WotBS Tolamaker's Burning Sky
- Thread starter Tolamaker
- Start date
Tolamaker
Adventurer
Sessions 112-117 Like Looking in a Mirror
112
The group teleports to Ycengled, where they see that the forest is slowly coming back to life after years of fog and undeath. They meet with Fearne or whoever and see how the elves are doing. THey say that Shaaladel hasn't sent troops in yet, and the forest still holds its haunted reputation for a little while. Wandering away from the village, Fearne pointedly wonders aloud about what a shame it would be if Shaaladel were to fall in battle, and be replaced by his kinder daughter Shalosha. The group then wonders the same thing. Hypothetically. They don't come to a conclusion.
Traveling north to the battle lines, they meet with a general who asks for their help with guarding Theorond, brother to Shaaladel. Theorond is quite insulated, not even speaking Common very well. As they tour the river, Theorond asks to cross a bridge, where ELuriah hears the sounds of an ambush before it can attack. A bolt comes flying from the trees, and a mad cackle sounds out from the assassin, Sorripa the Undying.
113
Two behirs swarm up over the bridge as well. Aripos and Gruz go to deal with Sorripa, but a half-orc steps out of hiding, announcing himself as Duke Zurg. Mishka and Eluriah defeat the behirs with axe and Control Water, and Go to help deal with the two assailants who look suspiciously similar. Seeing they are outnumbered, the two teleport away in a flash of fire.
Receiving profuse thanks from the elven general for not letting the Lord Shaaladel's brother die on his watch, the group goes further west. There, they meet with a commander, and agree to retake some territory on the Shahalesti side of the river. At a cliffside, they find a barbarian named Ashkim and a druid named Hairule alongside several T-Rexes flightless dragons. The druid calls a storm down while the barbarian and dragons hold the line.
114
Slowly, as two barbarians hack away at each other, the group manages to maneuver in a way that Hairule is forced to teleport away without Ashkim, leaving him unconscious at Mishka's feet. However, the way he teleported away left a portal behind, closing quickly. THe grouip decides to jump through, wherever it may lead them.
They find themselves in a camp, where Hairule is calling the alarm. Zurg and Sorripa are there, and they are joined by a horrific beholder inquisitor, Pontus Jikhtasceksh, wearing another beholder's skull as his mask. Hairule is quickly dealt with, but the Beholder's antimagic cone and telekinetic rays soon split the party up as Zurg and Sorripa maintain their mobility.
115
Gruz chases Sorripa around, trying to pin the little assassin in place. Mishka charges Pontus Jikhtasceksh, managing to shrug off his attempts to hold her in place. Eluriah and Aripos are less lucky, as Jikhtasceksh maneuvers to keep them in his sight so they can't benefit from Foresight or Invisibility.
Chasing Sorripa backfires as it leads to a two on one between Gruz and the remaining mercenaries, and he attempts to rally. However, His movement has brought him back into Jakshim's eyes, and a disintegrating ray hits Gruz, and he is turned to ash. Eluriah screams, Mishka fells Jakshim, and Aripos dispatches Zurg and Sorripa with two well-placed bolts. They gather Gruz's ashes and bring him back to the river, where they find that they are actually opposite Lord Shaaladel's camp. They meet with him, asking for his assistance, which he gladly offers to bring Gruz back to life in exchange for the Torch. He laughs at the faces they make, and nods to a cauldron hanging from Gruz's broom. "I believe an artifact such as that would cost quite a pretty penny. It would be a shame if he were not able to make use of it."
The group puts Gruz's ashes in the cauldron, and Aripos pours out a stolen wine into the cauldron as he sips on his own glass. In the afterlife, feeling the tug of mortality once again, he hears his patron speak into his ear. "You return to life, but death awaits at your doorstep!" Pulling himself out of the cauldron, Gruz summons forth a Blade of Disaster as vampiric ambushers descend on their tent.
116
The party rouses as vampires swarm them, while an invisible commander tosses fireballs and other control spells about, all while calling for the spawn to focus on getting the Torch. However, the vampires underestimated how weak the Stormbreakers would be after a long journey, and found themselves overwhelmed. As Gruz chases after the invisible commander, his warlock sight lets him pierce the veil to see none other than Aurana, the dark elf advisor to Lord Shaaladel. He is able to polymorph her into a rat, and they drop her into the bag of holding as elven guards come to investigate, and the party mutters about whether this was Shaaladel's betrayal.
