Against the Idol of the Sun: A 5e high-level campaign log

[J-H]

Thanks!

It's kind of a tanky AOE damage-based patron... in theme with kaijus being pretty tanky and dealing lots of damage to everything around them.
I have it as a PWYW on DM's Guild, but here's what it has:
-Damage resistance from all sources equal to Con modifier
-Expanded spell list focused around elemental damage, earthquakes, and knocking things around (Bigby's Hand).
-6th level: 1d10 to one attack roll or saving throw once per SR (similar to other warlocks)
-10th level: 45' cone roar dealing thunder damage to creatures and objects; hostiles in the roar must also save or be frightened.
-14th level: 30' radius destructive aura, 4d10, 1 minute, 1/LR. Can give PB # of creatures advantage on the save against this damage to partially protect the party.

[J-H]

Session 14: 7/24/2021

Player-facing recap:
Everyone made it!
The party decides to work on raiding/destroying the temple of Tezcatlipoca, which is halfway across the map, with Aaracokra territory in the way. They decide to thread the needle between a triangle of Aaracokra cities, searching along the way.

They find a shrine with a snake twisted around a pole in the middle of a suspiciously regular item. They rest there safely, find 3 healing potions, and Ssword likes it there.

Moving on, the group continues to head northeast, finding some kind of Aaracokra operation with a couple of big gashes in the ground and buildings around it. It is bypassed and the group continues on northeast. They find a damaged nest that apparently belonged to wasps the size of dogs at some point in the past. Ratel (monk), Teador (paladin), and Dmitri (barbarian) go down to investigate, while Reybella (cleric) and Malamir(artificer) stay in the air. Dmitri’s sense of divine creatures pings, and Reybella and Malamir’s perception checks let them pick up on the general presence of some invisible flying somethings. Five pretty agile Aaracokra Slayers, each dual-wielding short swords, attack; their invisibility drops on their first attack.
I have them split into two initiative blocks and roll dual 20s (= 26 total) so all 5 go before the party does. They do some substantial damage with 4 attacks per round, and have some elemental resistances.
After 2 rounds, a couple of higher level priests arrive, using Firestorm a couple of times, Harm, and then a few other spells that don’t land very well.
2 rounds later, a couple of mid-level priests also arrive.
The party ends up killing all enemies except two of the priests (one Word of Recalls out).

None of the PCs outright die, but it’s pretty close. Dmitri uses his barbarian features to avoid going down at 0hp, and a couple of the others get down to single digit HP. Reybella pumps out a lot of healing with mass cure spells, probably 80-100hp per PC over the course of the fight. That made a huge difference.
Ratel used Stunning Strike for the first time ever, stunlocking one of the slayers into oblivion.
There are a good number of critical hits on both sides of the fight.
Dmitri stabs enough slayers and priests to death to get Ssword a little bit of an upgrade, with its mental stats slightly improved and its telepathy now extended to a 30’ range.

At the end of the fight, the group loots the area and boogie on to the northeast.
The artificer leaves his homunculus bird behind to see what happens; the Aaracokra do come and clean up the area.
The party travels for the next half of the day with nothing happening, and settles down for a long rest the next hex over…but I tell them to not actually take/apply the rest yet.

Non-player facing recap:
“Let’s fly through the middle of enemy territory across trade routes investigating everything while on our slow magic brooms and being very distinctive!”

+1 point on Ssword’s development chart for bringing him to a shrine to Sseth.

The party found an Aaracokra gem mine, but bypassed it. At this point I rolled random encounters, and got a 1 (regular encounter) and for this hex a 2, which meant Aaracokra patrol. The regular encounter was just some air elementals. Since the party is not in an air-skiff, the elementals ignored them as they moved out of the elemental’s path.

The group is very distinctive (nobody else on the continent is rocking Iron Man armor and flying brooms), so I had the patrol just hang back at a distance/high altitude. I set a DC 20 Perception check to spot them, and nobody made it on their pre-rolled scores, or on the Perception check for searching the next hex…

This was an on-the-fly call, and I think the right one since they were within 30 miles of Aaracokra cities. With the distinctiveness and failure of a previous strike team, some of the elite Slayers get called in. They are CR 14 (AC 20/HP150, Multiattack +12 for 1d6+14, heal 1hp each time they damage an enemy, elemental resists, minor blessings from Aaracokra gods). They attack from invisibility. I have priestly backup with 2 senior priests arriving later (following at a distance to not be spotted) and then two more War Priests later.
The War Priests really should have been there first. The +2d8 on each attack from Holy Weapon would have been pretty big for the Slayers, since they get 3 attacks with their main weapon.

There is a very limited population of Slayers, so they will not make an appearance again for a while. This means the next deliberate attack on the party will probably need to rely on summoned creatures for melee/beatstick firepower. I’ll probably go with some sort of evil conjured creature(s).

From this, the Aaracokra should learn:
-One of the party keeps not showing up on divination or scrying (the dwarf, effect of Ssword)
-Casters aren’t enough; high-end melee isn’t enough
-Area of effect spells and debuffs tend to fail often (party has generally good saves)
-Larger numbers are needed – this is hard to run at the table. I still forgot to use the Warding Light (light cleric reaction) feature the senior priests have most of the time.
-The Aaracokra need a better way to split the party up or use less blunt-weapon tactics (long ranged attacks, wear them down, etc.). The Aaracokra approach to battle makes this hard for them.

At this point, the party’s location is still generally known. They rest at night (Aaracokra do not have Darkvision) using Mordenkainen’s Private Sanctum. At this point, given the number of divinations that can be directed at the party (near 3 cities, several reported fights, etc.) it’s safe to say the Aaracokra know where they are and can locate their resting place. The sound & vision blocking of Sanctum works both ways.

I need to figure out a less “roll initiative” way for the Aaracokra to wear down the party. They have Weather Control, and I’m considering having them park near the party and use Weather Control to create “unbearable heat” conditions. I need to dig into this a bit more, but I think it could keep them from resting fully.
Another option is just to spam summons or fireballs or whatever into the Sanctum.
The Aaracokra will have a problem in that the monk’s Cragtop bow +2 has a super-long range, longer than most spells, so they can’t attack from full safety.
They also explicitly have Symbol on the spell list for senior priests, so they could set up several Symbols as a trap, and then attack from the far side of them.
There are also plenty of lower-level Aaracokra around. I may need to stat up a group or mob template to represent 4 or 6 soldiers flinging javelins en masse. The party will buzzsaw through them, but it’ll be faster at the table than a bunch of individual soldiers running around with lots of misses.
The party has no teleportation, no earth glide, and no faster mode of travel than the brooms of flying, so I need to set up something where they can be defeated and run away without being TPK’d, but where it’s still possible to lose a PC or two. Luckily, the Aaracokra are militant, angry, and are not a hyper-organized/optimized society, so it’s OK if I design a plan that’s not perfect for them.

Now that Ssword can talk to the group and is a bit more aware, he’ll probably tell them they need to work on ways to get around without being seen. I’m not sure what to have him suggest, as I don’t see any great options for this on the cleric, artificer, or paladin lists.

[Dork_Forge]

Great to see more of this!

What about Ssword just suggesting to the party to sleep in the day and travel under the cover of darkness?

[Kane0]

Something like Dream to interrupt rest benefits?

Snipe and fade harassment with ranged weapons and spells, as long as their movent exceeds the party's flight? Earthbind and similar spells might be helpful, or even things like mirror image to appear to present a larger force and absorb counterfire that will most likely hit.

[J-H]

Session 15: 8/14/2021

Everyone was here.

The party starts taking their long rest, but after a little over an hour, it’s become unbearably hot, to the point where they can’t rest. It doesn’t take long to figure out that it’s Control Weather. They depart Mordenkainen’s Sanctum and travel a couple of hours east, but it’s still hot. Malamir the Artificer uses his Stone of True Seeing and spots a Scrying sensor. Teador the Paladin dispels it, but there’s no guarantee another scrying sensor isn’t there shortly after.

The party ends up turning back west to try to find whoever is casting the spell. They fly due west, arrayed over 1200’ in a north/south line (300’ spacing) on brooms, with the griffon, homunculus, and Silver Raven figurine extending the line. It’s about midnight, and they’re now on rocky terrain.

Suddenly, two glowing four-winged celestials flash into existence (randomly chosen in front of Dmitri, middle of the line), firing four arrows that all strike him for about 70 points of radiant damage.

The enemy forces are two senior priests (one concentrating on Control Weather), one scarred wizard (using the Magic Missile/Bigby’s Hand combo from before – they realize that he’s probably the one they killed before, but Raised from the dead), and two war priests, plus summoned Celestial Archers.

The party being spread out really hurts. Dmitri charges forward (but the brooms are slow) and is down to about 3hp before he gets into melee with the enemies. I had intended for the battle to happen in the middle of an area affected by Symbol:Death (10d10 necrotic/turn, Con save half) set up as a trap. However, I realized partway through the first round that Symbol’s exclusions only apply to triggering the spell, not to the effects. Since the Aaracokra wouldn’t stand in the area of effect, I had to move it further out. Ultimately, Dmitri was the only one who was harmed by it. Lesson learned.

Ratel the monk spent the whole battle closing distance while firing arrows at the big bright glowing summoned celestials. I think he popped 3 of the 4 (the war priests re-summoned them). They have good damage, but AC 16 and 40hp is pretty low for a 5th level slot.
Reybella, at the far right end of the line, spends the whole battle trying to get close enough to do anything. She doesn’t have any speed enhancers or mobility spells (life cleric).
Teador the Paladin used his last 4th-level slot to Dimension Door into the enemy group. Malamir spent a couple of rounds dashing with his winged (artificer suit) boots.

