Improving the Darklake (Out of the Abyss Spoilers)

[Goober4473]

I wanted to add some more memorable moments during Darklake travel, so I've come up with a set piece for use there. I liked the idea of the hag sisters, but having them just kind of show up and be annoying is boring, so instead, this. What have other people come up with for this area?

Sisters Of The Dark Mirage

Lost in the Mirage (700 XP)

The party becomes hopelessly lost in a maze of watery passages, which seem to magically shift, preventing even those who should know the way from proceeding. The Mirage was created by three green hag sisters, who are constantly at odds with one another. It makes it incredibly difficult to navigate, but the party can always return to a place they have been if they try, though they may not know this.

Nanny Plunk, a woman claiming to be a witch of the Dark Mirage, appears on a nearby rock, and offers to guide the party through her domain, but only if they agree to perform a task for her: she wants them to steal Maven Delve’s gravestone.

If the party refuses, they can make a DC 20 Wisdom (Survival) check to navigate each day. On a success, they make it out of the Mirage, but increase the drow pursuit track by 1. The drow won’t attack them in the Mirage though.
On a failure, increase the track by 1 as they waste the day, and they also encounter one of the witch’s homes. If they slay all three of the hags, the Mirage dissipates.

Creatures: Plunk is a Green Hag (MM 177, CR 3).

Maven Delve (1,725 XP)

If they agree to her task, Nanny Plunk will bring the party to a passage that leads to Maven Delve’s cottage. The passage opens into larger body of water with a small island, about 40 feet in diameter, in its center. Plunk says she will wait at the other end of the passage, but will follow them if they take too long.

The 40-foot diameter island sports a cottage on its top. A graveyard with six gravestones and a simple fence sits next to the cottage, and a rowboat is tied to a post on the side of the island. One of the six gravestones belongs to Maven Delve herself, though she is not dead.

Creatures: Maven Delve, another Green Hag (MM 177, CR 3), sleeps in the cottage, and Dunk the Ogre (MM 237, CR 2) tends the graveyard.

Dunk will speak with travelers, and if alerted, Delve will suspiciously ask what they are doing here. Even if they admit to their true goals, Maven Delve will offer them a better deal: she will perform a ritual that will allow the party to pierce the illusions of the Mirage, if they steal a magical talking toad from her sister, Dame Spiderwort.

Treasure: Delve’s cottage contains alchemy equipment and a potion of heroism.

Dame Spiderwort (1,800 XP)

If the party agrees to Maven Delve’s offer, she and Dunk get in her rowboat and lead the party to a large open cavern, pointing them to the cliff face on the other side. She says she will wait at this side of the cavern, but will return home if the party takes too long.

A small staircase in the rock face winds up precariously to a cave mouth 40 feet up. This is Dame Spiderwort’s home: a 10-foot wide, 20-foot long passage leads into a 2-foot diameter chamber. The walls are covered in tangled vines with mushrooms growing out of them, and it contains a bed, two tables, and a chair.

Creatures: Dame Spiderwort is the third Green Hag (MM 177, CR 3) sister. She is currently gathering fungus on the lakebed below her home. She will invisibly follow any intruders if they dock near her home.

If the party notices her, which is likely if Shuushar is with them since he can see invisible creatures, she asks them what they are doing here. As with Delve, regardless of whether they tell the truth, she offers them another deal: steal Nanny Plunk’s recipe book, and she’ll perform the ritual that Delve offered. She mentions that Plunk won’t be home (though in truth, she might be following them), so it will be a snap.

Two mushroom-covered Vine Blights (MM 32, CR 1/2), camouflaged on the walls, attack anyone but Dame Spiderwort that enter her home.

Croaky, an awakened toad (Frog; MM 322, CR 0), with 10 Intelligence and that speaks Undercommon, is trapped in a jar on one of the tables. He is friendly to anyone trying to rescue him, though grows hostile if they tell him they plan to give him to another witch. He knows all three witches are green hags, that killing them will end the Mirage, and that you can return to any place in the Mirage you have been unerringly.

Treasure: Spiderwort’s tables contain enough tools for two herbalism kits, three bottles of a potent alcoholic beverage, and a bag of devouring.

