Variety (AKA “oh shit that guy has class levels”)

The Bugbears came up to the crying child, chuckling evilly. “What can we do for you, little girl? You lost?”

“No,” Abenthy answered, pulling free the ring that he had gotten long ago at the LaCroix residence, the one that made anyone wearing it look like Charles LaCroix’s little girl. He swung his blade around before the Bugbears could respond. One’s head went flying off into the grass, the look of smug cleverness still plastered on its features. The others were slow to reach for weapons and paid for their delay with arrows in their throats, shot from Karinna and Tyrion, who rose, silent as ghosts, from the grasses.

“That’s one for both of us,” Tyrion admitted. “But mine was the cleaner shot.”

Even as he smirked, an arrow embedded itself in the ground at his feet and he yelped in surprise. In the distance, a hundred feet or more away, the squat dwarvem fortress was suddenly erupting, like a bee’s hive, with Bugbears. They clambored onto the ramparts, firing arrows and lobbing curses. Another arrow soared through the air, expertly aimed towards Tyrion’s face.

TING! The arrow flew off course as Karinna fired a bolt at it from her handbow.

“That’s two for me,” she said. “Or was that not clean enough?”

“Into the woods!” Abenthy called to the group, raising his shield to block another volley of arrows as he retreated. The group fell back towards a copse of trees, their companions charging forward across the plains to meet up with them: Verrick, the former traitor and spy for the Red Hand; Xaviee, Samuels, and Biggs, shipwrecked companions of the late Twyin; and the lizard warriors, crying out in jubilation at the successful ambush of the Bugbears.

Little did they all know that there were eyes in the woods, watching them approach and preparing an ambush of their own...

To break down the encounter into simple math, there are about 16 Bugbears hear at the old fort. Most are inside, a handful are outside, waiting to move silently in for stealth strikes against anyone attempting to seige the fort. The campaign module stats out two special bugbears: a shaman and a berserker/barbarian who leads the Buggies. I take it a step further in my conversion—because Bugbear swarms aren’t as much of a challenge in fifth as they were in Pathfinder, due to the lack of trip rules, big flanking bonuses, and some other minor details—and decide to make this fight contain a variety of differently classed monsters. This is one of my favorite techniques for adding challenge in a high level, or high magic item, campaign because it does so by adding a tactical challenge rather than simply outleveling player characters.

In this case, I use the wonderful (and newly available) Revenge of the Hordes to add some variety to the Bugbears, throwing in archers (who have a good chance of hitting even Abenthy as long as they don’t move on their turn) and a Hunter to ambush them in the woods, using his harpoon to pull Abenthy to the ground and delay him while his fellow, regular Bugbears, swarm the other players. I do buff the regular Bugbears a small amount, giving them a few basic fighter class levels in order to gain a +1 to their attack and damage rolls.

There is a wonderful Shaman template in the Hordes guide that I use mostly as is, though I tweak it down a bit to better match the healer/support template that the campaign intends. The leader Bugbear I build using the rules in the Dungeon Master’s Guide for adding class levels to a monster, and make a pretty impressive Barbarian Bugbear Chief, with mighty hitpoints, devastating damage attacks, and resistance to most damage. In a one-on-one against any single player character, this guy has the advantage.

All of these adjustments do not ensure a player loss. Instead, they ensure that the players can’t go head-on rushing into battle and expect to win. Thus, this encounter won’t devolve into a roll-battle. The players have to think tactically. And hopefully by doing so, you encourage your players to play the character they have wanted to, in combat. 

For instance, you have an AC 24 Paladin who wants to wade into battle like a tank? Let him! Build your monsters so that they are a minor challenge to him and most likely they will still be a huge challenge to the AC 17 wizard hiding behind him. When those monsters rush past him and charge the wizard, this creates a fun challenge for the Paladin: how does he regain control of this scene? How does he taunt and engage these monsters? How does he position himself to block their access to the rest of the party (and bonus points if he yells “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!”)

My players are great in these tactical situations: they respond quickly and briliantly to the challenge, dispatching the ambushers as fast as they can and then choosing the woods as their battleground, forcing the majority of the Bugbears to come to them. Tyrion launches a well timed Hypnotic Pattern at the rushing horde that causes three of them to drop immediately from the fight. The remainder Karinna confounds by using her Cloak of Darkness (gained from Mordekai back in Celaenos) to devastating effect. The way I designed this particular cloak:

Cloak of Darkness (damaged) Requires Attunement Can be used once a day, resets with the rising of the sun Action: Casts Darkness as per the spell in a twenty foot radius out from the Cloak. The spell requires concentration and can be ended as a free action. Otherwise, it lasts for one minute. One difference between this and regular darkness is that, while wearing the cloak, the user can see five feet inside this darkness. Can be dispelled with a lvl three or higher light spell.