117
The party demands to see Shaaladel, who greets them in a simple trance robe, though the blazing archangels above him are still intimidating. On the way, the party decided to play it cool, and not outright accuse him of treachery, so they simply say what happened, and dump Aurana out into the court. When she denies what has happened, a player muses that angels should be able to tell if she's lying, and what do you know, that is in the character sheet I used. With Aurana's lies revealed, Shaaladel quietly asks her how long she has been working for the Ragesians, mentioning how strange she has acted ever since "that night you were meant to assassinate Leska." The party immediately mutters about the visions they saw in the Temple of Souls. Aurana tries to maintain her innocence, but Shaaladel says there is a simple test to see if what she says is true. "If you have any loyalty to me, walk into the running river, and do not return until I ask it of you."
Aurana is led to the river, and she steps in. Her body catches alight, and she screams, but Shaaladel does not ask her to step out, until all that is left is a slurry of ash floating down the river. He apologizes to the party, and the party wonders if they hadn't doubted him too much.
The next day the armies across the continent make pushes into Ragesia, and find the information found was true: the Ragesian forces are spread more thin than they once thought. A march begins, with some skirmishes, but it soon becomes clear that the armies will converge on Ragos soon. Trying to see if they can deal with Leska's immortality beforehand, the party does some research on the march, learning that there are legends that the Flamebringer Dragon lays at the center of the Opaline Wastes, guarding the Aquiline Heart. One of their sources is Mishka's grandmother, who asks why it's so important to make Leska mortal first. "Coaltongue was immortal, and look what good that did him!" Acknowledging the wisdom of their elders, the party decides to rejoin the armies to take Ragos.
Post Session Thoughts
112
This was a very top-of-my-head session. I didn't even mention a sphinx encounter, simply because it consisted of me having a sphinx land, ask riddles that I found from a reddit thread, and then they succeeded on all of them. The real fun was when the ambush started. One of the End of D&D requests was to have a doppelganger/mirror match fight, which I had said would likely be a dream sequence, because the balance would just be out of whack. Well, this section of the adventure was planned to use the battle point and mission system from the campaign guide, and I prepared a few stock encounters that were cribbed from module 12. The VIP mission was not prepared, so of course they chose that one. In my mild panic, I realized I might not have the right monsters prepared, but I did have the PC character sheets in front of me. So last second I threw in two PCs with escape hatches, and the doppelganger arc started.
113
Nothing specific here other than the joy of calling T-Rexes "weird dragons." I have to say, it's a lot of fun to run a doppelganger party that's specifically made to be the PC's mirror in every way. All of the names are anagrams or just their names reversed. Some personality traits are the same, while others are reversed, and it really just lead to a lot of laughs.
114
I waited a turn too long to try and escape, because I had planned to have one final PC doppelganger fight, but they had corralled the barbarian too well. Plus, Transport via Plants leaves a portal open for a single round, and when Aripos realized they were in range, he immediately ran in. My players love to keep the party together, so even as they all screamed at what a terrible idea it was, they jumped in one by one. Similar to the Empyrean fight, I really find the best way to balance a fight after one that was too easy is to just roll straight into the next fight. I brought in a beholder I planned on having a different encounter in, and it worked out great.
115
Ah, my first kill in over four years. It was meant to be Aripos, but the beholder had too many Dex saves, so Gruz pulled the short straw. The group has at least three separate ways to bring someone back to life, and so when they started to try and wheedle a resurrection out of Shaaladel, I pretty much laughed in their faces.
116
This session didn't quite go as I planned. The battle was far too easy, as I thought a slew of vampire spawn and a vampire mage roughly as strong as Strahd would be a challenge at the end of an adventuring day, and I was completely wrong. CR calibration continues. This session also ended early due to a cat emergency on my end, but thankfully everything turned out alright.
117
Again, this didn't quite go how I planned, I definitely flubbed the way I wanted to present the soft accusation of Shaaladel, but the players seemed to enjoy it. I also did my darnedest to steer them to Ragos first, because I have committed that cardinal sin of planning how I want to end the campaign, and was having trouble thinking of how to make the Opaline Wastes interesting before Ragos. The tracks are set baby, all aboard.
Changes to the Module
The only book change I made was the nature of Aurana's ambush on the party. I decided a while back that I was a little tired of all o the betrayals in the campaign, and felt like Pilus's betrayal will be enough. Shaaladel is an elf, and I think he should be willing to play the long game. So, in my head, I reasoned that this ambush was a matter of Aurana failing Shaaladel too many times, starting with her failed assassination, and the rest being unnamed occasions during this war. This being her last chance, she failed, and Shaaladel felt content to cut her off as a loose end, and accept the Stormbreakers having the Torch... for now. I was a little surprised how willing the party was to go along with Shaaladel after his show, because I tried to put in a little menace with his sentencing her to death as a "proof of loyalty," but ah well, it will be a nice reveal at the end of the campaign. This is the end of Shaaladel's machinations in this game, but I plan on having him teased as a big bad post-campaign. I've already started to mention riots and fits of rebellion in Shahalesti among the Taranesti, Droalesti, and non-elves.
