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    d20 Inixon - Dwellers of the Isle of Dread (5th Ed.)

    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.

    --

    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.
    Last edited by Yora; 2020-05-14 at 02:09 PM.
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    Default Re: Inixon - Dwellers of the Isle of Dread (5th Ed.)

    Day 2 (continued)



    After having defeated the priest, the party searched the rest of the temple and discovered two prisoners in the basement guarded by a large snake.

    Alamar: Grey elf nobleman and warlock.
    Ilmari: High elf rogue and sage.

    The two had been ambushed in the inn two days ago and had been kept in the temple since then.

    They looked out the windows to see that the remaining acolyte had gathered more cultists in the temple grounds that were guarding the only two doors with two large guard beasts. They came up with a plan to open the main doors of the temple to lure the cultists inside the main hall, where the rogues and warlock could shot at them from a balcony at the upper level while Haren and Karim were keeping them from getting deeper inside the temple. (And Tarani guarded the prisoners.)
    As the cultists rushed inside the first ones went down in the arrows and magic raining down on them. But they kept coming and piled up in a heap at Haren's feet. Alerted by the noise of fighting, the cultists guarding the back door came running around the building and the two guard beasts rushed through the door just as the last survivor of the first group made it out. One of the best tore into Karim and had him collapse on the floor, so Alamar jumped down from the balcony to save him. In the end, the last three cultists standing turned around to retreat, but Haren managed to knock one of them out before he made it through the temple gates.

    The surviving cultists were all tied up and taken to a store room and Alamar decided to interrogate the two acolytes, who confirmed earlier information that the headquarters of the cult were located at an abandoned town where the river ran into the sea, and that they had been capturing and converting villagers and travelers for the last two months.
    They decided to interrogate the deranged priest in the main temple room that was still covered in corpses. But before they could get him to tell them anything, he simply used his magic to command them to release him. They untied his hands and he made a run for the door, but wasn't able to make it to safety before Ilmari came to his senses and shot a blast of ice after him. Unfortunately he had not been able to heal himself while he was tied up and so died on the steps of the temple.

    The remaining prisoners were taken to the basement and the cages of the guard beasts and given food and water while the party returned to the elderman's house to report the events at the temple. The plan was made to spend the night at the empty house of Brian and to take a boat down the river the following day.

    --

    GM thoughts: Common cultists are nothing to a first level party. Even with support from acolytes.
    Last edited by Yora; 2020-05-14 at 02:11 PM.
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    Default Re: Inixon - Dwellers of the Isle of Dread (5th Ed.)



    Day 3 (13th Day, 7th Month, Year 507)

    The party decided to use their limited funds to store up on healing potions and then set out with a boat in the late morning to travel down the river to the abandoned town by the sea.

    By the evening they reached the coast and left their boat behind when the first roofs appeared in the distance and continued to the ruins on foot. Finan and Ilmari scouted ahead and found some other boats dragged up the shore next to a collapsed bridge and an overgrown road leading up to a nearby hill. They came upon a group of cultists that had set up a guard post at the edge of the ruins but didn’t put much effort into actually guarding.

    The group decided to simply circle around the cultists and follow an old path up to the top of the hill. The path led to a series of caves that housed a giant bee hive, that the people of the town used for harvesting honey. They tried not to disturb the giant bees as they descended into the caves, but Ilmari slipped on a slope covered in honey and landed in a honeycomb wall, which greatly agitated the bees. The giant bees were easily fought off, but Ilmari got stung and fell to the ground paralyzed.

    Once Ilmari had recovered and night had fallen outside, the group continued to an old wooden door that had been mostly covered up in wax and honey. Haren managed to break through the door with relatively little noise and they discovered a passage leading into a larger network of tunnels. The only people they encountered awake were two people busy in a large central cave serving as a kitchen and three guards watching the main entrance, none of which had taken notice of their presence inside the tunnels. Finan and Ilmari killed two acolyte in their beds without raising a noise, and the door to a room with sleeping cultists was quietly blocked by several sacks of grain from a nearby store room.

    Eventually their luck ran out and Ilmari peeked inside another bunk room where two cultists happened to be awake. They didn’t buy his story that he was a new arrival from Orlane and looking for kitchen, so the group had no choice but rush in and overpower the four residents. With the acolyte in the next room already dead, still no alarm appeared to be raised, and Alamar learned from one of the captives that their priests were all residing in the lower tunnels.

    Taking a dark and apparently rarely used passage in the deeper parts of the tunnels into the lower caves, the group crossed a creaking bridge over an underground pool and where attacked by two giant eels. Ilmari and Karim were badly bitten and starting to bleed out, but Haren and Finan managed to kill one of the eels and drive the other back into the dark depths of the pool.

    The walkway led to a small underground harbor that connected to the sea, which had been covered up by a mud coated tarp to hide it from ships getting close to the shore. Down there they discovered a group of prisoners who told them of a mute priestess with a golden mask who had turned the other captives into loyal followers. All of them had resisted her magical gaze and they had heard the cultists talking that they would be taken away by a ship to serve as slaves. They freed the prisoners and told them to take the boats hidden in the cave and travel back up the nearby river to return to Orlane.

    They continued to explore the lower tunnels and found the rooms of the priests. Fearing that their assault would be discovered soon, Haren and Alamar started to search one of the rooms and woke up one of the priests, but with only his mace in reach he stood little chance against the two of them. At the same time Finan and Ilmari sneaked into the room of another priest trying to assassinate him in his sleep. He woke up just long enough to reach for his serpent staff next to his bed before the two of them shanked him to death. Searching the quarters of the priests, they discovered a recently written and unsent letter addressed to a captain, which revealed that the missing captives were being taken to a place called Inixon and that the priests were afraid that the raiding of ships near their hidden temple would draw the wrath of the local smuggling gangs.

    Spoiler: Garban's Letter
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    Last edited by Yora; 2020-05-14 at 02:12 PM.
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    Default Re: Inixon - Dwellers of the Isle of Dread (5th Ed.)



    Day 4: 14th Day, 7th Month, Year 507

    After having slain the priests, Alamar decided to put on the high priest’s robes and take his serpent staff and walk into the room behind the great doors at the end of a brightly lit corridor. The rest of the group stayed behind in side passages to observe what happens and come to aid him as soon as a battle started.

    Opening the door and stepping through it, Alamar entered a chapple that also looked like a throne room, and on the raised platform on the opposite wall of the chamber were two cultists sleeping at the feet of a figure dressed in red robes and a large snake over its shoulders.


    Alamar tried to impersonate the dead priest and tell his mistress that intruder are in the temple. With a gesture of her hand the two cultists rose from their cushions and the snake started to move forward, and in a moment of panic Alamar reached out with his newly developing telepathic powers. Surprised, the priestess signaled her servants to halt, and Alamar heard her speaking into his mind as well, asking who he is and why he has come to this place. Sensing that his deception had utterly failed, he ran back to the others, and seeing that the game was up, Haren the group in a charge into the main chamber.

    The two cultists were easily knocked down and Alamar unleashed a telepathic attack against the priestess. Dazes from the attack, the priestess rose from her seat, revealing the tail of a great serpent instead of legs. She removed her mask, revealing a face covered in green scales, and as her robes fell away she transformed into a giant snake.

    Fighting off an assault from Haren and Karim, Finan landed a deep strike with his blade and one of Ilmari’s arrows stuck deep into the neck of the great snake. Haren landed a mortal blow with his axe and continued to sever the serpent’s head.


    Evil Overlord List, #34: “I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.”

    When the two cultists awoke they told a story of having been taken from Orlane and brought to the hidden temple, where they had been brought before the priestess and became convinced to loyally serve her and the Great Serpent. Others managed to resist and were taken back to their cells, to await being taken away on a ship as slaves. Those who died during their imprisonment were being fed to crocodiles.

    Picking up the golden mask, the group returned to loot the treasure room and the priest’s quarters. They freed all the cultists they had locked into their sleeping rooms and found them in an equal state to the first two they had questioned. A bit confused and appalled by what had happened to their fellow villagers who had resisted the power of the priestess. Though of the cultists that had been guarding the main entranace to the hidden temple there was no trace to be found.