Dmitri stayed up at 0 hit points with multiple failed death saves (hits). Zealot barbarians with Rage Beyond Death are very very hard to actually put down. Hit point damage just flat doesn’t matter.

Ultimately, the Aaracokra Word of Recall out, with nobody dying on either side except some summons. Five Aaracokra casters have now encountered the party, fought them, and lived to analyze lessons learned for future battles.

The party moves an hour east and rests, figuring they can’t do anything to stop the scrying.

They then search the hex, and discover an old cart track and pile of boulders that looks like a deliberately blocked cave entrance. It turns out to be a 30’ high x 20’ wide (+-) mine shaft. They follow it a few hundred feet back before encountering some interesting mushrooms with holes on the side. Malamir decides to touch one, and the Shriekers shriek until destroyed.

This reveals a 30’ square shaft going 200’ down, blocked by a massive and extremely thick iron grate. Malamir uses Fabricate to create a hole, and the party drops down. There’s a Symbol: Fear at the bottom, but most of the group is within range of the Paladin’s aura and isn’t affected.

They systematically check hallways. The first hallway has some brown mold (DMG pg 105), and some giant scrap, plus 26 20lb bars of silver (100gp value each). The next hallway has a giantish corpse with some rot grubs. Around this time Dmitri realizes that he’s been wielding a short sword and could be using a shield. This saves him from getting bit by rot grubs (+0 to hit, rolled 19; he’d just changed AC from 18 to 20 by putting on his shield).
The grubs die swiftly, of course.

The next tunnel goes farther into the mountain, then down a long ramp, and around a corner to a dimly lit room. Several of the party spot something reflective on the ceiling. Malamir and Teador fly up to investigate, and pass their Charisma saves. It’s a mirror. Malamir decides to Identify it, using Identify as a ritual. We discuss, and he has to make 2 more Charisma saves (bless + flash of genius means he passes both with exactly 15 on a DC 15 ). It’s a mirror of life trapping. Discussion ensues.

Teador decides to smash the mirror.

8 deformed giant-things rain down on the floor 40’ below. To be continued next session…

I go ahead and have everyone level up to 15.

Not for party consumption notes:
They did survive an encounter with another kill team. There is no plan for defeating scrying, so I have another attempt on them scheduled for some convenient time in the near future. If they seek out the Yuan-Ti, they’ll either set off wards against scrying, or they’ll lead the Aaracokra to a Yuan-ti village that can then be destroyed.

The Aaracokra now know that the short guy with the short sword doesn’t show up on divinations and seems immune to hit point damage. They’ll have a better plan next time. The War Clerics and others with +6 to +9 to hit just don’t cut it reliably enough. Unfortunately, there are only about 30 or so Slayers in existence, and 5 of them just got killed a few days ago.

Running caster-heavy battles like this is also time consuming and a bit tiring. Unless they go with overwhelming numbers, which is hard to run at the table, they will have a hard time overcoming the party. Sure, I could send in 8 clerics who all open with Fireball, but this is where D&D as a fun game conflicts with “fighting a war effectively.”

Right now I’m leaning towards the Aaracokra just spying on the party and letting them wreak havoc in the party’s wake unless/until they attack Tezcatlipoca’s temple.
I’m not sure if they realize how bad being able to be scried on consistently is…and at least two of the Aaracokra temples have full-time scrying rooms.

Dmitri is very hard to kill. Since Ssword gives him Mind Blank, he can’t be affected by Calm Emotion. Sleep or Death effects are about the only way to put him down now. Hold, Paralysis, etc. work , but he’s got advantage on saves, a paladin aura, and a friendly artificer around, so those are not super reliable. Grapple also doesn’t work well against a raging barbarian. If they keep going for Tezcatlipoca’s temple, they’ll run into plenty of Death effects anyway.

Anyway, this is one of the dozen-or-more dungeons scattered around the map…they finally found one! There was silver on the first floor, so I’m sure they’ll continue exploring out of greed. It’ll probably take all of next session. Lots of fomorians of a few different types.

[J-H]

Session 16: 8/28/2021
Dmitri’s player wasn’t here, but we had someone run the character anyway. We opened with 8 formorians raining from the sky, catching Teador the paladin at the bottom. He Misty Steps out of the bottom of the pile, and the fomorians stand up, spot what looks like food, and the fighting begins. Their psychic-damage evil eye is pretty effective (except on Teador with his +14 Charisma save and Dmitri with his immunity to psychic damage from Ssword). Note that the Evil Eye Curse does take effect on a failed save, even if the damage doesn’t hit. Dmitri and Malamir end up cursed. Malamir snags two of the Fomorians in a Web that lasts the entire battle (DC 20 vs a +0 Dex save and a +6 strength check…they never rolled well enough to escape).

All 8 Fomorians get killed off, although they do some clobbering in the meantime. If they were smart and coordinated instead of disoriented and confused, they could probably have brought down one or two characters by focus fire. Two are killed while being trapped by Web, and 3 others while tryingto run away.
The battle is a bit loud.

The party heals up a bit, then heads on down the next passage, which shows signs of regular mining/digging at some point in the past, then down another very long ramp down farther underground. Near the bottom of the ramp, they hear someone counting down in Giantish “6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…go!” They book it back up the hall, leaving the fomorian ambush out of range.

A couple of arrows with Light on them are shot down the hall, and they can hear someone going “what is it?” in Giantish. Ratel the Monk heads down solo, with Teador following at ~120’ (Darkvision/Message range). He walks up slowly with no weapons drawn and manages to establish basic communication. The fomorians are very wary, especially when he mentions that there are others. They just heard all these scary sounds from above, and now here’s this little person who’s completely unworried and talking about “friends” and “surface” and “aaracokra” and all sorts of other weird things.

He goes to the village alone and talks to a couple of their leaders, and eventually they figure out that he’s there looking for ways to be stronger. An exchange of gifts is determined. The party spends a couple of days using Fabricate to turn the big iron grating into several sets of giant-sized iron tools, to replace the bone tools the Fomorians have been using (the Fomorians have a couple of big mushroom farms and an Underdark-connected lake that they fish in extensively). They also do a bit of instruction on metal care, better tanning for fish hide, etc. They consider trying to get the Formorians to go to the surface, but realize they have 8 giant-sized bodies to hide... that part doesn't go so well. They do eventually Stone Shape away the recurring Symbol of Fear at the base of the elevator, so eventually there's nothing stopping the giants except a 200' vertical climb.

This takes 3 days. The Fomorians bring them a small (for them) container with a glowing blue liquid in it, saying it’s from the Fountain of Blessing that makes them tough. Nobody blinks at drinking a “this made us tough” liquid from some deformed giants. There’s enough for 3 doses.

Ratel the monk immediately chugs it and falls asleep. Teador the Paladin follows up by doing the same, and his player, who’s running Dmitri the Barbarian, says Dmitri would do so as well. They sleep for 8 hours, and the other 2 party members decide not to disturb their rest. The “Fountain of Blessing” has 3 effects, two beneficial and one negative. The +2 Constitution is fixed, and the others were a “roll to see what happens.” Here are the results:

Ratel (monk):
Constitution +2 (incl raising max)
Intelligence -2
Resistant to radiant damage, 20% of skin covered by jet black patches

Teador (Paladin):
Constitution +2 (incl max up)
Cha -2
Resistant to poison damage, 20% of skin covered with brown and yellow dots

Dmitri (Barbarian):
Constitution +2 (incl raising max)
Cha -2
Resistant to fire damage, burnt orange patches on 20% of skin

Ratel has a Headband of Intellect, so the downside on this doesn’t impact him at all. Radiant resistance is pretty good considering some of the enemies the party faces, too. Teador’s loss of Charisma hurts (reduced from 18 to 16), and Dmitri the paladin’s charisma is now down to only 6, but he’s got a LOT of hit points. Dmitri used to wear a Breastplate of Fire Resistance, so I’m pretty sure he’ll be happy with this.

[Eldariel]

The thing I noticed about Summon Celestial - seems it was cast from level 5 slot. It's about twice more powerful from a level 6 slot, with the extra attack and extra damage on each arrow and some welcome extra HP. If they have level 6 slots available, that seems like an excellent use for it.

Also a great read. Interesting to see what will happen in the future.

[J-H]

Session 17: 9/12/2021

Two people felt sick, so we did this via Discord.

The party headed towards Oztalun the aboleth to see about getting scrying-blockers. On the way, they explore and find an old mine-turned-living-space where something came out of a mirror and apparently killed everyone there several months ago. The place had been thoroughly looted.

They continue to explore and found a fog-covered valley inhabited by some druids. One of the druids spots a scrying sensor and kills it for them. They decide to leave to avoid bringing trouble down, and start discussing item-making, missing the chance to talk to the druids more and realize that the valley contains portals to the elemental planes.

I have the artificer roll an arcana check (22) and provide a link to the Amulet of Protection from Detection and Location. We start discussing special components to craft the amulets, and Nondetection only takes powdered gemstones, so…they’re crafted pretty fast.

They go on to assault the Temple of Tezcatlipoca, the god of death and cold. On the way, we hit day 100, and they see a big beam of light from the sun down towards the direction of the Aaracokra capital city that persists for about 30 minutes. The potential fight at the high temple of Huitzopochitl has gotten its first upgrade, as the flow of sacrifices has not been interrupted at all. There’s a continuing additive process going on in the background on the calendar.

The party decides to strike at noon. Ratel the monk flies up on his broom, keeping himself between the sun and town, and at about noon, drops 20 alchemist’s fires on the garrison, air-skiffs, and town, then drops himself down (boots of skyfall), shattering one of the small barracks buildings. The rest of the party, meanwhile, approaches from the north and goes up to the top of the temple to enter through the skylight-type opening. Monks are fast, so with everyone moving around and in position, Ratel is delayed by 6 rounds and misses the first half of the battle.

