The Pirates of Mystara
by Not a DecepticonIf any of my players finds it, please steer away from reading.
Warning: Unmarked spoilers for Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Sea King's Malice, Isle of Dread, War Rafts of Kron, Elder Evils, Exemplars of Evil, Shore of Dreams, Dreams of the Red Wizards modules.
I've been lately poking on various parts of the forum mentioning that I am preparing new games to pitch to my players and I finally made that yesterday. After some serious competition, we arrived at the combination of two modules - WotC's Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Frog God Games' Sea King's Malice. I brought up there is a rather railroad island sequence in SKM and I suggested that if we would play into Mystara I could replace it with Isle of Dread. They agreed.
So what I am doing in this thread is gonna try to mix modules to create a metaplot connecting everything, with plans to lead it to higher levels and allow the party, if they'll want to, to establish themselves as the greatest pirates of Mystara and maybe even ascend to immortality. So I'll be doing plot/worldbuilding from top to the bottom.
Campaign background:
Hel of the Entropic Immortals had sworn to tear the whole creation and rebuild it anew and millennia ago she has placed a flaw in the world itself - the Leviathan. It has grown over untold years and now its coils are one with the world itself, unnoticed to the mortals. big catastrophic events like the Great Rain of Fire either made it stir in its' slumber or were caused by such stirring. Non-Entropic immortals cannot really put an end to it since an ensuring battle of powers could cause insane amounts of destruction in itself - it would be like throwing a nuke at a tornado. As such Immortals are more likely to work through proxies of promising mortals they may seem as potential future Immortals themselves - the PCs. In fact, if the Players decide to pick something that wouldn't be class-wise "proper" for Mystara (eg. a Hexblade or Cleric of Atheism), the explanation will be an Immortal is working behind the scenes to support them in a way that won't be obvious to Entropic Immortals.
Hadric from War Rafts of Kron will replace the vampiric manta ray from the Elder Evils module, with similar goals - wake the Leviathan to raze the surface to allow him to rule the seas after rising everyone killed as undead. To do it he spreads worship of Leviathan and tries to cause as much chaos both underwater and on the surface. Aside scheme from War Rafts of Kron he also has lured other entities to his cause, including Captain Gnash from Exemplars of Evil, captain Syrgaul from Temmeraut's Fate, or an intelligent Kartoeba that will replace Aboleth from the Styes. His greatest accomplishment was turning Sahaugin into the worshippers of Leviathan under the name the Devourer.
Sahaugin in my take on Mystara are results of Glantrian experiments on the Shark-Kin to create a race of soldiers. They are to Shark-kin what Crocodile-kin are to Lizard-kin - bigger, nastier, more aggressive cousins. They are being bred and kept as a secret so that Glantri may attack with them the targets like Saltmarsh, a port city in Karameikos where Glantrian agents will replace role of Scarlet Brotherhood, and from there go after Five Shires, while keeping the appearance of neutrality as no one knows they're creators and masters of the Sahaugin. However, Hadric has converted a group of Sahaugin who either escaped Glantrian slaver or were purposefully freed or allowed more leeway to serve as a scapegoat once the plan comes into motion. Who in turn spread it among their still enslaved breathen. Duke from Final Enemy views himself vassal of king from Sea king's Malice now. Now when Sahaugin attacks all of this fighting will serve to wake the Leviathan.
the PCs will enter the scene in the Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh + Danger and Dunwater quest, ironically hired by one of Glantrian agents to expose leader of one of opposing factions within the town as a member of a smuggler's ring. Glantrians were unaware of smugglers selling to lizard-kin, who are suffering from Sahaugin attacks, so PCs may uncover the plot early.
The plan is to let the party keep the smuggler's ship and sail to the seas, taking quests like one from Salvage Operation, Isle of the Abbey or main quest from Sea King's Malice, search for a missing captain and her ship. Except where in SKM she sailed to find Crocodile Island and ended assaulted by Sahaugin there, here she The plan is to run few adventures to get them to level 5 (likely only Shore of Dreams is one I would want them 100% participate in as it has a triton trying to wake up an ancient evil so it may foreshadow few things in the future) and then let them loose on the isle until they reach level 8 when they can return to the Sahaugin plot. After the end they should be level 10 and can either go back to the Isle or start picking other pirate quests, the latter option will likely lead them into the main Leviathan plot but also allow establishing their reputation or even domains on the Mystara. I think the biggest danger may be that they decide Isle is more interesting, in which case whole "world-saving" plotline may be quietly dropped and we will focus on the Isle of Dread.
I still need to see if the Dreams of Red Wizards plots with Sahaugin-occupied Sea Elven City can fit into this plan, depends in Mystara has a good equivalent to it.
I will likely post here other campaign notes and plans and once we start (which will take a while, we still have Curse of Strahd to finish, should take around a month maybe) campaign log. I would appreciate anyone with more knowledge of the lore dropping any criticism of this plan and ideas how to adapt it more to the lore of Mystara or what things should I include to make it a better experience or things flow more smoothly.
Okay, time for, at long last, the first campaign log and needless to say, it was interesting:
The Party:
Cleric, a Shadow Elf who got washed to the surface and taken in by Hsiao, after discovering how much Church of Rafiel and the king of Shadow Elves. has lied to her she became very anti-religion, and is using a found homebrew of Ur-Priest subclass as a Cleric of atheism
Wizard, Wizard 1/Warlock 1 Human from Glantri who tried to experiment with portal opening, punched portal to Ravenloft and made a deal with Death Knight who was another player's character in previous campaign
Hexblade, Bekladise Elf from Glantri, who has stolen a Blade of Duck and Dawn, a weird sword with two sentiences that was created when Glantri wizards tried to inject some of Radiance into a Blackflame weapon from a captured unfortunate Hin.
Artificer, a Hsiao who was fascinated by flying machines and became a customs officer in Serraine but then his interests shifted to sea travels and now wants to explroe the seas on a ship, has connections in Minrothad guilds
Barbarian, a Bulldog Lupin who was kicked out from her nomadic pack.
The first session I started with the festival as described in Sea King's Malice, with a contest to discover the new Lord of Blooms to celebrate coming of the Spring. It gave me an opportunity to introduce a bunch of Saltmarsh NPCs from the GoS book. And give them some Mystaran flavor, like my Keledek being from Northen Reaches and tattooed and swole worshipper of Odin. Or my Anders Solomor being an Elf from Alfheim and Skerrin Wavechaser being one of Alfheim Orcs.
I thought the contest is gonna be brief and maybe even boring (in Sea King's malice its entire purpose is to introduce Joshua Cree, a former sailor who was on the ship Discover which is relevant to that campaign's plot). But it was a ton of fun thanks to Hexblade and Wizard (whose PCs are good friends) cheating like crazy, going through hexes, sleights of hand, inspiring leader and lucky feat, intimidation and some damn good rolls they managed to score a lot of wins...up until Anders didn't enlist Skerrin as a last-minute contender. It was hilarious and ended with Skerrin tied for first place with Wizard.
Before they could find a way to settle this, a sudden ruckus and mild panic erupted. A body has washed on the sea. The party rushed in and found it to be a body of a young woman in archery garments, wearing signs of having suffered imprisonment and physical abuse before dying of drowning. Eilander identified her as one of 4 adventurers who few weeks ago tried to investigate Haunted House halfway between the town and dwarven mine. Anders Solomor was supposed to come and publicly rope the PCs in, announcing them as brave heroes who will cleanse that awful place once and for all. However, it wasn't necessary. My players were eager to go there before I've ever managed to tell them the legends of hidden treasures and Alchemist's secrets hidden in the house. Anders ended still making a big proclamation of promising rewards to the heroes who will clean this house.
The house itself was interesting. I used the suggestion from the book and made part of the smugglers Hin to make the adventure more Mystaran flavor, though the party had not much love for them anyway. Funny moments included: Wizard walking straight into giant weasels nest, get downed in one turn and then Cleric....casting speak with animals, negotiating and making a picnic for weasels and even healing one wounded by Hexblade. While the rest of the party was pointing angrily at the unconscious Wizard's body. Cleric walking into the house and yelling HELLO at top of her lungs, alarming the smugglers. Wizard using his Form of Dread and freaking out the party. Artificer's head snapping by 180 degrees first when he notices what Wizard just did and then back when surrenderring smuggler mentioned they're, well, smugglers.
We ended in the cellar, they found the barracks and were about to investigate the caves or skeleton room or room of smuggler's leader.
I have a few questions, tho, that I hope you could help with.
1. Any names of famous wizards of Mystara I could namedrop? One of the rooms has magic books written by Greyhawk mages like Tenser and Nystrul, I was looking for an equivalent that isn't Bargle, since he may show up actually.
2. This one is a bit further down the line but I did notice Tower of Zenopus on Saltmarsh Region map and I have found some nice conversion of that classic adventure for 5e rules and Saltmarsh setting However, it does include among monsters a Chuul and a Phase Spider and I was wondering if these exist on Mystara and if not what could be a good substitution. Any ideas? I don't worry about Deep Scions since the "a guy made a deal with something down the sea" is easy enough to adapt, especially if I have Alphatia and a sea vampire from War Rafts of Kron to forshadow.
Part Two: Death Claims It's Tool
We lost the Cleric today. The party went to the caves beneath Haunted House, to face the smugglers, which was fun with a lot of jokes about Hin smugglers including their leader. but Cleric stayed behind and opened the big door labeled "DANGER" and got massacred by Skeletons, then failed 3 saving throws. It did make an interesting plot twist, where after taking down smugglers the party had to face Skeletons and Skeletal Alchemist with Cleric's zombified corpse. Surviving hobgoblin even joined the party against the skeletons after a while, upon realizing he cannot get out of this place without their help.
After the session, I talked to the Cleric and she decided to drop out, personal reasons unrelated to the game but they made playing with 5 people not fun, they also affected her behavior in this session and she apologized for it. She may return in later time after sorting things out. A bummer that took a lot of wind off my sails, but it happens
Meanwhile Mystara-feel moments included:
- Books in smuggler's leader's room became: from illustrated tome of erotic poetry into an illustrated tome of erotic Hin poetry and from a treaty on Iuz and his minions to Wizard Perrantin's treaty on minions of Atzantieotol and how to fight them.
- Wizard rolled poorly on Arcana what Skeletal Alchemist is. I let him have it that since he is from Glantri and a noble from Klantyre I decided "You know, you meet Brennard McGregor once or twice, you know what a lich looks like, this isn't a lich."
Part Three: Doing Haunted House Backwards
Continuing from where we left off the last time, the party finally has beaten the Haunted House. They first took a long rest in now cleared smuggler caves, then investigate last remaining parts of the cellar, the alchemist lab and the final two caves. Sadly final surviving smuggler had in meantime took off and escaped with the raft. Then the party returned above investigated the library and study, finding a note about the lab to their amusement. Then went upstairs and got into a fight with spider swarms and Ned, whom I decided had no reason to put on his act now and just attacked them. but he dropped what he was supposed to, the info pointing the party to Gellan Primewater as involved with smugglers (Ned was sent by Skreein to get captured and spill the beans, the party didn't even try to insight him. They let him go but made him swear he won't set a foot in Saltmarsh. They kept looking around, finding the cloak with yellow mold, which failed to affect anyone but grossed people horribly. Then Artificer flew up to the attic, got attacked by Striges and they all hit their attack and rolled combined double of his HP, murdering him in one turn.
Party carried his and Cleric's body to the town and we looked up some rules for buying resurrection and learned only Jowett can do that and he is in Specularum. Once they heard that raise dead will cost them over two and a half thousand gold Qon top of costs of sending two bodies to Specularum, with Gentle Repose on it, Artificer asked if he shouldn't just make a new character. The party spent the rest of the session collecting rewards, looking for jobs and outright debating blackmailing Gellan Primewater before realizing how flimsy their blackmail material (some guy of ill repute who they no longer have an access to said something that maybe suggests he was hired by someone who has similiar tic to Gellan) is. They even took a job from Manitard Copperlocks so I'm now gonna run them a sidequest. Which I have no idea for and will have to look for some.
In the end they got some good news - Jaxa Brand, whom they haven't yet meet, lended them money for sending their frends to Specularum for ressurection. Meaning they are now few thousands gold in debt. Also Eiliander Fireborn informed them the town council wants them to lay trap on the smugglers once their ship appears.
Now I have an adventure for a filler to prepare for tomorrow, that's gonna be stressful....
Part Four: And Now for Something Completely Different
With two PCs dead, one player unable to make it to this game, and a party in debt having taken a job from dwarves, i've decided to run a filler adventure. Enter Horror at Havel's Cross. A Pay What You Want adventure on DMsGuild. It was easy to insert in - a Halfling professor wants to be escorted to a strengthened inn in a dangerous part of the area, where she should meet with rest of her archeological expedition, and then they want to be escorted back to Saltmarsh with a valuable object they have found.
I had some fun inserting Mystara Lore into the adventure. The archeologists were exploring a site they believe to have been built by an Elven cult of life, death, and rebirth that has later fallen into necromancy (Wizard, being a necromancer from Glantri, was very happy). Or at least this is what they believe it is. There roof of this temple they found is pyramid-shaped and on the entrance is an Ankh, writings are in hieroglyphs, there are no historical records dating this building back further than few hundreds of years ago, but it's clearly older than Gnoll invasion on Traladara, and the records seem to indicate this building just "showed up" out of nowhere one day, with no knowledge among people where it came from. I can cross "let the PCs explore an ancient Nithian Empire site" off the bucket list now.
The second time I could inset Mystara lore was with Bolormaa, who leads Faithful Quartermasters of the Chanates, officially here to buy fish that is then transported to Ethengar, but she has a "side hobby" of buying and selling magic items. I made her a Hakomon who has as one of her taboos to always end a sentence in "yes?" and tried to play her as somewhat disturbing, but players have found her hilarious. They also know she has very expensive magic items and can brew healing potions. I think to fully replace the tiefling from the module I will make it one of her taboos is to place a minor curse on every magic item she gives or sells. The artificer was sadly absent (and his character is dead at the moment) so my plans to reveal her interests in Blackmoor technology and reveal to him legends of it.
The adventure proper was simple. The party arrives at Havel's Cross, a very fortified inn next to a bridge and nearby Dreadwood*, only to find the place massacred and Goblins looting it. The module suggests once half of Goblins dies or he is reduced to half HP their Hobgoblin leader will surrender. Yeah, the module did not account for a Lupin Barbarian with a greataxe. After killing the guy in one hit the Goblins surrendered immediately on their first turn. Getting information from them that they didn't massacre the inn, merely came to loot the bodies and after some loootin...investigating, the party has discovered that it was a job of Ghouls and that someone has left the creatures inside after clubbing the guard to death. Urged by the NPC who hired them the party set off to the dig site.
Also, fun fact, the adventure says how will the NPC react if she sees PCs looting bodies but the party simply was smart enough to preemptively keep her away from seeing them stealing every bit of gold they come across. I guess the party is savvy.
The fight inside was simple, especially since Bane is Ghoul's, well, bane. The final "boss" of the place, an Elf driven mad by an artifact of doom, was more threatening, though his power to be brought back each turn until artifact is destroyed became hialrious by the time PCs managed to do exactly that. Finishing him off they helped NPC burn the bodies of her friends, now ghouls beheaded by the PCs. A fun adventure and this time no one died.
* - come to think of it, by placing the whole region of Saltmarsh in Karameikos I did put a forest supposedly ruled by a powerful hag with an army of humanoids and hag & vampire generals close to Black Eagle Barony. I don't think it ever will come out in this campaign but I think I'm gonna make her somewhat related to Bargle, like his mother or something.
My players are a curious bunch. I let them do some things off-game to not waste time doing them on a session, since chances were we will need to cut it short. And then they ended doing these things during the game anyway. Namely, selling a lot of loot seemingly because they really want to pay off this debt as fast as possible. But there were some interesting elements, like them taking notice of an inn named Dwarven Anvil being run by a human woman. And of course Artificer, who was present this time, got to meet Boloorma from Etengar and learn about the lost legendary city of Blackmoor. the PCs actually clued her to the fact that the flying city of Serraine is technologically advanced and likely powered by Blackmoor technology and told her about the Nithian Temple from their last adventure. The players are now considering whenever that could be a Blackmoor building, which makes it interesting. Artificer is already smelling a plot hook with the legend of Blackmoor (so I may have to look into DA series at some point) and Wizard too is excited to go find this long-lost place. But first, the smugglers.
Boarding the Sea Ghost is quick and the group immediately casts charm person on the first mate to convince him to take them to the captain and then murders both of them. Pirate deck wizard surrenders for the promise of letting the crew go, leaving only the Bosun in the deck to fight them. And that is dealt with rather quickly as well, only hurdle being Barbarian blowing their attempt at stealth by barking orders of surrender to all smugglers still fighting. The crew and lizardfolk leave and the party investigates the ship, including finding Oceanus, getting his story (that's msotly Hexblade, only one to speak Elven), slowly piecing together clues about the Lizardfolk buying weapons and bickering over who gets to be the captain. The last one actually leads to Hexblade trying to lock Wizard in Oceanus' cell and to Artificer stealing Hexblade's hat. I love this group.
Also, they keep trying to study that philosopher's stone book and cannot make that DC 20 check.
A quick update, we had a minisession during which the party reported their tidings and got quests to a)check what Lizardfolk are doing b)if local abbandonned lighthouse isn't another smugglers hideout and c)in exchange for clearing their debt and paying their fees for ownership of a ship as well as stocking and crew for it for a year, they agreed to follow the trial of a missing ship to Ochileea and tgen to Shireton if necessary.
Also a second time I've run into having scientiste or explorers mentioned in the adventures and I'm starting to think I should look up info on some scientific communities in Mystara, does something like tyat exists?
So, having done the "PCs buy magic items in bulk" between session, we started with the sad news that since Cleric player is leaving the game, her character has decided to give up adventuring and reopen Halav's Cross inn. However, soon after the party discovered a new ally in form of an NPC using sidekick rules. A young girl from Threshold who only recently got appointed a cleric and was once protecting a caravan as a part of her trials, where she had befriended and had her life saved few times by Barbarian and would be eager to repay the favor. Here she is with statistics for a sidekick for a 3th level party using Acolyte statistics as a basis.
It was only halfway through the session I have realized that there may be a bunch of continuity or timeline issues with having a 18-yo Aleena the Cleric as the party sidekick. But I want to play a long game here, and I can see a few options on how to use her, including having Bargle attack the ship and let the PCs actions determine if she lives or dies as in canon. And since chances anyone is gonna play the old BECMI rules adventure where she dies are slim to non, I think letting PCs get used to her if I ever want to make her death canon will lead to it being more impactful.
I decided that, since I have a bit in Sea King's Malice about looking for the sailor from a ship "Discovery" that may have seen the missing ship "Zephyr", and it takes PCs to the farm, I will slot in here a Dragon of Icespire Peak adventure, Butterskull Ranch. Just changed the gnome owner to be formerly a sheriff in Heartforge. It went pretty funny, with PCs first wrecking the orcs and then almost dying to an ambush on the upper floor. Amusingly this is also when the party discovered the items they bought from the Etengarian seller have minor curses on them. Boy oh boy, did they freak the frick out.
Also among the Orc bodies, they find a written note of the orc plan:
1. Steal the formula for Butterskulls
2. Present Butterskulls to King Thar
3. ???
4. Profit
And a small picture of King Thar giving an Orc headpats.
The wizard, who needed a spell to read it, was **** livid.
The session ended on the party chasing the prized cow of ranch owner. So overall it was light session.
Wizard's player was missing this game, she's sick apaprently.
The party has learned from the sailor that his ship Discovery encountered the missing ship Zephyr on its way to Savage Coast and that the Zephyr's crew was talking about finding a way to some uncharted island not on the maps, where apparently treasure is laying on the beach up for grabs. That is of course the Isle of Dread but my party doesn't know it yet. Also, we had some nice roleplay with the party recruiting Big Al's daughter to join their crew as a ship wizard, they saw a hook for roleplay and grabbed it.
Back in Saltmarsh, the party walks straight to the Etengarnian witch who sold them cursed items. She explains it is part of her taboo to add "a bit of her pain" to all her magical creations. She offered the party to either take the curses or cast remove curse to make them give up the items. The party chooses the former. She told them items will need some time to regain their magic after casting this spell. She would charge them the same either way.
I need to underline here that NO ONE tried to use Insight or Arcana on her. The person who already screwed them over once. So you can imagine look on the party faces when they go do another sidequest, Tower of Storms (also lifted from Dragon of Icespire Peak), and in the middle of a fight with harpies they realize not only are all items she "fixed" still have the curses but also lost all other magical abilities. They almost abandoned their quest to march back to town and commit bloody murder. But they forced themselves to finish it, basically unloading their fury on the singing priest of Loki (who replaced the priest of Talos from the original adventure), almost dying to his lightning bolt in the process.
Upon finishing the quest, the party walked back to Saltmarsh to commit bloody murder, only to find the witch's tent gone and other Etengarians looking at them as if they grew an extra head when the party insisted their operation is run by some witch. They went to Keledek the wizard, who laughed his ass off when they told him how screwed over they've been. He made them a deal. They need from him two things - removed curses and possibly restoration to bring back items' original power and to find that witch who scammed them for over 3k of gold at this point. One of those they'll need to pay for. The other one they can do a job for him, but only once they deal with Lizardfolk since it's not a job that is gonna be important if the city is going to get destroyed. So I have a hook to send them to the tower of Zenopus, that's gonna be fun.
Also the party makes clear threats they're gonna derail the whole campaign to get that witch so I think she is now, by the power of retcon, working for one of my antagonists, likely an Alphatian spy.
Part Eight: Danger at Dunwater
We had two sessions since last update. Party learned from Keledek that he can localize the witch who cursed them if, after dealing with the Lizardfolk problem, they'll go to the tower of his old friend Zenopus, who warded it from powerful magic users. But first was the job with the lizardfolk.
After a long argument about who is the captain, Wizard or Hexblade, finished with charisma checks and the whole crew voting and Hexblade winning, the ship sailed forth. On the way the party got attacked by an encounter I picked from Sea King's Malice - a raft with pretended shipwrecks begging to be allowed aboard. In reality, they're small enemies in cloaks (in the book it was Kobolds but I changed it to Caymen for Mystara, keeping the statistics the same) keeping the crew's attention, while a sea-adapted variety of Ghouls detaches from the bottom of the raft, swims under the ship, and climbs up, attacking from behind. It was an exhausting battle, mostly due to the paralyzing touch of the undead (Caymen/Kobolds died to single burning hands). And because the Wizard ran forwards, trying to cast sleep on Ghouls, failed to get even a single one (he needed like two HP more on his roll) and then became their favorite target. We had a nice roleplay moment when he almost died but Hexblade used amulets they wear to take the damage. The wizard was wondering if they truly become friends, while Hexblade was afraid amulets are actually cursed and make her actually care for this nerd.
The party took an unrelated attack as proof Lizardfolk were up to no good and tried to sneak into their lair via sea route. This ended with A LOT of Lizardfolk and Tritons (who replaced aquatic Hobgoblins) upon them. The party surrendered when they have seen Kna (who replaced Locantah) riding on giant eels.
They were taken to the Queen, who chastised them for trying to break into their home and killing one of the guards. The party tried to claim they're trying to replace the smugglers but Queen's advisor kept finding holes in their story. And it didn't help that when Queen's other adviser suggested they're done only to get cooked as a new meal, Hexblade had a "say it to my face!" reaction (Hsiao Artificer: My head snaps 180 degrees to glare at her). And that the Barbarian tried to ask if the Lizardfolk had anything to do with the Caymen attack. In the end, the party managed to learn that the Lizardfolk aren't preparing an attack on Saltmarsh - they want to take back their stronghold that was taken by the Shark-kin. The Queen even let the party meet one they hold prisoner. Who according to Oceanus was way too big for a typical Shark-kin, not to mention taking over strongholds was not their usual forte. The Shark-kin talking about how soon they will raise and "the Great Maw" will consume all, didn't make it any less worrying.
Obviously, the party wanted to help with the problem. The Queen, noded by her advisors, suggested they can do three things to convince her to let Saltmarsh join her alliance: get the approval of her people and allies, kill crocodile Thousand Teeth who killed many of her warriors, and recover helmet stolen from her by Newts when they rejected her offer of alliance. The party was allowed to rest and set off to kill the crocodile. Which went pretty well, even if they were all terrified when a crocodile had legendary actions and legendary resistance. Still, extra attacks at end of the turn really brought even Barbarian down to low HP fast. Not to zero, but the party was worried.
Upon returning they proceeded to win the approval of the Lizardfolk warriors by finding a way to deliver the crocodile's huge body, as well as two giant constrictor snakes, so that it may be turned into food. They kept the best part of the crocodile for the artificer to prepare the dish for the queen. He nailed it. Meanwhile, rest of the party went looking for the queen, found two hatchlings, and (after the wizard fell over trying to pick both of them), got them back to nursery, where other lizardfolk civilians asked for their help taking care of babies, which the party oblieged. They're now halfway through winning the community over.