Nanny Plunk (600 or 2,200 XP)

If the party agrees to Spiderwort’s offer, she leads them to a riverbank with a ruined stone structure. The structure is 10 feet from the bank, and is 20-feet on a side. The wall opposite the river is collapsed, as is the ceiling.

Outside the building, a garden of mushrooms grows, with two scarecrows made of barbed wire watching over it. The inside of the building is sparse and littered with bones and rotting meat. A pile of rags makes up Plunk’s bed, and a cauldron filled with a nasty substance sits in the center.

Creatures: Nanny Plunk (MM 177, CR 3) may or may not be here, or may have followed the party. She will make her offer one more time if the party is polite, but otherwise tells them to get lost. If they persist or attempt to rob her, she attacks them.

The Scarecrows (MM 268, CE 1) are animate, and attack anyone that enters the garden or house besides Nanny Plunk.

Treasure: Nanny Plunks recipe book is hidden under her rag bed. It contains recipes for potions of healing, potions of greater healing, and elixirs of health.

[Theodoxus]

Having just played through the lake... anything to make it more fun... We players were given the false impression it would be a couple day sail across it - not something closer to a month... let the doldrums set in... omg.

[Ashdate]

Definitely a step up from what the book mentions!

The two times I had the party on the Darklake, I had them encounter a duergar outpost/water gate that was preventing passage forward. An intellect devourer (habitating a former duergar) led them into a trapped room where skeletons attacked. Exploring, they find that the outpost has been attacked by something, with the skeletons being the former inhabitants.

One umber hulk and a few traps later, they find a mind flatter who is worshipping Orcus. Rather than fight the party (mine were level 4 at the time) he spares them when he reads their minds and finds out they encountered Demogorgan. He tries to direct them to Gracklstugh, warning them that someone is spreading Demogorgan's influence there (and as a worshipper of Orcus, he doesn't want to see Demo's influence spread).

(Of course, I'm going to have other plans...)

Second trip: Vrocks attack the party. While fighting them off, who shows up but Ol' Demogorgan? Sanity checks are made, and the party must figure out how to hide from the Prince of all Demons. The prince is clearly not there for them, but his presence is to remind the PCs that he is still loose.

I probably won't have them make a third Darklake trip.

[jps4di]

Expanding on OP’s original idea. Adding motivations and endgame for NPC’s.

The hags are part of a coven. Their respect for the ancient code will not let them directly engage each other, but working through others is acceptable.

1) All hags are presented as drow (or your choice) personas for deception.

2) Maven Delve states that Dame Spiderwort also is an accomplished alchemist, whose domicile will provide necessary items for PC quest. This is motivation enough.

3) Dame Spiderwort’s offer ups the ante to provide even more for the PC’s. Nanny P’s recipe book is good for home brew; if fitting into AL like I am (with wiggle room because that the way we roll) then adjust by upping potions, etc.

4) Aquiring Croaky, he will tell them the true nature of the drow (or whatever race you picked). He does not know of the power of the coven. He does know that all 3 hags must be killed to lift the Mirage, or they must attempt to navigate the Mirage (DC20, per OP). He also knows that they are trying to get the PC’s to kill the others because of the code.

5) If then PC’s make it to Nanny Plunk’s domicile, then the three hags will certainly band together, using coven powers. PC’s had multiple chances to go another way. So be it.

Great idea, OP. Hopefully my adds will help flesh it out a little more.

[LynxThinks]

I'm running OOTA now and just ran into the Nanny Plunk section yesterday and came up blank. Honestly, I had no idea how to handle an encounter with so little information. I tend to like things more structured before I run them. A quick googling led me here! I absolutely adore this little module and it really helped knock some dust off the traveling section. I hope you don't mind, but I drew up a map for this lil module and I was hoping to share it here! It's pretty plain, but I wanted to knock it out in a day so I can move on with the rest of prep for traveling the dreaded Darklake.

The paper texture was taken from a free vector site. The art is hand drawn by me (I know the house isn't the best, I may mess around with that in the future), and the text and compass were compiled ransom-magazine-cutout-style from Blando's OOTA maps (I couldn't find a decent font, if ya'll have one in mind--preferably one that's free use--I would appreciate it).

It's not perfect and I'm certainly not as talented as WOTC artists, but I think it'll do for my campaign.