    After resting from their ordeal, the group loaded the treasures taken from the temple on the pack goats kept in the stables and led the freed cultists back to Orlane. Kamir inspected the golden mask for magic, which it clearly was holding, and Alamar and Haren got into a long fight over whether they could risk using it and falling under a curse. The possibilities that the masters of the golden priestess could send their minions and use powerful magic to recover the mask was also worrying. Alamar was insistent that the mask might come very useful in the future if they were to attempt infiltrating another serpent temple, and with the robe and staff taken from the priest he had a perfect disguise.

    Despite Alamar’s protests to keep their possession of the mask a secret, Haren and Finan went to the witch Remi to learn more about it’s power. After studying it and performing various divinations, Remi told them that the mask had strong influence over the weak minded. Even someone without any mental powers could use it to bend the minds of others, but its powers would be much greater for someone who already possesses magical abilities of this kind. Alamar saw great potential in such an object, but Haren was not trusting him with such power.

    As the sun was setting, the group visited the elderman of Orlane, who was crowded by freed cultists who were telling him of what had happened to them. The elderman inquired if there was anything they could do to find the people who were still missing, and one of the former cultists mentioned that the ship that was taking away the slaves always came during the darkness of the night of the new moon. The next one of which would be two days from now. A plan was made to ambush the crew of the ship when it arrived at the secret temple and then take their ship to reach the stronghold of the cult’s leaders on Inixon. Taking the helmsman of the ship prisoner and forcing him to take him there was not considered reliable enough, and so a freed cultists named Kevan volunteered to steer the ship for them, as he had been a sailor in his youth, and more than eager to help the people who had freed them from the cult’s control to save the still missing slaves.

    Haren decided to check on the smith of Orlane who had reacted to their questions so violently when they first investigated the village. One of the smith’s sons answered the door and recommended that they don’t disturb his father, as he had always been an ill-tempered man and had finally started to calm down today. A quick visit to the temple revealed that the corpses from the battle had been cleared away during the two days they had been gone and the captured cultists set free. As they returned to the inn for the night they discovered that their prisoners there were gone as well, and somehow nobody had seen the innkeeper and his lackeys since then.

    During the night, Alamar snuck from his bed to quietly take the mask from Haren’s pack. He put it on to study its magical energies for several hours, and found it to be just as the witch had told them, with no signs of dark or malicious powers. He managed to put the mask back into its place unnoticed and returned to his bed with nobody being the wiser.

    --

    Thus ends the adventure Against the Cult of the Reptile God.

    I've been running D&D campaigns on and off since the release of 3rd edition in 2020 with five different groups, and I feel that this has been by far the best adventure I've run yet. Two of the players were already familiar with the adventure and one had been running it himself in the past. I had redrawn the dungeon maps and repopulated it with 5th edition NPCs and creatures that fit my homebrew setting, but I ran the town part essentially straight from the book. I had moved some inhabitants to different buildings, and to make it unclear which of the two inns was safe and which one is controlled by the cult, I turned one of them into a trade post and changed both their names.
    We spend three sessions investigating the town with the inn and temple and it was a blast to run. Though I think having some people in the group who knew that they were supposed to talk with random villagers to start gathering some clues probably helped a lot. As fun as this adventure is, it begins in a way that really is not suited to introducing completely new players to the game. But I think having a mixed group of veterans and beginners would also help, even if everyone goes into it completely blind.
    I always thought the descriptions of all the villagers was a total overkill and pretty much none of it was used when I ran the adventure the first time some six years ago. But this time I was much better prepared and the players were looking to talk to random NPCs, and having all that information really made it a breeze to play them. You get a few bits of personality, what their concerns are, and what they know about the situation. And that really makes it super easy to play out their interactions with the players. This has very much been a learning experience and I'm looking forward to see how this will affect my future preparation of NPCs for adventures.
    What I wasn't quite prepared for, and which the adventure has no advice on, is how to play charmed cultists that get captured and interrogated by the players. Sure they are charmed, but what does that really mean? They are magically compelled to regard the enchanter as a trusted ally, but simple villagers would not withstand persistent questioning by seasoned warriors. Do they just spill their beans and reveal everything they know? I kind of feel that it makes things to easy, but I really saw no reason why it shouldn't be that way.

    Something the adventure is regularly criticized for is that the original boss fight against a spirit naga is much too dangerous and that the adventure recommends the players getting help from the local wizard who knows a lot about what's going on but doesn't want to tell them, or two elf fighters who can serve as backup. The two elves never came up in this campaign because the party never got to their house or talked with the most gossipy NPCs. The wizard (reskinned as a witch) came in quite handy a couple of times, sharing a little bit of information and giving a second opinion about the magical enchantments on the cultists, but never offered and never was asked any help with fighting the cult.
    Not having run a 5th edition game before, I was a bit concerned about having two 2nd level and three 1st level PCs fight a Yuan-ti Malison at CR 3 with a few backup minions. But it turned out to be a walk in the park for them, which did not particularly surprise me, They still had huge numerical superiority. I really wanted the priestess to turn into a giant snake during the fight, which admittedly really didn't help her in the fight. It took her a full round to transform and mostly just resulted in her losing her ability to attack twice per round. Otherwise she might have been able to make six attempts at PCs instead of just two, but I doubt it would have changed anything meaningfully.

    The most meaningful change I made to the adventure is that I had the prisoners who resisted being charmed not be killed and thrown into a pool, but instead be taken away as slaves, which serves as one hook for further adventures. The second hook is that the cult seems to be responsible for raiding ships with goods destined for Finan's smuggling outfit, and there's a third hook of the warlock Alamar having visions that the serpents have mystical knowledge that he's interested in. So far the players have been quite happy with "doing the heroic thing", but since I intend to expand the campaign into a sandbox after this initial starting adventure I feel it's important to not just give them a single goal that I tell them to pursue.

    What really surprised me was that damn mask. Charm effects in 5th edition have a much shorter duration than they had in 1st edition so some homebrewing was required allow the leader of the cult to charm dozens of people for months. I could simply have given her a unique ability that allows her to do just that, but I already had the image for how she looks, and I just really love having enchanted masks as part of my setting's worldbuilding. So I created the golden mask, which is simply a reskin of regular eyes of charming, with the additional power that boosts the natural suggestion ability of yuan-ti to become a long-lasting charm effect. And that's really all there is to that thing.
    So five sessions into the campaign, the party gets their first magic item (actually second but they never checked the staff for magic) and they immediately get into heated debates that they should leave it alone. That never happened to me before. I think this actually resulted from Haren having already been established to be weary of dark magic and cursed objects. This goes all the way back since they found the bronze serpent idol under the inn. I think the player just thought it would be fitting that Haren would suspect the mask to be cursed, because it was worn by a mysterious telepathic priestess who turned into a giant snake. I don't think the player had real concerns that I would make their first magic item cursed. But with Alamar being greedy for magic and his player being quite bold with taking the lead, things just escalated from there quickly.
    With other players I might have intervened, but with these two I felt quite confident that they would both take each other's stubbornness in good sport with no hard feelings. I also really like the approach that when one PC turns against another, the other player has the sole call if that attempt can go forward and play out or not. Stealing a magic item from another character certainly would count as that. But in this case the item was not part of Haren's equipment and merely stored in his possession until they decided what to do with it, so it wasn't really stealing from another player. And I was told that Alamar's intention was to study the mask, not to keep it. So I judged this situation to not count as fighting within the party and let Alamar go ahead with it. However, even though the player notified me about the plan secretly, I spontaneously decided to play it out in the open. Even though the other characters never learned about it, I feel that it's better to have the cards out in the open with this. My impression of this group is that they enjoy collaboratively creating a story about conflict between the characters, but it does not have to be players secretly working against each other. I will see how this turns out in the long run, but I am feeling pretty good with how this went at this point.
    Last edited by Yora; 2020-05-14 at 02:13 PM.
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    Default Re: Inixon - Dwellers of the Isle of Dread (5th Ed.)