We are only one session behind real time now, so we'll see when I update next! The Battle for Ragos awaits!
112
The group teleports to Ycengled, where they see that the forest is slowly coming back to life after years of fog and undeath. They meet with Fearne or whoever and see how the elves are doing. THey say that Shaaladel hasn't sent troops in yet, and the forest still holds its haunted reputation for a little while. Wandering away from the village, Fearne pointedly wonders aloud about what a shame it would be if Shaaladel were to fall in battle, and be replaced by his kinder daughter Shalosha. The group then wonders the same thing. Hypothetically. They don't come to a conclusion.
Traveling north to the battle lines, they meet with a general who asks for their help with guarding Theorond, brother to Shaaladel. Theorond is quite insulated, not even speaking Common very well. As they tour the river, Theorond asks to cross a bridge, where ELuriah hears the sounds of an ambush before it can attack. A bolt comes flying from the trees, and a mad cackle sounds out from the assassin, Sorripa the Undying.
113
Two behirs swarm up over the bridge as well. Aripos and Gruz go to deal with Sorripa, but a half-orc steps out of hiding, announcing himself as Duke Zurg. Mishka and Eluriah defeat the behirs with axe and Control Water, and Go to help deal with the two assailants who look suspiciously similar. Seeing they are outnumbered, the two teleport away in a flash of fire.
Receiving profuse thanks from the elven general for not letting the Lord Shaaladel's brother die on his watch, the group goes further west. There, they meet with a commander, and agree to retake some territory on the Shahalesti side of the river. At a cliffside, they find a barbarian named Ashkim and a druid named Hairule alongside several T-Rexes flightless dragons. The druid calls a storm down while the barbarian and dragons hold the line.
114
Slowly, as two barbarians hack away at each other, the group manages to maneuver in a way that Hairule is forced to teleport away without Ashkim, leaving him unconscious at Mishka's feet. However, the way he teleported away left a portal behind, closing quickly. THe grouip decides to jump through, wherever it may lead them.
They find themselves in a camp, where Hairule is calling the alarm. Zurg and Sorripa are there, and they are joined by a horrific beholder inquisitor, Pontus Jikhtasceksh, wearing another beholder's skull as his mask. Hairule is quickly dealt with, but the Beholder's antimagic cone and telekinetic rays soon split the party up as Zurg and Sorripa maintain their mobility.
115
Gruz chases Sorripa around, trying to pin the little assassin in place. Mishka charges Pontus Jikhtasceksh, managing to shrug off his attempts to hold her in place. Eluriah and Aripos are less lucky, as Jikhtasceksh maneuvers to keep them in his sight so they can't benefit from Foresight or Invisibility.
Chasing Sorripa backfires as it leads to a two on one between Gruz and the remaining mercenaries, and he attempts to rally. However, His movement has brought him back into Jakshim's eyes, and a disintegrating ray hits Gruz, and he is turned to ash. Eluriah screams, Mishka fells Jakshim, and Aripos dispatches Zurg and Sorripa with two well-placed bolts. They gather Gruz's ashes and bring him back to the river, where they find that they are actually opposite Lord Shaaladel's camp. They meet with him, asking for his assistance, which he gladly offers to bring Gruz back to life in exchange for the Torch. He laughs at the faces they make, and nods to a cauldron hanging from Gruz's broom. "I believe an artifact such as that would cost quite a pretty penny. It would be a shame if he were not able to make use of it."
The group puts Gruz's ashes in the cauldron, and Aripos pours out a stolen wine into the cauldron as he sips on his own glass. In the afterlife, feeling the tug of mortality once again, he hears his patron speak into his ear. "You return to life, but death awaits at your doorstep!" Pulling himself out of the cauldron, Gruz summons forth a Blade of Disaster as vampiric ambushers descend on their tent.
116
The party rouses as vampires swarm them, while an invisible commander tosses fireballs and other control spells about, all while calling for the spawn to focus on getting the Torch. However, the vampires underestimated how weak the Stormbreakers would be after a long journey, and found themselves overwhelmed. As Gruz chases after the invisible commander, his warlock sight lets him pierce the veil to see none other than Aurana, the dark elf advisor to Lord Shaaladel. He is able to polymorph her into a rat, and they drop her into the bag of holding as elven guards come to investigate, and the party mutters about whether this was Shaaladel's betrayal.
117
The party demands to see Shaaladel, who greets them in a simple trance robe, though the blazing archangels above him are still intimidating. On the way, the party decided to play it cool, and not outright accuse him of treachery, so they simply say what happened, and dump Aurana out into the court. When she denies what has happened, a player muses that angels should be able to tell if she's lying, and what do you know, that is in the character sheet I used. With Aurana's lies revealed, Shaaladel quietly asks her how long she has been working for the Ragesians, mentioning how strange she has acted ever since "that night you were meant to assassinate Leska." The party immediately mutters about the visions they saw in the Temple of Souls. Aurana tries to maintain her innocence, but Shaaladel says there is a simple test to see if what she says is true. "If you have any loyalty to me, walk into the running river, and do not return until I ask it of you."