Edit: Made the cave section look more indoors and added a fence around the graveyard.

https://i.imgur.com/ramwXZa.png

[smrad8]

Reviving this old thread to report what a great addition this was to our OOTA campaign. Really appreciate the OP for bringing this color into this part of the adventure.

Volo's Guide has an excellent description for hags, and although I planned to use the Mirage as the hook we ended up not needing to because of the party's hasty reactions to some of the hags' weird magic, so our game ended up relying mostly on that magical weirdness and eccentric evil.

Here's the encounter summary - it was extremely fun to DM in that it required a massive amount of role-play, especially to navigate the arguments between the three coven members and the negotiations between the coven members and the party. Also, and this is a warning for any who wish to run this encounter, it also proved to be massively difficult encounter for the party since, as you can see below, they managed to offend all three of the hags, one-by-one, and then brought the hags all together while also splitting the party into not two, but three pieces. Oops. :eek:

The party was in two keelboats - one rowed by the kua-toa Shushaar and one by Hemeth, the duergar rescued from Sloobudop. It was a large party that also included Jim-Jar, Spiderbait and Yuk-Yuk (the two goblins from the Silken Road), and seven PCs. (All the other NPCs had been lost or killed along the way.) As they approached a small island in the middle of a large subterranean lake they saw the eerie form of a young human girl, about 10 years old, who stood impassively and expressionlessly watching the boats pass. A basket lie at the girl's feet and the party could hear the cries of an infant from the direction of the basket. As the party drifted past the girl exploded into a cloud of buzzing wasps and vanished. (I was looking more for a spooky feel here, and it worked - the PC's were freaking - but mechanically maybe this would be a hag form of teleportation or even misty step. The girl could either be a disguised version of the hag or Nanny Plunk's daughter, not yet old enough to have transformed from her human form.)

The characters approached the basket and found that rather than a baby, the basket held a box, and inside the box were wooden puppets in the form of three of the PCs. These puppets animated and started satirically imitating the three PCs in question until the group's Eldritch Knight incinerated them with fire bolts.

The destruction of her puppets, of course, deeply offended Nanny Plunk, whose cabin lie nearby, and when the party's keelboats rounded into sight she beckoned them to come near, the young girl by her side again with a basket with a crying baby at her feet. Nanny Plunk irritably explained to the party that they now owed her for the destruction of her puppets and she demanded that they either turn over the Eldritch Knight as the appropriate price, or they could bring her back her sister Maven Delve's headstone from the cemetery on Maven Delve's island. The party chose to take their chances with the headstone. Of course, as in the OP, Nanny Plunk followed invisibly and, knowing that Shushaar could see invisible creatures up to 30' away, she stayed out of range of his view.

The young girl silently led the party toward Maven Delve's hut and then vanished again in a cloud of insects, but before they docked the group's Rogue used a disguise kit (purchased at high cost in Sloobudop) to attempt to disguise herself as Nanny Plunk. The Rogue then attempted to deceive Maven Delve into obtaining the headstone. Both the ogre minion and Maven Delve rolled horribly and failed to see through the disguise. In the course of the conversation, Maven Delve invited the Rogue into the hut to see her new pets - a pair of young gnome children she was holding in kennels and who, to her great amusement, could not be seriously harmed when she poked them through the bars with hot pokers and other enjoyable poky things. Of course the Rogue recognized the children as Topsy and Turvy, who had broken out of the drow prison with the party but who had gone missing one night amid some suspicious giant rat tracks prior to the party's arrival in Sloobudop.

While the Rogue was occupying Maven Delve, the Eldritch Knight attempted to sneak toward Maven Delve's headstone but was spotted by Maven Delve through the cottage window. The disguised Rogue convinced Maven Delve (good rolls, seriously) that this was her new boyfriend, which made Maven Delve ridiculously jealous. In any case, the Rogue tried to barter for Maven Delve's headstone and Maven Delve said she could have it if she would bring Dame Spiderwort's talking frog and if she would leave the Eldritch Knight with her for romance. The Rogue agreed, and she joined the ogre in Maven Delve's canoe to head toward Dame Spiderwort's home.