    Hey there Yora.
    I don't know most of the source material you are referencing (Except for Isle of Dread! I DMed that when I was about... 10 or 11 years old? I remember getting thrilled by The Rakasta and Aranea. The party died early on though, due to some bad random encounters with dinosaurs. They never got to explore more than about a third of the isle).

    However, I am enjoying reading your log and expereinces in 5e (I am also considering making the transition). I will be following this log, even though I may not have a lot to contribute.
    The group sounds like a fun one to have- resourceful, creative, and capable of having conflict between characters, but without it excalalting to a conflict between players.

    Looking forwars to reading more! Thanks! :)
    Last edited by Kol Korran; 2020-05-12 at 01:40 PM.

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

    It really has been super fun so far. Unfortunately two players could not make it yesterday so we're trying to reschedule for later this week. I can't wait to see what the players will be doing with the stuff I have prepared for the journey to the Isle of Dread.

    The players are indeed great. Though in addition to the five we have now, we also had five more, most of which dropped out right after their first session (and one even before that). The last one wasn't able to continue to completely unrelated reasons. This is the first time I've been trying to play with random people and it's been hugely succesful so far. There were two players I had some concerns about how well they would fit in with the rest of the group during their first sessions, but they both apparently got the same impression and dropped out after that. Now we've had the same five players for the last three games and they are working out great.
    It's a very small sample size, but I've long suspected that dysfunctional groups primarily come from GMs not setting a good precedent for what manners are expected. You got to set the tone and other players will align to that, and most things will work themselves out.

    I quickly realized during my preparations that the Isle of Dread actually is massive in size, at the scale of a moderately sized country, and that it really is amazingly easy to run a game with little preparation when you don't tie yourself to a script what the players have to do and how things need to play out. I used to prefer to have one game every two weeks, but with this setup I have I feel that I could easily run twice a week. It feels a lot more like entertainment for myself than doing work. So I'm seriously considering to expand the campaign to full West Marches mode with multiple and interchangeable groups, once this group has reached the Isle of Dread and I know when this semester will end.
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    Default Re: Inixon - Dwellers of the Isle of Dread (5th Ed.)


    Day 6: 16th Day, 7th Month, Year 507

    After resting in Orlane for a day, the group returned back to the cult hideout in the caves with the two rescued sailors Kevan and Nolin and their three goats. Haren, Alamar, and Ilmari went to set up an ambush for the sailors that were expected to arrive in the night to pick up the next shipment of slaves.

    With the moonless night being pitch black outside, they waited in the underground dock until they saw the light of a lantern approaching over the water. Alamar put on the purple robes of serpent headed staff of the priest to greet the four sailors that stepped out of the boat. When the leader of the sailors asked why they didn’t hang up the lantern to find them in the dark, Alamar told him that they were busy recapturing prisoners that had escaped from their cell. Which would get done much quicker if the sailors could help them with that. The leader of the sailors was not happy about the delay but sent one of his men back to their ship to get more people to help with the hunt.

    The sailor demanded to be taken to Garban and Alamar led the three men deeper into the cave where they were ambushed by Haren and Ilmari, who managed to overpower and capture them after a fierce struggle with the leader. When the boat returned with another load of sailors they repeated the same procedure and captured five of them alive, with only one dying in the fighting.

    After questioning some of their prisoners, Haren felt quite certain that these men where not more victims of some kind of enchantment, but rather regular pirates who had been hired to smuggle slaves, and that they should be dealing with them accordingly. They learned that the captain of the ship waiting outside was called Satar, which wasn’t one of the names they recognized from the letter they had found on a priest’s desk.

    Alamar suggested that they should be using the golden mask to charm one of the pirates to learn more information. Haren and Ilmari approved of this idea, but Haren insisted that Ilmari would be the one to use it. Unfortunately, the attempt to charm Satar failed, so Ilmari made him an offer that they would spare and release him if he cooperated with their questions. He admitted that he was working for another pirate leader named Mazdak, whom the priest Garban had been writing a letter to, and that they were delivering the slaves to another man called Tsorasz on Inixon near the pirates’ hidden base.

    Haren wasn’t happy that Ilmari had promised the pirate his freedom, but was determined to honor it. But all the other pirates were still guilty of raiding ships and helping in the kidnapping of slaves and would certainly be put to death if they handed them over the the elderman in Orlane. So he decided to take it on himself to behead them. The grim work was quickly done and the bodies burned on a pyre. Satar was allowed to leave without his weapons as promised.

    The next step of the plan was to capture the ship of the pirates and everyone got into their rowboat, including the sailors Kevan and Nolin and the three pack goats. When they reached the ship waiting outside the cave, Alamar shouted up to one of the remaining pirates that the caves where under attack and they had to flee immediately. When he climbed up the ladder to the deck with Haren and Ilmari, the leader of the remaining pirate asked who they were and where any of the other pirates were. With only three pirates and a big monkey on the deck, there was little need for further deception and a fight broke out immediately. More pirates and another monkey came up to join the fight from below, but they were all easily defeated. One of the pirates jumped for his life into the water, and as the fighting came to an end, Haren managed to capture one of the monkeys alive and put him into an empty fruit crate.

    Day 7: 1st Day, 8th Month, Year 507


    After a quick look over the ship, Kevan concluded that with the seven of them, they would be able to make it to the next port, but he didn’t want to dare sailing away from the coast without a full crew of sailors. So they set out to sail south to make a first stop in Abil to hire a crew.

    Day 9: 3rd Day, 8th Month, Year 507


    After three days of slow progress the ship finally made it to Abil, which turned out to be located inside an enormous sea cave. Kevan left to search the taverns for trustworthy sailors and Alamar excused himself for a few days to make some visits.
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    Default Re: Inixon - Dwellers of the Isle of Dread (5th Ed.)



    Day 11: 5th Day, 8th Month, Year 507

    Haren was selected to be the captain of their new ship and Kevan was able to find a crew of 8 trustworthy sailors in the taverns of Abil, as well as a Sui warlock who wanted to accompany them on the journey.

    Sagari: Noble triton warlock.

    Nolin pointed out that a group of sailors had been hanging around near their ship since shortly after they arrived and so Haren, Finan, Ilmari, went over to them to see what it was about. The sailors seemed to be interested in their ship, but appeared to have some of their concerns eased at the explanation that they just recently took the ship from some pirates. The sailors still told them that the weather seemed very fine for setting sail and that such an opportunity should not be wasted. Once the men returned to their new ship, the sailors returned to their spots on the crates and send one of them to make a report.

    Nolin wasn’t able to get any useful maps showing the precise location of Inixon. While the areas of Sulay closest to the mainland were pretty well charted, the locations of islands further out in the Endless Ocean was often nothing more than ruomor and guesswork. He guessed that the best shot at getting an accurate map would be in Tual, one of the few major ports among the countless of small islands.

    Day 12: 6th Day, 8th Month, Year 507

    With no more business in Abil, the ship set out the next morning to sail to Tual with the goals on getting some maps or other useful information about the specific location of Inixon.

    Day 13: 7th Day, 8th Month, Year 507

    Another ship was spotted in the distance, but it soon disappeared without getting closer.

    Day 17: 11th Day, 8th Month, Year 507

    5 days after leaving Abil and 11 days after leaving Orlane, the ship arrived in the notorious pirate haven of Tual. Instead of a real island, Tual turned out to be a group of rocky spires reaching out of the surrounding sea, covered in small wooden huts and connected by precarious walkways and bridges, with disturbingly large numbers of sharks in the waters below.


    After docking their ship, the group started to walk around town to search for hints regarding someone who might be able to provide them with the means to reach the mysterious island Inixon. They ended up in the Beached Whale, a large tavern build inside the hulk of an overturned cargo ship that had been thrown on the rocks in a typhoon many years ago. The first name they got was of a navigator named Juib who claimed to have to the Island several times, but he had disappeared recently, with rumours having that he’s been having some trouble with the Pirate Queen of Tual.

    There was also word on the street that a pirate captain named Kamar was planning to sail to Inixon in search of a treasure, and that he had been trying for quite some time to buy something from the merchant Perang, apparently unsuccessfully.