The party drops down into a room full of magical darkness – but Teador the Paladin has a magic eye, Reybella the cleric uses True Sight, and Malamir the artificer has mounted his Gem of Seeing on his power armor. Dmitri the paladin can use Ssword’s divine sense as blindsight against enemies.

What followed was a long and massive battle with incredible carnage. The High Priest arrived late (round 3? Round 4?), having been alerted by his god only when the party was very close. The party fought a total of:
1 high priest, who cast Power Word Kill twice, Danse Macabre, and then got into melee with spirit shroud and 4 attacks per round, which went well until he got critted and shredded.
3 senior priests (2 escaped via Word of Recall), who put out 2 or 3 Cones of Cold, about a half-dozen Blights, 3 Harms, and I don’t recall what else.
4 acolytes who landed a Bane and a Hold Person but otherwise mostly didn’t have high enough DCs (2 escaped). By the time they had stuff to Counterspell, they were mostly dead.
5 shadow cats (1 dead, 4 escaped at <40hp via shadow stepping and mirror walking)
7 spellcasting skeletons (CR2, +6 to hit was not very useful)
5 regular skeletons raised by danse macabre
1 altar that casts Finger of Death every round on initiative count 20.

There were, if I recall correctly, four player character deaths, plus Dmitri the zealot spending most of the fight at 0hp and accumulating failed death saves, plus 2 PCs Banished and two or 3 PCs held at various times (usually briefly).

Around round 3 or 4, he had the bright idea of stabbing Ssword into the altar. This was one of the few ways of damaging the altar (nobody ever did a “hey, what would work?” question that would have triggered a moderately easy Religion check). This left Dmitri at disadvantage in the dark, as he lost his blindsight. He gamely swung away anyway, Recklessly attacking and taking quite a few hits.

Over the next 3-4 rounds, the altar had a 50% chance to fail to cast Finger of Death. At initiative count 20 on the 4th round, the altar exploded, dealing 8d6 (24) necrotic damage to all priests in the room, and dropping the shroud of darkness in the entire temple.

Ssword wanted to be stabbed into the high priest’s heart after the high priest got killed by Teador the Paladin. Now Ssword can cast Inflict Wounds on hit twice per day, and Cure Wounds (2d8+4) twice per day.

This whole time they have been fighting in one room. We end at a bit after midnight, and rather than choose to stay and take on the rest of the temple, the party will retreat (almost), leaving a dead high priest and shattered altar behind, but the rest of the temple intact.

Teador the paladin explicitly picked up the high priest’s corpse to take with them. In addition to taking the loot, they are going to do what they can to prevent resurrection.

Ratel the monk gets on his flying broom and is going to charge the garrison in town, then drop into town and wreak some carnage before trying to run away to meet up with the party. I will have to run the numbers, but I think he may get himself killed doing this. It depends on how many casters are with the patrols present and if any of them can land a Hold Person.

It was actually really convenient to do this on Discord, as I had a map spreadsheet available to move enemies outside the room around on, and could use Excel to do my math for me.

Loot:
Breastplate +1
Shield +1
Spear +2
Ring of Spell Turning
Nightcloak
Rare, requires attunement
This black cape has faint grey spots, like those of a hunting cat. The wearer is immune to the Blinded condition. In darkness or dim light, the wearer can turn Invisible (as the spell, but without Concentration required) as an action.


I'm tired...

[Kane0]

That ring and cloak both sound like they will be very useful in future. Is the party nearly full on attunement?

[J-H]

Yes. They each have 1 slot above normal (4 for all except the artificer, who has bonus slots from being an artificer).
Nobody seemed excited about the Ring of Spell Turning. I'm not sure it'll get used.

Edit
Currently attuned items, from memory:

Teador the Paladin:
Amulet to prevent scrying
Thundercleave (battleaxe +2, +2d6 thunder damage)
Ioun Stone of Mastery
Gauntlets of Ogre Power

Ratel the Monk:
Amulet to prevent scrying
Headband of Intellect
Skyfall Boots
Bracers of Defense

Reybella the Cleric:
Amulet to prevent scrying
Ioun of Fortitude
Wicker Shield of Mobility
Tentacle Rod

Dmitri the Paladin:
Ssword
Rocksmasher (Maul +1, +1d6 acid, dwarfbane)
Mantle of Spell Resistance
I can't recall the 4th item.

Malamir the Artificer:
Amulet
Skirmisher Spear +3
Artificer multitool (the one that lets you pick one cantrip and use it for the next 8 hours)
A bunch of infused stuff for flight, +AC, Hill Giant strength, a spell storing item, and I don't recall what else.
He mostly uses lightning launchers (total 5d6+10? damage), although I think his damage may be better with the skirmisher spear (with movement, it'd be 3d6+24 thanks to the BA attack and strength belt).

[Fumble]

I really look forward to reading these updates... Keep up the good work.

[J-H]

Thanks! :)

Session 17b: 9/20-9/22/2021
We did this over Discord text chat across a couple of evenings.

Ratel the monk’s player decided to not go “assassin mode” by charging the village, but instead to run due east, stopping and setting fires every so often. I tracked movement round by round until it became pointless. A 60’ move speed monk (dash 120’) vs 50’ move speed Aaracokra (dash 100’) makes for a big difference over time.

It has been about 2 minutes since his dynamic landing.

Approximately 200 civilians are flying around in the village at low altitude.

All Aaracokra troops are out and about, but some are still fastening on armor. The guards at the prison are on high alert.
Both air-skiffs have lifted off.
Daytime forces of 40 Aaracokra:
20 Guardsmen
10 subcommanders
5 Champions
3 sun acolytes
2 war priests
1 senior priest

Ratel heads due east setting fires and firing arrows. A patrol in a nearby (eastern ish) hex is vectored on to him by Sending and/or the scryers from the temple (they can't scry him, but can scry friendlies). It has been about 2 minutes since his dynamic landing.

Approximately 200 civilians are flying around in the village at low altitude.

All Aaracokra troops are out and about, but some are still fastening on armor. The guards at the prison are on high alert.
Both air-skiffs have lifted off.
Daytime forces of 40 Aaracokra:
20 Guardsmen
10 subcommanders
5 Champions
3 sun acolytes
2 war priests
1 senior priest

Ratel heads due east setting fires and firing arrows. He continually pulls slightly away from the Aaracokra by dashing. A patrol in a nearby (eastern-ish) hex is vectored on to him by Sending and/or the scryers from the temple (they can't scry him, but can scry friendlies).
Patrol difficulty:
1-2 Pat 1
3-5 Pat 2
5-8 Pat 3
9-10 Pat 4
(roll) 6

Time for appearing is 2d10 minutes (16), which would be near the edge of the hex.
Patrol 3:
2 guards: stay with air-skiff
4 subcommanders 1 stays with air-skiff
So total is.
3 subcommanders hp 48
3 champions hp 96
1 wizard
1 senior priest {Tez}
Tactics: No heal, just disable/kill. They’re mad and focused on killing enemies.

I have him roll perception to see how far away the inbound hostiles are in front of him when he spots them. With his Cragtop bow, his long range is 1200’. The enemies close at 100’/rd (dashing) towards him, while he’s either dashing (120’) or going normal speed (60’) plus firing.
I used average damage for his bow shots at long range to speed things up.

Round 1:
Front Distance 1200', close by 160'
Pursuit Distance 1200', close by 40'
1 champion hit for 12+12=24 damage

Round 2:
Front Distance 1040', close by 160'
Pursuit Distance 1160', close by 40'
same target hit 1x for 12 damage, 1 miss

Round 3:
Front Distance 880', close by 160'
Pursuit Distance 1120', close by 40'
Different target hit 2x for 24 damage


Round 4:
Front Distance 720', close by 160'
Pursuit Distance 1080', close by 40'
2x misses

Round 5:
Front Distance 560', close by 160'
Pursuit Distance 1040', close by 40'
2 hits for 24 damage to one target

Round 6:
Front Distance 400', close by 160'
Pursuit Distance 1000', close by 40'
1 hit/1 miss against a different target.

Round 7:
Front Distance 240', close by 160'
Pursuit Distance 960', close by 40'
2 arrows fired at wizard, blocked by Shield

Round 8:
Front Distance 80', close by 160'
Pursuit Distance 920', close by 40'
2 arrows fired, killed wizard with purple worm-poison laden arrows.

Round 9:
Front Distance 30', close by 50' as they descend
Pursuit Distance 920', close by 40'
Subcommanders 6x atl-atl at +8 for 1d8+4+1d6, 5 misses, 1 deflected
Champion 6x javelin +9 to hit for 2d6+4, 4 misses, 2 hit for 28
Tezcatlipoca priest casts Cone of Cold, 31 damage
Ratel Dashes 120'

Round 10:
Front Distance 90', close by 50' to 40' range; no more plunging fire
Pursuit Distance 940', pull away by 20'
Subcommanders 6x atl-atl at +6 for 1d8+4 1 hit deflected, rest miss
Champion 6x javelin +7 to hit for 1d6+4 all miss
Tezcatlipoca priest casts Hold Person, save failed. Uses Diamond Soul to succeed.
Ratel dashes 120'

Round 11:
Front group Distance 210', close by 50' to 160' range, except Champions close by 100' to 110'range
Pursuit Distance 960', pull away by 20'
Ratel dashes 120'. Out of range of clerics and champions, atl-atl users can't reliably hit enough to overcome deflection.

After just 11 rounds, he’s zoomed past them, and is pulling away!

In retrospect, I could have used the chase rule from the DMG of dashing 3+CON times and then having to make a DC 10 Con save to avoid exhaustion. However, this would have applied equally to the monk and the Aaracokra, so he still would have pulled away. What about the incoming patrol that intercepted him from the front? I already had themheading back at maximum speed (dashing) as well.
At most, it would have added one round of time-on-target for them. Ratel as a high-level wood elf monk was still faster.