Part Nine: Danger at Dunwater Part II
We played two sessions over 3 days. First, the party went to get along with other members of the Lizardfolk faction. Wizard got along with the minister Sauriv, through a conversation about magic. He, Artificer and Hexblade got Merfolk to like them by telling stories of their lives on the surface and of Good Kingdom. Playful Merfolk even got to drag them into the water to swim with them, which ended with the entire party swimming together. Then they walked past Kna with their leader mocking the party...so Warlock challenged him to a duel to the first blood, which she won, gaining his respect. Finally, they meet with Tritons and helped them prepare for the visit of the Ambassador, though their leader was more interested in hitting on Hexblade anyway.
The next day the party set off to the location of the Newts and managed to ambush them. I used the creatures from Bullywug Ambush. It went well. Everyone almost died. The croaker's ability to just deal everyone psychic damage 3 times is a bane of concentration spells, btw. Also, the giant toad almost ate the Hexblade, so good times were had by all. The party recovered the helmet, delivered it to the queen and Lizardfolk threw a huge party for them and other allies, including the ambassador of the Tritons. The party was given the magical helmet as the symbol of friendship between their communities.
At the night they were woken up by sounds of combat. Tho the Glantri players surprised me positively by roleplaying their paranoia (I did tell them Glantri Great School of Magic makes Game of Thrones look like Harry Potter) and being kinda chill about the potential attempt at their life because "it's almost like home". As it turned out the Lair has been attacked by Shark-Kin. After one of them struck the barbarian it turned out that their weapons can drive anyone into a berserker frenzy, which actually caused the party to split apart as some tried to move past the Barbarian, while others tried to keep her down so she doesn't hurt anyone. Aleena was spamming Resistance cantrip at the Barbarian, Oceanus tried to grapple her, even the Wizard tried to grapple her, that's how bad things went.
After few battles that were turning hilarious with Shar-kin (using Sahaguin stats) would go down easily, their weapons would drive allies mad, and also at random moments they themselves would go berserk. As the party slowly realized from putting together the clues, the spears were cursed. Worse, they were having markings of the very witch who cursed them before. Meaning she conned Shar-kin and sold them cursed magic items as well. At this point, the party wants this woman dead so much (and I'm so making her Emily Von Hendricks).
They finally arrived at the Queen bed-chamber, a secret passage to which they discovered by accident during befriending the lizardfolk) and find her fighting the ambassador. Queen was claiming ambassador lead Shark-Kin in, while she claimed Queen is driven mad by cursed spears. It actually, due to some bad roles, took them a moment to realize in-character ambassador is full of it. The ambassador was using Sea Hag stats with horrifying visage being reflavored as "she is so beautiful when you look at her you realize this is NOT natural and it frightens you", I was going for some uncanny valley. This got few of the party members and then evil eye actually gave the Queen a heart attack after Hexblade avoided it via Lucky reroll. Once she realized she just avoided dropping to zero she was very happy for this feat. Aleena actually had to drag the queen's unconscious body to another room and heal her, while the party chased after the ambassador, who thought her job is done. They managed to grapple the latter before she ran into the pool of water. But before they could question the ambassador, a Shark-Kin, a classic looking one instead of the huge buff ones they fought so far, jumped out of the water, stabbed her, told the party these are not "true kin of the shark" and ran away the same way he came. Wizard tried to grapple him but failed. The party couldn't follow as 4 buff Shark-Kin broke into the room with Queen and QAllena and they had to help them. But they did notice the ambassador's body turned into water, meaning she was a simulacrum and the real ambassador is either imprisoned or dead by now. We decided that a whole ass dungeon of battles with a huge number of foes would be exhausting so I let the party narrate how they spent a long night pushing the Shark-kin back. Also, barbarian made a beeline to nursery, beheaded two Shark-kin trying to get there and guarded it for the whole night.
They're finally level 4 now.
After a long night of battle, the party and Lizardfolk managed to defeat the Shark-kin and drive them back. In the morning they have been celebrated as heroes, while the chief priest who spent the whole night struggling to overcome a single enemy who attacked him in his chambers, was seen as weak. He was so afraid of another cleric using this to assassinate him he hopped alongside the party and Minister Sauriv (who I never mentioned, I have made a crocodilian instead of standard lizardfolk) to Saltmarsh so that they can negotiate the alliance. The party came straight to the city hall, without even cleaning their clothes from shark blood. The whole city council listened to their reports (which the party consider an improvement, seeing how before only one person would talk to them, maybe two) and the revelations of new threat and Lizardfolk's offer of alliance caused a lot of commotion and arguments. The party was thanked and paid by Anders Solomon and excused, as the politics do not require their presence.
They immediately went to Keledek to get him to find the witch who cursed them. He explained details of the job he needs them to do in exchange. Go to the ruined tower of his dead friend Zenopus, warded against powerful mages, and ask an oracle he had there "Who tries to wake up what should eternal lie?". The party, realizing he is talking about Jormungand/Leviathan, shared with him what they know. He told them that while someone could convert Shark-Kin to worship of Leviathan he sincerely doubt this same person could transform them in this "roided up" version and made Simulacrum out of Merfolk ambassador. The plot thickens.
And Wicker Goat the party meet another group of adventurers, composed of Fleetwood, his finance Clarion, brothers Felonius and Greegan, dwarf Rolf, Elf Belrain, and Halfling Touchberry. The party got their attention so that Allena can sneak to the party bedrooms since she and Fleetwood are exes and she really does not want to have this conversation right now. I decided to portray the old iconic adventurers as kinda boastful jerks, they quickly get on the party's nerves (Greegan trying to pickpocket Wizard and Hexblade did not help). Hexblade and Fleetwood ended trying to outdo one another with stories of heroic deeds and then in a drinking contest, which Hexblade barely won. Wizard filed a complaint that these rivals are not meeting his standards.
In the morning at the breakfast, Manistrad Copperlocks offered them a new job. Get their expert from a loggers camp and help them find what kind of monster chased miners from one of their mines. Because I haven't pillaged enough of Icespire Peak adventures. The party agreed and set off to logger's camp. On the way they found a boar on the road. Barbarian lured it off the road with food. But as the party was leaving they noticed boar suddenly vanishing and a bird with a magical aura flying away. Artificer flew to give pursuit and grappled a freaking bird (it cost him longstrider and expeditious retreat to catch up). He captured the bird, tied it up...and it turned into a bear that tried to attack but promptly feel to the ground and upon hitting it transformed into a dead woman with a broken neck. Some rolls let the party identify her as a member of Atruaghin Clans, one wearing symbols of Dael Tiger Stripes and Atzantieotol, as well as the fact someone clearly taught her wildshape incorrectly, hence why she died.
Upon arriving they found the camp besieged with megafauna, with both Phorohacons and Hyenodons having eaten most of the workers. After a hard battle they did manage to overcome them and found the Dwarf they were to pick up, Donna, as a sole survivor since she managed to lock herself in a room before the beasts got her. After skinning the animals they searched ruins of the house from which they came from ad found a totem dedicated to Dael Tiger Stripes and Atzantieotol, one to lead to the realm of woe and pain, which apparently summoned these things.
I ran Mountain's Toe Gold Mine on last session, it was pretty okay even if it was just a bit of combat and PCs literally chasing the running away leader of the wererats to ensure she does NOT live to see another day. There were thee interesting tidbits that do relate to Mystara, however.
One was the Lupin Barbarian, her detection of Licantropes ability and immunity to lycanthropy made the adventure far, far less dangerous, she really had an opportunity to tank like a champ being the only one immune to lycanthropy. Alongside the Hsiao Artificer's massive perception it helped balance out the encounter.
Speaking of the Hsiao, he had a moment of pure horror when he tried to sneak into the mine through the tunnel on the side..and saw it full of Stirges (since I don't think Carrion Crawlers are in Mystara so I replaced one in this adventure), same species as the one that killed him once. Seeing him just NOPE away was hilarious and he said it was a geniue moment of horror for him.
And finally, on this session Wizard, who is from Glantri, let his anti-clerical sentiments slip within an earshot of Aleena. Who confronted him about it, and the two had a lot of passive-aggressive snipes at one another through the rest of the adventure. It was a source of a lot of laughs, and at some point Wizard was outright hiding behind Oceanus, having failed Insight checks and convinced himself Aleena wants to kill him. We outright have jokes this game is turning into a harem anime with Wizard as a protagonist and Aleena, Oceanus and Hexblade are his love interests.
It was fun session.
Part Twelve: The Tower of Zenopus Part I
We started with Wizard giving the magic googles they found last time to Aleena as an apology for his behavior. She forgave him. Even joined in when he and Hexblade started shit-talking wizards to get a bit better cover about being fron Glantri. Of course she told horror stories about Wizard terrorizing her hometowm, Bargle.
The party has reached the Tower of Zenopus and immediately Artificer sneaking around got to watch two groups of Goblins and Hobgoblins in an argument. He had Detect Magic on so he noticed a familiar magical aura from a sword held by one of the Goblin bosses. After he went back to tell everyone, the party decided to approach them openly to talk, which could work since a lot of these folk were survivors of previous encounters between Goblinoids and the party, but the bosses wanted to fight. When the bosses were killed remaining Goblins and Hobgoblins have surrendered and told the party the following information:
- the sword was stolen from a traveling witch who Goblins tried to rob but were chased away by a band of adventurers, one of the Bosses snatched it when they were running away. The description of the witch matches the one who sold the party cursed items and the description of the adventurers who saved her (and whom she rewarded with magic items) matches the rival adventuring party.
- After getting the sword the bosses started squabbling over it (the sword is cursed to convince its user it is powerfully magical, make them paranoic someone is gonna steal it and then cause the person they think will do it an obsession over the same sword)
- The Goblins were hired by smugglers who have an operation here.
- Few rooms with treasures, including the crypts. (in reality, Goblins told them rooms with danger in the hope the psychos who keep attacking them and murdering their friends get killed)
Goblins then ran the **** away.
The party goes to the next room. Everywhere webs, a lone chest in the corner. Artificer rolls insanely high perception but I cannot tell him there are two monsters because one is indistinguishable from an object until it moves and the other sits on another plane. So I tell him he can feel something is wrong. And detect magic does nothing since none of those are magical per se.
So after the party spends a minute or so trying to shoot a chest, unsuccessfully let me add, they finally try to open it and get a Mimic. As they kill it a Planar Spider appears, grabs Wizard, PUTS A GUN TO HIS HEAD before proclaiming "Give me all your money and equipment or the kid dies!". The party proceeds to try to convince them to go after the abovementioned witch if he wants magic items, but he just adds her to his shit list for later. Once the party annoys him by trying to clumsily talk the way out of it, he almost kills the wizard with a bite, and combat resumes. They did manage to kill him at which point Wizard and Artificer stripped him off gear, performed an autopsy, and cut his corpse to pieces to sell later. They made Allena sick.
- They found there was a glyph on the spider preventing him from leaving this room.
- They would need a lot of work to figure out how to fix his advanced gun or crack his tech but they get something from his personal computer - coordinates of other planets and borders of this crystal sphere, his shit list (which has mostly alien names...and Bargle), a shipping folder full of smutty fanfics about spiders, an "oogle" browser with history of searches like "hot spiders on this planet" and "find hot single Brain Collectors in your area" but when they try the search itself they get pixelated animation of a spider running on a desert and hitting cactuses.
- Wizard's Warlock patron, a Death Knight from Ravenloft, censors all of this for him because she's arachnophobic and doesn't want to look through his eyes only to read about spiders boning.
Thanks @agathokles for suggesting the use of Planar Spider, the party found him terrifying AND hilarious.
Then come the crypts. During the investigation, the party notices the walls are covered in familiar-looking symbols from the temple, the one with Ghouls. With some spells and great rolls, they manage to decipher those as ancient burial rites of the Nythian Empire and Wizard & Artificer put their brains together to figure that they have never heard of such an empire and only Nythians they know of are a bunch of assholes in the Emirates of Yalarum. I hat to explain to the Wizard these are on the opposite side of Darokin from Artuaghin Clans since he was curious if maybe there is a connection. I like when Players spot plot threads and start making theories.
In crypts, all reskinned to give them Nythian feel, themselves the party moved pretty much everything and picked a fight with every monster there was. Including a wererat who bit Aleena and infected her. Yes, I've run a whole adventure with the wererats where no one was infected and this one here just infected a canonical NPC.
The session ended on the party almost getting murdered by a Banshee. Turns out these creatures are very brutal. As they managed to short rest, a Ghost showed up. We'll be picking up from there next week.
Meanwhile, I promised to give them how old Nythian part of the dungeon actually is, since the party realized Zenopus built over an older structure. How long time ago from 1000-1004 was the Nythian Empire again?
Part Thirteen: Dungeons & Daddies
The party started this session by meeting a Ghost. Ghost was friends with Banshee whom the party has slain, so they tried to lie to him. The Wizard and Artificer told two lies - that they didn't see her and an insinuation the Goblins killed her - and one failed while other succeeded, which made the Ghost suspicious. The party tried to bring up being sent by Zenopus' friend, but the Ghost was bonded here by Zenopus and has no love for him. Before I could explain that he is forced to guard the tower, the party interrupted me to say they're here to rob the place. So the Ghost, complaining how unfortunate it was, possessed Artificer and attacked. They did get him out eventually and managed to plead to him. The Ghost revealed a loophole allowing him to let them live - if they get rid of all other intruders in the tower.
The party ventured forth and found two trapped rooms, one next to another. One had a magical trap releasing minotaur skeletons from hidden rooms when someone entered the room. The other had a hidden pit trap at every door, that would drop the victim to a room with glyph of warding on the floor, that upon contact casts hold person on up to two targets. All pits surround a stone column in small holes through which trapped inside rust monster feeds on their metal items. The party didn't know what the traps do so they left the rooms be, for now.
(thought of trying to add an image this one time since this NPC may actually be important later)
They then ambushed (or rather, due to botched rolls, tried to ambush) the pirate captain in his quarters. The captain had with himself an ally - Drethna, a mad Atruaghin shamaness who was exiled from Bear Clan for worship ot Atzanteotal and joined Tiger Clan for revenge. She has seduced the captain of this smuggler crew to secure shipments of weapons. You see, Tiger Clan too has noticed signs Leviathan stirs in its sleep and they believe it is a child of Atzanteotol since snek. So they believe if the world survives its awakening, they will be allowed to cull the people left. The woman has also sent her student to open a portal to place megafauna came from in Logger's Camp, since the camp was inconvenient for the smugglers.
So backstory aside, the party made quick work of the captain, making the shamaness run through a hidden door, but not before casting Black Tentacles to cover her escape, dealing the killing blow to the captain in the process. After getting out of the tentacles, the party followed and found themselves in a corridor with magical darkness and the words BEWARE THE DOPPELGANGER written on the wall in blood. The moment Hexblade walked into the darkness (since she can see through it) the darkness was dispelled and she was teleported behind the party with a note saying "REMEMBER: BLEND IN" in her hands. The party had spent like 15 minutes just on the attempts by Hexblade to convince the party she is actually herself.
Once the party cleared that out they faced Drethna with two animated armors in a foundation of the tower. I had a lot of fun freaking my players out when she used her ability (she uses Kraken priest stats) to put fear of Leviathan into them. I just told them they all hear this terrifying roar. In the end, the party still prevailed and she tried to flee but was knocked unconscious and tied up right under the door to the room with the giant stone face. After interrogating her, they knocked her out again. Also they bought into her view of Leviathan and believe Atzantieotol to be the true BBEG of the campaign. I wonder what theories they'll come in with later.
The party decided to, instead of entering the next room and solving their quest, to drag the unconscious villain all the way back to the magical trap next to the entrance so they can test what it does. First, they had to bypass rust monster trap. Artificer is a Hsiao so he tried to carry her over the traps. But he duped strength so I had him roll athletics and right as he was about to leave the room, he failed. He used his ability to stop his fall, but failed next athletics so I decided he triggered the trap. He used his ability to stop his fall again and was struggling to stay afloat because the trap closed over his head.
Hexblade tried to jump over the trap on her side and failed. She managed to use her sword to stab the wall and hang on, but then had a crazy idea to Eldritch Blast the floor, which I decided triggers the Glyph of Warding. She was paralyzed and eventually, gravity won. Thankfully she had no metal aside belt buckle, but the humiliation of her pants falling off when a weird antenna/tentacle from the wall ate it was enough. Meanwhile, Barbarian and Wizard decided the best way to get her out is by SLASHING AND BLASTING THE FLOOR, which I'll never let them live down. Eventually, everyone managed to get out, stressed and humiliated. At which point the Wizard exclaimed "Wait a second! I have Tenser's Floating Disc prepared!"
After punching the Wizard, they dropped Drethna into the other room and watched the two minotaur skeletons grab her unconscious body and carry with them. Deciding she is gonna get eaten*, the party rested in the captain's office. Then they engaged the other smugglers. Which included a guy with a much younger wizard girlfriend who were openly engaging in their daddy kink, to the frustration of everyone. Word of advice - if you want the players to try their damnest to kill someone, make that someone's partner call them "daddy" and make sure they know it's a kink, it worked for my players. The only one who pissed them off more was the third guy who assumed Wizard and Hexblade's matching amulets meant they're dating. Furious Hexblade stabbed him. To her outrage, his dying words were "I knew I should not try to stand in the way of true love". Later when reinforcements came, one of them saw her standing over the guy's dead body and started shooting at her, yelling "You murdered the greatest opera singer in all of piracy!" The party was mighty confused. To the party's charging, the "daddy" got knocked out with a sleep spell (they plan to keelhaul him) and his girlfriend ran away. It is unlikely they catch her, they have to pass Sea Hag room to do it.
Also, the party has teamed up for this fight with two prisoners, an Etergarian warrior named Ganbold and a human girl named Adrianna. Adrianna, upon learning they will be soon embarking on the quest to find the missing ship Zephyr, begged the party to let them join the expedition, since her brother was on the crew. What the party doesn't know is that she is Adrianna Karameikos, daughter of Duke Stefan looking for her brother, and her companion is a son of Golden Khan sent on a diplomatic mission to Karameikos after displeasing his father.
* - obviously she is not gonna get eaten. I wouldn't let an opportunity like that slide. Any ideas what could be done with the shamaness of Atzantieotol deep in Nythian ruins? I was thinking of having her return as some sort of Lich/Banshee/Archdruid combo to menace the PCs or the Known World. But I'm open to suggestions.
Part Fourteen: Tower of the Usurper
I just had my longest session as a DM yet. 7. Hours. Let me get you gits of it
First, the party's pursuit after the last remaining smuggler was interrupted when they ran into a Sea Hag, who was willing to let them go and even tell them where did their target go...if they feed her someone. The party offered her the 3 captured smugglers. While Wizard was transporting them, however, he heard a corpse speaking his name. And when he tried to investigate it, it lunged forward and grabbed his face, touching it several times. It spoke to him in the Glantri language (Glantrian?) how "Now that I know your face, I will always find you."
Meanwhile, Hag got impatient, gave Artificer a heart attack, and threatened to eat him if she doesn't get her meal soon. She got it, released the Artificer, and told the party the girl they're chasing was told by her there is another place with the water (north the room with stone face) wherein the wall is a hole in which she can hide, it has an air pocket letting her wait out until the pursuit leaves. It was, of course, a lie. But the party still is too trusting. They went to chase the girl, to the sounds of "nom nom nom" as the hag was devouring the smugglers.
They passed the room with a stone face, Artificer quickly figured how to activate it and asked Keledek's question, getting the answer "The one who is not dead, through beneath seas he lies, feeding on victims of the changing tides." He then went to continue the chase, while Wizard went to test this face himself. He asked who is after him and was told "A tireless hunter from the kingdom of magic, employing services of those whose fate was most tragic." Later History checks told him the most possible people who could it be would either be from his own Principality, Klantyre, or he pissed off someone in Boldavia, a likely candidate could be a necromancer Aozy Markvo. Wizard's Warlock Patron also asked a question - who would be most likely to help her escape Demiplane of Dread. She was told to seek "Masters of Entropy who sow chaos, through their services come with a cost".
Warlock's Patron, Death Knight, offered Wizard that if he opens his mind and stands still briefly, she can scan the area using the overwhelming aura of death in the place, due to Nithian catacombs. After the session, I ran a player who plays Hexblade, but also the patron since it was her old PC, an encounter with Thanatos during which he made her an offer. He may help her escape Demiplane of Dread and free her from her own patron, a powerful devil, in exchange for some time in his service and bringing him the Dread Orb, which he will use to trap said devil as he brings Death Knight to Mystara. He made few rulings like ensuring neither Wizard nor his crew know of Thanatos' involvement and the latter don't know why Wizard suddenly seeks this Orb. Also warned Death Knight that if she brings Wizard to it when he is too weak, it will kill him. He made her also make Drethna from previous psot another one of her Warlocks, to let them stay in contact through her.
Meanwhile, back at the tower, Artificer jumped to the running water in the next room, wasn't swept in somehow, saw there is no hole to hide it in...and there is a Malfera waiting for him. A fight ensued in which the Malfera's paralyzing poisonous breath was especially dangerous. A Hag joined after some time, getting bored with waiting to kill anyone who would be swept by the current and come on the other side, into her cave. She tried to bolt when Malfera finally was cut to pieces by Barbarian, but Ganbold, Etengarian NPC ally grabbed her and threw her to the ground. The party executed her. Wizard was, from their perspective, so focused on the stone face he didn't notice a fight.
They went back to question the stone face. They asked where is the witch who cursed them...and the face contacted Keledek. Who promptly told them to drop the pursuit because this reaches deeper than they thought, and to not trust anyone, especially...and then he was electrocuted by someone* whose unknown voice told the PCs to "mind their own business" before it blew up the stone face.
So naturally, the party decided to not go race back to Saltmarsh but instead took a long rest. Upon leaving they ran into a Goblin named Mouse, who tried to scare away the smugglers with some homemade inventions because she didn't want the Goblins working for them be murdered by a bunch of murderhobos. Which did happen, to her disappointment. However, the party convinced her to join them as an apprentice. Adopting a Goblin was on their bucket list.
Also, Artificer stole from the upper levels of the tower all that wasn't nailed down and some of those things too. I now need to make them 8 plot hooks for future adventures.
Returning to Saltmarsh they found a city in chaos due to the fact that someone* replaced Keledek's tower with Tower of the Usurper (which I stole from a Midgard module). And now the town has been fighting the Bugbears and Hobgoblins. Huge history roll let Artificer recall he meet a veteran from Karameikos who was coming back from vacation in Ierendi who told him about this tower. It's named after a member of the uprising against Duke Stefan, part of a stronghold of a guy who believed in not just overthrowing Stefan but chasing Thyatis all the way out of Traladara. To take the tower most of the castle had to be leveled and lately clan of Bugbears led by an Ogre took it over and was using it as their base. Oh, and it was located near Castellan Keep on the other end of Karameikos.
The city guard needed to send someone to deal with this problem from the inside. They sent one group of adventurers first but they were captured after it turned out their new magic items are cursed ("I have fought in many campaigns against Alphatia. I have seen wizards fight. never seen a fireball turn one hundred eighty mid flight and hit its caster in the face."). So the party packed themselves into bag of holding and Artificer, turned invisible, flew over and snuck part upper guards. The party fought their way from top to the bottom of the tower, against very strong bugbears and finally saved their rivals from an Ogre, becoming beloved heroes of Saltmarsh.
* - Bargle, it was Bargle
Part Fifteen: The Secrets of the Skyhorn Lighnouse
I had run some short side-sessions lately, for my two Warlocks.
First Hexblade learned of two entities living in her sword, personifying light and darkness...or more like the Rad (the power, not the Immortal) and Blackflame who offered her one of two pacts. mechanically Rad offered her power over defense (works similar to Gambler's Rapier, each long rest she gets to choose a bonus from 0 to +3 to attacks and damage but gets an equal penalty to saving throws) while Blackflame offered her skill over power (an ability to get from +1 to +3 to any skill check or saving throw but at the cost of an equal penalty to the next attack and damage rolls). She picked the Rad's offer.
Now my other Warlock, the Wizard, got first a vision of his patron who informed him of a Dread Orb of great necromantic power and told him to visit the Tower of Storms. he snuck out when the party was celebrating their victory. There he let his patron cast Lightning Bolt through him, blasting the altar. Which blasted him back, knocking him out. While he was out, the patron got to meet Loki and asked him for help in double-crossing Thanathos since she has no desire to serve the Immortal. Loki agreed he may help her if she does a specific thing for him once she's free. While this was happening, Wizard woke up with a limited-use rune allowing him to cast Lightning Bolt 3 times on his hand and a Necromancer standing next to him. Aozy Markov introduced himself and explained that Wizard's brother called in a favor, asking for the necromancer to find the Wizard and check on him. After convincing him that he is doing fine and enjoying his "in-field research" and explaining the apparent threat of waking the Leviathan, Wizard got from Aozy an offer - he would write to necromancer reports of his progress and Aozy would send him books, information and requests he finds to be potentially helpful for his research or to further stimulate his growth and development. Neither Wizard or his patron know of the other's secret deal.
Now for the main session
After the last mission and saving the town, the party was celebrated as heroes, even their rivals drinking in their honor. And let them know if they ever need help capturing the witch who cursed them, to give their group a call, since they have a beef with her too now. Also Aleena and Clarion, ex and finance of Fleetwod, rival party's leader, went to shit-talk him behind his back. Also, Artificer tricked Greegan into stealing from him a bag of false coins with a magical effect that will scream if he ever touches them.