    Day 18; 12th Day, 8th Month, Year 507

    The next morning, Sagari took the group to the mansion of the Pirate Queen Farah on top of one of the rocky spires and use his connections with the Sui nobility of Sulay. The well armed and disciplined guards at the mansions gate let them through into a grand entrance hall, where an elderly servant was asking about their business. Sagari told them that they wanted to talk with Farah about Jiub, and unexpectedly the servant returned a minute later, ordering them to follow deeper into the mansion. Sagari and Alamar explained that they had business with Jiub and would like to negotiate for his release. While Farah wasn’t usually open to such requests, the arrival of strangers completely unknown in Tual happened to come at a very convenient time for her. She had a problem with Captain Kamar and wanted him gone from her port, but she couldn’t afford to risk her position of neutrality and respect among the other pirates in Sulay. But if Kamar ended up dead in one of the many common fights among pirates in Tual, nobody would be batting an eye. So the Pirate Queen proposed to them that if Kamar were to be permanently gone from Tual, she would release Jiub on the condition that they take him with them and he never returns to her port. A proposal that the group was willing to consider.

    While still considering what to do about Kamar, the group decided to make a visit to the mansion of Perang, to see what business the two men were having with each other. Perang had a spire all for himself, with a small dock at the base and a cargo elevator going to the house at the top. But with the elevator up and nobody in sight, they had to take the stairs all the way to the top. When they arrived at the gate of the mansion, they found three lazy thugs sitting in the sun at a small table, who never bothered to get up from their seats as the newcomers approached them. Only when they told the guards that they wanted to talk with Perang about Inixon did the largest of the trio send one of the others to get inside. A few minutes later a well dressed Fenhail man came from the house to ask them if they had been send by Kamar, and he still didn’t get the message that his master doesn’t want to trade with him. Alamar tried to explain that they had nothing to do with Kamar but were interested in the same purchase, but the servant told them that his master was not interested to sell to anyone and told them to leave. The group tried to play it tough and pointed out that those three thugs wouldn’t be able to make them, but the servant responded that they clearly had no idea whose house they had come to. Not wanting to start a fight over the this, they returned back to their ship to discuss their further plans.

    They decided to try and catch Kamar at the Beached Whale that evening, with Sagari trying to charm him and make him tell what he knows about the location of Inixon. If that failed, they could still try to have Finan and Ilmari shank him in a bar fight caused by Haren. When they made it to the Beached Whale, they found Kamar with some of his pirates sitting at a table, and Alamar put on a new face and walked over to them to ask to join them for a game. They were happy to offer him a seat and Sagari got in position at a nearby table. Unfortunately his attempt to charm the pirate captain failed and he gave the signal to the others to go ahead with the more direct approach.

    Haren started a fight at the bar and while everyone was distracted, Alamar used his Staff of the Adder to bite Kamar under the table. Unfortunately he only nicked his leg and didn’t manage to poison him. Finan and Ilmari moved up to stab him from behind while he was still distracted and getting up from his seat. As the whole taverns was descending into a brawl, Haren knocked out a sailor next to him and made his way over to his friends at the pirates’ table. Even after several hits from Finan and Ilmari, Kamar was still coming at them until Haren came to their help. Seeing the fierce fighting, Sagari decided to stay out of the fray but charmed two nearby sailors to go help his friends. Meanwhile Alamar was using his eldritch magic to make one of the pirates to drop dead in sheer terror. When the captain fell under the combined assault from Haren, Finan, and Ilmari, the remaining two pirates turned to make a run for the door. Kamar’s large bodyguard fell soon after and Ilmari managed to knock out the last pirate before he could get away. As he was struggling to drag the body towards the door, Haren simply threw him over his shoulders and they made their escape while Sagari filled the entire tavern room with heavy fog to cover their retreat.

    They took their prisoner to a nearby alley to wake him up, and as the pirate was still coming to Ilmari used the golden Mask of Charming, this time with success. The pirate was happy to tell them that Kamar had wanted to look for a treasure on Inixon and even had a map that supposedly could take them there, but they had been sitting in Tual for weeks while he was trying to get an object from the merchant Perang that would help them get passed the dangerous reefs around the island. After he helpfully told the group that there was currently only a handful of pirates on their ship, with most of them being in various taverns around the town, Haren quickly dispatched him from behind with his axe.

    Seeing an immediate opportunity, the group went straight to Kamar’s ship before any word got there about his death. While the rest of them were keeping out of the way among some crates, Alamar took on the face of the sailor they had just questioned and ran towards the ship, shouting to the pirates that their captain was in trouble and needed help. Not noticing the unknown voice on the familiar face in the dim light of a few lanterns, the leader told four of them to stay and guard the ship, while the rest of them started running towards the Beached Whale, with Alamar following behind them for a while to keep up the deception. Once they were out of sight, Haren, Finan, and Ilmari raced up the plank to the deck and killed the four pirates without any trouble. Sagari went to search the captain’s cabin and found both sea charts with the location of Inixon, as well as a treasure map and a chest with the pirates’ loot. Grabbing the maps and the chest, they turned over some barrels with lamp oil in the cargo hold of the pirate ship and set it on fire.



    "Smoke on the water... Fire in the sky."

    They returned to their own ship with their haul, with none of the pirates that had seen their faces left alive.


    And not a single pirate was fed to the sharks that day.

    --

    Once you start down the sandbox path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

    I've started running D&D 20 years ago, and this is the greatest campaign I've ever run. Or played. By a huge margin. This is what RPGs have always been promised to use to be.

    It's true, all of it!

    It always seemed somewhat unbelievable that sandbox games are not only supposed to be much easier to run, but also faster to prepare than fully written adventure scripts that are structured by scenes and encounters. But it really is. I slapped this campaign together on a whim and was ready to go within a week. To be fair, I am now using pretty much all the ideas I had over the years for a sandbox campaign at once, but as the people always say about these things "no preparation is ever wasted if the material goes unused". It might take a bit of time to get a starting pool of material, but after that there really is comparatively little work.
    And running these session feels like it takes almost no effort. It really isn't uncommon to have the players talk among themselves for 10 minutes and I busy myself with other stuff, only to pop back in when it seems they are coming to some kind of decision and have them tell me what they want to do. At no point do I need to worry "What should I do to fix things if they actually do this?", only for them to abandon that whole idea 5 minutes later while I am frantically building on my contingency.

    For Tual, I had all three adventure hooks prepared in advance. Try to get Jiub from prison, try to get the map from Kamar, and try to get whatever object Perang has. Visiting the Pirate Queen was something I had considered a possibility, but I didn't actually prepare anything for her mansion. The players had no reason to seek a fight with her and they wouldn't stand any chance to survive against her elite henchmen for more than a round or two. My entire preparation for her was to decide that she is willing to release Jiub if the players rid her of Kamar. They still could have getting Jiub from prison and get the map from Kamar without ever considering to visit her. (Though I had a contingency that she could come visiting them if something goes wrong with rescuing Jiub.)

    I had no idea that the players would decide to ambush Kamar in a tavern, or that they would get the idea to charm him to tell them what he knows about Inixon. Seeing the players come up with these things on the spot is a real joy. And I like their style. Burning the ship at the end was completely unnecessary.
    But I guess when the game is open ended, it's better to cover your tracks so nothing will come back to bite you in the butt.
    Last edited by Yora; 2020-05-24 at 06:10 AM.
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    Default Re: Inixon - Dwellers of the Isle of Dread (5th Ed.)

    Sounds like you had a blast!
    A long time ago I tried running a Seafaring/ Pirates themed sandbox game. The first two adventures had clear goals, but no set way to accomplish them:
    - In the first a famous pirate tests potential crews, in a sort of a find-the-hidden-treasure hunt in a series of small isles, against other groups.
    - In the second they got betrayed by the fsmous pirate, but also hunted by an inquisiton fleet force, and they had to escape the series of isles.

    The two adventures were spectacular, and the party did things I never expected. Some of our best games! But... as they escaped, I sought to enable them to pursue whatever adventure they wanted, provided various hooks and such, but the campaign faltered and stopped... I later realized that the players wanted some clear (or semi clear) goal, and some way to pursue it, and disliked "just sailing to seek adventure"... You seem to have thought about this, and prepared some direction in advance, to provide enough motive for exploration, while leaving enough freedom to explore and undertake interests on the way.