This is a nice case that shows why white-room optimization doesn’t cover all the bases. The only other ways I can think of for a character to keep up such a high ground speed for an entire hour are:
1) A shapeshifted druid
2) Ann arcane caster stacking Longstrider (+10’ speed) and Expeditious Retreat (granting dash as a bonus action for up to 10 minutes per casting) to triple dash for 120’rd until the caster runs out of spell slots or loses concentration
3) A rogue triple-dashing (90’, 105’ wood elf, 120’ tabaxi).

I found it a bit ridiculous but also awesome.

He travels for 2 hours in the Cursed Forest (dim light, difficult terrain, lots of spooky and dead plants) without stealth. Random encounter rolls, he picks up a Shadow Cat that just decides to follow him.

He stops to survey the terrain with his spyglass. Roll: Shadow Cat gets a natural 20 on its Wisdom check to not attack.
Ratel’s perception was 9+4 to spot the shadow cat while he was stopped
Shadow cat natural 20 + 13 to stay hidden and spying.
Ratel then stealthily proceeds into the jungle, and I roll for random encounters. He gets a troop of monkeys and a low roll to not spot them until he's in the middle of the group. He slowly backs out and away, which is a good response that does not provoke the monkeys into a poo-flinging loud riot that could draw attention.
I roll more random encounter dice and get another troop of monkeys and a couple of "nothing" responses, so he then settles in at the north end of the hex to await the party that evening….
But he still has a Shadow Cat tailing him, so the party will get attacked.

The next attack force would either be an adventuring-party configuration of Aaracokra elites (a monk, barbarian, sorcerer, etc.) or would be one where they get a Helm of Teleportation if they fight off their attackers. I don't want to keep them from exploring north, so I'll hold off on this and have the Shadow Cat pace them at a distance using its high move speed (50'/rd + 30' shadow to shadow teleport). It's a fiend, so it doesn't tire.
Of course, Ssword pings on Shadow Cats, so when the party meets up with Ratel, they may notice it, if it strays too close. I'll roll dice throughout the next session to see if they spot it.

If not, it'll follow them for a few days until I feel the time is right for an Aaracokra party using the Helm of Teleportation to bamf in and attack them. At this point, access to teleportation doesn’t exist only because their only primary caster is a cleric, and clerics don’t have anything good for same-plane transportation.

Also, I roll 4d6 for random encounters while the party rests and they get nothing, so they're going to level up to 16. They're a bit short by XP, but I use milestone leveling, and they passed the minimum requirements (destroy altar & kill high priest).

In theory, they could move very quickly with surgical strikes and finish out the campaign in a few battles. In reality, none of the other temples are nearly as easy to reach - all of them are in the middle of larger cities, with the exception of the main temple of Huitzopochitl, which backs up to a lake. I'm kind of hoping they sneak up to that one underwater when the time comes, because it's a really cool moment to create, and totally possible (especially if they get the rest of the Panoply of the Shark).

[J-H]

Session 18: 9/25/2021

The players for Dmitri the Barbarian and Reybella the Cleric were both out. Unlike last session, we had very little fighting, partly because I forgot to roll random encounter dice some of the time (lots of travel). When I did roll, I’d get results like “A tendriculous”, which doesn’t matter because they’re flying, or an Aaracokra patrol, which I don’t want to deal with again right now, and which is up high while the party is under the jungle canopy.

The party reunites and, of course, surprises me by heading east and then south into the Cursed Forest towards the Phase Spider tower they had taken over. En route, they discover a hexagon of standing stones. It will summon a copy of a powerful enemy from the past of whoever stands in the middle; if the summoner is reduced to 0hp, the enemy becomes real and can leave the area. There’s some discussion of using it to bring Dracula back, but they decide against it.

They pass through another hex, and hear a big meaty thumping noisy. It turns out to be a pair of Clay Golems brawling with each other in an unsophisticated fistfight that has ruined at least half a square mile of forest. There’s discussion of coming back later to deal with them or find whatever made them.

The party pushes on in a forced march to rest in the old Phase Spider Tower.

They then travel south to a yuan-ti village. On their way there, they are attacked by two Hellwasp swarms, which do substantial damage but are ultimately killed off. Teador takes 38 damage from a critical hit when the hellwasps get inside his helmet. Malamir makes good use of Chill (fire) Shield.

At the village, they speak with the leader, Ilsa (snake/abomination swordmaster). They do not disclose Ssword yet, but do show off the body of the high priest, which they had put in the extradimensional crafting space to avoid scrying. Ila is impressed, and shares information about the party’s planned next target, the temple of Tlaltecuhtli. It’s in the middle of a city of at least 20,000, with two garrison outposts. From the exterior warehouse district to the temple is a distance of over 1,000 ft. The temple itself is a giant block of stone raised from the earth and shot through with tunnels, and it’s inhabited by some kind of devouring creature that goes through a lot of meat. Ila is about a hundred miles away and doesn’t have more detailed information.

The party starts planning how to handle this, and settle on a plan involving potions of Invisibility (they have 1) and creating scrolls of Dimension Door for fast in/out. The yuan-ti can contribute some forces to attack in a diversion, kill guards so they can get into the city un-noticed, or something similar.

Ila greets the party the next morning with the news that it has tried Sending to four different contacts in the village the party had visited before, and none have responded. They volunteer to investigate, fearing the worst.
En route, they pass through a hex that they have never explored, so they pause to explore it, discovering a 15’ diameter circular ring of flowers that seems fey-ish to them. They decide to come back to it later, and proceed to find the destroyed yuan-ti village. They move south to another village (I thought they’d found it before based on notes, but they didn’t recall the description). They visit briefly, find out that none of the others in the area were destroyed, and leave to not endanger this village, which has more kids and families.

On the way back up, they decide to stop in the fey ring. They step in, and find themselves somewhere else. It’s a beautiful summer’s night, but after consuming the Hero’s Feast, they depart without dancing with the fey, exploring the rainbow-colored forest, or doing anything else. They return to 1 day before they entered. The players were already suspicious about time passing, and I did note that they did not see the footprints they would have left. I forgot about Malamir’s spider-cart-wagon thing. It would have been fun to have it be “not there” and then show up a day later or something. Oops.

They travel on towards the coast to try to buy potions from the tortle potioneers. As they travel, they ask about the moon to see if time has shifted. It takes a while of “the moon looks exactly the same as it did last night” for them to catch on that they traveled back in time 24 hours.
There’s discussion of exploiting time travel, but there are challenges related to fey unreliability.

They explore their way up the coast, finding a bunch of tortle villages. Most of them are fairly small and boring; there’s not a lot to do with a bunch of 70-120-person fishing villages. They do get a few warnings about an area to the west in the forest being weird or dangerous, and they buy a Necklace of Fireballs that a hunter found in a shark’s stomach last year.

Each village typically has 2-4 hunters, a couple of monks, a druid, and maybe a sorcerer. Their casters go up to about 5th-level spells, so the party could try to get a bunch of them together and they’d have a good fighting force…but the logistics of persuading a few people from each tiny village to group up would be challenging.

We end the night with them finding a petrified Nalfeshnee with a maul near the edge of the cursed forest. Greater Restoration clears petrification, so they’ll probably free it next session – but maybe not.

In this session, I saw them moving from “tactical assault with just the party” to looking more at war-fighting and what the yuan-ti can bring to the table in terms of enabling attacks on cities. This is a good step forwards in their planning, and will definitely make them more successful.

I have a bunch of random encounter tables, but I find myself skipping a lot in favor of just moving the exploration or plot ahead. Random Plant monster #5 or Aaracokra Patrol #10 is too much filler right now. That’s fine, it’s a DM’s job to manage time and encounters for that sort of reason.

In the background, the calendar is still ticking away. They have a generous helping of time, and I hope they explore more and find more cool stuff, but if they dawdle for many, many months, they will be in trouble. The Shadow Cat followed them as far as the Phase Spider tower. I need to do some more rolling to see if it made it farther than that to the yuan-ti village. Per the calendar, they’re due for another Enemy Action, so I’ll probably have the Aaracokra trap the Phase Spider Tower. That might be a good way to trigger one of the enemy elite-type attacks – trap/alarm -> helm of teleportation strike force while party is dealing with a Symbol or something. It’ll also make them mad to lose one of “their” places.

I think they're going to head north to the scorpionfolk next, but we'll see.

[J-H]

Session 19: 10/9/2021

Players for Reybella (cleric) and Malamir (artificer) were out.

Ultimately, they decide to attempt a Circle Against Evil/Greater Restoration/Planar Binding on the petrified Nalfeshnee. Reybella’s player gives approval over the phone. Once it orients itself, the Nalfeshnee tries to bargain with them, and finds their terms of “We’ll use your desire for carnage for good, just hold still for an hour while we finish casting” to be insufficient. It teleports out, manages to miss most of its attack rolls for a round or two, and then teleports over and tries to grab Reybella to abduct or threaten her as she continues to cast Planar Binding. It’s knocked unconscious and placed back in the circle.

Planar Binding says nothing about knowing whether or not the target made the save, so there are some deception/insight checks. It plays along. Dmitri the barbarian makes a religion check to see what they could use to trap it. “Tell us your True Name.” “My name is You’reanidiot” (attempted teleport). Dmitri wins the opposed Initiative check and knocks the Nalfeshnee out. Something similar happens the 2nd time around, and they kill it, taking the Maul of Extreme Pain.

