Inixon - Dwellers of the Isle of Dread (5th Ed.)

[Yora]

I have started a new D&D 5th Edition campaign on Roll20 two weeks ago, based on the classic D&D adventures Against the Cult of the Reptile God, The Isle of Dread, and Dwellers of the Forgotten City.

For over a hundred years, a seemingly unending series of typhoons and thunderstorms has been plaguing the lands of Kaendor, slowly but inevitabily weathering away the old Bronze Age civilizations with floods and landslides. Fields are turning into marshes, bridges and mountain paths are being destroyed and never rebuild, and whole cities are slowly crumbling into the sea. Towns and cities are being deserted as people flee into the vast forests of the hinterland to survive on wild plant and animals and roads are being blocked by fallen trees and quickly overgrown by the always encroaching wilds. Villages become isolated and depending only on themselves, and what trade still exist is limited to the coasts and rivers that are reachable by ships.
The wilds of Kaendor are littered with the ruins of cities, but scholars know that many of these have laid empty for thousands of years, and that their own civilizations are not the first ones to fade from the face of the world. Floods and landslides reveal previously hidden vaults and tombs beneath the empty cities, drawing to them scavengers who are searching for the riches left behind when their owners abandoned their homes.

The Party
Players are still coming and going as they try out the campaign, but so far it has been centered around these four characters.

Tarani, grey elf Wizard, acolyte of the Moon goddess Temis.
Haren, goliath Fighter and Tarani's travel companion.
Finan, wood elf Rogue in service of a corrupt harbor master.
Karim, grey elf Cleric of the Storm Lord.

Day 1

Here begins the adventure Against the Cult of the Reptile God.

Tarani and Haren were visiting to the small town Orlane, searching for a man named Brian who has not been responding to any messages for the past weeks. They are joined by Finan who was send by his boss to find the whereabouts of a shipment of poisons that never got delivered by a merchant from Orlane.

As they reached the town and asked some locals for the home of the elderman, they discovered many of the people to be weary of strangers and a mood of uncertainty being over the town. Even the elderman was not very forthcoming with any information and merely let them know that people have been leaving in search for a better life elsewhere for many years. That some seemingly left over night without telling anyone is certainly strange, but people have been quiet about their business for some time now.

The inn made a shady first impression, with a suspicious inkeeper and unfriendly locals quietly sitting with their drinks in the common room. Haren decided to get beds for the night anyway.

As they explored further through the village they visited a small trading post for traveling merchants, where they got another offer for beds for the night. Which was an option to consider, but they decided to decline.

Tarani searched the northern parts of the town for magic and discovered traces of abjuration coming from a path leading into the nearby woods. Tarani and Haren came upon the hut of an old woman named Remi who described herself as a herbalist and gave them advice to be careful around the inn, as the innkeeper is hanging around with other unpleasant people like the smith and the carpenter, and shady looking strangers that have come to the town a while back.

In the east part of the city, Finan discovered that the store of the merchant he was looking for had burned down and none of the locals seemed to know anything about his whereabouts. The smith next door turned out to be an excessively angry man who threatened them with violence if they don't leave him alone immediately. The carpenter across the road had his workshop in complete chaos and seemed barely able to follow the conversation with the strangers asking him questions about the town.

They headed over to Brian's house near the temple and found it empty, but it appeared like Brian's family had left almost everything behind.

Clearly something was very wrong with this town, and it seemed to have something to do with the Inn. So Haren and Tarani decided to return there and stay for the night, while Finan set himself up in an abandoned house across the road to monitor the comings and going throughout the night. Late in the night, three men came down the road from the eastern part of the town and went into the darkened inn, so Finan decided to follow them inside.

Haren and Tarani had been expecting trouble, but Haren had a very difficult time staying awake. Five men were bursting into their room with clubs, but Tarani took half of them out immediately with a sleep spell. Finan heard the fighting from the common room and ran into a woman in armor in the hallway. The woman's mace hit him with magical power and injured him badly, and the innkeeper and the cook came from their rooms to join in the fight. Haren was able to overwhelm the remaining villagers in the room and with Tarani's magic attacked killed the woman. The innkeeper was subdued quickly and the cook was caught trying to climb out a window.

While Haren and Tarani were tying up the unconscious men, Finan found a box of poisons in the kitchen and searched the upper floor, where he discovered the smuggler Nazim in a locked room, who told him he was captured by the innkeeper's men a week ago, and all his goods stolen.

Tarani used her ability to detect magic on the tied up attackers and discovered than all but one of them were under some kind of enchantment.

The Storm Priest Karim was found trapped in another room, having been captured by the people in the inn the night before. He joined the others in their attempt to find out what is going on in Orlane.

They took the one man that showed no signs of magic to another room and began questioning him. He told them that the other people who were with him were members of a cult that worships the Great Serpent. He was taken from his bed in the inn two months ago and taken down the river in a boat to a hidden underground lair. There he was kept with other villagers until they were brought before a priestess with a golden mask. Some stopped to fight and argue when she started them in the eyes, while those who continued to resist were dragged back to their cells. He decided that it would be better to play along, but he does not have any of the fanatical devotion to the priestess and her deity like the others. Getting a free room, food, and drink simply for kidnapping some villagers now and then seemed like a pretty good deal to him, but now that the game is up he just wants to be on his way and never get close to Orlane again. Whenever they captured travelers in the inn, they would keep them there until a dark night and then take them in a boat across the lake to the temple on the other side of town. He assumes they are taken down the river and to the priestess later, but he doesn't known and never asked.

