Cleared: One Lodge of Dragon Cultists

We began by searching through the out-buildings. We found a parchment message discarded in the kennels. It was from Rezmir to Talis, letting her know that we were dead (reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated), and she should burn the Duffington's hunting lodge after the next load of treasure comes through. We found nothing of interest in the stable, other than that it stank of wyverns.

We moved onto the next room in the lodge: a dormitory housing three of Madam Duffington's servants. They were Arlenga the head maid, the head butler Gastyn, and the chief hunter Argreth Woodwise. They were all chained up in a line to good old-fashioned iron balls. They warned us about cultists in the kitchen preparing supper.

So we went into the kitchen expecting a fight, and even managed to surprise the cultists and their dragonclaw leader. We managed to drop the dragonclaw and two of the four cultists in a couple of rounds. The last two surrendered. We took them prisoner, and through some interrogation, learned that the remainder of the cultists were upstairs, but that there were some people in the basement. One of the kitchen cultists had the keys for the shackles securing the servants, so we had them switch places before we went down to the basement.

There we found three more prisoners: a beaten dwarf with a beard that had been shorn and burned, a badly whipped young human woman, and a human man in priestly garments. The dwarf was Craggnor, an ally of Varram, a dwarf cultist vying with Talis for position. The woman was Mirasella, a woman who had been kidnapped from a caravan and that Talis had been trying to torture into joining the cult. The priest was Brother Caemon, a visiting priest of Amauntor, a god of legal matters and commerce that had been visiting the Duffingtons when the Cultists attacked. Talis had been trying to convince him to provide legal help for the cult. In addition to the obvious direct harm inflicted on Craggnor and Mirasella, there were plates of food just out of reach of the prisoners.

We had some discussion with Craggnor about offing Talis to help his boss get a leg up with the cult. He let slip that the treasure would be bound for a village called Parnast, where wyvern riders took it up to a place called Skyreach Castle. We failed to convince him to aid us in getting to Parnast, but we decided to be the better people and let him have the food, which he ate with gusto. We freed Mirasella and Brother Caemon, stashed them with the other civilians, and put the two captured cultists in the basement with Craggnor.

We finished exploring the first floor of the lodge: finding a pantry, a pair of bedrooms, and a sitting room filled with trophies of exotic monsters: a griffon, a gorgon (large bull-like monsters), and a giant eagle in addition to more mundane animals such as mountain goats, and even a giant white 10-point stag. The only item of interest we uncovered were two potions of healing hidden in the griffin head.

We moved on to the second floor. We found an armory open to the roof. It contained some rusty spears and a cabinet containing some mundane bows, crossbows, and ammunition. Sandi replenished his arrows. We then found a barracks with a cultist guard passed out on the floor amid several empty wine bottles. He was drunk enough that we were able to gag and restrain him and drag him down to the basement for another round of interrogation. He managed to recover from his hangover rather quickly, refused to answer questions, and challenged Thok to one-on-one combat. Thok, of course, happily agreed. The battle between Thok and Werric the Wizened was short, and Thok was able to recover from the few hits that he took in the fight.

We continued exploring the upper floor, running into Talis, a cultist dressed in white armor. She had a pair of her guards, NPC types called Veterans identical in capabilities to Werric attack us from behind. This was an intense fight. Talis used a rather nasty fifth level spell: insect plague. It creates a damaging area of effect that also slows movement and obscures the terrain. However, like many duration spells in fifth edition, requires concentration. Unfortunately, despite constant attacks we managed to level against her, we failed to break her concentration before dropping her. Censura also an area of effect spell, hunger of hadar. It creates an area of cold darkness, also doing damage. Unfortunately, a lucky hit against Censura managed to drop his concentration, so it was not quite as effective at slowing down the veterans flanking us. I managed to deliver the killing blow in Talis with inflict wounds. However, the insects ate our squire, Egan.

With Talis down, focus fire from Thok, Censura, and Sandi dropped the two veterans. We've cleared the lodge of villains, and the DM has told us to expect to level-up at the next session.

The management of resources we've been adapting makes earlier encounters in the adventure day relatively easy, with plenty of high level spells and potent features being used to quickly end battles. Later battles often see us relying on lower-level features, and often competing against foes with plenty of higher-level features they are more than willing to unleash.

Looting for Fun and Profit

Thok rejoined the party as we got started. It proved to be handy to have our tank later.

It turns out there was a magic trap in the two statues flanking the door to the grand hall of the hunting lodge. It hit Censura and me, doing a little bit of damage and freezing us in place. We managed to break out of the freezing effect pretty quickly. After some experimentation, and little extra damage, we found that it was a constant magical effect on the suits of armor. Of course, these were suits of full plate, the best heavy armor in the game. I used dispel magic to clear the trap from one of the suits and upgraded when we were able to get a long rest in.