They then head north into the cursed forest, finding an old, abandoned, and thoroughly ruined temple to some ocean deity or spirit. They rest overnight in a Stone-Shaped concealed area. Ratel the monk walks out the next morning to find 5 lobster-creatures with big claws and poison tentacles on their face. The party ends up killing four of them – the last kill is run down as it retreats in the water (Ratel runs on the water until he runs out of move, then sinks and kills it) because it was spotted carrying an amulet that it had just picked up (the party had missed it in their investigation). The whole fight, the monk hears no talking from them.
After the fact, the creatures are identified as Chuul, believed to be old servants of aboleths who have the ability to sense magic and magical items, and are known to seek such items out and guard or hoard them.

Somewhere along here there’s a random encounter with disease-carrying bugs. Ratel is the only one on the ground, so they go for him, but he’s immune to disease.

The party moves on to the north, finding a set of stone pillars in the cursed forest in the next hex up:

You find a pair of stone pillars 4’ across rising thirty
feet high. Two more pillars are set just in front of
them, but only 8’ high, and another pair 15’ in front of
that. There are no markings on the pillars.
Investigation/Perception DC 10: There are some remnants of
stone benches in a large arc around the short pillars.
Investigation/Perception DC 20: Near one of the pillars, you find
a wooden chest. One side bears a mark like it was
damaged by a blow from a weapon, but it’s otherwise
untouched. It is not locked.
Inside is a Bag of Holding Type 1. The Bag holds
several old drums, drumsticks, and two guitars. One
of them is very strange – it’s a neon yellow color and
made mostly of metal. (It’s a Guitar of Electricity).

Proceeding north, they enter the North Desert for the first time. It’s a desert/badlands area with scrubby vegetation and lots of mesas and boulders. There, at the top edge of the map, they find a crater with a giant onyx meteorite in it not long before sunset. Malamir can determine that it has a magical aura of necromancy, but doesn’t know exactly what it’s for.

A random encounter produces an Aaracokra patrol spotted in the distance. It’s near sunset, so the party decides to head that way and attack them as they are grounded. It’s about a 1 hour forced march, which is pretty trivial to succeed on.

DM notes: No progress on the main quest right now, but that’s OK.
They really like the Panoply of the Shark set and requested more item sets for future campaigns. The last item in the set is a leather armor, so it’s not really great for anyone in this party, but that’s ok.
Teador has dropped his shield and AC to try out the Maul of Extreme Pain.
I wonder if they’ll make the Chuul/Aboleth connection ever?
The party is running low on gold, but hasn’t tried to sell any magical items at all.
The onyx meteorite gives a boost to Animate/Create Undead, including allowing it to function with bigger or different creature types than it normally would. Of course, getting a dragon corpse or something there would be quite a chore.
I expect them to handily kill off this patrol group, even though it’s the toughest type. Based on their conversation about someone always getting away, they’ll probably have 1-2 people on straggler patrol . The Aaracokra have worse Darkvision, a clear weakness along with their air-skiffs grounding at sundown.


Items:

Spoiler

Show

Guitar of Electricity
Very rare, requires attunement by a bard
This guitar functions as an instrument of the bards (DMG pg. 176), except that it produces a screeching, unnatural sound instead of the typical strumming most guitars produce. The Guitar of Electricity holds up to 7 charges, and a Bard may grant it additional charges by expending Bardic Inspiration dice at a 1:1 ratio.
Lightning Bolt. As an action, the wielder may play an aggressive chord on the guitar, causing it to cast Lightning Bolt, using the wielder’s spell save DC. This consumes one charge.
Dramatic Crescendo. The Guitar’s Lightning Bolt damage starts at 6d6 and increases by 1d6 per each round the guitar is played, to a maximum of 12d6.

Maul of Extreme Pain
Very rare, weapon (any hammer), requires attunement
The circumference of this +2 hammer is carved with tiny symbols resembling thorns, and it glows with a dull purple light when held. Any living or undead creature struck by this takes 2d8 psychic damage on hit, and has Disadvantage on the next d20 roll they make before the beginning of the wielder’s next turn.
Does anyone else remember the Adventurers! webcomic from around 2000? This was one of Khrima's weapons, except his was the Mallet.

Shark-Tooth Necklace
Rare
Once per day, as an action, you can summon a Giant Shark into a suitable underwater environment within 30’ of you. The shark remains for 10 rounds or until killed. You can control it mentally with a bonus action, and it acts at the end of your turn. This item is a piece of the Panoply of the Shark.

Panoply of the Shark
There are four shark-themed items scattered throughout the campaign. If a character attunes to or wears more than one of them at a time, the character gains benefits based on the number of items worn.
• 2 items You gain blindsight 15’, or 60’ in water, based on a keen sense of smell
• 3 items You may wildshape into a Giant Shark once per day.

[Kane0]

Hah, the electric guitar was a nice touch

[J-H]

Session 20: 10/23/2021
Malamir the artificer and Reybella the cleric’s players couldn’t make it.

The three PCs sneak up on the patrol, which has landed and is making a campfire. Their stealth rolls are okay. The one guard flying around notices “something” and flies over to investigate. Ratel the kensei monk drops him with a single poisoned arrow. The assault goes off as planned and they kill all the Aaracokra rapidly. Now they have an air-skiff!

There’s discussion of selling extra magical items to raise gold to pay for implanting troll hearts or, if they get adamantium, getting the adamantine skeleton graft. They communicate with the yuan-ti via Sending. They also try to sell the air-skiff, but nobody seems to be interested in such a high profile transport option. The yuan-ti will buy some items, but need time to gather cash on hand. We also decide to handle this via Discord.

They start exploring west and find an empty fortified campsite, and later encounter the Shabaka tribe of scorpionfolk as they continue to explore. The scorpionfolk are Large and have formidable natural weapons, but they observe that they are currently wielding mostly shortbows, and make frequent use of necromancy on the corpses of their own as well as dead Aaracokra. They are very interested in killing Aaracokra but desperately short on numbers. Their own undead are kept mostly outside the camp.

Shabaka has a problem: His daughter (low level druid) is betrothed to a warrior from a neighboring clan, but the marriage is delayed because the warrior needs more seasoning. The two of them have disappeared, likely to “The Death Knight’s Tomb” in an attempt to prove themselves. He’s sent one of his top necromancers and the neighbors have sent one of their best warriors, but they aren’t optimistic.

They get directions and go.

Scrawled across the outside in crude carvings is “Death Knight Trapped Here. Time passes fast. Not worth the risk.”

The entry area is smashed, but seems warded against dust and bugs.
Carved into the wall near the door in elegant elven, with some letters filled in with silver, is the following (requires Elven or language magic to read):
Facility Rules
1. No temporal manipulation magic, including passive magical speed effects.
2. Do not leave the facility without checking with Manager Baartie.
3. Outsiders are not permitted to know of this facility.
4. We shall change the past to protect our future.

They also find a stone-shaped message in the ceiling:
Aryvandaar has fallen. We tried our best to undo it, but in the end, we have toiled these centuries, only to be undone by a Death Knight in service of some mortal kingdom that grew up while we focused on temporal manipulation. Senior Researcher Othshan and the others bought time, and smashed the Heart of Time, trapping the unliving here, and I alone have escaped. Its master is denied any prize and the service of a potent servant, but it is a hollow victory. The non-material planes beyond the Border Ethereal are unaffected, so the undead’s aura is beginning to permeate the area. If anyone of learning reads this, I shall abandon my heritage, change my name, and seek my fortune elsewhere. Perhaps I will return with an army one day.
--Junior Researcher Eliepiir Vyshaan

There are a few names here that go back to ancient FR history.

They find a room with some de-powered magical appliances, an elevator, and some Temporal Stabilization Discs. Malamir’s knowledge is called on to determine that these are important and should be synced with the rune circles in the room they were in, and worn.

The three take an elevator down and find a smashed storage room that appears a bit old and thoroughly looted. There’s a big greatclub near a giant splatter of old blood.

They take the elevator down again and find two adult scorpionfolk squaring off with a pair of Bodaks. The scorpionfolk (the rescue team) are surprised to have allies show up just moments after they stepped off the elevator and started fighting. The bodaks are put down pretty quickly and the teenagers/young adults rescued (they had used Invisibility potions and barricaded themselves in a room). Some decomposing elven corpses are found along with a lot of nice but old furniture and elven décor, as well as magic-powered washing/drying machines and similar.

They then go down to the 4th level (counting top as 1) and find two zombie ogres, another bodak, and two zombie wights. The zombie ogres explode when they die. Everyone makes a beeline for the bodak and kills it pretty quickly. Teador casts Haste. I have him roll an INT check and he gets a natural 1; that was his chance to remember the rules. He takes 5d20 (57) damage and loses his turn due to the inherent temporal properties of the area. The zombie wights do some damage with their greatclubs, but go down. One of them asks “Where did you come from?” at the party in clear surprise. The party loots the area, finding a +2 longbow, some +2 arrows, four wizard spell scrolls, boots of elvenkind, and mithril elven chain, and a few other minor items. The boots come off of a body where the blood is still leaking out. The rooms appear to have been barely searched. As the party loots, they get a very sped-up Sending from the yuan-ti asking where they’ve been and that it’s been months.

We left off there, and I think they are going to go up to the 1st floor to take a short rest before continuing down.


DM notes:
Hurray! This is the second actual dungeon they’ve gone into fully (the first was the fomorian/silver mine area). The single-room raid on the Tezcatlipoca temple doesn’t really count. It was brought up (by them) and they compared what they did to a guerilla/decapitation strike.

As you can tell there is some temporal displacement into the future going on here, or rather into areas where subjective time passes more and more slowly the farther down they go. There are two more floors, and the bottom floor is still mere moments after the crystal was smashed millenia ago. They’re going to get some ominous Sendings from the future where they disappeared and Huitzopochitl won. There were some puzzled looks as they tried to figure out where time was passing at what rate, which way they should go, etc.