Tarani and Haren got Remi to come to the inn and take a look at the captured men. She confirmed Tarani's suspicion that they were under some kind of spell, but a regular charm spell would not be able to control that many people for such a long time. Some much more powerful magic must be behind it.

They then explored the basements of the inn and discovered a hidden meeting room that connected to a small series of tunnels where they were attacked by several snake, one of which dropped from the ceiling on Finan and almost managed to strangle him. They came to a small underground shrine with a bronze serpent idol and Haren threw his cloak over it before Tarani checked to see that there was no magic on it.

It was decided that they would rest in the inn for the rest of the night to regain their full strength and go talk with the elderman the next day. The smuggler Nazim asked if he could go and seek shelter at the trading post, as he didn't want to get involved in whatever dangerous business they were planning.

Day 2

As they went to the house of the elderman, some of the villagers were watching them from the distance, but it was impossible to tell if this was any different from the reactions they had gotten the day before. When they knocked on the door, Tarani checked the elderman for magic but found that he wasn't affected by it. They told him that some kind of cult was behind the recent disappearances and that the innkeeper was part of it. The elderman told them that the armored woman was one of the two priestess of the local temple of the Three Keepers of Fields, House, and Herds, which supported the information they got that the people were being taken to the temple.

Hoping that nobody at the temple would recognize them, the group walked up the hill and straight through the gates into the main temple hall. The acolyte they encountered eyed them suspiciously and a present servant quietly disappeared through a door soon after their arrival. While the others claimed to be praying at the altar, Finan snuck out to take a look around the temple grounds. He found the gardener who told him to stop snooping around and either return inside the temple or leave. Tarani quickly excused herself to the outhouse to prepare herself to search for magic in the temple and the people who were present, and found the acolyte to be enchanted as well. She let the others know that they were leaving and outside the temple building they decided to split up and attempt to silently take out the gardener and search his shed. Haren and Tarani went around the back, but they discovered that the gardener had disappeared when they ran back into Finan and Karim. As they searched the shed they discovered the gardeners room and the cages for two large arags.

Assuming the gardener went inside the temple building through a small side door, they decided to try to follow and came into a small store room just as the gardener was coming back with three other men. A fight broke out at the side door, just as the acolyte came around the corner of the building with more men. The group all rushed inside and killed and knocked out the men. Finan quickly bolted the door shut behind them and then raced through the temple building to get to the main temple doors which he blocked from the inside as well. Three more man with clubs were quickly defeated and the group headed up the stairs to the upper level.

Quickly searching through the rooms, the found the other priest and another acolyte who were waiting for them with protective magic in place. Haren and Finan rushed in and quickly knocked out the acolyte, while Tarani and Karim hurled magic at the priest. Haran ordered the priest to get down to the floor, but the priest told him "No, you all get to the floor!" with a command spell. Haren went down, but the others continued their assault. Haran quickly rose back to his feet and fought with the priest, deflecting his magically charged mace with his shield and knocking him out as well.

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Spoiler: GM Thoughts

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Against the Cult of the Reptile God is a really interesting and also strange adventure. The whole town is described in almost excessive detail, giving some basic information about how each house looks and how the inhabitants are reacting to the PCs. But without no clear path to the villains, this also means that this part of the adventure can play out in many widely different ways. Two of the players are quite familiar with the adventure, but since I move many buildings on the map and renamed most NPCs it's not easy to tell which person in the game is which person in the adventure. The adventure has two inns, one dangerous and one harmless. I turned one of them into a trading post and renamed both of them. I also slightly redrew floor plans, as I reduced the number of encounters to run the adventure in 5th edition with 4 to 6 players.

Converting it to 5th edition feels a bit weird so far, since with 1st level PCs everything still seems very swingy. The standard cultists seem to be no problem at all even in large numbers. While the priests should be decent "bosses" for 1st level at CR 2 and one reduced to CR 1, their ability to charge their maces with magic is extremely dangerous. One almost got Finan with a single hit and still had power to continue more such strikes if she had lived longer. The other could deal up to 24 damage and the highest hit point anyone in the party has is 13. And then there's the big pile of buffs they can throw on themselves. As it turned out, the players had no trouble taking out the priest with an acolyte as backup, but I think there could also have been some deaths if things went more poorly.

That they captured the fake cultist alive and also cast detect magic on the prisoners immediately took the game into a direction I had not expected.
What they did not notice at the end of the first session, and my recap at the start of the second session, is that the smuggler Nazim is also enchanted. Finan picked the lock on his door, but never searched the room to find the key being thrown under his bed. When they let him go, he ran to the temple and told the people there what happened. So when the PCs showed up at the temple one servant immediately went to gather all the other cultists to set an ambush. It probably wouldn't have done any good anyway, but locking an acolyte and three cultists (and the two guard beasts) out of the temple while they clear up inside was a very interesting move.
I already have a very fun idea what they will be doing next to deal with the invaders.