The party woke up, most of them sleeping on the ship except the Wizard, who stayed at the inn (and went to the Tower as described above). Once they woke up they got to study Zenopus' journals, as well as a letter found at Ogre's body. I used thsi to seed them A LOT of plot hooks including for many modules I plan to run if the party will be interested - Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (set in mountains between Darokin and Five Shires), Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan (Tiger Clan lands), White plume Mountain (Emirates of Ylarum), Death, Frost, Doom ( Vestland), Tower of the Stargazer (near Castellan Fort), Deep Carbon Observatory (Hinterlands in Davania), Ship of Horrors (this one will find them) and Obstacle Course from Dungeon of the mad Mage (in Alphatia, I like an idea of a crashed spelljammer vessel in late game). As well as setting up several of the Sea Princes, including Black Molly (from 3e adventure Sea Witch), Captain Gnash (from Exemplars of Evil), One Eye (from War Rafts of Kron), Barbarossa (from the Isle of Dread). The party has a lot to think about and plan, not to mention try to find connections and figure out the plot.
The party got new quests. Eliander wants them to clear Isle of the Abbey, a Halfling merchant wants to find a missing ship of his, Jade Lion, and Anders wants them to recover invoices from Edna Oweland's lost ship, Emperor of the Waves. While preparing for the mission, the party went to buy healing potions from a Halfling Druid leaving in a nearby grove. And he offered him to smoke some of his pipe. Few failed CON saves later, Wizard and Hexblade, stoned out of their minds, went with Barbarian to recruit an Elven sailor who was supposed to lead them to Skyhorn Lighthouse, where an observer is keeping watch on the Isle of the Abbey and where Jade Lion vanished. High as **** they got into a fight with two pirates who tried to beat that sailor up, accusing her of cheating at dice. Even high they won easily but Artificer was so pissed be actually PvPed Wizard with a single attack when the latter was whining people he puts a Hex on keep dying.
Wizard summoned his familiar and his patron stepped him, putting in it a soul of Mystara native she got to kill in an old campaign - Grandpa Feather, a Nagpa who once used Domiante Person on her when she was still alive. So now the wizard has a crow who is really PISSED that he got to be in an even worse form than before. I kinda think he may betray the party at some point.
On the seas, they approached the lighthouse, which is on an island so small it's not on the map. got attacked by a Water Elemental telling them (Artificer spoke Aquan, I decided to keep this language) that he is made to do it by a summoner. Having fought it off they entered the lighthouse and found it overrun with mutant Shark-Kin, this time a bit more mutated, having a bit of eel in them - they would explode dealing small lightning damage when killed. Lightning they were immune to. It was an easy fight that turned bad the more and more explosions chipped at everyone's health. Once they managed to finish this, the party found an Orc Druid barricaded in the top of the lighthouse. He explained to them he is carrying a legacy of Skyhorn family, whose last living member adopted him - to keep this lighthouse working and guard Bowl of Summoning Water Elementals hidden in ruins underneath it. Mutant Shark-Kin found out about it and attacked and now are kidnapping ships to force the sailors to summon Elementals to do their biding.
A session with a LOT of potential for the campaign to develop further, also funny as hell.
We spent most of the session being silly and fighting the (Mutant) Shark-Kin. From some few interesting things that happened,
- Wizard is still trying to bullshit Adrianna and her Etengarian friend that he's not from Glantri, she is on his trial tho and so far it resulted in a lot of trying to dig around and find what the **** is the Shearing without her noticing Wizard doesn't know. They ended selling her a bs story of having his shearing on a ship the Owl's Eye from the Minrothad Guilds, which convinced her (since her brother has gone missing on his Shearing of the same type), for now.
- the party had a bit of a laugh discovering the cult on Isle of the Abbey is likely Alphatian in origin...and was raided by Alphatian corsairs. It leads them to some history and religion checks and learning about the religion of Alphakas, the Immortal Patron of destroying Alphatia...and upon bringing up he likes undead and explosions the party is now considering infiltrating or just joining his cult.
- They interrogated one of the Shark-Kin and I dropped them some hints about their creators, the Duke and the Prince ruling them, and even a line about "Mind Breakers". Which was foreshadowing the Kopru. The players with metagame knowledge are expecting Illithids so they're scared already. I cannot wait when they learn the truth, it's gonna be a big surprise.
Part Seventeen: Spooky Scary Skeletons
Long story short: Due to a combination of bad decisions and rolls we had basically for hours of combat with Spooky Scary Skeletons and three manticores. After that we had an hour of extra play for roleplay to let the party unwind as they rested. Among other things, they tried to pry into each other's secrets. Especially the Wizard, who at one point used his blessing from Loki to kill a lot of Skeletons. They cornered him enough to spill the beans on how he got it. Failed insight checks from both Aleena and Adrianna made them come to the conclusion he was cursed by Loki or maybe even the Jormungandr. Then later got in a debate with the rest of the party if his patron is his girlfriend...or his sugar mama. Despite the wizard's protests and indignation at these claims. Aleena even started theorizing what if one of the female Entropic Immortals took "this poor boy" as her plaything. Let's add Wizard's own familiar (who has a raven with the soul of Nagpa who once crossed his patron and is rather bitter about it) shit-talking him and fun times were had by all. Except the wizard.
We also learned that Artificer, who is a Hsiao, is convinced Oberon is his father and that Lupin Barbarian has ambition to one day return to her nomadic tribe, become it's new Alpha and take at least three men as her mates. Between this, Wizard's eldritch girlfriend/sugar mama, Artificer having a thing for Harpies and misunderstanding Hexblade and Oceanus shittalking Wizard in Elven as flirting, Adrianna came to a conclusion she is working with a group of perverts.
Party also got a handout of a tablet found with one of the shark-kin from the previous fight. It had notes about locations of the set of magic items belonging to the barbaric king of beastmen, something I put in in hopes of getting the Barbarian interested and to give them more plot hooks, sending them to Serpent Pennisula and Isle of Dawn. Shark-kin want it for their own king. Later they have meet the surviving Alphatian corsair who confirmed one of Barbarian's magic items is part of this legendary set. He also confirmed the cult on Isle of the Abbey is cult of Alphaks, which is why Alphatian corsairs tried to eliminate it.
So anywya, two questions I have for Mystara experts.
1) Is there any info on beastmen from which other races of monsters like Orcs came from? Did they have any leaders whose memory has survived to modern times?
2) I heard Oberon once tried to become both king and queen of Ierendi, is this given a set-in-stone date in any of the Gazetteers? Because if not I am thinking of hving it happen if party ever tried to take a part in the tournament.
Part Eighteen: Ruins of the Abbey
Last session of the year started with the party attempting to try to talk to the cultists of Alphaks. The big brute Ogmund was willing to let them talk..after calling for reinforcements. Leader of the group, Ozymandias, got out of his room and ran straight into Artificer, with Goblin riding on his back. Artificer failed to convince him they're here to join their group but he did seem more reasonable to another cultist, Odium. Meanwhile, Ogmund, stalling for time, tried to shake hands of Wizard, Hexblade and Barbarian, and they had to roll saving throws vs his athletics to see if his grip would hurt them. Which backfired when he got cold damage from Hexblade's Armor of Aghatyst, thus provoking combat.
Btw who named 3 different guys in this adventure names starting with an O?
I kinda buffed this encounter by replacing cultists with Cult Fanatics. It didn't matter, the party went brutal on them and massacred all but one caster very fast. Once Ozymandias and Ogmund and all but one actual cult member were down, the rest surrendered. They did manage to negotiate safe passage and 700 gp to start a new life from the party, in exchange for information about the winding way. They then exit the ruins. They may return if I get Alphatia involved some more in the future.
As the party short rested searched the ruins, finding such things as Alphatian traditional recipes like "gyros", they had a moment to roleplay. Hexblade and Wizard tried to use their ability to speak languages no one else speaks to get from Oceanus how did he realize they're from Glantri. Wizard was adamant that it was because Hexblade (Belcadise Elf) is constantly going "Ole ole, FC Barcelona!" but Oceanus confirmed that while he recognized her as Belcadise Elf, it was because Wizard cannot shut up about Glantri. He assured them their secret is safe with him, but warned them that Ethengarian ally will likely get pissed once he realizes Wizard tricked him and is from Glantri and that Adrianna may be onto them because she is herself hiding something. Also, they spent half of the conversation in Elven, half abusing comprehend languages to talk in obscure languages, to the party's terror. And Aleena now thinks the 3 of them may be in a polyamorous relationship.
After entering the Winding way (while being impressed with a mural of Alphaks as a huge Balrog-like demon, since they were expecting an old man on a throne or something), the party was taught fear by a Bodak. And the creature ran away into trap-filled corridors, luring them in. After catching and killing it Artificer and Hexblade proceeded to carefully check everything. Hexblade still managed to get ahead of herself and be left with 3 HP after a block fell on her head. While Artificer was so focused on traps he fumbled his stealth and walked into the room with Ghasts and Minotaur Skeletons. We ended on a Ghast charging him.
Part Nineteen: The Winding Way
We had two sessions ever since, but one was jsut combat so I decided to write them together.
We pick up where we have left, at the party getting into another fight. This one was hard due to narrow corridors making it hard for the party to get in and actually fight. it was also easy due to narrow corridors meaning big minotaur skeletons and minotaur statues couldn't get in and all deliver the beating. If I ever run this module again I'm changing all the big monsters into something else. The notable thing was Adrianna, the NPC sidekick and disguised duchess of Karameikos, taking three crits and ending with 1 hp twice.
Wizard has summoned his Raven again only to have him die to a trap when he sent it to scout ahead and make it open fake door, getting celling cave on its head. In a final encounter with the animated armors, Hexblade got knocked out and the party decided to drag her back to the ship and heal her there. Before waking up she had a vision of a ghost of a young woman pointing at the Artificer's cabin. She decides to investigate and I offhand mention I finally have a list of books the party took from Tower of Zenopus. Including "Teachings of Al-Kalim: Analysis of Selected Topics", full of margins writings by Yalari readers mocking non-Ylari's author's ignorance. Or books about the Elven Swan Ship and Skyship of Love. And Unauthorized Biography of Master of the Desert Nomads.
One of the books was Sabina of the Yellowcrest Manor, which was a journal of a servant girl working at the titular manor for Flavocrista, a minor Thyatian noble family. You may have guessed this is a Candlekeep Mysteries adventure Sarah of Yellowcrest Manor just with names changed - I decided to try to now start changing names in modules to actually sound more like they should in the specific country. Hence sudden Latin names.
The party used some clever tricks to talk with the ghost, everything from Blink*, to letting her possess Wizard, to dragging half-undressed Oceanus with Helm of Comprehend Languages to translate from thyatian to giving her pipes of remiscenting to let visualize her story. of note was that I noticed this adventure uses some completely new Old One as a patron for the evil ritual the murders were committed for. And as I've read it description on the cover of the book, that Sabina crudely drew in her journal, an inspiration stuck me and I described a different creature. And even showed the party the picture of the drawing
That's right, I set up an encounter with worshippers of our boy Zargon down the line.
The Town of Saltmarsh was in chaos following party outing Primewater as involved in smuggling, but he himself was not yet arrested due to technicalities, him backing away from slavery once it was outlawed and half of the town finding smuggling victimless crime. Traditionalists and loyalists were fighting in the streets, the city guard was having a hard time separating them, there were open protests. Barbarian and Hexblade went drinking and saw the guard clearing the bar from participants in a bar brawl. They did learn Greegan, rogue of other party, apparently burst panicked to a temple thinking he stole a purse of cursed money - Artificer's trick set up many sessions before did indeed teach him a lesson.
While they went drinking Artificer and Wizard collected rewards and handed Fireborn documents he could use to hunt down and mass arrest a large number of cult of Alphaks members and their supporters. While the party was getting a reward for the other job, the Artificer noticed someone tailing the - a person in mask and a black cloak. He watched as the stranger sneaks up to Wizard with a flower crown - a reward for winning first session festival of blooms that Wizard was demanding to be given by Primewater multiple times - in hand and tries to put it on Wizard's head from behind. Wizard was oblivious to it with 10 passive perception, and even Artificer's warning was vague "pretend everything is natural" - Wizard failed a perception check I decided this would allow. Seeing something in the stranger's hand Artificer grabbed it and began grappling the stranger. A reminder Artificer is a Hsiao, so this is a giant owl doing the grappling. Dropping the flowers and the knife, the would-be assassin uses a ring to teleport out of Artificer's hands and proceeds to run. Artificer tries to chase him, Wizard finally notices what is happening. They begin shooting. Artificer misses and causes panic in the street due to almost shooting some guy in the head, but Wizard hits. Assassin falls, rolls over, gets up. Pulls out a scroll. They roll Arcana to recognize the spell. teleport. Assassin is gone in a flash. All they have is a flower crown and a cheap dagger anyone could sell (Minrothad merchant they asked called it a "shoddy Darokin job").
Party reunites and tr to think who could want Wizard dead, though flowers point to Primewater. After some REALLY bad attempts to roll Intelligence to get a clue Wizard and Hexblade decide it must be Aleena and Adrianna, who just purred founds to hire an assassin on Wizard. After a healthy laugh they do agree there is something suspicious about Adrianna and Hexblade decides to goad her into telling more about herself over a few drinks. She proposes a drinking game with Hexblade and the party succeeds in getting her drunk. She does slip a few small hints but nothing concrete before her Etengarian friend, Ganbolt, decides to escort her back to the ship. I did decide the hints were not enough to make two Glantrian PCs start connecting the dots, but Barbarian could, due to being from the area, and Artificer could with disadvantage. When they passed I PMed them Karameikos ruling family's family tree, with a note to look at Duke Stefan's children. They decided to not spill the beans and not tell now drunk Hexblade or, now high, Wizard.
After returning to the ship, drunk Hexblade tried to escort high Wizard to his cabin and while there tried to look for an assassin. She failed but found a letter Wizard got from Aozy. So she took it and read it to the whole party, while wrestling the Wizard, who tried to get it back. In the letter, Aozy mentions he was asking around before departing and knows the party is set to sial to Ochaleea and suggests Wizard convinces his allies to clean the old castle Axelohm, near village Yokotoro, north of city Wang Tsu. Axeholm was a stronghold from Alphatian occupation times, whose crew was made of non-magical members of magic families. Pissed at the dead-end assignment they would lash at the local population. A local community leader, a woman named Takara, tried to negotiate with them but was imprisoned and cut down while attempting to escape. She arose as a Banshee and attacked her captors, forcing them to abandon the castle, now overrun with Undead and due to uprising and losing these grounds to newly-formed Thyatis, Alphatia never cleared this mess. Aozy was never in the area to deal with it but he believes destroying or subjugating the undead will both improve the reputation of Necromancy and be a good test of Wizard's abilities. He even suggests Wizard could convince his companions with promises of turning the castle into their base or rumors of lost treasure of legendary pirate Rory Barbarossa being hidden in the area.
After a healthy laugh about this whole scene of two intoxicated PCs fighting over a letter, the party went to sleep. The next morning Artificer finished preparing the ship and they got official documents from Jaxa Brand. In private she asked the captain, Hexblade, to keep an eye on Adrianna and Ganbolt and make sure nothing happens to them on the way. She also handled her letter of marque as means of limited protection from law and Minrothad navy, was their mission requiring unsavory means. However, the letter is unspecified, meaning it is not on a single individual but on anyone holding it, so if their possession of it becomes known, they'll be the target of pirates.
Next session we finally set to sail Sea of Dread.
* - Does Mystara even have Etherial Plane? Or is Hexblade blinking in and out Spirit World?
Parts 20 and 21: Welcome in Thyatis
We played two games in 3 days so there is a lot to go through
The party had a few last things to do in Saltmarsh, including buying materials to make their own balistas and...buying weed. They also asked their rival group if they could check on Keledek who was teleported with his entire tower to nearby Castellan Keep and learned some creepy-looking guy in a cloak, reeking of magic, has been asking about them. They also meet a traveling pilgrim of the Blackmist of Twelve Watchers (on pilgrimage to learn different countries' blacksmithing crafts), who offered his services in all crafts he knows in exchange for letting him board their ship to Thyatis. On the way, he helped Artificer make two ballasts and taught him the basics of jewelry. The man talked a lot about Twelve Watchers and encouraged Artificer to keep honing his crafts, expanding his knowledge, and building the flying city he dreams of. Even suggesting this way he may find his own path to Immortality.
On the way Barbarian tried to study alchemy from the book found in the Haunted House. Wizard snuck it out to try himself and finally rolled that 20 to learn the book is utter nonsense and furiously threw it at the wall, waking everyone up. This was when they reached the mighty city of Thyatis. After a description, loosely inspired by this post, they docked in the city and went to get their papers. I kinda improvised them having to pay a fee and then double that in bribes to actually get the papers. Adrianna refused to set a foot in the city. Unknown to the party she was afraid she may be recognized as Duke Stefan's daughter.
In the city, they start asking about Sabina's lover, Vacken. In an inn in the Heart, their questioning gets them invited to a private drinking room in the back, where they meet Anaxibius, the famous gladiator. He explains that Vacken they're looking for is like Vacken broken Horn, an officer, and bodyguard of general Titus Claudius, who is having his triumph today. A part of said Triumph is the Emperor's Gauntlet, a series of competitions between gladiator teams, mostly an "amateur hour" and more casual than normal arena fights. In fact, Anaxibius was asked to sit it out. One of the teams fighting is Furies of the Storm, which is sponsored by Storm Soldiers. Anaxibius would like to troll the famous "Hattian hate-society" a bit and offers to arrange for the party meeting with Vacken if they participate in the Gauntlet and eliminate Furies or even win.
The party agreed but then split up. Artificer and Wizard went to Minrothad quarters in Thyatis. They have previously asked Jaxa Brand to provide them with Sending Stones and now were meeting a man who had one for them. he also told them lately they're getting reports of a ship luring other ships by pretending to be in distress and then attacking them, likely slavers. It caused many ships to refuse to aid other ships in need. Minrothad Guilds offer 2000 gold for every captured slaver vessel and the party was given a document allowing them to board any ship flying under Minrothad banner that they suspect of participating in slavery or piracy.
Barbarian and Hexblade went to ask about the tournament. They got to meet one of the rival teams - an all Lupin (ok 3 Lupin, 1 Gnoll but Gnolls are Lupin subrace in my Mystara) group called Das Hounds. Das Hounds were very impressed by Barbarian, who is herself a Lupin, the Gnoll, in particular, was hitting on her very unsubtly. The two PCs also meet Alexandrius Teterion who is sponsoring this gladiatorial group and who tried to bribe the party into throwing a fight since he bet a lot of money on Das Hounds winning and he needs money fast. He didn't tell them he needs it to buy his wife's freedom and this is the fastest way to get it in time, however, so the party refused. Upon leaving they were approached by a Bard called Metalix, who is from Hinterlands. He is part of a group called Wild Hinterlanders (also composed of a big warrior, short warrior, Druid, and a dog if you got the reference) and he too tried to bribe/convince with the tragic story of his team being captured and fighting for their freedom the party to throw the fight. They refused him too.
Come competition, I was afraid with 4 4-people groups it is gonna be a slog. Thankfully the party proceeded to CHEESE THE HELL out of the rounds, making their victory extremely easy. First-round was "put one member of the team on top of a column. the First one to leave it is disqualified" with rest of the team doing everything to throw someone off. Artificer teleported the Furie's member to the other end of the arena. The second round was "get to the center of the arena, then last a minute in it. The party jumped into the bag of holding, Artificer flew there, released them, then locked everyone in Bead of Force. Which no one of the enemies could move. Finally comes the "one team is on a platform on a water-filled arena, another outside it, first one who drops whole other team into the water wins". This one they easily threw Das Hounds into the water. Especially the Gnoll who was too dumb to stop flirting on Barbarian and got pushed into the water by Hexblade.
The party got to meet Emperor Tincol I who presented them with the reward - Javelin of Lightning that Titus Claudius took from a defeated enemy. The party tried to use their charms to make him release Hinterlanders but I swear the dice were with the emperor - the party suddenly fumbled all their rolls and he aced his Insight. The party got him to promise to release Hinterlanders if they survive a month on the arena, but also sent a spy to watch the party, suspecting something fishy about them. The party failed to stop the spy but asking them to roll Perception made them paranoid and Artificer warded the ship with Alarm and Snare spells.
Nex morning the party had a visit from a kid with a message from Anaxibius, telling them where to find Vacken. He was on Emperor's Hill, with Demetrion, overseeing the transportation of a cursed talking sword from Emperor's palace to Demetrion's study. Apparently, a mysterious woman sent cursed items with the potency of the curse proportional to position to all nobles in Thyatis. Artificer recognized this is the magic of the witch who once cursed them, but she made it harder to discover the curse now. The empire put a reward of 10000 gp for her but, to party's dismay, it's only if she is brought alive, so that she may die in the arena.
Party talked with Vacken about Sabina's journal and he told them what he knew, moved to tears when they gave him her journal. He informed them an Elf named Faerl is overseeing Flavocrista businesses and he may know where Lord Vallis is. Then a storm hit. A powerful storm ANd an earthquake. The party aided Vacken in saving people during this tragedy, using their skills and spells to save people in all manners of ways, while Demetrion jumped into Artificer's bag of holding and let Artificer fly him to the harbor, where he and other wizards in the city cast a force-field protecting it from a giant tidal wave. After it was over Demetrion announced rewards for any information on the nature of this storm, which was definitely magical but in a weird, chaotic manner, unlike Mystaran magic.
After a day passed on shopping in the city slowly rebuilding itself and bribing a tailor to let them know where he is coming from, the party confronted Faerl and it lead to a fight. Which they too cheesed with Bead of force. We ended at the moment it dropped, releasing Faerl and his allies trapped inside.
Oh there was a moment before that, where Barbarian asked Adrianna if she knows Duke Stefan. I was surprised and taken aback as much as the NPC by this question and allowed it to show, thus letting players not in the known finally put it together. And so they confrontrd Adrianna and learned she is daughter of Duke Stefan and her Ethengarian buddy is Subatai Khan, son of Golden Khan of Ethengar. Which really surprised them on many levels and may strongly affect things going forward.
When last we meet our heroes, they confronted Elf Faerl. Who, after being freed from Bead of Force was hit by a Snare and started calling for help and the guards. So the party used me not understanding new spells to stuck him into the Bag of Holding with Vortex Wrap. They killed the rest of his guards, put the bodies in another bag of holding (while shoemaker complained this is the second time this month someone murdered people on the back of his shop) and opened the bag to question Faerl....who promptly misty stepped out of the bag and begun running away and screaming. Hexblade Thunder Stepped in front of him, knocking him out. I informed them by this time they made enough noise to guarantee guards will show up, so Wizard used Disguise Self to look like Faerl, and when the guards arrived, pretended they had a misunderstanding but everything was already explained. Legionnaire in charge of this group yelled at both "sides" for wasting his time and causing civil unrest.
The party transported the Elf to their "sex dungeon" on Sea Ghost, where they ensured he won't escape and stole his spellbook. They proceeded to interrogate him and learned lord Vallis Flavocrista did indeed kill his family in a ritual for Zargon and then used their deaths to move to a village in Davanian Hinterlands, leaving Faerl to look after his family businesses. Vallis' plan was to unleash power of Zargon on Thyatis in a bid to become a new Emperor and Faerl believed himself to be crucial in making it happen. The party called bull and did such a good job dissecting Faerl's beliefs he came to the realization Vallis was using him and would easily throw him away once he was no longer needed. The Elf broke to tears, at which point the party convinced him to work for them and he was given a place in the storage room to write down all he knows about the village and the cult.
The party went to inform about this Vecken and also tried to get in contact with Demetrion, to ensure nothing happened with that weird cursed sword. But they decided to get in contact via official means, which meant corrupt officials. One wanted too much money so they tried another, who they realized halfway through had no intention of actually doing what he promised, just wanted to take their money. They tried to get more threatening with him...and he had the guards escort them out of the building. The Machine 1: the Party 0
As the party was preparing to leave Artificer decided to search the whole ship with detect magic. I had something planned but decided to throw some foreshadowing. So he found what look like child footprints and footprints of a giant beaver leading towards a window outside. After some huge Arcana rolls, he thought it may be a Pookah, so he cast See Invisibility and looks out. I know I could have Pookah stay hidden, but decided to let him have this, so he saw a giant furball yelling "Oh shit!" and jump int the water. He gave chase, Wizard with Helm of Underwater Action and Oceanus joining. They chased the Pookah all across to the other end of the port, where they caught him. The Pookah struggled a bit, during which he gave Oceanus a super long beard, turning Wizard's hair green and switching their clothes. In the end, he said he and his associates want to put Artificer to few tests to see if he has right to call himself Oberon's son. The first task is to search and rescue a damshell in distress far south in the real of animals. Which Artificer correctly guessed is also in Davania. Then Pookah promised if he passes all tests they'll get him meeting with Oberon, jumped to the water and swam away.
Meanwhile, Wizard was so pissed he forced Oceanus to switch clothes right there, drawing the attention of another group of soldiers, telling them to take this public indecency off the streets. Wizard had to return to the ship and suffer embarrassment, which continued until he asked his patron for help and got temporary looks of the form of dread. Then, looking like a corpse, barged in to finally exchange clothes with Oceanus, who was in the middle of being shaved by Hexblade. And since Hexblade was a) using her sword for shaving him and b) never has shaved anyone, they dragged Aleena in to watch with Cure Wounds ready. She was rather flustered and wondering if this is some sort of elven foreplay or something.