I think they’re going to head back up to the top floor for a short rest. Everyone’s down substantial chunks of HP from bodak aura, bodak glare, bodak scream, wight club, exploding zombies, etc. There is time pressure and if they leave, they won’t have enough Temporal Stabilization Disks to return… so there is no option to long-rest-recover their way through this.

If Malamir and Reybella show up next time, they’ll have no attrition, so it’s all manageable – but this is also a way to deliberately achieve the 5e paradigm of multiple encounters separated by perhaps one short rest. The paladin has mostly been sitting on his spells slots. Spell slots won't do them much good for the final battle though!

[Dork_Forge]

Session 20: 10/23/2021
Malamir the artificer and Reybella the cleric’s players couldn’t make it.

The three PCs sneak up on the patrol, which has landed and is making a campfire. Their stealth rolls are okay. The one guard flying around notices “something” and flies over to investigate. Ratel the kensei monk drops him with a single poisoned arrow. The assault goes off as planned and they kill all the Aaracokra rapidly. Now they have an air-skiff!

There’s discussion of selling extra magical items to raise gold to pay for implanting troll hearts or, if they get adamantium, getting the adamantine skeleton graft. They communicate with the yuan-ti via Sending. They also try to sell the air-skiff, but nobody seems to be interested in such a high profile transport option. The yuan-ti will buy some items, but need time to gather cash on hand. We also decide to handle this via Discord.

They start exploring west and find an empty fortified campsite, and later encounter the Shabaka tribe of scorpionfolk as they continue to explore. The scorpionfolk are Large and have formidable natural weapons, but they observe that they are currently wielding mostly shortbows, and make frequent use of necromancy on the corpses of their own as well as dead Aaracokra. They are very interested in killing Aaracokra but desperately short on numbers. Their own undead are kept mostly outside the camp.

Shabaka has a problem: His daughter (low level druid) is betrothed to a warrior from a neighboring clan, but the marriage is delayed because the warrior needs more seasoning. The two of them have disappeared, likely to “The Death Knight’s Tomb” in an attempt to prove themselves. He’s sent one of his top necromancers and the neighbors have sent one of their best warriors, but they aren’t optimistic.

They get directions and go.

Scrawled across the outside in crude carvings is “Death Knight Trapped Here. Time passes fast. Not worth the risk.”

The entry area is smashed, but seems warded against dust and bugs.
Carved into the wall near the door in elegant elven, with some letters filled in with silver, is the following (requires Elven or language magic to read):
Facility Rules
1. No temporal manipulation magic, including passive magical speed effects.
2. Do not leave the facility without checking with Manager Baartie.
3. Outsiders are not permitted to know of this facility.
4. We shall change the past to protect our future.

They also find a stone-shaped message in the ceiling:
Aryvandaar has fallen. We tried our best to undo it, but in the end, we have toiled these centuries, only to be undone by a Death Knight in service of some mortal kingdom that grew up while we focused on temporal manipulation. Senior Researcher Othshan and the others bought time, and smashed the Heart of Time, trapping the unliving here, and I alone have escaped. Its master is denied any prize and the service of a potent servant, but it is a hollow victory. The non-material planes beyond the Border Ethereal are unaffected, so the undead’s aura is beginning to permeate the area. If anyone of learning reads this, I shall abandon my heritage, change my name, and seek my fortune elsewhere. Perhaps I will return with an army one day.
--Junior Researcher Eliepiir Vyshaan

There are a few names here that go back to ancient FR history.

They find a room with some de-powered magical appliances, an elevator, and some Temporal Stabilization Discs. Malamir’s knowledge is called on to determine that these are important and should be synced with the rune circles in the room they were in, and worn.

The three take an elevator down and find a smashed storage room that appears a bit old and thoroughly looted. There’s a big greatclub near a giant splatter of old blood.

They take the elevator down again and find two adult scorpionfolk squaring off with a pair of Bodaks. The scorpionfolk (the rescue team) are surprised to have allies show up just moments after they stepped off the elevator and started fighting. The bodaks are put down pretty quickly and the teenagers/young adults rescued (they had used Invisibility potions and barricaded themselves in a room). Some decomposing elven corpses are found along with a lot of nice but old furniture and elven décor, as well as magic-powered washing/drying machines and similar.

They then go down to the 4th level (counting top as 1) and find two zombie ogres, another bodak, and two zombie wights. The zombie ogres explode when they die. Everyone makes a beeline for the bodak and kills it pretty quickly. Teador casts Haste. I have him roll an INT check and he gets a natural 1; that was his chance to remember the rules. He takes 5d20 (57) damage and loses his turn due to the inherent temporal properties of the area. The zombie wights do some damage with their greatclubs, but go down. One of them asks “Where did you come from?” at the party in clear surprise. The party loots the area, finding a +2 longbow, some +2 arrows, four wizard spell scrolls, boots of elvenkind, and mithril elven chain, and a few other minor items. The boots come off of a body where the blood is still leaking out. The rooms appear to have been barely searched. As the party loots, they get a very sped-up Sending from the yuan-ti asking where they’ve been and that it’s been months.

We left off there, and I think they are going to go up to the 1st floor to take a short rest before continuing down.


DM notes:
Hurray! This is the second actual dungeon they’ve gone into fully (the first was the fomorian/silver mine area). The single-room raid on the Tezcatlipoca temple doesn’t really count. It was brought up (by them) and they compared what they did to a guerilla/decapitation strike.

As you can tell there is some temporal displacement into the future going on here, or rather into areas where subjective time passes more and more slowly the farther down they go. There are two more floors, and the bottom floor is still mere moments after the crystal was smashed millenia ago. They’re going to get some ominous Sendings from the future where they disappeared and Huitzopochitl won. There were some puzzled looks as they tried to figure out where time was passing at what rate, which way they should go, etc.

I think they’re going to head back up to the top floor for a short rest. Everyone’s down substantial chunks of HP from bodak aura, bodak glare, bodak scream, wight club, exploding zombies, etc. There is time pressure and if they leave, they won’t have enough Temporal Stabilization Disks to return… so there is no option to long-rest-recover their way through this.

If Malamir and Reybella show up next time, they’ll have no attrition, so it’s all manageable – but this is also a way to deliberately achieve the 5e paradigm of multiple encounters separated by perhaps one short rest. The paladin has mostly been sitting on his spells slots. Spell slots won't do them much good for the final battle though!

Always love catching up on this, your campaign sounds very well thought out and a hoot!

I took inspiration from your panoply of the shark and introduced an ice version into my game, thanks!

From your DM notes, would I be right in guessing the final floor is so slowed down that they're under the effects of Slow?

[J-H]

Spoiler: spoiler

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No, the final floor is less than 30 seconds after the Crystal was smashed thousands of years ago. The BBEG for the dungeon is down there, and doesn't even know that he's trapped in super-slow time. Time is, after all, passing at a normal pace to his perception.

[J-H]

Session 21: 11/13/2021

Malamir (artificer) and Reybella (cleric) did not join us tonight.

The remaining 3 characters, injured from their explorations, go to the top floor, having Reybella heal them along the way. On the top floor, their temporal stabilization disks start to emit a whine, which gets louder as they approach the front door. After a couple of arcane and religion checks, they decide to go on back down to finish what they’re doing instead of activating the disks early.

The 5th floor (4th down) has two zombie ogres snacking on a recently dead elf, and should have had two bodaks, but I made a mistake and only threw two more ogre wights at them instead. The battle was pretty one-sided, but the PCs took a bit of damage. This floor had a bunch of metal tables, lab equipment, and chalkboards covered in obscure arcane symbols, complex mathematics, etc. Even the INT-19 (headband) monk could not figure out most of it without needing a lot of study.

They then took the elevator down to the bottom floor. On the way down, they heard a triumphant shriek, like an eagle, in their heads, and got a headache… apparently Huitzopochitl triumphed.

The bottom floor was a single room, 90’ in diameter, with a shattered crystal mounting in the middle, crystal shards laying all around, and 3 dead elven wizards… plus a towering figure in black plate with glowing eyes, wielding a warhammer in one hand and a longsword in the other. Drezhar the Destroyer, the ogre death knight, told the party that their little mercenary band was too late… and that he was prophesied to have his name live for thousands of years, and that they faced a legend.

Dmitri charges forth first, wielding Ssword, the artifact, which still functions. It actually harms Drezhar, which surprises him. He goes next, disarming Dmitri and kicking Ssword away (towards an ogre zombie also in the room). Drezhar hits like a truck for 3d8+7 weapon damage + 1d8 necrotic damage, several times over. As Ratel and Teador (monk and paladin) advance into the room, they discover that none of their magic items function… everyone is under the effects of an anti-magic field. Except for Ssword, none of their weapons now count as magic against a foe resistant to non-magic weapon damage.

Teador grabs Ssword and tosses it back to Dmitri, while Ratel shoots a couple of arrows. Drezhar uses his legendary actions to slowly bash through the barbarian’s massive pool of hit points with 3 more hits. I think one was actually a disarm again, but since it wasn’t the ogre’s turn, Ssword remained in Dmitri’s space and was easy to pick up.

It is pointed out that Death Knights typically have paladin/divine casting, and should be subject to Ssword’s expanded critical hit rate. This is correct, and Dmitri crits once this round for a lot of damage, allowing him to attack 3 times. Teador hits the ogre zombie for not a lot of damage, and Ratel runs in to start punching with unarmed strikes (Ki fist means they count as magic) but has a flurry of misses.

Drezhar tries to disarm Dmitri, but can’t quite stick the opposed rolls. He doesn’t need to knock Dmitri prone due to Reckless Attack. They trade HP damage, and Drezhar is pretty low when Dmitri hits 0 and has to save to avoid dying. Dying when your soul is 2,000 years in the future means you can’t be raised from the dead…
He can tell Dmitri should be dead from HP damage but isn’t, and gives an order to “just go ahead and disintegrate the short one.” Cue minor freakout. Ratel uses his next to last Ki point and lands a stunning blow on the Death Knight! Teador dashes over and uses Lay on Hands, which doesn’t qualify as magic in an AMF, to burst-heal Dmitri up to 80hp.