Aurana is led to the river, and she steps in. Her body catches alight, and she screams, but Shaaladel does not ask her to step out, until all that is left is a slurry of ash floating down the river. He apologizes to the party, and the party wonders if they hadn't doubted him too much.
The next day the armies across the continent make pushes into Ragesia, and find the information found was true: the Ragesian forces are spread more thin than they once thought. A march begins, with some skirmishes, but it soon becomes clear that the armies will converge on Ragos soon. Trying to see if they can deal with Leska's immortality beforehand, the party does some research on the march, learning that there are legends that the Flamebringer Dragon lays at the center of the Opaline Wastes, guarding the Aquiline Heart. One of their sources is Mishka's grandmother, who asks why it's so important to make Leska mortal first. "Coaltongue was immortal, and look what good that did him!" Acknowledging the wisdom of their elders, the party decides to rejoin the armies to take Ragos.
Post Session Thoughts
112
This was a very top-of-my-head session. I didn't even mention a sphinx encounter, simply because it consisted of me having a sphinx land, ask riddles that I found from a reddit thread, and then they succeeded on all of them. The real fun was when the ambush started. One of the End of D&D requests was to have a doppelganger/mirror match fight, which I had said would likely be a dream sequence, because the balance would just be out of whack. Well, this section of the adventure was planned to use the battle point and mission system from the campaign guide, and I prepared a few stock encounters that were cribbed from module 12. The VIP mission was not prepared, so of course they chose that one. In my mild panic, I realized I might not have the right monsters prepared, but I did have the PC character sheets in front of me. So last second I threw in two PCs with escape hatches, and the doppelganger arc started.
113
Nothing specific here other than the joy of calling T-Rexes "weird dragons." I have to say, it's a lot of fun to run a doppelganger party that's specifically made to be the PC's mirror in every way. All of the names are anagrams or just their names reversed. Some personality traits are the same, while others are reversed, and it really just lead to a lot of laughs.
114
I waited a turn too long to try and escape, because I had planned to have one final PC doppelganger fight, but they had corralled the barbarian too well. Plus, Transport via Plants leaves a portal open for a single round, and when Aripos realized they were in range, he immediately ran in. My players love to keep the party together, so even as they all screamed at what a terrible idea it was, they jumped in one by one. Similar to the Empyrean fight, I really find the best way to balance a fight after one that was too easy is to just roll straight into the next fight. I brought in a beholder I planned on having a different encounter in, and it worked out great.
115
Ah, my first kill in over four years. It was meant to be Aripos, but the beholder had too many Dex saves, so Gruz pulled the short straw. The group has at least three separate ways to bring someone back to life, and so when they started to try and wheedle a resurrection out of Shaaladel, I pretty much laughed in their faces.
116
This session didn't quite go as I planned. The battle was far too easy, as I thought a slew of vampire spawn and a vampire mage roughly as strong as Strahd would be a challenge at the end of an adventuring day, and I was completely wrong. CR calibration continues. This session also ended early due to a cat emergency on my end, but thankfully everything turned out alright.
117
Again, this didn't quite go how I planned, I definitely flubbed the way I wanted to present the soft accusation of Shaaladel, but the players seemed to enjoy it. I also did my darnedest to steer them to Ragos first, because I have committed that cardinal sin of planning how I want to end the campaign, and was having trouble thinking of how to make the Opaline Wastes interesting before Ragos. The tracks are set baby, all aboard.
Changes to the Module
The only book change I made was the nature of Aurana's ambush on the party. I decided a while back that I was a little tired of all o the betrayals in the campaign, and felt like Pilus's betrayal will be enough. Shaaladel is an elf, and I think he should be willing to play the long game. So, in my head, I reasoned that this ambush was a matter of Aurana failing Shaaladel too many times, starting with her failed assassination, and the rest being unnamed occasions during this war. This being her last chance, she failed, and Shaaladel felt content to cut her off as a loose end, and accept the Stormbreakers having the Torch... for now. I was a little surprised how willing the party was to go along with Shaaladel after his show, because I tried to put in a little menace with his sentencing her to death as a "proof of loyalty," but ah well, it will be a nice reveal at the end of the campaign. This is the end of Shaaladel's machinations in this game, but I plan on having him teased as a big bad post-campaign. I've already started to mention riots and fits of rebellion in Shahalesti among the Taranesti, Droalesti, and non-elves.
We are only one session behind real time now, so we'll see when I update next! The Battle for Ragos awaits!