(This party traumatizes innocent Aleena and Adrianna a bit with being horny on main sometimes)
In the morning the ship has left Thyatis and sailed south, to Ochalea. On the third day of sailing, they have encountered another ship, one that has seen better days. Using Message Wizard contacted the captain, Barthomelew Craw, who invited the party for dinner on board his vessel. The party accepted. But they were quick to notice many concerning things. They correctly guessed the food served to them is poisoned and started putting together these people are slavers. This was confirmed when they discovered a secret trapdoor leading to the bottom of the ship and have found it full of chained people. The captain then has closed the trapdoor behind Wizard and Adrianna. However, the battle wsn't very hard - the captain and his first mate have been sucked into Bag of Holding via Vortex Wrap and mooks were quickly dealt with, many being pushed into the water or running away on the only rescue craft.
Searching the captain's cabin the party has found coordinates of a location in the open sea and a date on which the slavers were to exchange their "merchandise". They sent off a part of the NPC crew to deliver the captured ship to the nearest Minrothad island and themselves set off to capture whoever is they "buyer". But first, they had the captain and his first mate keelhauled. Which put a smile on my face.
We played today. First, we finished the Spices and Flesh Adventure from Pirate Campaign Compendium, which in part two the party derailed all the way.
Here is how the adventure is supposed to go: After finding the rendezvous location of the slaver ship, the party learns of the legend of Shoyanna, Sea Hag who was a betrayed lover. They got this part right, learned a tale of a barmaid from Ochalea who fell in love with a con artist from Minrothad, a guy who was running an inn and scamming people by selling them supposedly rich parcels of land in Davanian Hinterlands...which in reality were uninhabitable swamps. Once angry investors came back to get his ass, he ran away and got to the first ship to Minrothad, only to find his wife accidentally snuck on the same ship while running away from investors he left her with. He promptly killed her and she returned as a Sea Hag haunting seas between Ochalea and Minrothad. This legend is known to many sailors and also was in the book of legends that Wizard bought, where he also learned more about Meredoth.
The adventure assumes the party will show up on a small islet, meet the two Merrow (in module people turned into Merrow but I changed it into mutants made with magic since Mystara Merrow have different origins) guarding it, then meet the Sea Hag from the legend, attack and, after she retreats, go through a very small underwater dungeon to finish her off.
Here is what my party did. They sent two PCs and an NPC sidekick to scout into the water, convinced this small islet is the back of a sea monster, So they noticed the entrance to the undersea lair and two monsters watching it. They had the rest of the party land on the islet, ambushed the mutants and murdered them in one turn, then sent sea-breathing party members deeper. Spent a lot of time arguing how to pass small and weak obstacles, used invisibility, stealth and bag of holding to pass by ravenous fish, sneak up to Shaonna the Sea Hag, force her into the Bag of Holding, sneak past back to the islet, and then release her to grapple and beat her to death. She did manage with her power drop two PCs to 0 hp and book for it to run into the water but was Vortex Wrapped back where she started and massacred.
Here go all hints about the transformation process she learned spying on Alphatians experimenting on Shark-kin, that she was supposed to drop.
The party, richer in total of 4,800 gold from robbing Hag's lair and bounty for the slavers, set off to find Emperor of the Waves. This module was rather spooky, with party being ambushed by monsters twice. I did a lot of substitutions for this. Altar of Lolth became the altar of Atzantieotol, giant spiders were replaced with giant snakes, giant wolf spiders with giant constrictor snakes and spider swarms with swarms of poisonous snakes. I found on Vaults someone had an idea of sea Medusa that turns victims into coral so Ettercaps became coral statues. The swarms, that could crawl over the PCs, turned out to be the biggest hurdles. the party found a captain's log mentioning having picked up a mysterious woman from Specularum, then being blown off by the storm far, far south and finding an unknown island, where the ship stopped for repairs, only to be ambushed by monsters. It was, of course, the Isle of Dread.
We left our heroes as they were attacked by two giant constrictor snakes.
When last we left our heroes, they were onboard the lost ship Emperor of the Waves, attacked by giant constrictor snakes and swarms of regular snakes pouring from their nest in a nearby room. A lot of people were covered in snakes and almost killed by giant snakes. Part of the group (Wizard and most of NPC allies) were above, so they had Oceanus rip off the crate so they can bombard snakes from above with spells and arrows. Oceanus slew one of the giant snakes and jumped down to aid his captain...and promptly fell on the trapdoor below, which broke, sending him below and waking up Ghasts waiting there. On good news, he has found the box they were after. Bad news, when he grabs it, that's when the whole ship got attacked by a giant octopus. Artificer teleported Oceanus with the box to the top of the ship, while Wizard decided to blast doors behind which the party heard some voices, revealing what was supposed to be the final boss of this dungeon - a Medusa riding on a Displacer beast. At this point, the party decided to book it as fast as possible, with every monster in the place at their tail, including the Ghasts. They made deal with Medusa, promising to get her to safety if she stops fighting them. But the Ghasts' paralyzing touch got the Displacer Beast. The party tried to convince her to abandon her pet but she refused. So they....left her while the ship was sinking, pulled by the tentacles. They later scouted the area to see if she survived, but found nothing.
She is so coming back to bite them, both literally and figuratively.
The party then proceeded to argue and come up with ideas on how they should be able to bypass the lock on the chest to open it until they convinced me. Inside they found letters of exchange and invoices of complete value equal 100 000 gp to exchange in Thyatis, Karameikos, Minrothad and Darokin. The party has decided to not only keep the money but to keep it a secret from their NPC allies. So that is also something that will bite them.
Among the documents was also a letter to Eda Oweland, whose author expressed his great concern Saltmarsh is strangled by a loyalist faction and sends his operative to the town to help set up the takeover of it by letter's author, who claims to be close with Great Duke Stefan Karameikos. It was signed a complicated signature, with recognizable letters B, L, V and H. The party needed no time to decipher it to be the signature of Ludwig Van Hendricks. So now they know Eda Oweland struck some sort of deal with Van Hendricks, seemingly giving him Saltmarsh if he kicks out Dwarves and the army. The party decided to not tell anyone about it, to have blackmail material, as well. So THAT is also coming back to bite them, especially once Van Hendricks finds out. The letter wouldn't be too much problem for him, but it may require some explanations if Duke Stefan discovers it.
The party spent the next few days sailing to Ochalea, on the way Artificer made two helmets of water breathing forHexblade and Barbarian. Goblin the party adopted tried to teach Barbarian and Wizard alchemy, but got so flustered she ended up making them doubt the basics they already know and nothing more. Then a storm came. The party had time to prepare for it and did a splendid job. The storm broke a mast and wind sent Oceanus flying but Artificer teleported him back. Wizard sent his familiar but it failed athletics against the wind, was thrown into the water and eaten by a shark.
Then the merrow attacked. I was using modern Merrows, so big monsters, but since I know the merrow in Mystara are just Merfolk, these would be just bigger, nastier subspecies, maybe something created for Merfolk military. The party had a lot of trouble, less with them, and more with the weather. When moving requires an Acrobatics check, then another one if you fail to not find yourself in the water, ranged attacks have a disadvantage and casting spells require concentration checks to even cast, and merrow keep throwing people into shark-infested waters, things can get a little bit stressful.
One of the Merrow barged into the cabin occupied by Faerl, Elf they recruited in Thyatis, stabbing him and throwing him into the water, where he got bitten by a shark and dropped to zero HP. Artificer teleported him out to part of the ship no one was on, then for three turns failed to reach him to stabilize him, being blown into the water but using his ability to avoid the fall and hover in place. In the end, he got pissed and used his magic compass to teleport to the ship. But since it teleports him in a random direction, he ended on the wrong end of the ship. While Barbarian tore one merrow after another to shreds, until finally, last two Merrow decided to bolt it, taking the unconscious Faerl with them. The furious party jumped into the water after them and murdered Merrow carrying him. The other one bolted, deciding this is a fight not worth it.
All while this was happening Goblin was locked in Artificer's cabin, making potions against seasickness, each turn we rolled to see if she hears sounds of battle and come help. She failed her perception rolls for the entire fight.
As the party recovered from the storm, they saw another ship, heavily damaged, with sights of damage from magical fire, merely an hour of sailing ahead of them. Its name was Discovery.
The party decided to board the ship but first Wizard has sent his familiar with invisibility to scout ahead. The raven quickly discovered the ship is ransacked and two last crew members are being tortured by mutated shark-kin in the now partially flooded cargo hold. One priestess, a few minions, and one large guy. The party decided to sneak and catch them by surprise. Which worked so well they downed the big guy in one turn and priestess in the second, neither getting a single opportunity to attack. Thankfully I kept the mutations I gave those guys earlier when I mixed them with monsters from another adventure. Thus they exploded upon death, dealing lightning damage and big ones (the second one burst through the wall after the first one died) also dealt 5 dmg upon being hit or hitting themselves. Which was good since I couldn't hit for shit and yet the party almost retreated. They did persevere in the end and came victorious.
Searching the rooms and talking with survivors revealed to them the ship they're looking for meet with Discovery and captain Jaxa Brand told their captain of her next destination, a mysterious island described in the writings of Rory Barbarossa, copied by the captain of Discovery alongside its coordinates - the Isle of Dread. The party has a new goal but first, they decided to take Discovery to a port, after hearing it could be possible to buy the wrecked ship and rebuild it into their new vessel - two survivors were very eager to help, wanting to join the crew and find their missing comrades and keep sailing the seas.
On the way to Ochaleea, Adrianna talked with Wizard, apologizing for being so on his neck for keeping secrets. She has warmed up to him due to him showing concern for her safety and even saving her during the Medusa fight by pulling her on a rope from above. She even invited him for a round of drinks once they arrive in Ochaleea. Which immediately made Artificer and Warlock scheme if they could maybe hook them up and maybe make Wizard eligible to the throne of Karameikos. Warlock had a talk with Oceanus, who was bitter the risk he took on Emperor of the Waves was all for nothing and she told him they did find a letter that she would rather keep secret for now. She did not tell him about the stolen money, as she deduced he would get angry about it. Also, they plotted to get Wizard and Faerl drunk and into a drunk fight to see who is more delicate. Finally Barbarian had to talk with Aleena, who felt bad about abandoning the Medusa. Barbarian convinced her you cannot always save everyone and she should focus on the task at hand.
I'm starting to think the party is a bad influence on these good-natured NPC :twisted:
We had to end early so I ran a session about Wizard's backstory, which involved him blowing himself up and meeting his patron, who brought him back to life and from her Ravenloft Domain to Mystara. It was mostly Ravenloft stuff, but we had a few laughs at Wizard trying to explain a few things like Immortals to a Ravenloft Darklord from Faerun. Later said patron went to contact wizard Meredoth, but was told to f off and one of her new allies, a gentleman named Firan Zal'Honan suggested he could place a few things in motion to give Meredoth a lesson of humility. Which is soo going to come back in main campaign.
The Wizard decided to practice the pipes and did such a good job, a number of NPCs came to listen to him. Sadly he failed Arcana roll to keep parts of his life story he didn't want to show everyone, namely how he blew himself up and ran away from the Great School of Magic. Which he too late realized may be a problem, considering Subatai Chan, the Ethengarian prince, being in the audience.
Meanwhile, rest of the party schemed that they're not going to let him go alone on a date with Adrianna, the official reason being he had an assassination attempt on him happen already and they do not want another one. Hexblade decided to ask Oceanus on a double date and Artificer decided to tag along invisible. Oceanus accepted the idea readily, even making Hexblade blush a bit. Wizard on the other hand was adamantly against it, until Hexblade didn't go ask Adrianna herself and she was okay with a double date. Wizard was a bit concerned but Adrianna calmed him down and the two had a bit of heart to heart, during which she mentioned that she will inevitably have to return to Specularum and assume her duties as a duchess once they rescue her brother, so she, for now, wants to enjoy the journey and seeing lands she was never in before (and Thyatis, since she was few times in the city, what's with her father being friends with the Emperor). Wizard felt moved enough to confess to her he is from Glantri and later, convinced by her, decided to go and confess that to Subatai, who just recently figured it out. I made him roll persuasion and he managed to stay on Subatai's good side, as the Ethengarian warrior has seen his heroism enough times to conclude he may not be backstabbing, lying, treacherous bastard other Glantrians are, or is at least trying to rise above it. He still asked for time to come to terms with it and kicked Wizard out of his cabin.
The party reached Ochalea in the village of Yokotoro, north to Chug Tsu, where the most important locations were the inn Shore of Dreams, and nearby ruins of castle Axeholm. At the inn Wizard decided to go on the stage and play on his pipes, rolling nat 20. He made owner of the establishment, a triton named Pisca, come out, pick up her instrument and play in a duet with him, with his 17 and her nat 20 on performance giving everyone a great time. She then invited the party to sit and eat with her.
She told the party most people rarely visit here, and few adventurers who do avoid Axeholm and go try to find Captain Barbarossa's treasure, buried on an island not on any map, north from Yokotoro. She has a map for it and offered the party to sell them a copy and give free food and lodging at the inn in exchange for 10% of the treasure. The party had pretty much all alarm clocks fire up and become suspicious of her and did manage to discern she was a bit shady (she wasn't nearly as much concerned about adventurers who already set off to find treasure and didn't come back or eager to invite Wizard into a double act with her at the inn as she was pretending to be).
Other people at the inn staff were two waitresses - Murasa and Reiko, the latter being also the security as a Monk. The party also got to meet the cook, Gnome nicknamed Schorch, who was very rude and paranoid, who told them off. They also have seen a mysterious man leave the inn, but didn't manage to see what he was there for or where did he go.
After getting drunk on sake and sobering up, the party set off to Axeholm, on the way meeting an old lady on a ruined road above a chasm producing toxic gas, who asked for payment for passing through her territory - a drop of blood from each of them. She also offered them healing potions in exchange for nail clippings and information for a lock of hair. The party attacked and she quickly called forth Harpies. But before they had a chance to use their song to make party walk over the chasm and fall, the PCs pushed the hag down themselves. They used the surprise of the Harpies to talk to them and, after Artificer failed to flirt with the Harpies, were allowed to pass in exchange for letting Harpies stay as part of the crew at Axeholm if they do reclaim it. They warned the party that earlier a man with an aura of death, accompanied by the dead, passed this road, scaring HGarpies and the Hag. The party had converged on Wizard, who had to explain this couldn't likely be Aozy.
Arriving at Axeholm, the party decided to set Warlock's raven familiar to scout ahead through arrow slits. He flew upwards and...straight into the room full of skeletons led by a Necromancer. He flew away...and a skeleton chased after him and shoot him down. Other skeletons manned arrow slits and baristas, while the party retreated to strategic positions. Wizard recognized the Necromancer as a minor celebrity in necromancy, Cylthrian Faelee, from Alphatia. The party packed themselves to bag of holding and Hexblade thunder-stepped with Artificer to challenge Cylthrian directly. The necromancer was very sad and not willing to fight, talking about being forced to do the bidding of his master and how necromancy failed him. Party offered him help and he said if they let him go with undead of this stronghold (sand Banshee who was resisting his power), he can leave them the castle, as he doesn't want to see it disgraced by his own hands and a resistance that made holding the place more hassle it was worth would be satisfying answer to his master. So they let him take control over all Ghasts in the area and leave with them and his skeletons. He gave Wizard a signet worn by the former castellan of Axeholm, now a Ghast, which denotes the owner as the rightful ruler of the stronghold in Alphatian law.
The party now has ruins of a stronghold and a wrecked ship to rebuild into their home bases. And I'm $60 poorer for Matt Colville's Strongholds & Followers, let us see how it works for Mystara.
We had a short session when the party went to meet Banshee Takara and convinced her they will turn this fortress into a place for the protection and betterment of Ochaleean people. Wizard even let his patron out and let her talk to the ghost for a while, also letting the party learn her backstory. Long story short she convinced the whole party, the ghost, and all NPC allies, except for the Goblin who is Artificer's apprentice, that she is a heroic warrior or even an Immortal-like being from another world, who wants to establish a settlement on Mystara to protect it from a potential invasion of evil forces from Shadowfell, lead by Vampire Lord Strahd Von Zarovich.
In reality, she is a Faerunian Warlock turned Death Knight who has a beef with Strahd and is trying to escape Ravenloft to Mystara. So the party's decision to turn this place into her temple/adventuring guild/vampire hunter club is going to get quite few powerful people and Immortals PISSED. I gotta get to read on the Council of Intrusion and Mr. Welch's Knights of Ebony because someone WILL come knocking sooner than later.
We picked Matt Colville's Strongholds & Followers to decide the party will turn Axeholm into a mix of Wizard's Temple and Barbarian's Establishment, while the ship they're building will be a mix of Establishment for Hexblade and a Tower for Artificer. The party didn't want a keep since it attracts too much attention (as if it wasn't already too late).
Last thing: Artificer had to cancel the next regular session so I offered to run a session for the players with party rivals, based on iconic Mystara NPCs, and we will likely use 1983 Basic rules and LoftP adventure Tower of the Stargazer. So this is going to be an interesting experiment. Wish me luck.
Some updates on my megaplot.
I found out about King Millien's Leviathan and will now think of incorporating it into the main plot. I think I will give Thanatos a bigger role in the creation of Leviathan who will be the final boss, likely connect it to the Burrowers as maybe some sort of mega Burrower or something else tied to the origin of the Burrowers. It also explains why Thanatos is helping a Darklord escape from Ravenloft to Mystara, as it will draw the attention of Knights of Ebony/Council of Intrusion and cause more chaos in the area, distracting Immortals from his other Schemes. I also found out the immortal Saasskas, whom I may introduce as creator of an artifact of doom party may soon find, who I think would make sense being involved in a plot of waking up the big Leviathan (Primordial Leviathan? Jormungadrn? I need more names for it). Loki just wants to troll Thanatos somewhat.
I also found out ixitxachitl exists in Mystara so I should bring back one who is trying to wake up this thing in the original Elder Evils.
Part 27: Thugs and Waitresses
The Barbarian player was late (warned us in advance she will be). The rest of the party executed their plan to trick their allies into thinking Aozy, Wizard's mysterious mentor, is paying for the creation of their two fortresses. And then the Wizard, taking the form of Curse Witch, visit local Thyatian army post to have various invoices and bills of exchange sent to be turned into money that would be then fuelled to Artificer's Minrothad guild's account (I need to check what banking the Guilds have). Artificer distracted NPCs by preparing clothes for the double date of Wizard with Adrianna and Hexblade with Oceanus.
While Artificer was preparing outfits for Wizard and Hexblade, they were interrupted by a Wood Drake who, despite his anarchist views, was roped into being a messenger for other fey. He had a message for Artificer from their buddy, the Pookah: that if he really finds himself Oberon's son, he should like him seek great treasures. He name-dropped one that may be soon on his path: Sea Queen's Pearl, a powerful artifact created by Immortal Saturnius, Protector of Pirates, for his favorite pirate centuries ago. Hexblade immediately started dreaming of ambitions of finding it to become new Pirate Queen. Drake also had a Diplomat's Pouch for Wizard, with a letter from Aozy, who of course has connections with the Fey. The letter had some advice and a 4th level spell (my 5e conversion of this spell) Aozy invented wanted Wizard, as his pupil, to test for him. But Wizard took too many Warlock levels and felt sad he cannot yet cast a 4th level Wizard spell.
Also, Artificer had to explain to the party's adopted Goblin why humans date. He did a poor job and she found whole idea dumb.
On the date, there was some talking and flirting. And also Artificer spying on the participants via invisibility. Oceanus brought up he is more serious than his Aquarendi brethren but he would still want Hexblade to visit his homelands one day. Adrianna admitted she is enjoying the travel and adventure, even if she is worried about her brother. Wizard told a bit about his brother, who finds himself much better in Glantrian intrigues than Wizard does. Artificer noticed that soon after bar owner, triton Pisca, and waitress & security guard Reiko went to fetch more alcohol for now drunk four, a mysterious man from before and a bunch of thugs entered the inn. And so, as the Wizard and Adrianna were about to kiss, thugs attacked the other waitress, Murasa, and a fight broke out. It was quickly joined by Barbarian, whose player joined and we said she felt asleep in Axeholm and now was returning to the ship, and inn's cook, who thought those were assassins sent after her by one of Sea Princes, ruthless Salazar Black. Even with most of the party drunk, they made short work of the enemies.
The party then tried to revivify the leader of the bandits but the cook tried to destroy the bodies due to her misguided belief they could be used by Black to find her. Then Reiko and Pisca returned and Reiko furiously lashed at the leader's corpse, cracking the skull. Party was pissed and sHexblade swore to kill Reiko at the first opportunity. They STILL wanted to take the body to revivify it, but then guards showed up. Also Murasa slipped Artificer anti-poison and told to drink before each meal at the inn. It ended with drunk Hexblade and Wizard casting darkness, grabbing the body, and jumping into Bag of Holding so they can revivify the leader with a scroll...that neither of them could use. Wizard when drunk tried to spam spare the dying and even petition his Patron, who told him firmly no. Hexblade tried to bring the guy back with a Shocking Grasp of all things, making the body burn inside a bit.
Artificer and Oceanus somehow got the bag of holding back to the hsip and let the two out. Adrianna and Oceanus were drunk enough to find the whole thing funny, Wizard got kissed on the cheek by the young duchess and Hexblade invited Oceanus to her cabin...but they both fell drunkenly asleep before anything could happen. Artificer and Goblin checked on antipoison to see what it does but did not trust it.
The next day party got up, Wizard had a moment of terror upon realizing if Brennard McGregor saw his yesterday antics, he would strangle him for making a mockery out of necromancy. Aleena didn't improve his mood, with theories his patron may be a disguised Immortal, maybe even petra, and saying his description of said Patron is not far from an Immortal. Hexblade teased a poor guy about being a Cleric after all.
The party ate dinner at Shore of Dreams, where they all were distracted by Pisca's song, but Hexblade managed to resist and distract everyone with a toast, to let Artificer cast purify food and drink on the meal. Pisca disappeared to supposedly bring up the map she promised them, while Reiko tried to keep them up with smalltalk. Party cooked up a scheme to pretend to fall asleep. Once they did and guards, Reiko and the cook came to move them and take away their gear, they jumped to ambush them. We ended here.
When we last left our heroes they sprung a trap on their would-be abductors and ambushed them. We couldn't remember who got the surprise on enemies, so I compromised by letting only PCs get it. The battle was surprisingly both easy as 4 veteran guards were no challenge, and hard as Scorch, a gnomish Rogue, took like half of Adrianna's HP while critting with a sneak attack. This was only thing Scorch did before Artificer cast heat metal on the metal parts of her studded leather, forcing her to jump into a nearby pool of water. Reiko, a Monk, was more an annoyance, with her ability to teleport once per round, which she used to distance herself from Hexblade, who was REALLY getting pissed at her. In the end, she tried to run when she was on minimum Hit Points, but Wizard took her down with Sleep.
The Veterans were holding little to no loyalty to Pisca and Reiko, so I let the party intimidate them one by one into surrender. We did have an interesting moment with seriously wounded Adrianna trading blow by blow with one guard wielding her katana two hands. Said guard was back to back with only other remaining guard, who was dual-wielding his katana and wakizashi and trying to hold off Hexblade, Barbarian and Oceanus at once. The party joked these two must be some epic lovers...before Barbarian just took off the head of guard fighting Adrianna. Last one was easy to make surrender.
From interrogating Scorch, guards and from Murasa the party learned there is no treasure of Rory Barbarossa, Pisca made it up to lure treasure seekers, kidnap them, and force to work at excavating nearby Temple of the Storm, temple of a cult of Saasskas, where Pisca hoped to find a powerful magic item, Crown of the Black Pearls. She convinced the whole village to help her via profiting from looting their victims and bought Shore of Dreams from Murasa's parents. Murasa went along until she fell in love with one adventurer, Rolen Moonbrooks (Half-Elf from Savage Baronies) and was plotting to betray Psica ever since he got kidnapped as well. Reiko realized it and hired thugs to get rid of Murasa. Scorch meanwhile joined Pisca because he was hiding from Salazar Black, one of the Sea Princes, from whose slavery she escaped, stealing money in the process. The party had convinced Scorch to help them take Psica down in exchange for safe passage to Saltmarsh, so that she can run deep into the continent from Black, and letting her keep the money she stole and even giving her extra 250. And they surprised me by deciding to use their scroll of Revivify to resurrect the beheaded guard as they wanted to keep nice with the locals. Barbarian made jokes about a fun good brawl, which horrified heavily wounded guards, one with a fresh scar from where her neck was cut by Barbarian's ax included.,
The party called the NPC allies they aren't dragging as their sidekicks usually to keep an eye on the guards and Reiko, all 5 tied up, switched Adrianna for Subatai Chan and descended to Temple of the Storm. there they meet Rolen and his companion, Dark Jungle orc Changa, both prisoners. They provided the party with information, but the heroes were surprisingly little interested in talking to them. The two were too exhausted to help them in upcoming fights anyway.