The two zombie beholders in the back of the room then close their central eyes, allowing all magic items to function again. Each one fires a Disintegration ray at Dmitri, but he makes his saves. Drezhar is then stabbed to death while stunned, and the zombie beholders go down pretty quickly, with only one more ray fired.

The party loots the death knight and discovers that the crystals of the Heart of Time are very hazardous and shouldn’t be messed with. Ratel considers taking them with him, but the temporal interference means he might end up in another millennium.

They then activate the stabilization discs and return to the room and time at which they attuned to them. Leaving that room, they meet the four scorpionfolk who just stepped off the elevator from below…from the middle of last session. Confusion ensues. Time travel is fun!

They escort the scorpionfolk back to their camp, where the adventuresome young fools are yelled at by the clan head for a very long period of time. The group rests there and buys several Oils of Sharpness from the smith.

They decide to head west to find adamantine for skeletal surgery. They explore as they travel, finding several scorpionfolk camps. They rescue a couple of low-level druids who were trapped by some gorgons. Ratel saves against gorgon breath once, then finds out what it is, and after that the party decides to kite and avoid the petrification-causing iron bulls. They are given a Goodberry Bag (10 goodberries/charge, holds 1 charge, recharges at dawn on a 6 on 1d6).

They meet an old scorpionfolk woman who keeps track of locations and lore of the land (cartography) and get some general terrain info for about 3 squares around, as well as being told that something strange is going on in 07.02 in the mountains. The party also encountered some scorpionfolk mining onyx to support necromantic endeavors.

We leave off with the party about to reach hex 08.03.

DM notes:
ALMOST got a PC kill. It was close! I gave Drezhar about an extra 40hp on the fly so that he didn’t go down before the beholders were at least revealed.
This was really fun and I enjoyed having a chance to pull off some time travel.
The artificer’s player hasn’t been for several sessions. They are close to finding the Adamantine golem. If he’s there, I think they’ll discuss turning it into giant power armor, which I have planned for (cue Pacific Rim music). It seems like their main motivation right now is finding adamantine and troll hearts to become nearly immortal, and the wealth to afford the surgery. They’d rather pursue that than go ahead and make the attack on Tlalchantli’s city, which the Yuan-ti are ready to support.

They are due by the calendar for an Enemy Action, so I’ll have it target something close to them to remind them that the clock is ticking.


Loot
From Drezhar:
Full Plate +2
Dragonslayer +2 Longsword
Eclipse
Very rare, requires attunement
This +3 warhammer can be used to cast Darkness three times per day. On a critical hit, the target must make a DC 18 Constitution save or be Blinded, as the spell Blindness. While holding the hammer, the wielder is immune to being hindered in any way by light-based effects, and any illumination spell or effect of 7th level or lower with a source point within a 20’ radius of the wielder ceases to function until the wielder moves away.

Teador took the Full Plate +2, bringing him to AC 20, 23 with shield. Ratel took Eclipse (will use as a kensei weapon) and gave Dmitri the Skyfall boots. Eclipse has no bonus damage, but it's a nice suite of abilities to use against the servants of a sun god. I expected Teador to take Eclipse since he can see through magical darkness, but it's still good either way. One of the epic boons I'll have available for elves is a blindsight boon, so that'd be a really good fit.

[Borria]

Clearly I'm missing something in the time travel shenanigans, when the heard the screech does that mean the God won in some timeline but not their own? Did they return to a time before the god won when they left the dungeon? Will there be any consequences for the players "losing" once before the time jump?

Love both your campaign logs by the way, I've been waiting to read up on this fight after all the threads you made preparing for it :)

[J-H]

Clearly I'm missing something in the time travel shenanigans, when the heard the screech does that mean the God won in some timeline but not their own? Did they return to a time before the god won when they left the dungeon? Will there be any consequences for the players "losing" once before the time jump?

Yes, they heard Huitzopochitl manifest on the material plane, and then they returned to their proper time - walking out of the room with the anchoring circles before the scorpionfolk from the 3rd floor even reached the surface (even though the party had previously gone up to the surface level and walked around a bit, after the scorpionfolk departed). If they had a way to measure the passage of time, they could theoretically come back in a few months and meet themselves.

The monk tried to figure out if the shards of the time crystal were useful. "How are you testing?" "I'll prick my finger with one." He made the CON save to not have his finger age, wither and fall off into a pile of dust, and then said that the shards would be great as arrowheads. I told him if he tried to take them back when activating the stabilization disk, he'd be making arrows 4,000 years in the future.

Love both your campaign logs by the way, I've been waiting to read up on this fight after all the threads you made preparing for it :)

Thanks :)
I have never messed with AMFs before, and wanted to get things right. It ended up as a slightly less dramatic slugging match than I'd hoped (Drezhar pretty much didn't go anywhere once Dmitri the barbarian was in his face stabbing him with a high-powered magic sword), but that's what happens when high level parties, successful saves against disarm, and a divine artifact are involved.
Zombie beholders are low-CR but still made everyone sit up and take notice. One bad roll can kill you.

[J-H]

Session 22: 12/11/21

Fairly short session today. The party attacked the Adamantine golem, and after a long fight in which 3 players were knocked to <20hp, successfully stabbed, shot, and bludgeoned it to death. This is an Adamantine Golem that I came up with, not the one from the book. CR 26, a kick attack to knock enemies back and prone, a vibrosword that gets two attacks in melee, and a coilgun (gauss rifle) on the other arm with a long range. The coilgun does 3d20 bludgeoning + 1d10 lightning damage with a strength save to avoid knockdown. Ratel hung out at long range pelting it with +2 arrows, Teador flew overhead (losing his griffin to a cannonball, but retaining his broom) and used Chill Touch repeatedly to keep it from regenerating, and Malamir switched between a few tactics, including trying out Summon Construct.

After salvaging 3,000 lbs of adamantium, 28,000 lbs of steel, and 50 lbs of mithril, they headed east and then south to sell materials to the yuan-ti and then visit the Fleshcrafter to get adamantium coatings applied to their bones. En route, they were attacked by a Rodan-descended Roc. Teador Dimension-doored atop it and attacked it a couple of times before it spun and knocked him off; Dmitri managed to jump onto it too, and hung on for an extra round, but then got knocked off. As it flew away, Ratel the monk used his sharpshooter damage and long range to kill it.

We ended there… selling and buying to be handled on discord, as well as potentially who’s doing what surgery in what order.

There was also some discussion of what to do with the Aaracokra after they “win.” Ratel is in favor of wiping them out as well as killing the yuan-ti. Teador the paladin is not. Ssword is listening and the campaign’s long-term ending will depend partly on what sort of values they convince it to follow.

I had it written up so that someone who wants to do the extra work and take on the risk could potentially crawl inside it and disable it while it’s functioning, and then retrofit it into a giant mech suit. It’s at the high end of powerful, but this is high end D&D. Unfortunately, the players decided to just wreck it.

The player for Dmitri the barbarian was sick and couldn’t make it. The player for Reybella the cleric may be taking a break from D&D… and this was the last session for the player for Malamir the Artificer; his work schedule means he has to leave at 9pm, so he can only come for around 2 hours. Malamir is going to go work with Oztalun’s people on a way to teleport back to Europe, where he hopes to create some items and maybe send over reinforcements occasionally. It’s hard to DM for just 2 people, and Dmitri is definitely the party’s hard tank/carry (zealot + artifact sword), so when he’s gone someone has to play him or they are at risk of getting squashed (2 PCs vs. threats designed for 4+). We may try to recruit an additional player.
The next scheduled session would also be on Christmas day, so we may not meet again until January unless something lines up for everyone’s schedules. That’s kind of disappointing.

The party is now very rich, although I’m sure they’ll find ways to spend most of it.

[Kane0]

Alternatively you could swap them over to sidekick characters?

[Dork_Forge]

It's a shame that the scheduling is getting messy and people can't attend, I'm a big fan of following this game.

One of my games is only 3 characters and I've taken to a Dragon Age style playstyle: They have accrued a number of NPCs that they get to level up as Sidekicks, and when going into situations I tell them if they can take none, one, or two of them. It gives them some tactical depth by choosing different sidekicks, whilst allowing me to use more challenging encounters.

[J-H]

Session 23: 1/8/2022

Happy New Year! Our Cleric’s player is dropping out. She has too many other games and things going on 
This game may go on pause while we do a couple of one-shots to introduce new players, so we don’t throw them into the deep end of high-level play.

The party headed southeast to Oztalun’s Lair and sold all but 300 lbs of adamantium, as well as the steel. I priced the adamantium at 50gp/lb and steel at 1gp/lb, with 1000gp of adamantium traveling back to Europe with Malamir. Between that and a few other items, the 3 players got 113,000 gp. They then went north to meet with the yuan-ti, who have lost another village to enemy action.

They reviewed their plan for attacking the nearby city of Tlalchantli, which involved using potions of invisibility and scrolls of Dimension Door to get in and out. Ultimately, they decided that with only one person able to cast DD, it was too risky. I told them with all the complexity on the enemy side, I wasn’t going to run several friendly NPCs to fill out the party too. That attack has been shelved with apologies to the yuan-ti until we get more players.

They head north to the edge of the map, then west to the edge of the ocean, without exploring…specifically looking for trolls so they can get some troll hearts implanted for regeneration.