As I messed around with the suits of armor, a voice called to us from a nearby guard room bordering the foyer. It was an older woman in fancy, but worn out clothing. She said her name was Madam Duffington and she was the owner of the lodge, recently taken over by the Cult. We agreed to help her clear the cultists out of her house (it was something we were planning on doing anyway). She led us through a parlor, warning us about yet another suit of armor, and into a linen room, where we took a short rest.

While there, she pointed out banners the cultists had brought in: purple and striped with the colors of chromatic dragons. She found them to be ugly. There was some banter between Madam Duffington and Thok over a tapestry depicting a boar hunt in the parlor. After that, she mentioned her husband being taken out to their kennels and being fed to a four-armed troll. We ended up meeting the thing later. Finally, she mentioned some "lizard-dog men" sleeping in a nearby room. This of course meant kobolds. I wanted to kill them all.

I used silence to let us sneak into their room as they slept, giving us a surprise round. While Thok, Sandi, and I have multi-attack options that let us mow down some kobolds quickly, Censura only had spells, which silence shut down. Sandi did manage to use alchemist fire to light up a kobold. He survived the longest. I dropped silence after the surprise round, and Censura cleared most of the little buggers with burning hands. After a couple of rounds of fighting, only the one on fire was left alive, which Sandi took out with a critical hit. This impaled it, through the shuttered window, pinning it to a kennel just outside. It started a small fire in the kennel, which attracted Trepsin, the four-armed troll, who brought a couple of his ambush drakes out to play, too.

For those unfamiliar with D&D, their trolls are green-skinned giants with long noses that have a habit of regenerating unless hit with fire or acid. They also tend to have bricks for hit points and hit like trucks. Veteran players fear them.

Thok, being courageous and willing to tank, stepped out and stood between the broken window and the troll, taunting it, and using the Dodge action. This action imposed disadvantage on every attack against a character for a turn. It did help keep Thok alive. Well, the RNG, being the fickle god that it is, had other ideas. While the troll missed with most of it attacks, it still managed to hit with a bite, one of its four claws, and criticaled with the fourth claw attack when the DM rolled two 20s. The odds of this happening are roughly 1 in 400. This allowed the troll to rend for additional damage. Fortunately, the damage was minimal (the DM actually rolled 1, 2, 3, 4 on four dice--insert Spaceballs quote here).

Censura, with a little guiding from us, used fireball, greatly injuring the troll and killing one of the drakes with it, and bloodying the other. I used a higher level spell slot on a cure wounds spell to keep Thok in the fight. Then Thok and Sandi hit the troll with everything they had and managed to drop it in the same turn it had taken the fire damage, canceling its regeneration, and dropping it.

Trolls used to regenerate everything BUT damage from fire and acid. This edition reworked regeneration so that it doesn't function on a turn in which the creature with it has taken the damage. This makes them significantly easier to kill.

We killed the remaining drake, then put out the small fire we had started, making sure Madam Duffington's house didn't go down along with the cultists and their minions. We then explored the kennel, finding four more guard drakes in a cage, and the troll's loot, including a cloak made of a winter wolf with a mithril clasp in the shape of a claw. Censura was enamored with the cloak, and opted to cash-in his share of it to take it as a personal trophy of the troll battle.

We'll continue our exploration of the lodge next time.

New Destinations

We have reached level six by now. While not as exciting as reaching a new tier, we still unlocked a few new abilities. First, Thok, as a fighter, got another bump in his stats. I gained an additional use of channel divinity, and a new channel divinity feature that allows me to give another creature +10 on an attack roll.

Slim Eater and Snapjaw had some gifts for us: some potions that they had looted from the lizardfolk's battle with the cultists. It totaled out to 2 potions of healing, a potion of greater healing, and an oil of etherealness. I took the potions of healing, and Censura took the oil of etherealness. We gave the potion of greater healing to Thok, whose player wasn't present for that session.

Borngray invited us to stargaze through the telescope installed at the top of the castle's keep, the Farseer of Illusk. Before we started, he warned us that a new batch of cultists would be arriving at the castle the next morning. He warned us that we should be off by then, and warned us not to return. He gave us the command word for the portal in the caves: "Draezir." He gave us the command word in strict confidence, and we didn't mind not sharing with Jamna Gleamsilver.