This is an assasin’s dream cloak! The regular Darkness spell has two uses: either to quickly create a smoke screen so wizards, rogues, and other ranged or injured fighters can escape combat, or to create a hampering wall to slow the approach of a rushing horde of melee fighters or a very powerful monster. This cloak adds the nasty ability of letting the user wander more or less freely around the darkness, getting advantage attacks off on those they encounter. Combine this with a rogue’s sneak attack ability and it turns them into a walking death reaper, making this cloud of darkness a terrifying place to be for Karrina’s enemies.

This gets back to a gaming philosophy I embrace as DM: encourage your players to play the character they want to be. If you have a ranger in the group who wants to be a Ghost Recon sniper, then build scenarios and magic items that let them achieve that. Karinna has always favored a sneaky backstab style of attack, so this was designed to encourage that in combat. It is  balanced by the fact that it can only be used in one combat a day, meaning it usually gets saved for the big encounters, and by the fact that it CAN be dispelled by either striking Karinna (again, encouraging that stealthy play) or by using Light level 3—which gives me a way, as GM, to ensure it doesn’t break the game or become the team’s answer to every big fight. As they level and start encountering more enemies with classes, spellcasters will have a way around this tactic, letting the challenge eventually level with them.

For now, though, this is a highly effective tactic against the Bugbears. It turns the forest into a shadowy arena of death and effectively cuts off the leader and shaman from the main troops. They are tough challenges on their own, especially with the shaman boosting the big bad’s health as he bears down on Abenthy, but after two sessions of trading blows, the player team comes out victorious and the Bugbears flee, most of them getting shot down as they run, including the Shaman who takes a critical hit arrow in the throat from Karinna.

Bluffs and Twists

The bridge loomed ahead of them. Perhaps once it had had rails or decorations but if so time had erased them. It had lost none of its grandeur, though. The sheer span it covered, over a hundred feet crossing the great river below. Abenthy was first to cross, with Tyrion and the soldiers close behind, and Karinna and Verrick making up the rear.

A blur of motion, hot breath against her neck, sharp claws digging into her shoulder—these were the sensations Karinna experienced as the Bugbear leader wrapped a meaty arm around her neck. His blood, pouring copiously from his many wounds, splashed across her black clothes, and the smell of him was like regurgitated milk and garlic.

He said nothing, only growled as he lifted a circular pouch in one hand and ripped its top off with his teeth. The pouch began to smoke and sputter with sparks. He held tight to Karinna and began to laugh, but the hoarse chuckle turned into a groan of pain as Karina drove her elbow deep into his abdomen and squirmed free of his grasp. Not wasting any time, she and Verrick began to run. Tyrion and Abenthy stared, neither yet quite comprehending what had just happened.

RUN! Karinna screamed, but the words were only forming in her mind before the explosion tore her from her feet. The world spun. Karina saw flame and heard the cracking of stone as the power the Bugbear had unleashed engulfed the creature, the bridge, and Karina and her companions. A ringing in her ears only grew worse as she lifted her head to look around. The bridge spun into focus, though she still felt sickly dizzy, like she was laying against a stone wall, defying gravity, looking down at an opening in the cliff where the tomb entrance was.

The sonic wave that had followed the explosion had knocked her flat, and thus she had avoided the worst of the flames. Tyrion had not been so lucky. His hair and eyebrows burnt away, the halfing looked oddly doll-like. He was lying on his back, his blackened hands curled into claws, his lips charred and pulled back from gums that were rippling with bright pink burnt skin. Abenthy was running to him, lifitng him, shouting something to Karina that she could not hear, and then tearing back (down?) across the bridge towards the tomb, the three soldiers following. She felt the bridge shake underneath her.

Suddenly she was pulled to her feet. Verick had a hold of her arm. She looked past him and saw the bridge collapsing around them. Now she knew why Abenthy had run, and Verick was doing the same, pulling her along. Why wouldn’t her legs work? They felt like dead stumps, each step she took radiating both numbness and a prickly pain that caused her to grind her teeth together. She was stumbling, not running, and she wasn’t going to make it.

Verrick spun her to face him then and his lips moved, but she couldn’t make out the sound of his voice. He shoved her, hard, and she flew backwards, tripping over herself and falling into Abenthy’s waiting arms as the bridge fell, and Verrick fell with it.

When she could hear again, the first sound she heard was her own sobbing scream. There was no answer from below. Verrick was gone.