Deeper int othe temple party fought a giant, electrically charged crocodile, Tempest Beast. Creature did not last long with the PC's damage output, but its ability to electroduce for 5 dmg anyone hitting it in melee, no save, wore the heroes down. They didn't even try to approach its nest upon realizing there are two young of the monster inside.
Then the party proceeded to enter that main temple room and deal with puzzles inside, disarming one trap but triggering another one, that summons Water Weird...who was torn to shreds almost immediately as poor thing rolled last on the initiative. Well, it happens. I must admit I bit cheated in this part of the adventure - it says a button you need to activate a mechanism to open the door to the secret chamber is hidden in one of the walls and can be found via Investigation. I moved it to first thing the party tried to investigate with a check, an altar, the moment I realized they will never think of the wall.
The party entered a chamber with a giant conch shell, all underwater. They decided to send people with items to allow them to breathe underwater, meaning few NPC had to stay behind. Once Wizard and Barbarian walked in without waiting for others, I described the door closing and rest of the party had to jump to join them. Once inside, the whole chamber got hit by a storm sphere and storm mephitis started spawning. Once Artificer made it inside the conch he saw Pisca trying to free the artifact she was searching for, Crown of Black Pearls, from a glass-case in the middle of the conch. Barbarian joined him and dropped half of Pisca's HP in one attack action. She replied by summoning a bunch of merrows to aid her, making it 3 way of Party vs Pisca and Merrows vs Storm Mephits. Pisca got to paralyze Barbarian with Hold Monster and then she and Hexblade, who joined inside the conch, began wearing each other down. I think by the end Pisca had 4 hp and Hexblade a single last hit point. Then Artificer managed to get the crown out of the case. Pisca jumped to grab it and got shot with Artificer's cannon, ending the battle.
The party knows there is a dark magic with the crown, it is not as strong as some cursed magic items they have seen, courtesy of curse witch, but the kind of curse in it is old so they cannot tell what it does without letting someone get cursed. Their plan for next session is to start experimenting on it, either Hexblade or Aleena may put it on their head.
Before we ended, the Party spent some extra time finding a room to loot extra stuff from. There were signs of a cave-in in the room and they decided they will send people to dig it out to see what is on the other side. I think of putting a megadungeon in there, anyone knows a good megadungeon easy to place in Mystara?
I decided to give the party a handout in form of notes that survived 1000+ years to give the party some lore about the temple and the possible dungeon hiding behind caved-in corridor. The party has decided to hire people to dig out an entrance and explore once they're back. Especially the Wizard as the notes mentioned "Army of Dead" and "Codex Death". They also used that opportunity to track down a single person with a stolen Remove Curse scroll and...threaten them into selling it at a discount.
In the morning the party set off to experiment with the Crown. After convincing Aleena is okay Hexblade is the one to try it - she insisted she does it making the party first suspicious, then realizing Aleena would just feel bad if someone else gets cursed while she stood and let it happen, making the players decide nothing bad can ever happen to this woman - Hexblade put it on and the party began experiments like casting spells and examining her. She and Wizard went full-on "Glantri Mode", noting everything. We managed to sneak in some small moment with Adrianna trying to drag the Wizard out of the room when it looked like Hexblade will have to undress, both to give her some privacy and out of maybe a bit of jealousy. It wasn't necessary (Hexblade misunderstood what Artificer meant, there was no undressing) but players found it rather sweet too.
In the end the party has found that the Crown makes Hexblade consider water the lifeblood of the world and wanting to punish those who desecrate it. They decided to let her keep it as it is making hexblade slightly...better. Also through all of it Subatai Chan has been trolling Hexblade by saying things like offering his blade if they'll have to kill her, much to her frustration.+
The party said farewell to two people they saved from Discovery, whom they relegated to overseeing repairs of the ship during their absence. They tried to recruit Scorch into overseeing Axeholm reconstruction, but upon realizing she is going to embezzle some of their funds, they decided not to. Artificer tried to send a job offer to Minrothad guilds, while Wizard tried to pray to his Ravenloftian patron to summon a "hot devil guy" to take care of it, but failed and was told to focus on important things. They also decided to leave Elf Faerl in charge of rebuilding the castle, at least until Minrothad people won't show up. The Elf, having a crush on Hexblade, was easy to persuade by her, even if Artificer butting to talk technicalities in almost ruined it.
The party discovered most of villagers are ashamed of preying on adventurers and decided to from now on help them, which plays along the party has been investing money into the place. Murasa and Rolen have taken over the shore of dreams but it is hard to maintain an inn in just two people, especially with an evil monk tied up in the tool shed. They tried to take Barbarian aside and offer her to maybe become new owner of the inn so they can be free of management tasks at least, but she passed the offer to Artificer, who also hired Scorch as his cook/spymaster to gather rumors.
Hexblade and Wizard went to interrogate Reiko and she promised to give them some of Pisca's letters in exchange for her life. From these letters, the party learned Pisca was contacted by captain Tarin, from island Tarin's Crown (Artificer's history check told him it is probably Crown Island, a small island near Thenagos Archipelago commonly considered uninhabitable and used by pirates as a navigational point)., who claimed to be in possession of Pirate Queen's Pearl and offered Pisca to join with him (and save him from his rivals who besieged him on the island) so they can rule Sea of Dread together. Pisca was also in contact with Shayona, a sea hag party killed already. Apparently, the same wanderer who told Pisca about the temple of Storm (which the party immediately suspected is their old foe, the Curse Witch) introduced them to one another and their methods of kidnapping people were so similar because Shayonna's adopted Pisca's method for her own plans. Pisca wanted to convince the Hag to side with her and then go and steal Pirate Queen's Pearl.
All things sad and done, the party set off to the isle of Dread. Also, they checked how will Hexblade react to littering in the water, which ended with Wizard and Subatai being thrown overboard. I wanted to test the party combat power so I had them ambushed by mutated Shark-Kin. The first wave was easy but the next round they immediately rolled for reinforcements, including a huge Shark-kin Scourge showing up next to Wizard and Shark-Kin Stormcalled almost killing multiple people with Lightning Bolt and Call Lightning. In fact, I had prepared the third wave if the party turns out to be too powerful but they were worn down very quickly, with Barbarian and Adrianna going down and Wizard barely holding up. Hexblade, who managed to be of much help despite being in her cabin most of the fight, used the Crown to cast Maelstrom, which saved the day, dragging all enemies into a whirlwind and letting them die and explode in bursts of electricity away from the party. One last enemy was pushed overboard. The party was tired so much Wizard and Adrianna just fell asleep sitting on Artificer's bed, so he, feeling a bit better, went to rummage through Wizard's stuff before taking his bed.
As the ship sailed away, I described a scene of how one surviving Shark-Kin mutant was dragged in front of an even bigger, nastier Shark-Kin, the Baron, who angrily beheaded him. We ended on him ominously watching the ship sail away.
Part Thirty: Welcome to the Isle of Dread
We started with party waking up morning after the battle. Wizard and Adrianna, who felt asleep exhausted sitting on Artificer's bed, got up and walked out of his room, to many stares. Artificer immediatelly ran in to inspect the bed and has, in a very passivele-agressive way, get Wizard to know what he thinks they were doing. Hexblade came to conclusion the crew is bored by long journey and starts doing rumors about the two and I decided to play along. And to make this spicier I decided that at some point on the way Aleena had approached the Wizard and asked if they can talk in private as she wants to know more about his patron. Wizard just lead her to his cabin, which pretty much everyone saw. At some points two of friendly NPC were caught by Wizard listening throguh the door. But he later failed to notice that Artificer, Hexblade and one of said NPC (Artificer's Goblin sidekick, Lil' Mouse) were lsitening (and eating popcorn) through the fool in Artificer's room, which is right above his.
Long story short, Aleena is still convinced that Wizard's patron (Deathkngiht from Ravenloft) is really disguised Immortal Petra and even suspects their meeting may have been orchestrated by the immortal. So he is bombarded with a ton of questions about the patron and decides to nod and pretend he agrees with Aleena's theories. His familiar, who is a soul of a Nagpa from Mystara whom I threw in my Ravenloft Curse of Strahd game and who was killed by character who became abovementioned Deathknight, did not help, complaining how unfair it was to be killed and stuck as an abused raven for simply "trying to take over a single kingdom". Wizard nudged Aleena into telling him more about her faith and ended up getting a lecture about the religious aspect of tensions between Traladaran natives of Karameikos, who worship Petra, and Thyatian settlers, among whom popular is her rival Vanya.
Once Aleena leaves Wizard's cabin, she passed by Adrianna, who decides she now should have a chat with him, maybe a teeny bit jealous and misunderstanding the situation. She interrupts him screaming in his pillow after being basically called a Cleric by an actual Cleric, which is Glantrian pride could not take. He explains to her what he talked about with Aleena...more like complains about being called a Cleric. Adrianna kinda doesn't understand why would it be bad and in discussion make him realize maybe the way people in his homeland see things isn't always right and Clerics aren't so bad. They had a conversation about how much he grew since leaving home and the early, much rougher teamwork everyone in the crew had. Adrianna even admitted at one point thinking Wizard, hexblade and Oceanus had a three-way relationship. Wizard failed perception check to hear the coughing attack this gave earsdropping Hexblade. Speaking of them, Mouse shared with Artificer and Hexblade her fears that Wizard's patron is a mosnter who will eat her soul. In a heartwarming moment the two assured her they won't let that happen. In a less heartwarming moment, Subatai Khan saw them (Artificer left the door open) and decided to mock Hexblade, proud Belcadise Elf, laying on the floor with ear to the glass, getting some chuckle out of it and few more comments.
Back to Wizard, his conversation with Adrianna moved towards his home and his older brother, a shrewd politician and cold-blooded killer. It lead to Hexblade improptu deciding she befriended Wizard when she tried to hook up with said brother (and we ended giving Wizard's player homework of "find a hot picture of your characters older brother") and also she and Artificer decided to quickly make a kilt for Wizard, which Artificer then presented, supposedly innocently, to oblivious Wizard. Who had a brilliant idea to immediatelly put it on, only realizing he ended up stripping in front of Adrianna after she commented on his legs.
While all of this was happenning, Barbarian fell asleep at the tiller and only barely managed to stay on the course.
On following days Artificer decided to spike the food he is leaving for Pookah with weed. The next day the whole ship and everyone but Artificer's clothes were in different colors, most embarassing possible. Artificer, having found a note saying "thanks but NEVER DO THAT AGAIN!", decided he has "established dominance over the beaver". Wizard locked himself in his room, screaming int othe pillow. Hexblade had to weight down whenever come out of her cabin in bright pink, or just come out naked and settled on the former. Barbarian was amused, Oceanus, by Hexblade's suggestion, just took his shirt off (which, when Wizard was told he missed it, made this bi diseaster of a man spend yet another day screaming into his pillow). Subatai found massing with his outfit an insult to his whole culture, and Artificer argued pulling pranks on each other is part of Fae culture, so HIS culture. Subatai conceded that point but said he does not wish to be a colaterral of these pranks and warned him of playing with dangerous spirits ( I do not know if Ethengar knows Fey enough to diffirentiate between them and Spirit World). He also made few snipets at Hexblade, basically saying he owuld rather expect this from her. Hexblade took barbarian on the side to tell that if this guy ever tries to kill her, Barbarian has a permission to just chop his head off. Next day Subatai took Barbarian to the side and told her to not hesitate kill hexblade once she will inevitable be corrupted by her cursed crown and try to kill him. Amused Barbarian made it known she thinks Subatai and Hexblade are into one another, making furious prince storm off.
Also at one point Artificer made Wizard non-magical bagpies, since his magical ones tend to reveal party secrets, but Wizard failed performance roll on them so badly Subatai, Adrianna and Starshine the gnome charged int othe room, weapons drawn, thinking they're under attack again. So he decided to stck to his magical bagpies and shameshin.
Finally the party reached Isle of Dread. Having explained what Barbarossa notes told them about the occupied penissula, the party decided to beeline on their ship to village of Tanaroa. There they noticed quickly there are freaking zombies running around, doing taks like washing clothes, putting on a fence or removing a hornet's next by smashing it with a shovel and then grabbing and eating all the hornets trying to bite the zombie. The party looked for someone they can have a conversation with and run into a guy who pulled a book of conversations authored by Rory Barbarossa, and started reading from it things like "Welcome, dumb pricks." "I'm talking in your language because you're too much of morons to learn mine" "Good sir, I find you very strong and attractive and your jaw very masculine". The party managed to figure out the pirate apparently wrote a whole book of worst possible translations and sold it to this guy's ancestors as a joke. While trying to explain it to him, the guy was charged and uppercut by one of the warchiefs of the village. The War Chief apologized for this fool and offered to take the party to the Martiarch.
As it turns out the party wasn't the only group of adventurers on the Isle, they were slightly beat to the place by another group. Group was lead by Gnome Bard from Heartforge who was too focused on trying to get into Hexblade's pants to be more useful and was easy to bullshit into revealing the groups goal here. As it turns out these guys are friends of a community in Davanian Hinterlands that, according to a druidic prophecy, will soon be threatened by great evil but saved by Crown of Black Pearls. And they came to the Isle seeking it. The party realized these people seek the crown on Hexblade's head (thankfully hidden by her hat) but seems to have confused it with the Black Pearl mentioned to reside deep in the Isle of Dread. Or are looking for Black Pearl but got the names mixed up, it was hard to tell. They managed to bullshit the Gnome by telling him their story of encounter in Yokotoro, but omitting they have found the crown, claiming they killed Pisca before she has found it. He bought it hook, line and sinker and decided to make the village the next place to look, if they won't find anything on the Isle of Dread (edgy Elven Ranger from this party did NOT buy it, but the PCs do not know it yet).
The party had some fun exchanging rumors and interacting with this other group, especially with Barbarian from Northen Reaches, who overheard Wizard mentioning Jormungandr and had to be convinced the party is not the baddies serving him or Loki. They also had fun interacting with the Matriarch, especially after finding the villagers would love to open trade routes with with other lands but their boats are too weak for it and raids from priates stationing on nearby islet do not help. Both of which the party was happy to help them with, especially with their Minrothad connections. The other group suggested the PCs deal with the pirates while they go make early foray beyond the wall and scout ahead. Artificer was also interested in rumros there is a man with advanced technology on small island south of penissula. the Wizard asked about the undead and Matriarch had one of Zombie Masters called, the two had very friendly conversation about necromancy and promised to sit down in spare time to compare notes. I was trying to get the party a plot hook to look for Zombie Master's appertnice who was sent to deliver provisions to a Shamaness leaving south of the village but hasn't yet returned, but the party didn't bite. Their plan for next session is to sail to pirate camp.
We ended on a big feat throw for two groups of adventurers by the locals.
Part Thirty One: It's All Fun And Games
We picked up when we left, with party during a celebration. Norseman of other group and War Chief the party meet got into argument who is stronger they decided to solve via friendly competition and invited party Barbarian. First round - arm-wrestling - ended with a draw, each participant beating another but losing to third. Barbarian handily won the full wrestling competition, with War Chief putting up more of a fight, while Norseman didn't even realize what happenned when he was brought to the ground. When Norseman and War Chief squared, Gnome Bard of other group offered party a bet of 500 gp, which he won when Norseman brought the War Chief down. The party offered bet of 1000 for the next competition, javelin throwing. And because there was money involved, they begun cheating. It was a lot of talking to distract the bard while they try to sleight of hand casting Bane on other two competitors and Hex n Norseman and sneaking elemental weapon on one of Barbarian's javelins. They felt justified as it was clear the Gnome was giving his buddy Bardic Inspiration and Bane'd Barbarian and War chief. However, all of it was for nothing as both Barbarian and Norseman could not match amazing rolls from War Chief, who rolles like two natual 20's on throwing javelins at the target. Norseman had worst result so the final competition was a drinking contest between barbarian and the War Chief. Which had them making con saves against stronger and stronger save DC until someone had 3 failiures. it was close, but Barbarian persevered. I was kinda amused Wizard kept asking me to roll bane on Chief, only to find out the guy either rolled so high he would pass even with -4 or so low he failed without it. Later the party decided to get the Gnome Bard drunk by switching his drink with strongest one. They were fishing for more information...but then other party's Ranger picked him up and carried away. Artificer got to hear her scolding the Bard for not noticing they switched his drink and cheated in the competition. I did throw it as a foreshadowing about the Ranger for the foreseeable future.
In the morning party was discussing Hexblade's sword, which she said can change forms and demonstrated by making it into a bow. This got a comment from Subatai Khan that Glantrians need just cheap imitation of Ethengarian skill. Few pointed insults later and he has dragged Hexblade outside for archery competition with Artificer as a referee, told to watch for Hexblade to not cheat. First they shoot at flying seagulls and both hit. Then Subatai choosen target flying further away and once again they both hit. While they were arguing what to target next, Artificer noticed the flock of whatever they hit is flying towards them. And seems to be too big for birds (Artificer: "Are you sure you were shooting at birds?" Subatai: "My country has no acces to the sea, I do not know sea birds."). And somewhat leathery. Soon 8 Pherodonts descended upon the party, their beaks bringign death....or would so if I wasn't rolling like crap and only two of them hit and at the tankiest characters. The party massacred these creatures and then proceeded to skin them and make rations of their meat. Hexblade and Subatai finished their rivarly when Artificer threw up a ball - Subatai hit it but Hexblade managed to hit both it and his arrow.
The party went to visit the Shaman and had a nice chat with her, learning that Zombie Master's student delivered her herbs yesterday but was suppsoed to take care of skeletons that were running out of control in an area between her hut and Tanaroa and if she hasn't returned yet, she is likely in trouble. The party exchanged skin and body parts of planar spider for one of her potions and Shaman gave them her shopping list of things she may exchange for more potions. From this the party learned there is a red Dragon on the island, there are two lakes where monsters live and at least two agressive groups of creatures, one smelly and lizard like and other spider-like and there is a lair of giant squid on the way to the pirates.
The party's next step was the squid, with which they decided to talk, being able now all to go underwater (Hexblade suspected Subatai wil ltry to kill her and her failed insight told her "Yes, people of Ethengar, which lacks access to the sea, are well-known for their skills at underwater murder...wqait"), using Oceanus' ability to communicate simple ideas to sea creatures. It worked well enough that they could produce a vial of squid ink (milking jokes were had) and convinced it to let their ship pass if they offer her fresh meat each time. So they could spend some phteranodo meat to sail unbothered to pirate lair. Where they have seen a whole lot of pirates. As well as another ship and a woman in armors with 4 mechanical snake heads pertruding from her back, accompannied by a giant automaton. They sadly failed their stealth checks, so the pirates know of their presence. We ended on that revelation.
Parts thirty two and thirty three: Tarin's Crown
In Pirate hideout the party meet the pirate captain from the X1 module as well as one of pirate captains - Alphatian mage operating a ship of automatons, with her own private golem - listed as random encounters in Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Captain explained to them they are part of a contest between few groups of pirates over who can take Pirate Queen's Pearl from Captain Tarin, who controls a nearby island that is near inpenetrable fortress. Winner swears to lend the artifact to other contestants so they can accomplish their specific goals with it, in exchange gaining their loyalty and being set up to become a new pirate lord of the area. After bragging about their accomplishments, the party was offered an option to join the competition, which they accepted. They followed lead of mage, to meet other two rivals.
The mage (changed the character to a woman to work as potential love interest for Artificer), was accompannied by a mechanical golem and wearing an armor with 4 mechanical Hydra heads sticking out of it (think Doctor Octopus tentacles), both of which she managed to create using just few torn pages from Codex Authomata - one of two books said to be either created, or translated and compiled from even earlier texts by Meredoth. Wizard literally pushed Aleena into water trying to join that conversation once he heard that. The other book, Codex Death is said to be half of all-powerful tome of necromancy, Codex Mortis, that can be recreated if merged with the other book, Libris Mortis. Mage, while not occupied tinkering with Artificer's mechanical Owl or his own gear, with no sense of personal space, said she wouldn't mind sharing the knowledge in Codex Automata with fellow researcher as long as she can claim the credit for rediscovering it.
Other two captains were also taken from GoSD random pirate ships, but I changed the Half-Dragon to an Orc, the other one being a Druid operating a ship made of a giant three with a small forest growing on it. The party convinced them to make this a competition of 5 female captains (as Hexblade is the official captain of the ship).
The party got told that Tarin's Crown is a fortress of sorts, an island with very narrow path through huge rock cliffs as only entrance to its only bay - a path on which you are bombarded from catapults, have to face "giant sea snakes", and assault from Tarin's own shiop, Sirvel Narwhal. There was also something "dark and monstrous" striking from above. Meanwhile the rest of the island is guarded by agressive vegetation, jungle itself is alive and malovent. So of course the party sent their crow, with a message and invisibility spell. He did manage, by some utterly insane rolls and almost being discovered twice, fly all the way to the tower in which captain Tarin locked himself and even into his private room. Party sent him a letter explaining their mruder of Pisca and acquisition of the Crown of Black Pearls and claimed to want to join his side, even providing Pisca's unfinished letter to Shoyana as a proof she was going to screw Tarin over and of their good will. Tarin called his navigator, Gren, and the two plotted to lead the party into a trap, kill and take the crown. Thakfully, the crow heard their whispered conversation and party, through it, have too. So the party made scheme on their own. They knew Tarin's plan is to lead them into a trap at his tower, while his ship (lead by first mate he wanted dead anyway, beleiving her to ba a traitor) attackes theirs. So they divided the party into two, with one group being most of the PCs and other being Wizard and NPCs. Adrianna was visibly upset and jealous seeing Wizard rather happy to be left alone with Oceanus, Sheila and Subatai Khan ( who they still call his fake namew, Ganbold, btw), enjoying companion of three hot npcs.
Party sailed into the bay, sent foot on the island and meet Gren, who lead them to the tower, warning of island's dangerous vegetation on the way. The party realzied this flamboyant guy is two-faced as hell and convinced him to betray Tarin by luring him out of the tower. Once they he did, the party trapped Tarin and all his minions in a Maelstorm. In these circumstances it wasn't hard to beat him to death, Adrianna seemed more occupied with whenever Wizard is now having any "happy time" with other NPCs than with delivering the finishng blow. As he died he begged something in the sky to give him another chance. Gren then promtly betrayed the party and blinded Aleena. In following round of combat, the party saw some invisible force pull a black statuette from Tarin's cloak into the sky. Artificer tried to give chase, then I sent him WHAT is doing it as his character could see it. Next round a huge Black Dragon falls from the sky, grabbing the artifact and Alenna, then pulling up and threatening to drop her if the party tries to attack him. He said he has an offer for whoever will come victorious of this fight.
So after quickly murdering Gren the party got to talk with the Dragon. Introducing himself as Sarvax, he put Aleena down and explained Tarin was his contact from Dragon Knights and one the Dragon was hoping to make king of Isle of Dread. As he explains, he has some project he wants to test on a brand new kingdom, he calls it "Constitutional Monarchy", he would be "gray eminence" of this new goverment. But Tarin disappointed him and now he offers a contest to the party and other pirates. Whoever managed to gain support and control over the various groups on Isle of Dread, including fellow pirate crews, as well as slains or subjogates great beasts living on it (two of which reside in the sea surrounding it, three fight for control over the sky and one swims to hunt on it from a nearby island), will get the artifact and Sarvax's patronage in becoming new ruler of this kingdom i nthe making. The party agreed to these terms.
Meanwhile Wizard's group tried to message the first mate of approaching ship, but she reacted by ordering a shrapnel fire at their ship, which nearly killed few of them. They respond by firing from balsitans, then pirates begun boarding their ship. The first mate ordered the party to surrender, Wizard refused. In the fight Barbarian player went to control Gnome sidekick NPC who managed to terrify one of pirates by charging with a pickaxe, threatening to, I kid you not, castrate him. Imagine a huge muscular man being chased by an adorable gnome girl, who threatens to stab him in the balls, and the pirate yelling "not again!" because that's what happenned. First mate focused on Oceanus, almost murdering him in series of strikes, while a guy who slashed Wizard few times, each time saying pardon, revealed he was freed by the party from Shoyana's slavers and vouched for their honor. This and the damage dealt to her made her close to surrender herself and I was gonna make her do it once the pirate's turn comes. Instead Goblin NPC called Mouse blew her head up with a crit on Firebolt. Mouse was very proud of herself, especially when demoralized pirates surrendered and left.
Two halves of the party rejoined and compared notes. Wizard was proud of how perfect his victory was, which made Oceanus (beaten down to 5 hp) go for a swim. Hexblade joiend him and the two went to swim underwater, holding hands. Adrianna dragged Wizard to his cabin and told him she isn't sure he is taking whatever thing going they have seriously and thinks he is constantly chasing skirts and trousers and should rethink what kind of relationship he wants the two of them to actually have. It didn't help once she left Aleena came to his cabinbeing shaken after almost dying to a dragon and hoping a "fellow Petra worshipper" will be able to help her get over it. It ended on pretty annoyed Wizard hugging her...just as Adrianna came back, saw this and walked out, furious. Artificer was, ocne again, listening in on everything through his cabin's floorboards, with Sheila. Both moved to food storage when Wizard went to clear the misunderstandign with Adrianna, who promptly told him they should try to take things between them more slowly. Wizard then went upside to see Mouse the Goblin chase his crow with a frying pan and, furious he stole food again, killing said crow with a Firebolt. Wizard was amused, but made a slip she sent him to Wizard's patron, that she is still terrified of. Mouse went to barricade herslef in the kitchen.