To use the Farseer of Illusk we needed to make two checks: Dexterity to work the mechanisms, and Wisdom (perception) to spot anything. I managed to make the first check, but failed the second. Sandi and Censura, however made both checks. Censura spotted first one black dragon, then its twin entering a lair elsewhere in the marsh. He related this information to Sandi, who realized the secret of the dragon in the Mere of Dead Men. Voaraghamanthar, the black dragon that claims the swamp as its territory has a twin Waervaerendor. Its through the help of this twin that it seems able to cross the swamp so fast. Sandi saw hordes of undead wandering the swamp, explaining how it gets its name, and demonstrating how helpful having Snapjaw as a guide through the swamp was.

We settled in to rest for the night before leaving in the morning. Sandi, being Sandi, decided to take some vengeance on Dralmorrar Borngray. He sneaked over to the elf's room and tossed in the remaining clay pot of frog hallucinogen. Not only did the poison have no affect, it woke Dralmorrar, who spotted sandi and was not amused. Sandi fought a running battle with Dralmorrar, escaping out the front door of the keep right after dealing a telling blow. Dralmorrar cursed at him as he slammed the door. Alek elected to have Sandi use his own potions to recover from the damage rather than use any spells.

Snapjaw and Slime Eater saw us off as we activated the portal and traveled to the next stage of our journey. We ended up in an alpine forest in the Graypeak Mountains far to the east. We were between two standing stones with a clearing containing three other sets of standing stones. Not too far away was a mountain lodge. All the outside windows were shuttered, and smoke came out of one of the two chimneys. We noticed a nest for a large bird on the roof. We heard noises in the forest behind us, so we approached to lodge.

We entered an empty cloak room before passing into the main room, with a set of grand stairs leading up to a balcony. Suits of armor flanked the door and gargoyle "statues" stood at the base of the stairs. Censura, not trusting statues, hit them with an eldritch blast. The gargoyles did not move until I entered the room. They used their flight feature to keep control of the room. They even managed to bloody Sandi for the second time that day. Between Alek's guardian spirits and Censura's and Sandi's ability to do large amounts of damage in one shot, we managed to drop them.

We'll travel deeper into the lodge next time.

Castle Assault, Part VI

We rejoined our heroes still in the room with the large lake. We spotted some of the bullywugs swimming under the lake and into an underwater passage. After some examination and comments by the lizardfolk, we realized that they were swimming with the current to a point outside of the castle. We decided they were fleeing in defeat, so we continued on.

We reached the room below the crane. The floor was covered in mist up to three-feet deep. Thok managed to waft some away with a few waves of his shield and a successful athletics check. There was nothing of interest under the mist. We crossed the room headed towards the portal room, when Pharblex Spattergoo and his honor guard attacked us. Pharblex was a larger than average bullywug with some spellcasting ability and wearing the jaws of some fanged aquatic creature as a headdress.

Despite the mass of bullywugs, twelve all together plus Pharbles, the fight did not last long. Spirit guardians, my premiere crowd-clearing spell can last up to 10 minutes! So I still had it up for this fight, catching almost half, including Pharblex, in the initial wave. Censura also manged to clear a clump, and do a fair bit of damage to Pharlbex, with a well placed burning hands spell. The positioning of the bullywugs forced an unfortunate splitting of the party. However, they ended up being pushovers. Censura activated his dagger of venom in anticipation of stabbing Pharblex with it, but never managed to make an attack.

We found Pharblexes lair and a chest trapped with a dead fall dropping clay pots filled with a hallucinagenic compound that made the victim think they were a frog. According to the text of the adventure, the chest was otherwise empty. D.J., however, decided that the designers had been too stingy with the magic items, so he rolled to have one randomly be found within: a wand of winter, which looks and feels like an icicle and casts various ice-themed spells: ray of frost, sleet storm, and ice storm.

Wands, and magic items in general, bear some discussion at this point. First, 5e and encounters have returned to the more old school method of magic items where the details are DM-facing. However, D.J. has opted for a model like 4e: just give us the rules for how they work so we can use them without having to refer to him to look it up. I prefer this method, both as player and as DM. It saves me work as a DM, and as a player it shows that the game designers trust me to not abuse the system. Don't get me wrong, there are good reasons to keep the exact mechanics of a magic item obfuscated from players. But those are narrative reasons, so the rules usually amount to "it does what you want it to do, customized for maximum entertainment value." (Or at least that's how they ought to read. Other DMs will argue that there are other reason; none of them are good.)

But back to wands. Some wands, like the wand of magic missile and the wand of winter are available for use by characters regardless of spellcasting capability. In this case, the to-hit rolls and save DCs for the wand are determined by the wand, not the wielder. This being the case, once we had a chance to identify it during a short rest, the wand was given to me.