Two more quick challenge options I want to discuss. The first targets players directly, through your NPCs. It is “bluffing,” meaning to give your players misinformation every once in a while, generally through NPCs that are lying to them. How many of you (DMs) have had player parties get so strong that they begin to intimidate their opponents into giving them information? The enemy castle layout, the password to the guard station, the time for the secret drop off, the name of the secret leader of the Dragon Cult... by strong arming some weakling goblin or kobold, the players get the information they need (and then maybe they cut off the poor bastard’s head for good measure). And this is all fine, it’s a great way to empower the players, to reward them for not slaughtering all their opponents, to hand them out information in interesting ways, and to move the plot forward. It’s also a great way to occasionally mislead them.

Even the weakest goblin is not always going to want to play fair in defeat—whether to spite their enemies or because they figure they are dead anyway—and their answers might not always be accurate. To use the above examples: the map they draw for them leads them directly into a trap; the password they tell is actually a code word to sound the alarm; the time for the secret drop off is a day late; the person they name as the leader of the Cult is innocent, and an enemy of the goblins that the goblins want killed. In our game, the players storm the fortress and take out the remaining bugbears (though the leader is missing). They are then debating resting, but the last bugbear tells them as he dies that the full hoard is returning in a few hours and will avenge him! It is a lie, but the players believe it and put off sleeping, which allows them to walk unprepared into the trap laid by the leader bugbear.

The other option targets the characters more directly. When you want to challenge a character, you can do so in the form of situational twists. A twist is something that characters must react to immediately, usually via a saving throw or series of saving throws. They aren’t exactly traps, but they function similar, only it is the plot or situation that triggers them, not stepping on a pressure plate or opening a treasure chest. The nice thing about saving throws is that, no matter how epic the situation, they can resolve it in a roll or two. And the DM can build them to be as challenging as they desire or need for the moment. For instance, for a high level party, you could feasibly set up a battle on a ruined land where the ground is splitting open and swallowing up the battling armies. To keep their feet, players have to make DC 14 STR checks, falling prone if not. Then the ground opens up and the players have to leap clear (disadvantage for anyone who is prone) Dex Save DC 18. Anyone who fails, falls in a crevice and takes 9d6 damage. The remaining players can try to navigate a path through the forming chasms as they open in front of them, which is a Wis DC 20 save, failure meaning they have to repeat the STR and DEX saves from before. A couple of rounds of this, and then you see which players have fallen in a chasm and which haven’t. Now the players have to figure out how to get free...

That’s an off-the-cuff example, but it illustrates the point. An epic moment created with just a few rolls and also you created an unusual challenge for the players that avoids the standard attack vs. AC that can get old session after session. It keeps players thinking about their characters in more holistic terms, not just as combat machines.

In our game, the twist is that the boss bugbear (who is a berserker, keep in mind) has a potion the shaman made that is basically a hand grenade. He intends to suicide bomb the last person on the bridge, hopefully taking them all out. I make this a deadly situation to raise the tension on the scene and provide a proper climax to such a big fight, so I have Karinna make a grapple save (failure would be instant fail of the bomb’s blast damage), then the bomb goes off, forcing Dex saves to avoid fire damage. Then the bridge starts to collapse, forcing Dex saves to avoid falling into the chasm. And failure of this roll? With my players so close to finally entering the tomb, I don’t feel like death is an appropriate penalty for failing the save. Oh, it is definitely a possibility: had Karinna not tried to break free, the blast might have killed her straight out. Had Abenthy not run forward to grab Tyrion, his unconscious body would have plumeted to the depths below with little for him to do but drown in the river. But these situations called for player decision. This roll is simply a roll: luck. I don’t want to cheaply end their adventure like that. And this is one of the many uses of retainers.

I’ll talk more about this next post but one of the reasons I came up with a system to make retainers act like items the party can use is that I feel it gives them a clearer role in the game and thus the story. Players identify more with active characters and there is few things as active as having an NPC they can use to help them win combats. In addition, our remaining NPCs have been tied to character stories. Xaviee, Samuels, and Biggs are all former allies of the deceased Tywin. And Verrick started as an enemy way back in session 6, then became an ally and eventual love interest for Karinna. That makes these characters amazing sacrifices for scenes like this, and I set them up as the failure options for the bridge breaking roll. Losing them has both a story impact and a game impact, as they lose their help in the upcoming tombs. But it still keeps the main story going and doesn’t end the game on a sour note, but rather a powerfully tragic one.

Next session’s post will cover the first part of the Tomb of Haggemoth and will take us through the converted final dungeon step by step. I will also go over how I like to run retainers. Verrick may be lost, but the three soldiers are still standing with this team, and I came up with a new system for 5E to represent them.