Meanwhile underwater Hexblade and Oceanus saw what was guarding only way in and out of the bay - a gargantuan Hydra. Terrified they went to discuss it with the rest, but decided to first take matters privately with Artificer. Having not found him in his cabin, they decided to wait and flirt on his sofa. Artificer sensed something is happenning in his sanctum and left, passing by terrified Mouse. He then proceeded to listen on them, until they all realized Oceanus and Hexblade talk in Elvish, and he doesn't speak it. After finally entering the room they had explained the situation and decided to have whole crew meeting. In meantime Artificer tried to explain to Wizard what is he doing wrong with Adrianna and Barbarian had a great idea to calm Mouse down by a) telling her to find a patron stronger than Wizard's and b) getting her drunk. So a drunken Goblin walks into the meeting and starts yelling she is looking for Immortals to worship.
The party tried to contact other pirates for help but upon learnign they're rivals now, the priates refused. The party tried to say only they know actual terms of Sarvox's contest and won't share them until free...but pirate mage just went to work on a sending to Sarvox. After some back and forth, they decided to feed the Hydra a fish stuffed with Alchemsit fire and promptly went to catch one, making a contest out of it. Artificer cheated by Vortes Wrapping the shark on a ship,. which was then murdered and stuffed with alchemsit fire Mosue made. Wizard and Hexblade spent this time chatting, something Subatai joined to be a bit of a jerk and joke the Wizard is, how they say in Karameikos, a "gigolo".
After having stuffed shark bomb, Hexblade, Oceanus and Artificer swam to hydra, left it there and then thudner stepped/flied away. While explosion did not kill Hydra, it did wound and stagger it enough to let the ship escape safely. Now they set a course back to the Isle of Dread.
Chapter Thirty Four: Gripphon's Nest
Having sailed away from Tarin's Crown, the party got a message from Alphatian pirate saying that she managed to contact Dragon Sarvax and got all information other pirates needed. Everyone agreed to honorably give each other 24 hours without attacking other participants in the tournament over the control of the Isle of Dread.
As the party set sail to go around Isle of Dread and go into the Isle from very small beach near Troglodyte's lair (which is hwere they expect to find Z.A. Zephyr), Ganbolt (a.k.a. Subatain Khan), brought up to them that they are going to have Crismon Caruthra and her pirates from pirate Hideout behind them, asking for an attack in the back. After much deliberation the party decided to go and see if they can strike some sort of aliance with her. She proposed a contest. - a one on one duel between her and Barbarian. Winner swears fealty to the loser. Also if she loses, the party gets her treasure, but if wins, she takes their ship. The party agreed, secretly plotting to kill everyone if they lose. But, surprisingly, Barbarian refused to participate, calling the bet foolish and loudly chewing out her teammates for always ruining all contest by cheating with magic. This caused two things. One, Hexblade stepped in in Barbarian's place and before the fight got with Artificer to give herself some boosts while pirates were distracted. Also, pulled Oceanus in for a "good luck" kiss, to my and everyone's surprise. Two, right as the fight started, one of Caritha's officers (for whom I was using tokens with female picture), aproached Wizard and, asking if he would keep her company, wrapped her arm around him, pressing a knife in her hand to his neck. In case he would try any funny things. Adrianna, Wizard;s almost but not exactly girlfriend, saw that but didn't notice the knife and was glaring at him whole time.
Anyway, letting Hexblade buff herself was a mistake. She managed to deal nearly 90 damage in one combat round between her own attacks and Armor of Aghatyst. I gave Caruthra statistics of a Bandit Lord, 91 hp, three greatsword attacks. I thought it's gonna be a fair fight. It was not. Long story short, Crimson Caruthra surrendered and swore alliegiance to future Pirate Queen. Party also got their loot, including +2 Greatsword. Pirates threw them a party, making everyone suspicious and deeply surprised when no betrayal has taken place.
As mornign came, Artificer has woke up to find Pookah Silvestrus Woodfellow in his chair, eating his popcorn. Pookah told him he got news that nearby small islet north of Pirate Hideout (which they party did not yet know was where Hippopgriphons live) there was a shipwreck and someone important (as in "not some Oberon's bastard kid, that's for sure, but I don't exclude a possibility of a grandchild") has survived it. Silvestrus was tasked by watching over that person and offered Artificer a favor if they take this job from him. In return he offered to poke around the Isle of Dread and get some intel. Artificer asked him to find where to find beasts that battle over the Isle that dragon Sarvax has mentioned.
Hexblade merged her sword with Greatsword, getting approval from two voices inside it, both promising a reward for this gift soon. She did decide to do this process in Artificer's cabin, making him and Wizard (who walked in to get something for a hangover) suspicious of why she is talking with her sword. They kinda let go of this when they focused on identifying loot from pirate treasure, including shortsword Orectus, which they found out is sentient sword able to find ores, but can only comunicate via sending emotions. Artificer promsied to find a way to modify it to let it speak. Hexblade tried to press two swords together to see how they'll react, but Artificer stopepd her after watching her sword more or less absorb another sword.
Having explained his deal with Pookah, Artificer convinced everyone to go check island up north. Pirates followed, watching them - the party got impression that their new allies are not plotting to betray them, but still need to be seriously impressed to gain their true loyalty. From the ship party observed the island and saw remains of a wreckage and somebody climbing up the high cliffs...right where they have found evidence of a hippogryphon nest. The party approached via a boast, with Wizard attunning to Orectus on the way. His patron gave him shortsword profficiency, which Hexblade and Artificer saw as a shadow forming behind him and teaching him how to hold a sword. He was thnakfull Aleena didn't saw it, as he would not hear the end of how he's guided by Petra (she still thinks Deathknight from Ravenloft who is Wizard's patron is actually disguised Immortal Petra. I may have a bit too much fun with this).
Why did Wizard attune to the sword, you may ask? Orectus allows you to cast Levitate 3 times a day. Artificer knows taht spell too, but due to it being concentration he couldn't jsut cast it twice. The two combined their spells to lift the whole @#$#% boat up and land on top of a cliff. Theyre they saw a Lupin in Wizard clothes trying to wrestle his spellbook from a hippogryphon's beak. They party managed distract the beasts with speak with animals and ptherodon meat, while guy they were saving ran off, though not before Barbarian tried to stop him and accidentially made him flip in the air and fall on his back from sheer strength difference. They did start to try to convince the gryphons to let themselves be domesticated (which was slow because, you know, they're animals and don't usually speak like that)...when the Lupin guy got kidnapped by a Wyvern. Artificer got him back with Vortex Wrap. Gryphons agreed to the offer in exchange for getting rid of wyverns leaving on next island. And food.
Lupin's name is Emenos le Chiot, he's a Lupin "alchemist appertnice" who wants to be a wizard, comes from Renardy. Speaks with a lot of French. As Artificer and Wizard were fixing his clothes with Mending, they noticed he had a tattoo on his back, right above his tail. A tattoo of a symbol they recognized as a mark through which some powerful Archfey is keeping an eye on him. The party suspect this guy of all kinds of things, including that he is said Archfey's "b***h". Also Artificer got good enough rolls to know how high prices intact Wyvern eggs or young Wyverns fetch on market, but when he shared this idea with the party, Hexblade had a better idea - they adopt and raise a Wyvern.
Sidestory: What Happens in Glantri or how I may love cameoes a bit too much
Barbarian went on a week long vacation so we played a one-shot in Pathfinder 1e, one telling origins of Hexblade and, as such, set in Glantri.
The cast:
Hexblade - playing Shadow Bloodline Sorcerer, I will keep referring to her as Hexblade for simplicity despite it being a story how she got her sword.
Silksword - played by Artificer player, Bel;cadiz Elf, very by the rules person.
Alchemsit - played by Wizard player, also Belcadiz Elf, very "eat the rich" attitude due to being bastard son of a noble.
Bard - Gnome Bard, newcomer to Glantri, writes crappy romnces and came seeking inspiration for her next novel, tends to twist the facts for the sake of story. Played by Cleric player.
We start with three Belcadiz Elves meeting Bard at Wizard's Holster. They have some nice chat and the restaurant's waiter, Humprey the Invisible Stalker, became instant favorite. He did let slip he send a bottle of Glimmerwine to the backroom, but quickly changed the topic. Soon later the four noticed none other than Aozy Markov ordering a bottle of that and bartender saying they don't have any (despite Humprey preparing one for them), but he could check in back room, and leading him there. Immediatelly 3/4 of the group tried to sneak to see what's up. They struggle a bit but managed to get in and see Aozy meeting with none other than Jaggar Von Drachenfels and have some cryptic conversation that indicated they're investigating some Bel;cadiz who will tomorrow receive informations for inaguration to some sort of secret society, and he will receive instructions where to go "through a child", so he will be hanging at Great School of Magic. Before anyone could say anything more, Bard assumed there are more hidden "conspirators" in the room and tried to make them panic and run out of shadows via casting a spell making loud scream in other part of the room. Neither of the two fell for it, but the three wannabe spies managed to sneak away. Though they were terrified the two VERY DANGEROUS people may go after them. Still, the party of 4 decided to investigate.
(What happened is the two ran separate investigations into Brotherhood of Radiance and ran into each other and had tensely agreed to share what they know)
Next day they managed to snuck Bard into Great School of magic via pretending she came to promote her novels. They even got like two girls who did read them to act like squealing fangirls.They planned to go and take over boring "history of Glantri" class. However, they didn't except what will happen on this class. I decided to pull them into more interactive version of the story told in Glantri Gazeteer, the one where Princess Carnelia de Belcadiz y Fedorrias pulls whole class through very traumatic version of history lesson. With one change - instead of captain of the guard being her wipping boy, this role was given...to Hexblade's own father, powerful illusionist in his own right. Needless to say, everyone left the class shell-shocked.
Hexblade went to act like a looked to Wizard as she promised (see his origin story). But she suddenly had to hide on the window's ledge, when she saw her father walking by. She innitially hid from him but he did notice her when she looked out who has approached him. That person was Sir Anthon McGregor, 10-years old mage complaining about some slight "Princessa" has done to him and assuring his grandfather, Prince Brennard McGregor, will hear about it. Hexblade did notice the boy spoke in a rather cryptic way. After he left, her father tried to chew Hexblade (who pretended she hid there for a smoke), but she told him to f off unless he wants her to tell mother about what humilation he had to endure today. He left, swearing intensively in Spanish. She follwoed him, eventually finding him disappear inside a closet in one of the classrooms. As she found out, it had a trapdoor and a tube leading somehwere.
Meanwhile, rest of the group caught the winth of Aozy Markov and trailed him, reaching another secret passage, with stairs. That at some point divide in two different ways...and then they hear Hexblade swearing in Spanish, as she is sliding down the tube, coming from oe direction. After short exchange of Message cantrip they join her in a very simple maze, where they avoid combat with few skeletons by distracting them and solve literally child-simple puzzle using cryptic words from Anton. It was rather simple thing I threw, I was afraid of overthinking or overcomplicating the puzzle, I have to admit. But I think players had fun.
In the end they activated a portal leading them to laboratory. Bard, Alchemist and Silkworm proceeded to ivnestigate, finding notes about vivisection of a Halfling and inconclusive results of experimentwith injecting something called "blackfmale" with something called "Radiance". Meanwhile in another room Hexblade has found a corpse of a Halfling and a sword made of darkness and light. She takes it, triggering a trap that summons a Flesh Golem Hound, starting our only combat. It doesn't last long.
(so what happenned is: Hexblade's father captured and vivisected a Hin with Shadowflame blade, then, having managed to get some acess to Radiance, attempted to inject the blade with it, creating a setient sword with million voices that will soon form into two, each representing one of these mysteriosu forces. He also caught attention of Rad, so Brotherhood of Radiance teleproted/stole his secret lab until they decided he is trustworthy enough to join)
Hexblade start hearing voices in her head showing her images of her father as person who hurt them, as well as promising power to save her. She accepts. At which point she suddenly feels like a small pebble in vast space andsees a vision of a pair of radiating eyes demanding she returns what she stole. Sword starts panicking and begs her to let it take her out of there. She keeps her cool but agrees and disappears. Rest of the group is saved by sudden appearance of Etienne d'Amberville himself, who puts to sleep both Hexblade's father and Golem...neither of which should be possible. That's enough for others to know they better play nice. So they try to explain to Prince everything. He learns that whoever stole the sword is no longer there and seems to recognize the three suddenly. He says they will be able to avoid any punishment for their transgressions..if they do a job for him. Then he makes them vanish in the mist.
(explanation: Using the sword caught attention of Rad, who tried to call upon her and intimidate into not messing with Radiance, and decided to show up in person when she ran. He did plan on just wipe everyone's memories, but then recognized other three PCs as people who helped him in the past, and sent them into 936 - I will offer the players to return to those characters once I run Castle Amber one day).
Hexblade found herself back at school, ran up to see Wizard blew up whole lab he was experimenting in, the two agreed to run away. So they fleed Glantri City, then Glantri itself. Voices in the sword with time subsided, reduced to just two. But Hexblade strill had nightmares of that voice and whenever she would look in the direction of Glantri, she could swear she sees pair of giant radiant eyes starring at her.
(also, Hexblade player now thinks some cosmic horror is after her, so that's gonna be fun).
Part Thirty Five: Wyvern's Nest
The party spent some more time asking questions and arguing about what to do with the Wyverns and whenever to take their eggs or not. In the end they have decided to try to take them. My party right now is rather overpowered, I have noticed, so the vyverns didn't last long with their focused fire. But they took Ganbold/Subatai Khan with them and the man was enarmored with the flying monsters, even as he helped slaughter them. Hexblade, Subatai and Wizard each took one of the three eggs. Wizard took one for purpose of trying mail it to Aozy, but Artificer conviced him othertwise. Artificer then built suitable terrarrium i nthe kitchen for the egs to keep warm until they hatch.
Meanwhile Hexblade discussed with Wizard what she (the player) learned from the flashback one-shot as well as whenever they trust their new crewmate, Emenos, or Ganbolt's suddent interest in the vyvern eggs. But this was interrupted by Ganbolt himself, who came offering that, since he and Hexblade, who is the ship's captain, do not get along, he offerent to stay to train the hippogryphons. He has experience with both horses and eagles so he could be their best choice for this. He asked for someone for help but party wanted to give him neither Adrianna (who had some experience with Karameikos flying troops) not Oceanus (whose speciality is sea life anyway), so Artificer suggested Starshine, the Gnome whom they promised adventures but kept most of the time in eagle's nest on the ship. She did agree, frustrated about being always left out, but demanded later to be taken to Serraine, where Artificer is from.
The party was pretty fun, with some more Hexblade/Oceanus romance, Hexblade beating Ganbolt in a wrestling contest, everyone trying to get Emenos drunk only for him to either pass saving throws as if nothing happenned or fail so bad to instantly pass out drunk. At the end Artificer gave everyone his special blend, knocking everyone but himself and Barbarian out.
In the morning Ganbolt and Starshine left the ship and rest sailed north, where they have found the small place where ship can dock, with Z.A. Zephyr looking abbandonned. but when they tried to sail closer, giant head of a sea dragon bursted from beneath the water.
It was a short session as I had to leave to work an hour early. The Sea Dragon appeared from beneath the water. The party respond by launching barrage of atracks but they did minor damage. And they really felt the pain when their Goblin sidekick made a critical hit with a firebolt, only to find that dragon is immune to it. And then it spit fire* at the ship, for 50 damage, knocking out their healer, Aleena, reducing Hexblade to 5 HP, their tank Adrianna from 70 to 20 and would have kileld Artificer and Wizard if they didn't pass their saving throws. At this point party is panicking and Artificer tries to distract the dragon by negotiating. But the monster has hard terms - half of party treasure, half of their food and he wants them to go and sink a Thyatian ship that robbed him and fleed, the Emperor's Hand. Party is trying to heal up a bit as Artificer talks, they try to form plans as desperate as putting two bags of holding into one another in front of the dragon. In the end Hexblade cast Whirlwind, which pissed dragon off. He wrapped his tail aroudn the hsip and attacked it, dealing 220 damage to the main hull in one freaking round. The party respond by concentrating fire, this time much more effectively, they hit hard enough to bring this creature down.
They almost died, most of them had little hp left, ship's main hull was barely holding up on 32 hp. And then the Artificer says it was surprisingly easy. Really.
The party proceeded to cut out every single thing possible from dragon's corpse, while pirates they subjegated before caught up to them, and watched in ave their new leaders having slain a dragon. The party then wanted to go to the small beach, but they stopped when they sensed the smell from Troglodyte lair. So isntead they searched throughfully Zephyr, an abbandonned ship that was bearing the sights of fight - an ambush by mutated Shark-Kin. The party managed to put together that captain Eliza Brand and her crew went to explore the Isle and remaining part got attacked by Shark-Kin.
We ended o nthe party finding hoard of the sea dragon. Next sesison they plan to do the crafting of items from sea dragon's corpse and set off into the Isle of Dread, while pirates remain to repair the ship, at least a bit.
* - I was using a picture where sea dragon clearly breathes fire, so I stuck with it, it may be explained later as I know Sea Dragons usually use acid and poison, yes?
Part Thirty Seven: Hot Ganbolt Isn't Real And Cannot Hurt You
Today we started with bringing up two different crafting homebrews and trying to mash them together to see how soon will Artificer be able to create the magic items from all parts of sea dragon I let them harvest. Thankfully most of those is going to take weeks as I may have by accident given them too much strong stuff.
The party has decided to not use vials of Dragon Blood to make powerful healing potions that also give fire resistance...but instead made vodka out of them. And then threw a party for themselves and the pirates. On the party they tested the dragon vodka, which was very good, and decided to try what didn't work last time - get Emenos, their newest Lupin companion, drunk and try to get some info off him. He wasn't much of a talker, even drunk, but Artificer with detect throughts got a series of images - a giant black hound, the Wild Hunt in the sky and a pirate with burning beard - flashing briefly in Lupin's mind whenever topic of his past came up. Emenos then tripped and fell to the ground, losing conciousness. The Artificer recognized the Wild Hunt as a thing lead by Mas-y-Mos, the great huntress in service of Oberon himself, and black hounds as her servants. Also managed to recognize the tattoo on Emenos' back as Mas' symbol. He failed to recognize the burning guy, but Wizard and Artificer had some ideas, though they saw different images associated with it - legendary pirate Salazar Black, the most feared of former Sea Princes, equal to Barbarossa. From Red Caruthra the party learned both Black and Barbarossa came from "desert lands up north" and that Black terrorizes the world in his flying ship and weilds powerful fire magic. The party nwo has a theory that Oberon has sent the Wild Hunt after Salazar Black, Emenos is a sleeper agent and they're a bait - since they are likely to run into ruthless pirate at some point - and once they and Black meet, Emenos will turn into a Black Hound and attack.
After that Hexblade dediced to talk with Artificer alone (though Wizard drunkenly walked in and refused to leave, providing comci relief). She told Artificer some of how she discovered the sword and about two giant eyes starring at her. And even tried to get information about it from her sword. Recultantly the entities in the sword did manage to talk, Shadowy one saying the being has "ensured he is the only one of his kind in Glantri". From shining one she has, with some extra probbing, learned the group her father wanted to join in is "Brotherhood of Radiance" and that being whose eyes she saw knows where she is whenever she uses the sword and if he haven't destroyed her yet, he is likely curious about her progress and power growth. With some combined thinking 3 PCs managed to put together that the being Hexblade is fleeing from to be Immortal Rad, only Immortal allowed in Glantri. Hexblade was a little bit absolutely terrified.
After getting Wizard to sleep, Artificer and Hexblade went to check on wyvern eggs, Hexblade almsot expecting to find Ganbolt teleported in to steal them, revealing himself as true BBEG. This lead to jokes about Ganbolt getting buss and hot once he returns, to Hexblade's terror. Seeing everything with eggs was ok, she went to talk with Oceanus about recent revelations. This did end with the two of them in her room, on a "fade to black" moment. And a ton of laugh as we realized her bed is exactly side-by-side, with only a think wooden wall between, of Artificer's bed. Artificer who famously hears good enough to hear through the walls. No one thinks poor guy got any sleep that night.
In the morning, after some chat with Little Mouse, party's Goblin sidekick, who is very excited at the prospect of vivisecting a dragon again, the party set off to nearby caves, leaving pirates with the ship to repair it. Wizard made his Raven invisible and sent it ahead. It flew over a small pool of muddy water and saw 4 Troglodytes playing dice. It also heard laugher interrupted by hiccups, coming from afar. Sadly, raven lost Stealth checks and allarmed Troglodytes. So it flew away. Troglodytes were about to go back to their business since it was jsut a bird, when Wizard got close enough to begun blasting. The party made short work of 4 Troglodytes, having rest of the cave to explore, if they wish so.
Part Thirty Eight: Lair of the Wretched Troglodytes
We started with the party deciding to harvest the bodies of dead Troglodytes. Or rather, making their Goblin sidekick do it. Few succesful Survival rolls, failed stealth rolls, succesful stealth of Troglodytes and failed Perception rolls of Barbarian and Adrianna, the Troglodytes in next room ambushed the party, while openly discussing which members of the party are scary enough to be captured alive. Troglodytes were quickly dealt with and harvested as well.
The party moved to next chamber of the cave, finding 3 tunnels. Two were down slopes, from one they cou;d hear laughter and hiccups. Third lead to a room with dry dinosaur meat. They sent Wizard's Raven familiar to a next one and it promtply found a muddy pool. Raven flew over it...and a Troglodyte jumped out of water and ate it, then went back to hiding. Barbarian and Hexblade rushed in and two Troglodytes jumped out, their happy expressions replaced with shock and anger as they realized they have intruders in their caves. One Troglodyte was quickly killed and Hexblade managed to intimidate other one into surrender even through language barier (Wizard's Comprehend languages expired). But Wizard was pissed about his Raven (in part because Artificer acussed him of animal abuse due to how nonchalantly he let's the raven die) and blew the Troglodyte up. It was such a ruthless act most of the party and even Adrianna were visibly unsettled by it.
The party went to last tunnel and saw two Troglodytes with shields and in improvised human costumes, training some routine under a Shaman. Barbarian, Hexblade and Oceanus managed to sneak up on them and since Oceanus had Helm of COmprehend languages, he could udnerstand Shaman ranting how dangerous and scary the "scaleless" are and how he is a veteran and not a single "scaleless" can sneak up on him. So of course the party picked this moment to attack, massacring the shaman and one of Troglodytes immediatelly. Last one ran to the final chamber, from which the hiccups and laughter was coming. Laughter stopped.
Wizard, still feeling bloodthirsty, chased after Troglodyte and ran into a whole bunch of them, with one adored in shoddy armor. The last one blocked the entrance with his own body and cast silence on the party, which threw a wrench in their plans. Assuming this is the chieftan of this tribe (and because he DARED to lock their way in a NARROW CORRIDOR, the insolence), party focused attacks on him and he went down very fast. But once he did, the REAL chieftan - a large Troglodyte Juggernautt - rose from the pool of dark water at the end of the cave and threw a dagger at Wizard. Dagger that caused Wizard everyone within 10 feet to roll on Wild Magic Surge Table. I'm kinda glad I went with this because it really improved a session that was kinda dry (party ignored or failed to pick diplomatic options and Troglodytes kinda make boring enemies in long run). We got a lot of chaos, including Oceanus getting large, Wizard and chieftan (who also rolled and also rolled at end of his every turn) starting to fly, a bunch of Flumps (I don't know if there are Flumps in Mystara but one player was so excited to see them I decided to roll with it) got summoned only to be immediatelly reduced to 2 hp each by necrotic wave and then blown up by a fireball (Warlock's patron offered to send them to her Domain instead of dying, I allowed it).
After a lot of laughs, party defeated all Troglodytes. They identified dagger and cloak on chieftan as Dagger of Venom and Cloak of Elvenkind...except actually they're cursed, dagger causing Wild Magic Surges whenever its Venom abbility was activated, Cloak causing hiccups and wearing both causing every surge to have a chance at triggering wild magic surge. They have the traces of party's favorite curse witch all over. I have decided since now Curse Witch is working to help unleash Leviathan and I have described effects of Leviathan's crazy weather as chaotic, directly comparing them to Wild Magic to player of Warlock's Patron (who is from Faerun, trapped in Ravenloft), so I decided her curses being able to cause Wild Magic Surges (or rather effects identical to WMS) will be good way to show they're conencted.
During the fight Hexblade had first chance to summon a Specter. Which she did and it took form of shadowy being from her sword, the one who calls herself Shadow of the Flame. As the party was leaving, Goblin sidekick kinda freaked out Wizard and Hexblade by, right after she finished harvesting Troglodyte corpses, asking if they could write her recommendations for Great School of Magic, since she heard Glantri are good at cutting things open. This prompted Specter/Shadow of the Flame, who was pretending to be Hexblade's shadow, to talk to her and call her out on the fact how Glantrian it is her group just attacked someone's home, murdered everyone and harvested their corpses. She also chastised Hexblade for being so nonchalant about Rad watching them and not wondering WHY he didn't yet come after her. And finally dropepd a hints she may be conencted to the Halfling, whose corpse was next to the sword when Hexblade found it.