Heading south, they find a valley whose bottom is a circular(ish) sheet of glass. Not sure what happened, but something big happened here a long time ago. In the next hex south, they find a cliff face carved to resemble a humanoid skull. Inside the mouth was a small cave with a swarm of snakes and a circle carved to aid in extraplanar summoning. They kill the snakes, an old foe from the very first session of Castle Dracula. Four manticores land on the air-skiff, which is hovering near the entry. The manticores attack and last about 1.5 rounds. (random encounter)

Heading south, the group encounters a small tribe of nocturnal Halflings, who wield flint knives and are mostly fishers who try to stay under the radar. When asked about trolls, they point the party to two hexes south, and explain that ‘tricksters’ (faerie dragons) help keep the trolls away, and they help the faerie dragons.

The team heads south, and finds a small troll village with huts, wooden shields, javelins, and the like. Ratel the monk and Dmitri the barbarian drop down while sending Teador the paladin to go park the air-skiff someplace safe. The discussion this whole time (going back several sessions) was “Let’s go kill some trolls and take their hearts.” Now they’ve arrived, and the trolls actually have houses and lives of their own. “Are we the baddies?” is asked.
I look at the MM entry and confirm that they can take a troll’s heart out without permanently killing it.

After some extensive out of character discussions, they decide to offer the trolls some magic weapons in exchange for letting them harvest a few troll hearts. I have to clarify that they can preserve the troll hearts for up to 2 weeks in the little freezer-boxes they got from the Fleshcrafter, so they don’t have to convince the trolls to take a 3-week round trip to someplace far away to get their surgery done.

When presented with a Returning Greataxe, a +2 Spear, and the Kraken Flail +2, the trolls talk a bit, do some rock-paper-scissors, and then select 3 unlucky members of the tribe. Ratel, with the best medicine skill in the game, performs surgery. It takes help from other trolls holding the donors down, and it’s messy and loud, but by the end of the day, Ratel is washing off the blood in the ocean and they have 3 troll hearts on ice to implant.

I then roll another random encounter as they head south. A couple of lightning bolts lash out at the air-skiff as they fly above the beach. Looking down, they now spot a kraken along the edge of the beach. Dmitri and Ratel drop down to attack, while Teador steers the air-skiff farther over and sets it to land before getting off on his Broom of Flying.

Dmitri gets whacked by tentacles and thrown away, but gets back in melee range pretty quickly. The kraken does more lightning damage to the boat, and I notice that it has 120’ telepathy. I had picked the boat as a target because what does a power-hungry kraken hate? Flying people with weird heart-powered boats. The Kraken speaks in their minds (except Dmitri, he has mind blank) and calls the air-skiff an abomination and proclaims the death penalty. They answer in kind and do some damage, but Ratel also responds that they stole it and are killing the ones who made it.

The discussion goes on, telepathically, in a fraction of a second. Ultimately, they agree that the kraken would prefer the Aaracokra gods dead (in accordance with notes on the Kraken page in the MM), and wouldn’t mind helping attack them other than the mobility issue (crossing mountains, etc.). They strike a tentative deal to pay the kraken to help them in their fight. They need merely return to this beach and say his name, Huizhong, and he would come.
After checking, Teleport does not limit the size of the creature being moved, although I do say a kraken would probably count for all 8 slots.

So now they probably have a Kraken lined up to help with a single battle.

The party then travels south over the ocean (slightly safer), noting an area with undead sharks and little life, plus an island, and then turn east to visit the Giantish city of Athos. Here, they spend several days searching and finally locate a Cloud giant named Marva, a Celestial Sorceress capable of casting Heal as required for the surgery. The best Medicine check in the party is about a +7, so they look for someone who can do that. I think, and roll some dice, and ask them “in a world with magic healing, who has a high medicine skill?”

Since the 5e books don’t include “Deliver Baby” or “C-Section” or “Fundal Massage” spells, a midwife would definitely have cause to boost Medicine skills as high as possible…and they find a Goliath midwife named Kaamia.

They’ve now hired the assistants they need to get troll hearts implanted and their bones plated with adamantium. I owe them costs for those assistants, and they’re talking about possibly hiring some goliaths or giants to help guard them on the way there and during the surgery.

DM Notes:
Wow! I did not expect what happened. Hiring assistants wasn’t on my radar, as I assumed a party cleric would do it. It’s a good solution available to those with wealth, though. I also didn’t expect the approach they took with the trolls, although I really appreciated how the trolls having their own bit of civilization instead of being mud-dwelling near animals changed how they viewed things. I like it when my players have to debate and plan and make interesting choices to figure out “what is right?” and “what does my character think is right?”

They skipped over some really interesting encounters by not exploring along the way. This “get wolverine surgery” thing has really grabbed their attention as an intermediate goal. I hope they go back to some of these areas.

The Kraken was just a random encounter for the area…but the info in the Monster Manual was just enough, and the willingness to talk back to it took it from a combat encounter to something totally different. I think making the final attack with an anti-deist kraken on their side is a pretty awesome idea. The High Temple of Huitzopochitl is near a very large lake, so they could pre-position him.

[Kane0]

Good players, bravo!

[J-H]

The next session will be a 3rd-level one-shot to introduce 2 new players to D&D as they explore an ancient elven forest in the Cursed Forest.

In the meantime, here's the current terrain map. They found a lot of terrain to fill out the map, but have not explored most of these hexes.

[Kol Korran]

Thank you for posting this! I had long wanted to DM a similar concept, albeit a far lower level. Yet the basic structure is similar- A hex map/ hex crawl, with a few main objectives, but a lot of other things to explore, and some factions who both initiate and progress their own plans, and respond to the PCs actions.

However, I am fairly grown up, with a very demanding job, 2 small kids and a few other responsibilities which leave me very little precious time.

I have taken a long hiatus from DMing, but miss it deeply. I am inspired by your log (and the one for lower levels, for newer players using various models). And... I think I would like to spend my time planning (Very slowly unfortunately), My idea.

So, I guess I am asking whether you have some useful advice, tips, online guides/ Useful sites to undertake such a project?

Thanks in advance! This looks fantastic!

[J-H]

I know I did some reading up on the topic in 2020 when I started pulling this together. There were some posts here, probably including one or two by Yora, who seems to have a LOT of in-depth posts on worldbuilding. I know I read some over at The Alexandrian about Hexcrawls, and followed links to some others. I didn't save any of them, but read a bunch of stuff and then let it all gel. Sorry.

The base concept came from Castle Dracula... in there, the evil priest Shaft had an obsidian sacrificial dagger that was basically Aztec in origin. I got to thinking "Ok, how did that get from Central America over to Eastern Europe? What if they wanted it back? What's over there?" I had also recently read an online novella about a Nahuatl creature/person who had been living undercover for the last few hundred years, and had to deal with magic use increasing in her area, driven by what eventually turns out to be someone bringing back the worship of Huitzopochitl through the usual methods.

Those sat and spun in my mind for a while, and somehow I came up with the base concept of "What if the Aztecs invaded Europe instead? How would they do that?" I somehow got from that to "let's make them Aaracokra and give them flying ships; but the party will steal flying ships, so how do I limit those some?"

I went through about 5 iterations of the main map, starting with a couple of bubble maps that just showed generally what was where, and then shrinking and narrowing it down repeatedly because it was too big. This map isn't too big - as shown by how much they've covered! - but it's still pretty big. Once I had the terrain for the final map done, I had to do a political version to show who was where. Once I had that done, going through and doing the writeup for each Hex entry was very time consuming, even though it's only a couple of paragraphs for each. I actually used some spreadsheet randomization to help me come up with prompts for some areas, like "A __(city/mine/ruin/lair/etc.)____ inhabited by _________ who are __(dead/alive/missing/hostile)_______ with ___(loot/plot clue/nothing/store)____."

Going back and filling in the Specific Areas section has taken a while too, but that's easier because it's just "here's a dungeon" or "here's a city as a combat area, the general overview and then the temple the party's likely to have their actual fights at."

It took a lot of work, and I don't think I'll self-write this format again as a result.

The Hex listings with the detail on each hex are still somehow only 36 pages. The Specific Areas entries are another 64 pages with about 3 pages left to write (5 Aaracokra cities, a few side cities, and the rest is basically dungeons). I've got about 55 pages of Bestiary (unique/high-power monsters have their own section)... then there are several 1-3 page sections where I wrote up a few of the major side quests (Ssword), a half-dozen pages of faction overviews and demographics, how the air-skiff works, the hook/intro adventure and ocean crossing, etc etc. I think it'll end up around 200 pages when formatted for the DM's Guild, excluding the campaign log.

So... that's probably not super-helpful, but that's what the process has been like.

[J-H]

We're done with the one-shots. The second one was last time and tonight, at level 11. The party was tasked with defending a ritual going on at a yuan-ti temple 300 years before... the forging of Ssword.

They failed the first attack (invisible Quasits got through while dealing with Vrocks) and one of the casters in the ritual Wished that problem away. Tonight, they deal with a Quetzal attack (everyone saved vs prismatic spray), the Mercy monk did some stunlocking, and then they fought off an Aaracokra attack group. Highlights include lots of blasting from the guy playing a wizard for the first time and ACTUAL COUNTERSPELLING! (haven't had anyone do that before), the monk grappling a low-flying priest then poisoning him (no save; I figure grapple+poison imposes a concentration check, so priest failed to heal himself), and then the (nearly surrounded) monk using his turn to break a yellow diamond (summon earth elemental) and then using Step of the Wind to run away. At the end, the ritual casters came out, with the priests looking disturbed that their clerical magic was failing, and then they teleported away carrying Ssword.

One of the new players is a high schooler who will be playing some kind of wizard.
The other is his mom, whose first D&D session was tonight (we helped her roll up a swashbuckler rogue). She seems to be interested in sticking around. I'm not sure what she'll build, probably a non-caster.

Next session isn't until March 12th due to RL reasons.... so no major updates in this thread until then.