As Maven Delve was showing her new pets off to her new shared boyfriend, the rest of the party had quietly moved onto the island. The party's brutes determined that they didn't need to wait for the Rogue to return and they planned to just grab the headstone and kill the hag. Unfortunately the party did not count on the alarm spell, which conjured a swift-moving, extremely loud tornado of cawing ravens (who all quickly vanished), nor were they aware of the Green Hag's ability to become invisible and move without a sign of their passing. Maven Delve, quickly becoming invisible, leaving the Eldritch Knight, and seeing herself outnumbered, dove into the lake and sought to reach the canoe with the Rogue and the ogre. Fortunately for the party, the wizard's spider familiar had found its way onto Maven Delve's clothes, so it was able to provide a visual conduit for the wizard to see the hag's actions (until it drowned). Learning that the hag and the ogre had both left the island, the party rescued the gnome children and then ransacked and burned down Maven Delve's hut. Another impolitic act, and one with an unfortunate outcome.

The Rogue was now pleasantly in a canoe with the ogre - a surprisingly open chap who spoke in simple language to explain that he liked his job well enough but actually harbored a desire to someday start a magic shop. The couple was soon joined by Maven Delve, who hauled herself up into the boat and who complained loudly and endlessly about her sister's new friends who were terrible guests and who burned down her house. Unfortunately for the party, when the Rogue reached Dame Spiderwort, it became clear that the Rogue was not actually Granny Plunk, since Dame Spiderwort was definitively not fooled by the disguise and since the real Granny Plunk - who had been following behind the whole time - soon arose from the waters of the Darklake. The three hags very soon dispatched the hapless Rogue (using non-lethal blows, as the Rogue was an elf and they needed to boil her alive in order to get the elf grease at the proper consistency). The party arrived a few minutes later expecting to find one hag and a disguised Rogue, but instead found the Rogue blindfolded, gagged, bound, unconscious and up to her chin in a cauldron filled with vomitous, stinky liquid, all of which was being cackled over by not one but three hags.

A fully-operational and highly irritated coven of hags is the last thing a party of third-level characters is up to facing, and yet this is what our party allowed themselves to engage. Hemeth's first act on his turn (under DM's control) was to turn the boat around and to start paddling for his life, which perhaps saved half the party. (The second boat, which held Shushaar and some other non-essential NPCs, had lingered far behind.) The Eldritch Knight, Monk, and Champion Fighter waded ashore and killed the ogre before they were lightning bolted by the hags who had a sweet angle on them that got them all. Hold person spells had no effect but Eyebite sickened the Eldritch Knight, who started vomiting maggots from his mouth and nose. The Fighter downed a potion of water breathing and dove into the Darklake while the Monk took a second lightning bolt to the face, going down - forever. Meanwhile, the rest of the party tried with their might to escape in the keelboat out of the range of the Hags' darkvision where they hoped to be able to cast long-range spells in hopes they would not be seen. The Eldritch Knight stumbled through the Hags' space, being clawed for his trouble, seeking to rescue the Rogue from the cauldron. He spilled the contents (more irritation to the Hags) and found the Rogue still breathing. Spellcasters in the keelboat cast auditory illusions in successful attempts to distract the Hags, while the Eldritch Knight's grease spell also comically delayed the inevitable. The Champion Fighter emerged from the water seeking to flank the Hags, but was spotted early. Soon, the Hags had the characters on the land weakened and cornered. Frustrated at how bothersome the combat had become the Hags called truce (confirmed by an Insight check) and offered to let the party go in exchange for one of their lives as a minion. Blood for blood, they said, not counting the dead Monk, to the party's dismay. The Monk, they said, was the cost for burning down Maven Delve's house.

The party struggled with an answer, some wanted to run (though death would certainly come quickly from behind). However, in one of the most selfless acts I've seen in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, the Eldritch Knight - a lawful good noble-born warrior - offered himself as sacrifice for the salvation of a party that was on the verge of a TPK. The party protested, but the Eldritch Knight walked forward and the hags gleefully accepted. Dame Spiderwort transformed the hapless Knight into a huge cockroach, and then popped him into her mouth to keep him alive there for safekeeping ("I like feeling those scurrying legs on my tongue" she said between her teeth in what sounded kind of like a ventriloquist's voice). The coven waved the rest of the party off and told them never to come back again.

But between themselves they already said that someday they will.

[truemane]

Metamagic Mod: Thread Necromancy is a forbidden art.