4 horus after we finished party messages me asking if Troglodytes were jsut looking for a way to cure their chieftan's hiccups. Upon learning they could solve this encounter without combat, party went "Shame. Anyway...".
Part Thirty Nine and Forty: Bravorax the Red Dragon
We played two sessions in a short amount of time. First one opened on the ship, with Hexblade discovering Artificer has made a conspiracy board of all plot points and loose ends the party has accumulated so far. Intrigued she helped him research Vestland, where one of the plot hooks leads, and shared with him some information and the fact she had seen Wizard's mentor, necromancer Aozy Markov, engaging in some shady activities before she and Wizard escaped from Glantri. Artificer asked if she could ask Wizard for his letters from Aozy, but Hexblade decided to sneak into his cabin, intimidate his familiar to the point of near mental breakdown, and found and read his letters, all while Wizard was helping Artificer research Ierendi for another plot hook.
Artificer asked Wizard if he could see his letters, Wizard went to get them. Surprisingly he only ran into Hexblade near door of his cabin, but it was enough to raise his suspicions, especially after finding his familair traumatized. He walked in on Hexblade telling Artificer what she learned from the letters, which caused an argument between the two. And argument that exploded so much Artificer had to step in and Vortex Warp Hexblade out of his cabin. Hexblade was so mad she went to swim with Oceanus to calm down, went back, told Artificer her mind and went to have some "personal time" with Oceanus. Still right behind Artificer's wall, he was lucky that he managed to kick them out of his cabin first. Hexblade also sent her specter, remaining from last battle, to haunt Wizard through the night but that only got him excited and happy something supernatural is happenning.
In the morning the party set off to Isle of Dread. Travelling through the mountains, they have suddenly been accostede by a beautiful bird who...somehow stole Artificer's contact lenses of night FROM HIS EYES, and flew away, tanking Vortex Warp in the process. Party gave pursuit. On the way through swamp they ran into a bunch of Pixies, Brownies and Leprecuchans holding a beauty pageant and had been asked to serve as a tie-breaker. Something they are sure will come to bite them back for some reason.
Resumign the chase party ran into a Brownie knight trying to tame a lziard as his mount, in which they helped. Finally they saw a bird in the open field, but when Artificer and Aleena approached, a dozen or so of monkey threw dirt at them and stole the contat lenses, dispersing once Artificer called them with Vortex Warp. The bird then turned into Beaver-like Pookah whom Artificer asked to discern locations of great beasts on the Isle. The party learned the location of both Red and Green Dragon's lairs, about Dragon Turtle and nearby islet where a giant ape lives. Pookah returned artificer his glasses, which now are slighty improved enchancment, giving advantage to hearing-related perception checks too.
The party reached location of loco weed and got attacked by deranged ankylosaurus, the attack also provoking allosaurus and a plesiosaurus to join.And the party too kthem without breaking a sweat...and then Rede Dragon descended from the sky, breathed fire on everyone and captured their Goblin sidekick. Dragon demanded that, if they want her to live, to go kill green dragon that is "cowardly avoiding their confrontation". The party tried to negotiate and realzied the Dragon doesn't know about Sarvax the black dragon. This lead them to believe he is not as smart or strong and he presents himself. which combined with his very awful attitude and insulting their Goblin sidekick by calling her a "pet", lead the party to try to ambush him. Dragon saw through it and tried first to throw Goblin at Hexblade (he missed), then to grab her, fly up and drop her on the ground (feather fall saved her and she even used it to thunderstep above him). Concentrated attacks from the party forced Dragon to retreat. We ended session here.
Next session party has cut everything they could out of dinosaurs and went back to their boat, spending night at some place that looked like turned to stone ruins of a house, though nothing remained from it aside few more regularly-shaped rocks. The party had searched the place but there was nothing interesting aside the ruins being there. Adrianna took oportunitty to ask why they even go after the Dragon and not just focus on saving her brother, btu Wizard convinced her it is safer to eliminate Dragon before he can hurt her brother in another attack at them.
During the ngiht Wizard and Adrianna on their watch heard sound of many small feet and in the morning the party found tracks going northeast. They decided to not give a damn and march to their ship, then swim to dragon's lair. On the way Artificer got himself different infusions, especially fire resistant armor. Hexblade and Wizard spent it adding more things to the conspriacy board.
Party came to small volcanic island, where they localzied Dragon's lair inside active volcano. On the other end from them. But they have sent invisible raven to spy, discovering there are two people in red discussing something with Dragon, name Fire Lord was mentioned (Artificer: We will run out of board at this rate).
Artificer drank potion of giant strength and cast enchance ability on himself, Wizard cast Tenser's flating disc and they begun process of carrying party members one by one on a disc, which was following Wizard who was carried by Artificer. They managed to almost get everyone in before they failed stealth checks and were spotted. The battle has begun.
Hexblade cast Maelstrom, which provided some trouble to enemies, but Dragon flew out of it and respond with Erupting Earth. One of mysteriosu people, Fire Mage, threw a fireball at the party. Wizard respond with Eldritch Blast, but Fire Mage used a strange spell (Silvery Barbs) to make him miss, then gave himself advantage to resist Maelstrom and summoned Fire Elemental, that proceeded to walk over Hexblade and Oceanus.
Adrianna and Barbarian managed to knock the dragon down and Artificer grappled him, pinning him to the floor. Dragon respond with a fireball centered on himself, Hexblade counterspelled, Fire Mage Counterspelled her, Wizard tried to counterspell him but failed reading the scroll and destroyed it. Meanwhile third person, Fire Warrior, was dealing a lot of damage to Adrianna and Barbarian with her Flame Tounge sword. She even crit twice in one round.
Angry Hexblade walked over to Fire Mage and begun her assault, he tried to retreat but she cut him down, even Silvery Barbs did not save his ass. She then made the specter out of his soul, which again took form of shadowy creature in her sword. Who congratulated her on killing many mages and granted her Mage Slayer feat. Dragon began begging for his life, and Fire Warrior declared she is going to kill Hexblade for murdering her brother. When party rejected his pleas, Dragon tried to use stinking cloud, but even in heavy obscured area he was struck down by Wizard's Eldritch blast. Artificer then grappled fire warrior, dragged her to Hexblade and let Hexblade finish her off.
We ended on Hexblade having to explain very excited wizard what even is this strange specter.
The party has looted the Dragon's lair, noting the two allies of dragon looked somewhat modified with unnaturally warm bodies and with what looked like magma in their veins. One of them had letter mentioning alliance with the "Fire Lord" and some potential "competition" to their goal in the south, a "shadow of the past" from author's homeland. It was signed SB, which the party guessed to be Salazar Black. Some history checks let them pinpoint the Salazar Black and Rory Barbarossa's origins as Emirates of Ylarum, and that out of their plot hooks so far it seems like the "competition" they mention is the cult of Zargon, who had been worshipped in some sort of "lost city" in Ylarum territorries.
They also got the sword from corpse of mysteriosu woman, a flame tounge that also lets user cast few fire spells and is only slightly cursed to make user have deep respect for fire. So of course EHxblade, who has something like that but for sea already on her. She is now joking they should get earth and wind items like that and she'll become a Cursed Avatar.
After cutting the Dragon, party returned to ship and to Isle of Dread. There Wizard got a new letter from Aozy markov, learning he's been recovering from wounds he received while helping defend Glantri from Ethengarian assault that was prompted by sudden, devastating, snowstorm that hit their defenses. Party immediatelly conencted this to Jormungandr plot. Letter also mentioned students from Glantri one-shot are missing, but Hexblade didn't let Wizard read this part out loud.
The party set off to a somewhat uneventful trip to center plateau, first day only being interrupted by giant honey badger they quickly murdered. I decided to pull some encounters from Sea King's Malcie this time. So next day they meet Uder, a Fire Giant who was guarding a hot spring created from small stream of icy-cold water from the plateau that formed a small pool right over hot magma. It was perfect place to relax for Efretti noble G'Kano, who would teleport here whenever he felt like from Plane of Fire. I did namedrop City of Brass, though if it ever comes up in my Mystara games ir ptobably will not be the same one from standard D&D, since Mystara's Plane of Fire is cut off from main one in multiverse. I may one day run 5e City of Brass, tho, who knows.
Anyway, Uder was tricked by G'Kano into being servant and guardian, thinking he return home whenever he feels like. Instead he was trapped on the Isle. PCs offered to help him, so he took them to underground lake of lava, in middle of which stood inactive portal. Players struggled to open it due to bad rolls but finally experimented a bit and managed. As he returned home, Uder told them that he saw a group of people attacked by some sea-like creatures and taken towards the central plateau, and that maybe they were taken to cave of Captain Garth Blackbeard, which was located up the stream. He vanished before being able to warn them of something, and portal died completely.
As party returned and got to pull their thoughts together to first localize the mountains they saw on the other side to be probably between Soderfjord Jarldoms and Emirates of Ylarum, and second to get what they know of Blackbeard - he apparently was a Sea Prince who tried to turn a new leaf after Karameikos, Ierendi and Thyatis destroyed that organization. But when he was escorting a trade fleet his ship was caught ina storm and destroyed and he was pressumed dead.
As the party descended down to the hot spring, they got attacked by G'Kanno's magma bulette, which even got some good damage in before dying. Blake's sword told them it is turning into a mix of ores, so Wizard sent his familair to tell their pirates that this needs to be transported to the ship. The party then went to hot spring, almost all of them going naked, except for Adrianna, Aleena and Goblin, who were embarassed and Artificer had to make them swimsuits. The party had a lot of fun, with Wizard and Hexblade and Oceanus especially getting into it, while Adrianna got flustered and left. Wizard went to talk to her and helped her calm down and they spend somewhat romantic time stargazing. Also Hexblade and Oceanus were making out in the hot tub and then decided to sneak back into it again awhen everyone were asleep.
Next day the party begun climbing up to the plateau, on the way having a lot of laugh due to some people failing their climbing rolls. As they approached the cave, they were attacked by rival adventuring party they meet in Tanaroa, who have claimed to have a) figured out the party has the "black pearl" they're looking for and b)have received information that Grand DUke Stefan Karameikos had (with blessing of Tincol I, who is the one that informed him who is travelling with the PCs), put a bounty on their heasd for kidnapping of his daughter Adrianna and Subatain Chan. Party tried to explain it but the other group decided Adrianan msut be brainwashed so an epic fight broke off.
Or rather it would if I wouldn't fail every single roll, making it pretty much a humilating curbstomp that completely tarnished any credibility of the rivals as a threat to the point I think of retiring these characters enteirly, after they ran off with tail between their legs. Every concentration check I rolled horribly. Near every attack roll was a miss. We ended here, I actually apologized for the players for screwing up and making such unchallenging fight. They assured me it was very fun and that a single good roll on my side could cause a TPK, and it still forced them to think tactically, so I have nothing to beat myself up over.
We will resume campaign once I'm back from two week vacation.
We have picked up where we have left, with the party leveling up after defeating the rival group. Among other thing, the Wizard learned Animate Dead and Speak With Dead, so this was a huge necromancer step for the character. It came handy as the party went to investigate the cave near which they fought. You see, inside they found clear signs someone has been there months or so ago, and left half-eaten body of a man. Using speak with dead the party found out the man was a member of Zephyr';s crew and that the group lead by Eliza Brand has been attacked and taken prisoner by "sharks on two legs", who took them to this cave for the night, eat the guy the party is talking with and took everyone else "up". After getting all questions, Wizard animated the guy as his first Skeleton, which he named Mr. Skeleton.
Artificer noticed a strange breeze in the cave and soon discovered a tunnel small enough for a person to pass through at the time, stuffed with a sail to mask it. As the party entered, Wizard sent Mr. Skeleton first...and skeleton gor staked in the head by a trap. After which Wizard asked Adrianna to go first to not hurt his new toy, which really annoyed her. On the other end was a smaller cave, with dead body of Captain Garth Blackbeard, one of the Sea Princes, who survived sinking of his ship in a storm due to his two magic items and was washed ashore the Isle of Dread, where he died hiding, scared of the world. They learned from him people live on central plateau on top of the mountains, but it is full of strange beasts and "markings on the ground". One of his items was Handaxe of Lightning, which Hexblade advised Wizard to give Adrianna as an apology for that whole Skeleton thing. He did manage to convince her to stop being mad.
In meantime the party had a chance to discuss how exactly did they get acussed of kidnapping. They remembered one of the attackers mentioned that the bounty on their heads was not only placed by Duke Stefan, but also has explicit approval and support of Emperor Tincol I. Some intelligence rolls for base memory and logic allowed Artificer to piece it together. When they met the Emperor, one of them did say something that aroused his suspicion. They tought they managed to persuade him, but it could be they didn't, since they felt someobody was watching them on their way back to the ship. Nothing ever came from that. But now the party slowly realized Emperor probably had someone follow them and observe at safe distance and report. And if that person saw Adrianna and described her to Tincol, he would recognize his best friend's daughter and promtply contacted Duke Stefan.
Second issue was that the attackers knew the party has a Crown of Black Pearls. Which they didn't knew previously. An Arcana roll from Hexblade could help her recal she has seen Bard of the other group holding a hand mirror and trying to send it to someone through his Diplomat's Pouch when it looked like he may get killed and that it could probably be a Scrying Mirror. The party then realized they could been scryed upon and that's how these guys learned the party lied to them and has artifact they seek. The question was who they scried on.
So after terrorizing Wizard's Raven and learning that since he has connection to Wizard's patron he ALWAYS feels like being scryed on he couldn't be able to tell when someone is scrying on him, the party had faced an issue that they may to limit how often they summon the guy.
In the morning the party found out climbing the mountains would require 29 Athletics checks and decided to do the trick with flying boat again, this time using Artificer's battering ram. They did some good Arcana check and have arrived at the Central Plateau. Artificer used his amazing perception skills ("what do your owl eyes see?" said one of other players) to discern some interesting points on the map. One of the nearest was a geoglyph, which Artificer could see from above. It was a drawing of a strange squid-like creature. Some nature rolls allowed Hexblade to recall she read teories that Elven resistance to charm does not come from their connection to Fey, but that Elves evolved to have it to resist mind-altering powers of sea creatures that once ruled this world. Artificer managed to connect this with similiar legends that it was Fey themselves, who had to gain such resistance to break the shackles of powerful foes. I did throw the players off by giving then the name - Kopru - since the players were sure it's gonna be Illithids. One of small things I like Mystara for.
Going to next point of interest, the party got attacked by a pack of Dire Wolves. Rather big, due to the party power. And with maximalized HP. To my dismay Dire Wolves were more of a challenge than rival PCs last time. But the PCs still dealt with it speldingly, with Wizard sacrificing his last use of Lightning Bolt from Loki's blessing to get 3 of them at the same time. Mr. Skeleton was one casualty of the battle.
We wrapped up on party, having dealt with the wolves, arriving at next point of interest. Wreck of a sailing ship, laying in the middle of the plateau.
Part 43: A ROOOOOM! WITH A MOOOOSE!
Last time we have seen our heroes, they have discovered a lost ship in the middle of the plateau. Watching it from the distance has revealed damage suggesting it has been picked by a Roc, which terrified the party. Also, scouting via invisible familiar had discovered that there is a nest of giants scorpions in the wreck. The party made a short work of the scorpions, then proceeded to explore, finding lost cargo and treasure. Barbarian tried to check the hole in the ground where scorpions made their nest, but it ended with her falling down and having to climb in the dark.
As the party set up camp for the ngiht, Hexblade had a dream in which two beings in her sword offered her new gifts for bringing them a new weapon to inhabit. Shining man calling himself Essence of Radiance offered her either a weaker or stronger, but more risky defensive gift (basically either Favored By Gods from Divine Soul Sorcerer or a version of Fiend Warlock's Dark One's Own Luck, that deals damage equal to the roll), while female shadow calling herself Shadow of the Flame, offered her an ally, shadowy companion (read: teaching her Find Familiar spell). She picked the latter.
Artificer had a dream in which he was in a dark room, tied to a chair, with a table in front of him, with pieces of some mechanism and words written on the table, that he could patrially decipher before they disappear. He woke up very nervous and some party members even noticed it.
The party set up to new interesting point and ran into a random encounter - a herd of elk. Or rather, as my brain farted and confused the two, a herd of moose. The players remembered some horrifying moose facts and backed down to avoid a fight. They acted as if they avoided a horrible danger, so I described how one moose raises his head, watching them leave, and slowly says "I'll get you next time, adventurers. Next time."
The party has found an obelisk, with no grass within 100 feet from it, covered in letters in all languages, especially Sylvan and Primodial, clearly some sort of code, and making slight, barely-heard humming sound. Artificer wrote down the text of writing on each of four sides, then he and Wizard set up to decipher it. Which was hard, especially when upon deciphering code of one wall, the text on their own writing would change, creating a new cipher. In the end, with long effort, they gained a story of 3 sisters, one of which married a king, prompting the other two to rise against her, making king and queen "lost". Then sisters fought each other until one was also "lost". Finally, remaining sister, the "Black Queen", stood against "terror from the depth", but has been torn apart when it has erased all memory of her from the world. And that darkness ruled until "A raven has found the king within tree's branches."
Inspecting the obelisk, the party has found an entrance...to a room straight out of Artificer's dream. Artificer, Wizard and Hexblade entered. They found pieces of the mechanism appearing to be some sort of scepter (which was mentioned in the poems) and seemingly immovable. Wizard tried to make his familair move it, but the bird had felt as if something was pulling him to the table. Wizard ordered him to land. After making clear the player is sure, I had familiar roll dex save. He failed. It immediatelly felt dead and everyone in the party forgot everything about it. The party could hear a voice saying "MORE!" and words "I AM THE CALL OF THE HEAVENS, BRINGING DOWN GIFTS OF INTELLECT TO THE MINDS OF THE WORTHY" appeared on the table.
Wizard's patron had to make a saving throw, but she passed and kept her memory. She actually persuaded Wizard to let her manifest in the room and scenned it with her own powers, immediatelly feeling presence of something old and once powerful, but now a mere shadow, hungry for substance. It ate the familiar's soul and all memories of it to gain a bit of form for itself and would have consumed the patron, if she wasn't protected by her own magic and grasp by Dark Powers (Wizard's patron is stuck in Ravenloft). She send Wizard a short "film" of all memories he had lost and warned him to not feed whatever is in this room.
While all that was happenning, Artificer sat on the chair and had to make a CON save. He passed and heard in his head a voice affirming him he is worthy. He could now pick a piece of the scepter and was struck by inspiration, as he started comparing it to gun taken from dead planar spider so long ago. Out of character he got informed he can select one feat for free: Eldritch Adept or Fey Touched (picked the former for Eyes of the Rune Keeper) and now or whenever he levels up he can switch subclass to Armorer, something we discussed. Also when he levels up he can pick Archfey Warlock levels, using INT instead of CHA for multiclassing and Warlock features. The fact it is specifically Archfey freaked the player out.
The party, midly creeped out, packed their things and left. They had noticed some other points of interest but decided to beeline to the mountains and set up camp there.
I ended the session with a cutscene of a moose eating grass, slowly rising its head and saying "everything goes according to the plan".
Part 44: Climbing up that mountain
After that interlude, we have spent a whole session climbing the mountains to get to the big crater in the center of the plateau. The party decided to use all possible means to make it easier for themselves, including Artificer switching one of his items to rope of climbing and casting Spider Climb on Wizard twice, so that he can skip some climbing checks. Meanwhile Hexblade put her curse on his Owl and her plan was to keep teleporting to it so she doesn't need to do actual climbing. Every 2 hours of climbing I had them make a check or saving throw appriopriate of their method of climbing, taking minor damage and/or gaining level of exhaustion if they fail. I was also rolling for random encounters and while they didn't get any, the party was spooked by the rolls.
Several skill checks and many failiures later, many party members are amassing exhaustion from failed saving throws. Meanwhile Wizard was doing great job, much to EVERYONE'S surprise. The party had argued that after 8 hours of climbing they would get to rest and I agreed, it felt realistic and I like small additions of realism in places like these. Of course party got attacked by a whole horde of ptheranodonts, but those were a niuisance at this point. Artificer had fun flying up to shove them in air, making them fall down. Still, the party got pissed when the monsters almost killed their adopted Goblin and quickly defeated the others.
The party resumed climbing and on their last part, Hexblade fell, but Wizard used Misty Step to catch her. She took psychic damage from sheer embarassement. The party decided to just jump down and feather fall themselves at last minute to save time on climbing down. On the ground Wizard decided to summon his new familiar...but Hexblade secretly stole his components. He unpacked his skeleton from bag of holding and sent after his missing supplies. Skeleton indeed found them, but Hexblade switched him to point not at ther bag, but at the mountain, so Wizard decided some flying creature must have stolen it.
Wizard summonned his new familiar, a Bat with soul of an ally of his patron during her adventuring years (a character from our Curse of Strahd game who died during it) and we spent a lot of time on trying to interact with him. A bat with a soul of a Dwarf can be surprisingly fun to roleplay. Patron instructed Wizard this familiar is to be treated with respect.
Hexblade snuck by to summon her own Familiar and got a shadowy kitten. To her surprise oceanus snuck up on her and saw her summon it...and Artificer snuck up on both of them. And when the party returned with the kitten, Wizard somehow failed to see through her lies she had found it.
The party set off to the village of Mantru that theh have seen from top of the mountain.
The party observed the village to make it clear they aren't walking into a Shark-Kin trap. After making sure inhabitants of the village are humans, they approached openly and a bunch of villagers rushed to chese them away. But using some encode thoughts spell the party managed to gain their trust and were lead to meet Fano the Talking Chief and Umlat, Tribal Cleric. And of ocurse, the Chief, small figurine. It took them a while to figure out the figurine is the Chief Fano keeps talking about and praising as "my father's Chief and my grandfather's Chief", but there were a lot of laughs once they realized it.
After explaining they search crew of Z.A. Zephyr, Fano refused to talk any important matters and threw the party a feast instead. During the feat Wizard tried to chat with Umlat and actually managed to figure out that "Lord of the Skies" he worships sounds A LOT like rebranded Odin. So he asked the guy about Jogmungandr and I had him respond that there is an ancient eney wanting to drown the whole world in Mantru faith, he is called Leviathan. Wizard then started talking about all cults and signs Leviathan is waking up, almsot giving poor man a heart attak. Fano said the Chief wants Umlat to rest. This, alongside dodging all questions made party very suspicious of Fano.
Before they went to sleep, Fano asked the party to meet in his hut. He told them their village is being constantly raided by headhunters who live on Taboo Island, in ruins of old temple "built by gods" and that some of those headhunters appear to be former vilalgers from this and other villages, "posessed by an evil spirit". He also said his scouts have seen bunch of fish monsters take a group of people to the island few months ago, and headhunters capturing a group that looked like just ran away from a serious fight very recently. He said there is nothing his village can offer in payment, except canous and any supplies they may need, but the party is free to any riches of Taboo Island, where "whole rooms are made of tiles of gold".
So the next morning party set off to Taboo Island and, after debating whenever they should try to circle the island to find another way in, they decided to try the docks used by headhunters. They quickly found entrance to main hall and Wizard's familiar, while invisible, scouted ahead and told them of 5 guys guarding it/ Hexblade immediatelly tried to cast Sickening Radiance behind them. I asked if she is sure. A bit of argument later, the party sent bat a bit further, revealing a hall full of women and children. Hexblade was frustrated for rest of the fight she has to be, the horror, careful, with her AoE spells. I decided to ramp it up and sporadically, as party was killing the headhunters, I would have one of kids react by screaming "PAPA!" or "BIG BRO!". Morale of the party quikly turned into this.
As the battle started, Artificer head sounds of people running upstairs, so hexblade knocked down enemeis at entrance with Tidal Wave spell and Barbarian ran into the room, then chased one of those people... right in the middle of a room with Tribal Chief and her* three sons, who proceeded to beat the living **** out of her. Artificer's idea to solve this problem was to...throw the cursed chaos dagger inside the room. One fireball later, Barbarian is dying, all tribal chief's sons are dead, everyone is invisible and she is resistant to all damage and proceeds to go and attack the party. To their terror, she now can tank two smites from Hexblade and keep fighting. It takes a long to bring her down. Once she died, hexblade makes specter out of her, terrifying party Goblin, who faints. And once she gets up, Hexblade tries to lie it is not her doing, making poor Goblin think this place is cursed and ran away. Wizard's skeleton followed to give her headpats.
* - I made tribal chief a woman because I ran out of male pictures.
Hexblade, still with exhaustion levels, tries to get in by sending her cat with Hexblade curse on to teleport to it. But then Witch Doctor casts sticks to snakes so kitten is now surrounded by snakes. Oceanus and Adrianna saved it, while they hold off reinforcements on the opposite end of the room (which also includes ladies in waiting, whom I given more combat-oriented stats). Artificer tries to take down Witch Doctor, but the old guy survived for a while, until Wizard doesn't take his head off with Eldritch Blast. Wizard also kills Tribal Sub-Chief via dropping him to 2 hp and making him roll a save vs fear. I decided poor guy was so scared he died of heart attack.
We ended the session on the party letting women and children escape and standing in a room in which they comitted a horrible massacre.