    Reading your log so far, ignited a desire to try something on similar lines to what I tried before. If I may, some questions?
    - I am contemplating between 5e, Pathfinder P6/P8, and... Dungeon world. (I've been exposed to it lately). Any thoughts? Especially from the GMs side.
    - part of your campaign takes place on ships. Are these just as means of transport, or do naval travel rules and naval combat come into play? If so, can you direct to a good one? I tried using 3.5 Stormwreck before and hated it, and read the PF Skull & Shackles AP naval rules and disliked them. Any recommendations?
    - Any particular system youll be using for the wilderness/ hex map exploration?

    Thanks, and please keep up the log! I'm enjoying it. :)

    1. Special projects:
    Campaign logs archive, Campaign planning log, Tactical mass combat Homebrew, A unique monsters compendium.
    2. My campaign logs:
    Three from a GM's POV, One from a player's POV. Very detailed, including design and GMing discussions.
    3. Various roleplay and real life musings and anecdotes:
    For those interested, from serious to funny!

    Thanks for reading!

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

    I once read somewhere how someone described a method to begin a sandbox game as "dropping the players off at the rail station". When you start a new campaign, the players may not know anything about the world except what information you wrote for them and they did not read. Even if it's set in an established world, the players don't know yet who the useful NPCs are that are worth talking to and what nearby locations are suitable and interesting to be explored at this point in their characters' careers. And most importantly, they don't know yet who their characters are. Some players might have written a backstory, but they usually wrote that without knowing much about the world and knowing anything about the other characters in the party.

    These are all important things that players need to take their own initiative and start doing things in the sandbox world. And they are also things that become much more apparent once they have played together for two or three sessions. Some ideas they had for characters get dropped unconsciously because they realize it conflicts with the rest of the party and most people with basic human skills instinctively try to avoid doing such things. So you begin the campaign with a straightforward quest. In this case Against the Cult of the Reptile God. "Here is a town, some people you know here have gone missing, and you're trying to find them." This is infinitely better than "You're all sitting in a tavern, you can talk to each other if you like."

    Despite the expression "rail station", this first adventure does not have to be a railroad. In the case of this campaign, the players know they need to get from the mainland to the Isle of Dread, but in most sandbox game the starting town can be located inside the sandbox. The starting quest can end in completely unexpected ways because the players come up with crazy ideas, or they can even just abandon it when something else catches their attention. The goal of the starting quest is not to finish the quest, but just give the players something to do until they start having their own goals. When they have found something they want to do, it has served its purpose.

    Against the Cult of the Reptile God was a pretty straightforward affair, though the way this adventure is designed the initial sessions inside the town can play out in all numbers of completely unexpected ways. The dungeon will end with the cult leader fighting to the death, but trapping all the enchanted thralls in their sleeping rooms was entirely the idea of the players.

    Now Tual has turned out to be a much more open environment, but I still gave the players their main goals: Free the navigator from prison, get the maps from Kamar, and get the Magic Conch from Perang. Only getting the maps or the navigator would have been enough to reach the Isle of Dread. I always assumed the players would try getting all three things, and I believe the players think they are supposed to. But they could also just take one and leave the Magic Conch entirely. That would also work. The Pirate Queen wanting the players to kill Kamar was intended as a backup in case the players screw up in the prison and get themselves captured. That they would go talk to her to negotiate for the navigator was a possibility I had considered, but I didn't have anything planned for that. Starting a tavern brawl and drawing the pirates away from their ship with Alamar's illusion ability was completely unexpected. As was torching the ship.
    Tual does not really qualify as a sandbox, but it's certainly a small open world.

    When they reach the Isle of Dread, I am actually working hard already to get the players waned from the idea that they have to find and defeat the masters of the Reptile Cult. Their main priority seems to be that they want to rescue the slaves, so I will make this goal very easy to complete. I could take some of those slaves and put them right in the throne room of the Big Bad Evil, but then the whole campaign would probably end up the players trying to finish the starting quest. Similarly, the masters are working on something, but it's nothing time sensitive that would be a disaster if the players don't stop it. Otherwise they will once again head straight for the throne room. In hindsight, having a high ranking servant of the masters in the first dungeon was not a good idea. It would have been better if the naga only have a small base on the beach of the Isle of Dread and are basically wiped out when the players arrive to rescue the slaves. And then the big bads on the island would be a completely different group. But I guess we'll see how all this plays out in the end.

    Regarding rules, I found D&D 5th edition quite a joy to run so far. Being mostly a 3rd Edition and Pathfinder player and GM and really not fond of that system, I found 5th edition to be much more simple to run and especially prepare. Though I think the main draw for me are the Warlock class and the Cleric domains. They both have a style that really calls to my kind of fantasy.
    For all the exploration and travel stuff, I am pretty much completely throwing out what optional suggestions 5th edition has and almost straight up use the little 1981 Expert Rules. That's the way exploration and travel in D&D were supposed to be. It's a small book with relatively simple rules, and when you read it suddenly everything makes sense about encumbrance, random encounters, morale, and hireling loyalty. Later edition tried to have encumbrance as some addon that no longer served a purpose, and had random encounters without understanding what they are meant to do. I really can't recommend the Expert Rules enough. All these systems that are not about combat are still great and fit together with other D&D editions with very little issue. The only thing I feel is really important to remember is that this whole interdependent systems of multiple mechanics only works when used together as a whole, and it only works if experience point from fighting enemies is only marginal. If fighting is the main source of combat, then random encounters are not an obstacle but a present of easy XP. Even better to go with XP for hauling home treasure, because then encumbrance and resource management really becomes a thing.
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    Default Re: Inixon - Dwellers of the Isle of Dread (5th Ed.)



    Day 18: 13th Day, 8th Month, Year 507

    The next morning the group returned to the mansion of the pirate queen Farah, while across the harbor smoke was still rising from the burned masts and charred piers. She wasn't too pleased with the disturbances of last night, but Kamar was dead with nothing to point towards any involvement by her or her henchmen. So she handed them a splint of bamboo wood with half of Jiub's name of it, telling them to take it to the Lockbox where he would be released to them. When asking Farah's servant who was escorting them back outside, they were told to simply ask any of the sailors down by the water for directions, as anyone in Tual would be able to tell them the way to the Lockbox.

    After crossing half the town, they came to the end of the wooden walkways and bridges, where they were pointed to a nearby rocky island with steep cliffs on all side. Taking a rowboat across the water they arrived at a small deserted dock and climbed up shaky wooden stairs to a heavy door reinforced with bronze. On their knocking the door was opened and they presented their bamboo splint to the scruffy looking guards. After checking it with the other half they had in a small office nearby, the leader of the guard told them to take the elevator down to the prison, where another guard would take them to Jiub's cell.

    At the bottom of the elevator they found the prison to be completely silent with only a single sputtering oil lamp providing any kind of light. Taking out their own lanterns they went to go looking for the guard but came upon two prisoners who told them they had been left alone in the darkness without food and only the water they had for probably days, after they had heard screams further down in the prison. Claiming that they had just been taken to the prison only days ago for snooping around where they were not supposed to, they got the group to let them out of their cells and join them in finding out what was going on.

    Deeper into the dark dungeon they came upon several dead prisoners locked in their cells, which had apparently died only recently, but without visible causes. Alamar was peeking inside one cell and tried to reach to the person on the floor with his telepathic powers, which causes the prisoner to start screaming and jump to his feet, Other cells that had not been locked were thrown open and several escaped prisoners came charging at the group with clubs and knives. Three of them were quickly disabled with a sleep spell and the other two knocked out with little trouble. Once they woke up again safely secured in cells, the group began to question them and discerned from their ramblings that the prison was in complete chaos with people fighting for their lives.