We took that short rest to identify the wand after returning Pharblex's headdress to Dralmorrar. He then took us up on an offer to take down the otyugh in the ruined tower. He opted to leave the spectres at the top of the same tower alone.

We positioned ourselves at the entrance to the tower and the pile of rubbish housing the otyugh. We sent Egan to find a sturdy board, planning to use it to reach a chest perched precariously on some broken, rotted rafters on the tower's second floor. As Egan ran to fetch the board, however, a straggler band of bullywugs appeared in the outer barbican to flank us.

I was not having any of that shit. I used 4 of the wand of winter's 7 charges to hit them with Ice Storm. Although its damage is a bit lackluster compared to fireball (4d6 cold damage and 2d8 bludgeoning, leaving behind difficult terrain), it still did the job, dropping all the bullywugs in one round, allowing us to focus on the otyugh.

The otyugh even contact Sandi and Thok with telepathy, pointing out how terrible it was of us to come into its lair and start attacking it. My friend Steve S. would pull similar tricks in his game--when looting corpses we would stumble upon cards from children reading, "I miss you, Daddy. I hope your extra hours at guard duty will pay for my operation." In case, through focused fire we managed to deal over 170 points of damage to the otyugh over the course of two rounds. It still managed to get in a few hits on its turn with multiattack. It even managed to hit and poison Thok. However, protection from poison negates poison already in the system, so I cast it on my next turn.

With the otyugh out of the way, we made our way to chest. It was also trapped, this time with an arrow mimicking Melf's acid arrow. It contained mixed coins, and another random magic item: a cloak of elvenkind. We decided to give it to Sandi.

We'll be reaching level 6 at the start of next session and taking a long rest before going through the portal and on to the next stage of our journey.

Castle Assault, Part V

Before we managed to get our long rest, Dralmorrar came to us with another offer. He realized that we would have better luck taking out Pharblex with Sandi alive and well. So he offered to have has leave half the cost of a scroll of raise dead in escrow and allow us to use to bring Sandi back before we tackled the bullywug shaman in his cavern lair. We took the offer, drawing most of the funds from Sandi's treasure and dividing the remainder between Thok, Censura, and myself. After Dralmorrar made it clear that this was alliance of convenience, I decided to do the casting. While I did that, and Sandi was recovering from being brought back to life, Thok and Censura helped the remaining lizardfolk clean up the mess in the castle. Or at least, Thok helped while Censura tried to spend time with Daisy, only to chased off by Mrs. Pattinow.

Towards the end of the day, Green Imsa arrived riding on a hippogriff. She was still green, but she brought along the resurrected boy: Egan. He was now going to be serving as our page. He was an eager, if naive young lad. Thok and I did explain to him that adventuring is dangerous. I also took a moment to let the other party members know that we should not treat him like Nodwick. Imsa had another piece of good news: the elf prince had his curse lifted and had named us lords in his restored kingdom.

Dralmorrar gave us a map of the cavern beneath the castle. The most direct route to Pharlbex's lair involved a treasure crane. We decided to take a round about route before taking another long rest.

We took Egan, and two of our remaining lizardfolk followers: Snapjaw and the newly christened Slime-Eater, along with us. We explored a small side cavern, finding a gray ooze, which Sandi managed to finish off in one turn. The cave was also filled with treasure.

We wound our way through the caves, finding a big pool of mud the bullywugs used for ritual bathing (according to Snapjaw, anyway). We quickly dispatched a pair of bullywug guards stationed there. Past the mud pool, we found a room swarming with centipedes, but we were able to notice that they fled from fire, so we used lit torches to disperse the swarms before they could coalesce.

Finally, we came to a cavern with a large lake. We turned down a side passage toward a smaller body of water, only to find two more bullywug guards that were soon backed up by giant frogs the lake. Lots of giant frogs from the lake. Fortunately, we managed to protect our hirelings from the brunt of the assault. I can't stress enough how good area of effect spells are in these situations. And while our best AOEs represent our most significant investments of resources, they are worth it. None-the-less, the frogs did get some hits in, using bites to grapple and restrain Snapjaw and me. What was amazing, is that we had a grappling creature without having to read a second miniature rule book detailing how it worked.

The time progression certainly proves a key difference in play between 5th and 4th. In 4th, characters were more powerful, but progressed more evenly as they leveled. In 5th, the characters are much weaker at lower levels, but certain points in the progression lead to leaps in capability. The fact that reaching 5th level defines the start of the second tier in this edition has been proven out.

When we return, our heroes will have finally met Pharblex, and killed him.