The party, having defeated whole tribe of headhunters, became searching the area, being very relieved upon finding enough evidence to see these people they massacred were, in fact, evil headhunters and were performing arranged marriages to pair strongest women with strongest male warriors to produce better offsprings. That was a relief for the group, who were slowly fearing this may be a setup and they killed innocent people. While Barbarian and Artificer were searchign the area and found pretty much everything interesting there was to find, including secred passages. The party decided to rest in the secret room, locking it up to avoid ambushes. They got up, at breakfast on stairs and went ahead, finding two "trap" ways down. They entered the room with a rock box and opened it.
Everyone but Hexblade and Artificer failed their save. But the Goblin wasn't in the room when the box was opened and statue displayed. Artificer closed the box after attempts to identify the statue were meet with something trying to invade his mind.
Going down, the party begun searching the flooded corridors. Hexblade was unlucky to lean on the secret door to room with the statues, which opened, sending her all the way almost to the weel. Her cat vanished, not liking this mess. As she walked back, Barbarian stepped on the button sending portocolius down, locking Hexblade out. It took Adrianna to lift it, much to Hexblade's humilation.
Exploring corridor on the left, party noticed and electroduced the quippers, then froze a bit of water to avoid repeat of Hexblade's misforture, as Artificer entered priest's room and looted it.
Finally the party entered the big room and got jumped by 3 colossal crabs, all in hypnotic trance, seemingly dancing. Needless to say, they were immune to fear and punched like a truck, making it a very hard battle, full of moments where a party member gets grabbed and carried around by a giant dancing crab. I gave them max HP, which was worth when Hexblade did a crit with an Eldritch smite, only to see the monster holding her is STILL dancing. Party did emerge victorious, through it was a very dramatic encounter.
Part 47: Dark Designs of the Kopru
The party took a short rest but not before Artificer finding both the secret passage and a giant oyster with a pear inside it. When he tried to grab the pear, oyster closed, trapping him inside and forcing him to use Enlarge on himself to escape. After that he was understandably pissed and joined Hexblade in murdering the hell out of the oyster. It and the crabs were then turned into food rations for following days.
Hexblade got some charchoral from cooking and summoned her cat again, managing to once again bullshit wizard into thinking it was just a normal cat. His own familiar was suspicious. Wizard meanwhile shared with Hexblade that he finds Artificer's behavior lately suspicious.
Party went through thetunel with giant rat caves, which they noticed and proceeded to flush the rats out using Shape Water (I allowed it because an encounter like this owuld at best be a waste of time for the party this strong). The party proceeded to investigate the door to the next room, then try to investigate it without entering. When that didn't work, Hexblade and Barbarian walked in and tried to search for traps, accidentially activating the fire trap. They were forced to retreat, put the flames out of themselves and wait until slame and smoke subsides. The party then started investigating the door, which ended with Wizard trying to open them with mage hand. And once again, the water rushed in, dragging Hexblade, Adrianna and Aleena with it, right onto a portocolius. Artificer noticed lever in the wall and pulled it, opening portocolious and sending all 3 women all the way down, onto the rock. The party entered third level of the temple.
As the party was traversing the large cavern (after Hexblade cast Water Walk on everyone), several of them become blinded by the steam. That moment Kopru have chosen to order their slaves to attack. Hexblade, Artificer and Goblin found themselves attacked by their friends and allies, including other two PCs. Thankfully Artificer managed to teleport Hexblade closer to way they entered and she begun dealing serious damage to rest of the party with Sickening Radiance, in which many of their former allies have been caught. Kopru would stay in the mud, only resurfacing to try to dominate anyone else in the group. The party was terrified when they realized these creatures do not have an effect a lot of 5e monsters have, the one giving you immunity to their special abilities for a day, if you pass a save one time - meaning they could spam Dominate as much as they felt like.They also had no care for safety of their thralls, as demonstrated when they had Aleena run into range of Sickening Radiance, to Bless those inside it, taking damage herself in the process.
However, once Barbarian actually managed to reach Artificer and Hexblade and begun to rage, her own ability to supress Charm effects has activated and she ran into the hot water to kill one of the Koprus. She did serious damage to one, but became grappled by its tail. Meanwhile Artificer called for help his mysterious patron from the Obelisk, promising to bring her a sacrifice. In response Wizard, who was knocked out, woke up with 1 hp and free of mind-control. He immediatelly put Aleena to sleep with a spell. Hexblade tried to distract Oceanus with a kiss, but got grappled. But it did result in him and Adrianna being trapped within one of Beads of Force. With Hexblade. After realizing odds are against her, she used Blink to escape. Odds were turning in party's favor.
That's when Koprus got Artificer under their control and Barbarian was knocked out by combined damage from hot mud and Kopru's crushing tail. Her body resurfaced and Hexblade came to heal her, only for Kopru to attack her. She furiously tore the creature to shreds with her swords, taking its head as a trophy. This freed Barbarian and Artificer. Other Kopru saw this and teleported itself, as well as still enthralled Adrianna, Oceanus and Aleena, away. Surviving party regrouped and took body of a Kopru to perform autopsy. Study of it managed to tell them how powerful the mind-control of these creatures is and pointed them to the statue as potential reason how everyone fell under their control. Barbarian raged and broke the statue to pieces with her axe. Now the party plans to venture down, take revenge on Kopru and free their friends.
Part 48: Glassworks of the Kopru
I did not update this for a while so apologies if I decide to run fast through the following events, but it will be fairly fitting, considering that my players decided to speedrun things.
First they went back to Mantru village, trying to get some Dispell Magic scrolls. Umlat did not have that prepared but promised to make some. After checking how long it would take in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, the party just left, very annoyed. They returned to cavern where they fought the Kopru, decided to avoid ominous silhouette on the throne in northen part, and go down.
So here is a thing. I made a mistake when reading the book and didn't realize 3 new levels that Goodman Games added are supposed to be connected one to each of existing levels, in places where these levels had collapsed tunnels. As such the layout of this underground realm is now kind of a mess. My bad. I will maybe one day run this again, then will not make this msitake.
So anyway, the party entered glassworks where Kopru tried to make the glass vehicles and devices for underwater conquest of the world. They welded shut door to guard's room and tried to distract and bypass Ogres repairing the rails in next room. It didn't work due to ogres being, well, morons. Especially their leader, Puuk, who would brag how mysterious Occulus, trusts and admires him, taking pride in the fact this person calls him "an absolute imbecile". The party made short work of the ogres, though Puuk's habit of throwing charts at them had terrified them. They decided to not explore corridor where they heard Ogres mentioning some sort of "critters", and upon seeing a secret room with giant golden statue of Kopru, they noped the hell away from there.
In next room they fough Glass Golem, that terrified the Wizard when it reflected his Eldritch Blast. It also exploded upon destruction, heavily damaging the party. So of course Barbarian went exploring and immediatelly ran into a room full of crab-spiders. She won initiative against them and just....locked the door, declaring "nope". Even jumped on nearest table, pretending to be scared of spiders.
Part 49: The Corrupted Temple
The next level was a temple where Kopru would summon and enslave demons. I know demons are not very Mystara but here it being work of the Kopru, I made an exception.
The party found on next level locked door that turned out to have words written on it in Abyssal. Upon reading them, the door opened, revealing the temple with such an evil aura, that everyone had to roll a Wisdom saving throw or suffer 6 hours of penalties to everything out of sheer terror. Party passed, some of their remaining sidekicks (Goblin and familiars) did not. Inspectig the temple provoked two animated statues of Kopru to attack, trying to curse and then jsut crush the party. Soon after dealing with that the party found secret, trapped with glyph of warding, entrance to a secret room. They decided to uninstall the whole door to avoid the trap. Inside they have found a room with crystal's crafter into shape of Kopru skulls, laying on pedestals, with one missing. There was a spear on the wall, Artificer wnet to investigate it and found it is designed for killing demons. However, he also failed Charisma saving throw and a voice compelled him to pick up one of the skulls and use it to localize a missing skull on the upper level, in a sand-filled room. He became compelled to deliver it back to this room.
And I swear this was this close of devolving into PvP with Hexblade. Wizard was first on her side, until he realized that the forces compelling Artificer are undead (Necromancers, armrite?) and Barbarian was for just letting him do it. The party, with very angry Hexblade, went back up and, fighting small sand elementals, to the room full of sand in glassworks level. There they went into a battle with huge sand elemental and found the skull among the sand. Upon delivering it back, Artificer was given a p[ermament Wisdom books and the ghosts of Kopru Elders, whose collective resides in skulls, made it clear he can contact them if he may look for a patronage. Artificer now has options to multiclass into INT-based Warlock, taking the colelctive as either Undead or Great Old One patron.
The party, arguing about when Artificer became so irresponsible, investigate room behind the temple - filled with salt water, where Kopru were making black pears for their dark magic. They went to ivnestigate one of two rooms connected to it, finding inside a woman, clearly a Fey, chained to collumns. She telepatically begged them to free her, saying her name is Wastirli and she's been summonned ant enslaved by the Kopru for their dark designs. Once party moved in and freed her, it turned out to be an illusion made by Wastirlith, a water demon who was indeed summonnend and enslaved by the Kopru. It picked the words carefully to not be caught on a lie. The party put through and killed it, but Hexblade almsot died to combination of its attacks and effects of corrupted water.
In that room was also secret entrance, but the party took a long rest first. Hexblade, Wizard and Goblin mvoed to other room, with big water tank, to discuss if Artificer isn't acting weird. Meanwhile he and Barbarian went to open the door to the secret room. Long story short, the first 3 provoked Water Elemental inside the tank, while latter two triggered a trap spawnjing A LOT of sharks. This fight almost murdered the party, it was brutal. But they did manage in the end.
One funny thing was this chaos magic knife got used again and promptly summonend a bunch of Flumps, who saw monstrous sharks, felt corrupt water around them and ran away screaming...only to see Elemental, from which they also ran away....into the VERY EVIL temple. At this point Warlock's Patron asked if she can open a portal for them, as she is collecting Flumps. Rolled nat 20 on persuading them to go. So I said she didn't even have time to say her pitch when Flumps ran screaming into her portal.
In secret room they found trasurey of Kopru, among which was a special black mirror that acts as both mirror of water trapping and crystal ball of telepathy. They found two peopel trapped inside. Barbrian of the Rival group, Hashek, and crown prince Justin Karameikos. Justin told them he knwos a way to the bottom level of the temple, where they can find Occulus, who is plotting to wake up hundreds of Kopru, naively hinking he can control them due to his resistance to mind control. Justin also revealed Occulus is Eye of the Deep -an aquatic Beholder.
Part 50: The Vast Hollow
I hated running this session. I spent a lot of time preparing events and encounters in what Goodman Games put in this area - a vast underground cavern for PCs to explore, full of interesting things, like Myconid forest (I went to read up cab's excellent Myconids of Mystara), cave of Shadow Night Dragon, I even added possible investation from Hivebrood for them to clear.
So the party decided to agressively speedrun to the temple of the Kopru, outright running past the enemies and encounters. I did not have the temple prepared yet, so I ended trying to somehow keep them busy. Things like having Hashek the Barbarian try to get into every potential fight, only for the party to basically forcefully drag him out of it to keep moving.
I desperation I even decided to drop at them the Night Dragon not in its cave, but when they decided to use the mirror to just fly over the canyon, instead of using multiple paths I had prepared and developed for them. So instead of cool battle that I planned, with Dragon diving deep into the caves to attack from the shadows, I ended with PCs grappling the dragon to make it fall and then spending whole fight tearing it to shreds. I think I only managed to slow this down enough to fill remaining time of the session by messaging player of Wizard's patron and suggesting she may offer Wizard a reward (something we discussed before off-game) if he manages to deliver to her the Dragon. The party did manage to trap the dragon in the mirror, but now need to find a way to send it to the patron without losing the mirror itself.
Speaking of Mirror, the good parts of this session involved the party scrying with it to contact Jaxa and update her. They learned the news of the party "kidnapping" Adrianna reached Saltmarsh and Jaxa's office was throughfulyl searched. They also had an argument about Artificer keeping what mirror does a secret from them until he tests it out, but then putting it aside when they realized they could scry on characters from Hexblade's "origin story" one-shot. Which gave them image of mist-covered Castle Amber, follwoed by Hexblade noticing a pair of glowing eyes in the mirror. Realizing they almost got Rad's attention, the party put experimenting with the mirror to rest for now.
Another interesting tibit was that the party learned some details about their "frame-up" from Hashek the Barbarian. As it turns out, when they meet Emperor Tincol, he was suspicious of them and ordered a spy to follow them and observe. The spy saw and recognized Adrianna on their ship, reported it to Emperor, who sent a letter to his good friend, Duke Stefan. The rival party, Hashek included, have connections with one of ladies in Stefan's court, daughter of Black Eagle, Amalie Van Hendrix, who contacted them about the whole thing. The party is starting to think Von Hendrix may be onto them.
We ended on PCs reaching undergorund lake, where hundreds of Kopru lie sleeping. In distance they saw sinsiter glow of ziggurat built on top of its only island
Part 51: The Temple of the Kopru
If last session took wind out of my sails, this one was AWESOME. The party chased away giant squid hiding in the waters of undergorund lake. They made quick work of Ogres and Mud Golems guarding upper levels of the temple amd ambushed Steam Mephits Occulus sent to investigate the noises. They freed Dia, princess of underground tribe of humans, who joined them...and was kept in the back because Wizard didn't want to get her killed with her sad 18 hp. They also managed to close source of lava pouring into the ziggurat from a portal, warming the whole lake to wake up the Kopru - well of many worlds. With combination of Amor of Aghatys and Fire Shield Hexblade managed to not even get hurt by lava.
Upon descending the party sent first invisible bat Felix and then, sneaking, Artificer and Hexblade, to scout ahead. They all beat perception of even the enemy Ranger. Somehow. They saw Occulus the Eye of the Deep, with a Kopru attached to some sort of machine in shape of giant Korpu head with tentacles. He had chained peopel and a Shark-kin chained to the table. And was singing songs of his own awesomeness. Both the party's brainwashed commrades and equally brainwashed rival adventurers were there, serving as his security.
Artificer and Hexblade planned to Vortex Warp Occulus to place with more hostile NPCs and then drop Sickening Radiance, a.k.a. "the nuke". But when Artificer cast his spell, nothing happenned. some quick percpetion and arcana allowed them to realize Occulus is under globe of invurnerability. Artificer looked up the spell description and pointed out a fun fact - it says nothing of spells targetting empty space within the globe, just spells affecting creatures in it. Hexblade decided to hold her action with attack.
I ruled that a) this happenned as rest of the party busted in, kicking the door open and b) since Hexblade didn't do anything, she is still hidden, but Artificer is in the open. Battle of the party - Hexblade, Wizard, Artificer, Barbarian, Goblin sidekick, NPC Barbarian (Hashek) and Swashbuckler NPC (Justin - vs Occulus, Kopru and his mind-slaves - Oceanus, Aleena, Adrianna, Dwarven Cleric, Fighter, Gnome Bard, Elven Wizard and Elven Rogue - commences.
Rogue is shooting at Artificer, whuile Bard fires up Synaptic Static, capturing all except Artificer. Half fails their save, Hexblade included. Still, Artificer Vortex Warps her next to Occuls and she goes balistic on him, making him drop concentration on the globe. Elf Wizard tries to Vortex Warp her out, but fails.
Hashek is trying to grapple the fighter in a chockepoint to prevent others from reaching the party. But, after he, Adrianna and Oceanus got Bless from Aleena Fighter proceeds to action Surge 4 shove actions, ending with his opponnent on the edge of a bridge, with a lot of lava below. Justin tries to grapple Adrianna, but she just starts wacking him with her axe.
Hexblade is going to town on Occulus, despite having her eyes closed to nto get mind-controleld by Kopru, who is holding an action to Dominate. Occulus tries to paralyze her but fails, so he summons Fire Elemental to defend himself. Dwarven Cleric joins the fight, trying to hit Hexblade, but fails. Wizard is blasting and hiding behind a rock.
Rogue and Bard focus on Hexblade. Bard fires Psychic Lance, Hexblade tries to counterspell but he counterspells her. Wizard Counterspells Bard's Counterspell and since Elf Wizard doesn't have line of sight to him, she cannot counterspell his counterspell of bard's counterspell. I literally stopped the game to applaud the players for this, slow clap of respect.
Artificer teleprots Barbarian to Kopru, but soon she and Hexblade are attacked by Fire Elemental, while Kopru is chocking Barbarian with his tail. Worse, Oceanus comes to help, while Elf Wizard switches places with Occulus. Beholder begins running away, while having Sanctuary cast on him by Aleena, and he calls for 3 Ogres to join the battle. He almost made it to the door before Hexblade killed him with Eldritch Blast.
Fighter, being pushed off Hashek, stabs Justin and Adrianna moves to beat the **** out of Hashek. NPC Barbarian blows Wizard's cover behind a rock to say he approves of his taste in women.
Artificer finds himself with one Ogre but convinces him to not fight with promises of "shinies". Hexblade intimidates one of the Ogres to back off, but is soon after dropped by Oceanus. But not before breaking Dwarven Cleric's concentration on Banishment she subjected Barbarian to. As things are looking dire, Wizard desperately starts blasting the Kopru and manages to kill the monster. Monster's dead body slumbers down in the machine. Mind-control effects come off, machine starts going haywire. Whole place is coming down. Everyone runs. Wizard rolls good Athletics to carry Justin out to safety, Oceanus grabs Hexblade, Atificer is grabbed by Ogre he promised money. Everyone escape the ziggurat as it comes crashing down, even the crew. Which the party realizes is just half of it. Rest, they learn, was taken to the north by mutant Shark-Kin. The party can think of one Shark-kin outpost in the North - the one near Saltmarsh.
Cue Artificer's scream this whole expedition was for nothing
The party fleed the destroyed temple of the Kopru and found a secret passage that mutated Shark-Kin and headhunters use to transport their victims to Kopru, to get to the surface. It required some help from befriended Ogre, Goop. Then the party went to celebrate their victory with villagers of Martu. During the party a lot of things happenned.
Wizard got reunited with Adrianna and they had a lot heart to hear, her feeling horrible about being mind-controlled by Kopru but also extremely grateful for him saving her and her brother. She also felt sad that soon she and Justin will need to return to Karameikos to boring life of a duchess. It dawned on the party that Adrianna makes a much better heir to the throne than her brother*, whom the party deemed a buffoon pretty quickly. So Wizard decided to try to convince him the prince that maybe his sister should inherit the crown. I wish to say this was a feat of scheming trickery, but in reality it was both of them being VERY drunk. Wizard also managed to accidentially promise the Ogre Artificer bribed, Goop, to help him take over a tribe him and his brother, Puuk, were exiled from. Thankfully everyone were savvy enough to not mention they murdered Puuk.
* - I may have realized I made a mistake over who should inherit the throne when canon material says it's Adrianna and took an opportunnity to correct it.
The party also spent some time trying to humilate Bard of their rival group, who kept succeeding his saving throws until they burned a lot on Phantasmal Killer, just to make him halucinate "all vengeful women he was ever with" in the middle onf his musical number. Meanwhile Artificer got some pep-talk to guilt-stricken Oceanus, helping him overcome self-blame for allowing himself to fall under mind-control and recocnile with Hexblade. Barbarian lost another drinking contest to Hashek, Barbarian from the rival group.
In the morning patry first had to deal with Gnome Bard, who knew they have Crown of Black Pearls and demanded it for his party's quest. They managed, with some use of suggestion spell, to convince him to let them bring it to Davania and help with their quest, in exchange for half of the promised money. They then had a chat with the Shark-kin whom they saved, to learn the ones antagonizing them are basically some sort of mutants and heretics. They confirmed location of the mutant shark-kin fortress near Saltmarsh. They decided to first scry on Eliza Brand (using Justin, who knows her) and discover her imprisoned by mutant Shark-kin, learn from her the mutants plan to brainwash her and her crew to use as spies on Saltmarsh, then usee Suggestion to have one of the guards confirm the location out loud (making other guard think he's crazy and beat him up).Then they used the mirror to contact Jaxa Brand and report on situation. They learn city has been through outright riots for the last few days, following Fireborn's hunt of both smugglers and Alphaks cultists and people involved in Adrianna's "kidnapping", provoking angry response from the people. Anders Solomor managed to calm everyone down and will be holding peace talks today. They also learned their other rival party came back with Keledek and his tower. So they request Jaxa to not trust anyone and that she tries to prepare any military response city can amass against Shark-kin assault. They then scryed on Keledek..to see him in a dungeon and someone they do not know, this guy
putting strange helmet on his head...right before noticing he is being scryed on and trying to attack them through the scrying, forcing Artificer to break the connection. They then tried to scry on rivals and saw them all ,clearly brainwashed by Calcidius, evil mage who in front of them took form of Keledek and announced his plans to take over the city so that no one interrupts hsi research ever again. They quickly contained Jaxa again to warn her to not trust "Keledek" or the rivals.
Part 53: Of Plots and Mirrors
T the party decided to plan their steps ahead. They convinced the other party to take Goop andhelp him take over his tribe, while they shall go try to deal with the Green Dragon. Wizard had some talk with Adrianna, who revealed that she will probably soon have to leave the group to return with Justin and Subatai to Specularum, especially if they want to convince her father she should inherit the throne (I think in the end I retconned my previous msitake of saying Justin is the heir to be a political concession to more "conservative" parts of ruling class). She did say that once the party will be ruling Isle of Dread officially, Wizard could try to officially get her hand, making him blush (and also jealous when he found out that, as a duchess, she has people aiming for her hand show up roughly once a week). They tried to scry on their rivals. They saw Vigr, Alphatian wizard, enslaving people of southern villages with mind-control collars and making them work on more automatons. She also had what looked like a sort of walking mini-tank stylized after crab (Apparatus of Kwalish mechanically, through not named that of course). They saw Mirthina the Druid enter a cave they identified as Green Dragon's cave. They tried to talk with her, but she was stubborn and said to meet her there, if they're having any other means for her to find her way to Immortal realms other than the Pirate Queen's Pearl (which the party, armed with the Veil of Many Worlds, now had). Finally, they went to see Thereax the Orc has gotten Neanderthals, Lizardfolk, Phteradons and Aranea under her control and is amassing an army.
After travelling to the mountains again, the party was plotting how to bypass them and decided it owuld be fun to scry on Hexblade's father. They have seen him using a crystal ball and having a conversation with someone (Brotherhood of the Radiance) but they only heard his side, asking questions. And then suddenly a safeguard Brotherhood put agaisnt scrying picked them up and a monster (magical construct made for this purpose) came out from the mirror. The players decided to perform this scrying away from NPC allies, so it was 4 against a thing that regenerates, has resistance to magical attacks and can multiply. It was hard fight, up until they started grabbing these things and flying/teleporting up above to then drop them. The ground is not magical. Still, the monster gave as good as it got.
After that, the party had a moment to speculate, Hexblade managed to get some confirmation from her sword that the Church of Rad is manipulated by this group of wizards and Rad himself is heavily involved in Glantri's politics, through secretly. Hexblade thinks her father is now in a cult XD
And then, due to Hexblade's previous luck roll, means to avoid climbing up a mountain have arrived - Subatain Khan/Ganbolt and Starshine on trained hippogryphs. Ganbolt was very smug and rubbing how he tamed these creatures in Hexblade's face whole way to the dragon's nest. The party sent Felix the bat to scout ahead the cave, finding the dragon and Mithrina, both aware of his and asking the party to come to negotiate.
Part 54: Alliances and Assassinations
After a long debate what to do, the party decided to go in, even messaging Mithrina to convince her to let the overgrowth covering the entrance to move, makign their path easier. First they talked with the dragon, managing to give a decent offer, including letting her take over Vast Hollow as her new lair. They then presented Veil of Many worlds to Mithrina, who demanded demostration. By rolling randomly the party managed to open a portal to plane of dragons...and had to quickly close it once they caught glimps of the Great One himself and realized he a) knows someone is peeking into his realm and b) is NOT happy about it. Freaked out the green dragon i nthe process. But they did manage to have one enemy turn to their side.
They then decided to contact Thereax and, though these negotiations were much harder, they did in the end buy her to their side with promises of independence, allowing to keep her forces, use Isle as her base for priate raids and allowed her to create a list of targets she would like them to help her take down. The wizard also had to lsiten to a long litany of scolding for his "running away from home" stunt.
The party decided slavery is too much and they don;t want to convince Vigr, but to poison her. They decided to use the mirror to call Wizard's brother, who is good at intrigue, to help with the poison. They found him killing some people in an alley...because he is an assassin. After some back and forth what to tell him, they told him their location, about the contest and their plan. He told them he will get back to them and told Wizard to not resist any scrying. The party contacted Vigr, booked a "private" meeting on which they arrived "alone" - except for green dragon, turned into a squirrel by Mirthrina (to cast it, she had to drop concentration spell on her pet monkey, revealing to the party that if they picked a fight with her, she would send after them a Gargantuan Oranguthan named Henry). Vigr arrived "alone", meaning with her golem and army of animated armors. Negotations went poorly, since the party decided Vigr is irredeemable, I went ahead to play up her Alphatian Egomania. Just as it looked it come to blows, Wizard's brother shows up, stabbed her in the back....and then her whole chest exploded. As her army fell apart, assassin hugged his brother...and then handed him the bill.