    As they continued to explore the dungeon, they came upon more dead prisoners both inside cells and in the hallways, but also some that were still breathing but otherwise showed no signs of life. Eventually they arrived at a cell were a man was lying on the claw surrounded by three small creatures looking like horribly starved and diseased monkeys, running their claws over his body. Alamar tried to shot them with magic, but they quickly hurried away into the shadows outside the light of the lanterns and disappeared. In a nearby cell they found a small hole that seemed to have been dug through the wall, but none of them was inclined to try crawling into it.

    When the group discovered four dead men who had been killed by blades and stripped of most of their clothing, two more of the small creatures jumped from their hiding places and tried to reach for Alamar's and Fhareza's lanterns. Alamar managed to pull his lantern away, but Fhareza's was thrown to the ground, causing it to break and igniting the spilled oil. But quickly the two creatures were slain and the group discovered Jiub alive and reasonably well in a nearby cell. They told him that they wanted to sail to Inixon and that they heard he had taken ships there before, and he was more than willing to take them there in exchange for his freedom. As they continued to explore the dungeon, they heard a deep and rumbling voice calling them. Two huge hands appeared grabbing the iron bars of the small window in the door of a cell, and as Alamar raised his lantern, the large head of an ogre came into sight. The ogre claimed that his name was Hai and that he had been in a fight with some of Farah's henchmen. Since there was nowhere for him to hide on Tual he let himself be taken to the Lockbox, and made no attempt to break out of his cell since he couldn't leave the island port without a ship. He promised to serve the group if they could take him out of the prison and away from the island.

    The group returned to the elevator but got no response when they shouted for the guards above to get them back up. Hai gave Haren a lift to reach the whole in the ceiling and he managed to scale the shaft to the top, getting the others back up after him with the elevator. They discovered that the men they had met when they first came to the Lockbox were gone, and so was the boat with which they had arrived. Even though the next island was nearby, the waters throughout Tual were infested with sharks of all sizes that were feeding on the many bodies being thrown into the harbor. But Sagari was able to use the bond his people had with the creatures of the sea to convince the shark to let him swim towards the next island without attacking him. Once he got another boat he returned to the Lockbox to ferry over the rest of the group and they quickly made their way back to their ship to plan their next move.

    --

    This one turned out to be rather rough.

    When I ran Against the Cult of the Reptile God for a second time last month, it worked out fantastic, much better than the first time. Running Escape from Meenlock Prison a second time today did not. It wasn't all awful, but it was nowhere what the concept of the adventure was promising. A good deal of it does fall straight to me, no doubt about that. Given the complexity of the dungeon I had redrawn, I was using a full floorplan map for the whole thing again, and these things just never work for me in Roll20. Players keep running of in all possible corridors at the same time, and as always I failed to tell them to stop and do things orderly, and instead kept jumping around, trying to deal with all off them simultaneously. We had two completely new players today and I really should have paid much more attention to not letting some of the older players dominate the whole thing. The dungeon for next week will require a somewhat detailed map again, and I will try to get the hang of managing these things one more time.
    It wasn't awful, but I think I performed very poorly this session.

    Another mistake was that I had assumed this would be once again only four or five players, but instead all seven actually showed up. I was thinking that keeping with the sandbox approach, I should not adjust the dungeon to the party composition of the day and simply let them run free with the additional options and staying power this provides. But two meenlocks against four 3rd level characters, one 2nd level character, and two 1st level characters doesn't work. They barely survived for half a round. I was considering sending in more reinforcement, but then the fight was already over and I intended to just set up another larger ambush. But in the chaos of the whole situation it didn't seem a good time when the opportunity came up and then they also had two NPCs joining their party, so I never got to that.

    But I think there also is a flaw inherent to the concept of this adventure. This whole adventure seems to be designed around a single setpiece encounter. But when you make the dungeon nonlinear and that first encounter doesn't turn out as expected, the whole thing breaks down very easily. The whole thing looks really cool on paper with great potential, but that super creepy fight is something that might happen or not, depending on how the dice fall and what seems like smart behavior for everyone involved in the specific situation that has build up during the adventure so far. And if that encounter does not result in a bang, then the rest of the adventure really has very little to offer.
    I tried to prepare and script this thing in great detail over several weeks, and it just didn't work out. In contrast, the week before I made up a bar fight and a ship fight from nothing because the players spontaneously decided to have them and they were one of the big highlights of the whole campaign so far. I would even say the greatest session I've experienced in all my years as either a GM or player.
    Setpieces seem seductive, but they are betting everything on one card, and if that doesn't work out the whole thing is pretty meh. In contrast, with open ended and unscripted adventures, you just set up pieces and see what happens. Much of it will turn out to be pretty pedestrian stuff that isn't really memorable, but occasionally something great will come from them unexpectedly. And an average encounter that doesn't leave much of an impression does not feel like a disappointment when there is no expectation that its going to be a big awesome thing.

    This session did not turn out great, but I think I still learned quite a lot from it.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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

    First, thanks for your reply to my questions. I need to read the 5e DM's book more. I have sooo little time.
    As to The Expert rules. I played with those, back in the day... (I'm almost 41 YO now). I used those extensively in the adventures/ campaigna I created then, though I don't remember much, except the players got lost... a lot... I'll need to reread those. (Sigh... I have no idea when).

    As to your comments regarding the last session, with the meanlock prison:
    - It's very hard to create a small scope set piece (such as an encounter or an NPC) to work as imagined (even the boss who turned into a snake in your first adventure). Oddly enough, it's easier to invoke a certain feel from an adventure, an arch or campaign, because those have multiple opportunities, and you can adjust and reshape concepts.
    - Another thing I notice you talk about (possibly without referring to it as such) is letting go of control as a DM. D&D puts a lot of the onus of the game on the DM, and as such many DMs feel pressured, and try to control how the game will run and more. When I came back to DMing after a long hiatus some years ago, I implemented a rule where "players roll all the dice". I originally did so in order to reduce the number of dice roll and math I had to do, and enable me to keep my head on running the situation and scene, but it had an utterly unexpected result- by making all dice rolls utterly open, and telling the DCs upfront, I wasn't able to fudge. (And though I lied to myself previously telling me I fudged only very rarely, I quickly became how much I did fudge... the lies we tell ourselves). And... trivial stuff became hard, hard stuff became easy, and more...
    Many unexpected things happened.
    At first I was very much alarmed, and partly panicked- I was losing control! I will I deal with what happend? But... to my suprise, I also enjoyed it immensely, and it made me think and prepare my adventures differently, better. It made me a better DM, made the game a WHOLE lot better, and proved a great deal of fun!

    It was a great lesson to me. And it seems to you as well?

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



    Day 19: 13th Day, 8th Month, Year 507

    The group decided to follow up a lead that the merchant Perang had a daughter who was working in a tavern in a remote part of the harbor, and that her mother was from Inixon. The idea was to hang around the tavern for a while and let people overhear that they are planning to sail to Inixon and hoping that she would approach them about it. When they started trying to make some more obvious hints to the woman working behind the bar, she became worried and disappeared into the back rooms and said something to a big man working in the tavern.

    Finan went around the tavern to see if she would come out at the back, and Alamar and Fhareza hung around on the street to keep watching the front door, while the rest returned to the ship. A while later, three men from the tavern approached Alamar and Fhareza to warn them that they are having an eye on them and don’t appreciate them them snooping around the tavern. Alamar dragged Fhareza along to do some more searching behind the tavern, where they were discovered by several men who told them they had been warned to stay away. Alamar and Fhareza made a run for it, and after shaking their pursuers returned to the ship as well.

    As they had planned to rob Perang’s house and leave the port the same night, before someone came looking for them about the killings in the Lockbox, it was decided to forget about talking with the daughter and instead come up with a new plan. Finan, Ilmari, and Fhareza went to hide at the bridge connecting to Perang’s island and ambushed two of his guards as they left the house at sunset. They quickly took them back to their ship, which was already anchored nearby, and Sagari had the others put him into a locked room on the ship with one of the prisoners. He charmed the prisoner as he was waking up and told him that someone had captured them to get information about Perang’s house, but he didn’t know anything about it. The charmed prisoner was easily convinced to draw a simple map of the main floor of the mansion that they could give to their captors.

    With this new information, they returned to the rocky island and broke into a locked door at the docks, that looked to have been unused for years, and was presumably leading up to the kitchen’s basements near the top of the spire. At the top of the first stairs they came to a small room that had a little bit of moonlight come in through tiny windows with iron bars, when suddenly everything became pitch black and they were attacked by small flying creatures jumping them from the ceiling. Two of them grabbed on to Sagari’s and Finan’s heads and tried to strangle them, while Haren and Ilmari were successfully fighting off two more of them in the darkness. As the creatures were getting hit by their blades, the darkness lifted and they were revealed as dark gray flying squids with long tentacles. After a dangerous fight in which darkness filled the room a second time and Sagari was quite severely beaten up, three of the creatures were killed and the last one escaped through the window into the night.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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



    Day 19: 13th Day, 8th Month, Year 507

    As the group ascended further up the abandoned basement stairs, they were attacked by an undead creature in rotted robes with Sui tattoos on its face. After slaying it, they reached a heavy locked door that had been scratched by claw marks. Even when the door was unlocked, it was blocked by something on the other side, but Haren was able to slowly push away a stack of crates without toppling them, allowing them entrance into the larder of the kitchens of Perang's mansion.

    Using the map drawn by the captured guard, they made their way to stairs leading up to Perang's private rooms without encountering any guards. At the top of the stairs they arrived at a rooftop garden with a large water pool in the center and several doors leading to rooms in the upper story. Finan and Ilmari sneaked up on two guards and attempted to knock them out, but it took a sleep and dissonant whispers spell from Sagari and Alamar to take them out with little noise. The two guards were tied up and dragged into the bushes growing at the edge of the roof garden, which caused several thorny plants to come to live and attack them. Even with their small size, their large numbers allowed them to land several hits on Haren before they were ultimately destroyed.

    Finan picked a lock on a door leading to a library, where they found the magic conch they were looking for, as well as a large green gem and a strange tome bound in black shark leather sitting on a shelf. Searching the rest of the room came up with a chest with money and gems, as well as tools for making poison and forging documents.

    A second door led into the main living room of Perang where four small mist creatures appeared out of a small fountain in the center of the room. While fighting the creatures, another door flew open with Perang charging into the room, but Finan had gone to hide behind the door and fell upon him with Ilmari coming to his help. After a short fight, the master of the mansion was killed, and as he fell to the ground his hair disappeared and his head turned into a featureless gray face with blank white eyes. Everyone soon figured out that this creature had killed the real Perang some time ago and hid its body in the disused basement, where it had been roaming around as an undead ever since. The bedroom was filled with large wardrobes and chests that held a wide range of different clothes and outfits, as well as more of Perang's money.

    Before leaving the place, the group checked out the other door leading from the garden and found the room of Perang's steward, who quickly surrendered after a short fight, and whose answers to their questioning indicated that the creature must have had replaced the real Perang many years ago.

    With the magic conch in their possession and loaded with Perang's gold, silver, and jewels, they retreated back down the disused basement stairs, avoiding the guards guarding the mansion's main entrance. Their ship was already waiting nearby, and as soon as they had climbed on board, they headed out to sea and setting course to Inixon.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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



    Day 24: 2nd Day, 9th Month, Year 507

    On the fifth day of the journey through the Southern Islands, the mountains and jungle covered shores of Inixon appeared in the distance in the afternoon. As the ship slowed down to carefully navigate the reefs around the island, a sailor called out creatures in the water swimming alongside the ship. Suddenly the ship was janked sharply to the right and then pulled back hard to the left, coming to a very sudden stop that threw many of the sailors to their feet. A heavy cloud was forming right above the masts and Alamar was send below the deck to get the magic conch shell they had taken from Perang's mansion in Tual. A dozen humanoid fish creatures started climbing up the sides of the ship armed with spears and jagged knives. Alamar appeared with the shell and blew into it, which caused the fish men to turn their heads and step back from their intended attack on the sailors.

    Sagari stepped forward to talk with them in the language of water spirits, and the leader of the fish men told them that they would not kill and eat everyone on the ship because they had blown the magic shell, but they still needed to pay the sacrifice in blood. It was quickly decided to bring up one of the goats they had taken from the cult lair in Orlane, which was then killed and thrown into the water by the leader of the fishmen. On that signal all the fishmen jumped back into the water, the cloud above the ship disappeared in the wind, and the ship continued its journey towards the nearby island.

    Not long after, a strange sound could be heard on the wind and the ship changed directions. Alamar suddenly started walking towards the front of the ship but Haren managed to catch him before he could throw himself into the water. The sounds came from sharp rocks reaching out of the water ahead, and Sagari send his water drake familiar to dive into the sea to see what might be causing the sounds. In the water around the rocks were three sirens with long sea serpent tails whose singing had clearly been affecting Alamar and some of the sailors. Realizing that their ship wasn't being pulled to the rocks, someone pushed Jiub away from the rudder and turned it back towards the safe passage before they crashed into the reef.

    With their luring song having been foiled, the sirens jumped out of the water flew towards the ship on huge wing-like fins. Sagari used his magic to force one of the sirens to flee from the ship at the start of the fight and in a fierce fight the other two sirens were killed. With the port on Inixon already becoming visible ahead, it was decided to hang the two sirens from the masts as trophies instead of throwing them back into the water.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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



    Day 24: 2nd Day, 9th Month, Year 507

    When the ship reached the Sui town Mora, several warriors with spears and war paint where already at the docks watching their arrival. The locals seemed friendly enough, but the warriors asked about their business and were told that the group was searching for old ruins. They went to see the chief of the town but where told to come back in the morning, and so they went to have a look at the town’s trade post that was run by a friendly mainlander named Zeb, who was able to provide them with some basic information about the island. Being far from any sea routes, Inixon didn’t see much traffic from ships passing through, and even the Sui tribes had only started settling on the island a few generations ago. There were some ruins in the jungle that most people didn’t pay much attention to, and in recent months there had been some pirates in the area south of the island, which was why the Sui warriors were a bit more cautious about visitors than usual.

    Day 25: 3rd Day, 9th Month, Year 507

    The next morning the group returned to the house of Chief Dura, presenting gifts of two golden cups they had taken from Perang’s mansion and an expensive wine they bought from Zeb. They told the chief that they had come to Inixon to search for ruins and showed him a copy of Kamar’s treasure map that did not show the treasure’s location. The chief’s son recognized the small islands that were shown on the map and showed them their location on their navigational charts, which didn’t show these parts of the Southern Islands in much detail.

    After leaving the chief’s house, the group walked to the nearby temple of the Sui not far into the jungle. They were unable to hire one of the Shaman’s apprentices to help them on their expedition, but stocked up on healing potions and antitoxins.

    Soon after, they returned to their ship to begin their search for the hidden treasure.

    Day 26: 4th Day, 9th Month, Year 507

    Later in the day, the ship reached the small island off the coast South from Inixon and spotted the distinctively shaped rocky hill that was drawn on Kamar’s map. Sagari send his sea drake Jawa to fly over the island and search for signs of habitation, and he soon spotted a large ship in the waters on the other side of the island. Sagari told him to go and take a closer look, and after a short wait determined that it looked very much like a pirate ship, heading North to Inixon. With the ship not being able to spot theirs, and currently heading away, it was decided to first look for the treasure that was almost at hand, and follow the other ship’s course later.

    Haren, Alamar, Ilmari, and Sagari took a boat to the island and after a short search discovered a small and simple doorway made from three heavy stone blocks, that lead into the hill. Inside the doorway was a small cave that had some old scattered bones in it, so Jawa turned himself invisible to search the passage leading deeper into the earth. Roots from the jungle above were growing through the ceiling and along the walls, and Jawa discovered several moldy skeletons that were tangled up in the dense roots. Tugging at the leg of a skeleton made it come to life and swipe at Jawa, which made him quickly return to the entry cave. Four creatures consisting of tangles of bones, roots, and mold came shuffling from the passage and Haren stepped forward to stop them as they emerged from the tight and narrow tunnel. They were easily felled but kept getting back to their feet and continuing their attacks until an ice spell from Ilmari and some burning oil proved successful in destroying them, making the others retreat back into the darkness.

    The group carefully continued their journey into the small passages that were covered in tree roots and had many small shelves cut into their walls, some of which held old crumbling skeletons. They encountered more of the bone and root creatures that tried to ambush them from both sides, but were soon fought off, with the survivors retreating again into the tangled maze. Eventually they reached another doorway of big stone blocks that was blocked by crumbling and moldy wooden planks. Haren tried to kick them apart, but got covered in a cloud of poisonous mold. Ilmari used his ice magic to destroy the mold covering the planks and the doorway and they continued into the next chamber. Sitting on a stone throne was the skeleton of a tall humanoid creature with a fanged inhuman head. In it’s hands it held an old sword and large yellow stone. After Alamar checked the throne and the skeleton for magic, only the sword and the stone turned out to be enchanted. Haren carefully approached the skeleton and not taking any risk chopped off the skeleton’s hand with his axe before reaching for the sword. When nothing happened, Jawa picked up the stone from the skeleton’s other hand and handed it to Sagari. Everyone agreed to take a rest in the chamber with the throne before attempting the return back the entrance of the tomb.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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



    Day 26: 4th Day, 9th Month, Year 507

    After returning from the crypt, it was decided to take the ship northwest to search for the presumed pirate ship that had been spotted by Sagari's familiar Jawa earlier. In the evening they discovered another group of small islands some distance off the coast of Inixon, where Jawa spotted the ship again, docked in a large camp sitting between the beach and a steep cliff. Using his ability to turn invisible, he searched the camp further and found a fenced off area where several prisoners from both the local tribes and the mainland were being kept.

    A plan was made to wait for nightfall and then have Jawa take some spare weapons from the ship and drop them outside the huts of the prisoners. Meanwhile the ship was kept out of sight behind one of the islands while Haren, Alamar, Ilmari, and Sagari took small boats and the ogre Hai, and six of their sailors to land on the beach outside the sight of the guard towers.

    Sagari attempted to use his magic to put two men working at the forge to sleep, but when only one of them was taken out, Ilmari quickly ran up to silently kill the other without waking the nearby sleeping guard beasts. Alamar teleported up to one of the guard towers and killed the sentry as well. They then proceeded further into the camp and managed to kill three more pirates and two guard beasts with only little noise, and signalled their crew to move up. They began looking into some of the small huts and managed to kill several more pirates before the noise woke up others that had already gone to sleep, but they had already killed a dozen of the pirates before their attack grew into a full out battle.

    As more and more pirates appeared from their huts and came running from many directions and more guard beasts charged at them, Sagari decided that it was time to use the magic gem they had taken from Perang's house in Tual, and threw it into the water to summon an elemental. In the chaos, the prisoners took up the weapons they had been given and started to break through the fence that held them. Some particularly mean pirates who had put on their armor emerged from some huts that were build into the side of the cliff, and Haren climbed up a ladder to fight them. Sagari cast an illusion on the pirate shouting orders, who began trying to fight off an imaginary fire elemental, causing the men behind him to fall back and remain stuck on the narrow walkway. So Haren turned around to face some pirates on the walkway behind him.

    One the other side of the cliff, a woman with a staff and white face paint came from one of the huts, casting magic at the escaping prisoners that were joining into the fight below her. Alamar climbed on the roof of a larger house and began shooting her with magic, and Ilmari took up his bow to help take her down. Meanwhile the water elemental that Sagari had summoned turned towards the ship to prevent it from leaving, causing some of the remaining pirates to foolishly jump into the water to escape. When the battle started to come to an end, Haren charged back towards the pirate leader, who attempted to make an escape by climbing up the roof of his hut and jump to other huts behind it. Haren managed to corner him while Alamar and Ilmari assaulted him with magic and arrows. When the leader fell, some pirates that attempted to break out of a cave within the cliff gave up and the fight and asked to surrender.

    (Wow, where do all those views come from?)
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    Default Re: Inixon - Dwellers of the Isle of Dread (5th Ed.)

    Sounds like a fun infiltration (partly at least) and following battle! Your group souns like they are playing smart, with recon and pretty good stealth approach! They did something similar at the first adventure as well...

    Can you add the map locals key tonehere they've been, perhaps as spoilers? I happen to have thebold module (in Hebrew, but still). It can help figure out their progress, with your story.

    And thanks for keeping posting this! :)

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

    This is a prettier recreation of the original map from The Isle of Dread that someone made.
    This is my own spices up version of the map that I made for my own campaign.

    The original B/X adventure has 41 pirates in the lair and I was curious how such a thing would play out in 5th edition. But I ended up making it 1 veteran, 1 priest, 2 bandit captains, 6 scouts, 4 spies, 10 thugs, 18 bandits, and 6 worgs to have more variety. It turned out to be quite a slog, and the whole thing from first finding the place to defeating the pirates took us 4 hours.
    The players apparently had a blast with it, but I thought it was pretty dull once the big fighting broke out. When we got to the point where the serious threats were taken out, I stopped rolling for the fighting between pirates and escaped prisoners, as there seemed to be little point in spending more time on that.

    Wasn't the greatest session of the campaign yet, and for myself it wasn't terribly interesting. But I think for the players it will still be remembered as one of the highlights of the campaign.

    Originally I planned to make this a jungle exploration campaign with two small pirate encounters. But all by itself, it turned into a pirate hunting campaign quite quickly.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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



    Day 27: 6th Day, 9th Month, Year 507

    After having defeated the pirates, Ilmari went to talk with the freed prisoners. They told him that most of them were fishermen who had been caught by the pirates, but apparently the people who had the pirates hunting for slaves didn't want them to draw attention to their home base and so the pirates kept them in their camp instead. The other prisoners still at the pirate camp had been left there because they were not healthy enough for whatever their masters were needing them for.

    Meanwhile Alamar and Haren interrogated the four pirates who had surrendered, who told them that their captain had made regular trips to the main island to deliver the slaves they had captured or were transporting from the cult outpost on the mainland. Not wanting to risk the prisoners causing them any trouble in the future, the two executed all four of them.

    After searching the camp and the pirates stores for anything useful, it was decided to give the second pirate ship that was docked at the pier to the fishermen so they could return to their villages. An offer to join in the hunt for the pirates' masters was declined.
    Since they were not certain that all the pirates had been killed and there could still be more out there, the whole camp was then set on fire and burned down completely.

    The next morning the ship headed northeast to search for the place the captured slaves had been delivered to. When they came close to the location indicated by the interrogated pirates on a map, Haren, Alamar, Ilmari, and Sagari took a boat to the beach to scout ahead on foot. As they were trying to cross a muddy river flowing from the forest into the sea, they were attacked by an enormous crocodile. It managed to land a hard strike on Ilmari, but was quickly killed by Haren and Alamar.

    Continuing along the beach, the group soon spotted a small bay with several ancient white marble ruins that still showed some signs of the architecture of the ancient Naga. The ground had been dug up and huge piles of earth were surrounding the ruins. Sagari sent out Jawa to scout out the area, who spotted a group of frog men digging in the ruins and half a dozen armed reptilian humanoids patrolling the area. There were also several tunnel entrances in the surrounding hill sides, which raised the possibility of much larger numbers of warriors being present inside.

    Sagari and Ilmari sneaked forward along the edge of the jungle and ambushed two of the patrolling serpentmen with a sleep spell. Sagari then created an illusion of a small shack around the two prisoners to fool them into believing they had been taken far away from the ruins while they were out. The first of the two prisoners refused to say anything to his captors and did not respond to any intimidations from Ilmari and Haren, so they killed him to get the other one to talk. Alamar telepathically whispered into the mind of the captive that he was an allied servant of the Naga and managed to convince him to tell his captors what they wanted to know, as it would make an ambush waiting for them more believable. He told them that there was a Naga in charge of the camp, and about a dozen serpentmen warriors, as well as numerous slaves who were doing the excavation. Feeling confident that they would be able to deal with these forces if an open battle broke out, and convinced that the reptilian slavers were cruel and heartless masters, they killed the second prisoner as well and went to make plans for entering the ruins.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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