D&D 5E D&D AL Play reports: Princes of the Apocalypse, sessions 1-23

[MerricB]

MerricB, did you use the Adventure Hooks (Page 12-14)? And if yes, how did you introduce them?

Eventually, I chose not to use them. I did consider it, but they provided too much of a impetus to explore the Keeps right away, when instead you get a slower reveal of the threats of the keeps. The players are in town due to the recent bandit activity and the like, after the faction representatives asked for help.

Cheers!

 

[Hereticus]

In my opinion, I don't believe that third level characters are ready to hit the keeps yes. I ran seven characters through some scenarios modified from those in the book before they set out at fourth level.

 

[MerricB]

Red Larch. The Dessamber Valley. 13th Mirtul, 1491 DR.

Following the disastrous expedition against the Lord of Lance Rock, the remaining adventurers sent messages back to Waterdeep through their faction contacts, asking for aid. It was a few days coming, but five new adventurers presented themselves in Red Larch: some sent by the Zhentarim, others coming to find out what the Zhentarim were doing in Red Larch in such numbers!

With such reinforcements, it was not long before the new group headed to Lance Rock to confront the necromancer one final time. All had, by now, heard rumours of the necromancer’s undead beginning to range out from Lance Rock, attacking travellers and increasing his store of corpses to work upon. The signs that the last group had destroyed had been replaced, and new undead protected the necromancer’s caverns.

The adventurers were properly nervous as they entered the caves, but no undead lurked in the “ambush” cavern – instead a tripwire attached to some bells was strung across the entrance. The adventurers carefully removed it, and progressed inwards. They first made their way to the “stock” room, where the necromancer had kept his corpses. As expected, there were more corpses there now – travellers ambushed by the necromancer’s minions – and four skeletons stood guard. Unfortunately, skeletons were not fast enough nor strong enough to stop this group, especially as the cleric was burning them to ash with her sacred flame spell, and the fighters were smashing the skeletons’ bones with great swings of their hammers.

Krovis, now a paladin of Kelemvor, blessed the bodies of the corpses and sent them to ash.

The group then returned to the entrance chamber and proceeded down the other passage. The “entertainment” room had been restocked – four zombies were there, including a recognisable dwarf in a bear suit: Thumbalina!

The zombies, unaware of the party’s advance, were easily subdued. It may have been a different story if the warning bells hadn’t been discovered, but now the question was what to do with the corpses. Krovis was in favour of destroying all the corpses, but Jandar talked him out of it, explaining that their contacts would likely be able to raise the mountain dwarf.

With that, the group progressed to the necromancer’s chambers. With numbers on their side – seven of them – they still faced a difficult challenge, with the necromancer standing far, far away from the group, guarded by his skeletons. Krovis charged into the chamber, as the rest of the party made their way more cautiously, taking advantage of what cover there was. Krovis was struck several times by arrows fired by the skeletons – four times, the last a critical hit. Somehow he maintained his feet throughout, although he had to take a moment to catch his second wind before engaging the skeletons proper.

It could have gone worse for the party, but the Lord of Lance Rock had – in the end – been caught off guard by the ferocity of the adventurers’ attack. Missile after missile pierced his flesh, and bolts of force struck him from afar. He had time for only one spell before he was struck down, and that spell proved not as effective as he wished. Krovis went down, but by this stage his companions were able to destroy the skeletons quickly and revive the paladin; he’d given them enough time to win the battle.

The adventurers progressed on to the necromancer’s bedchamber, in which they found a strange pedestal made of body parts, holding a glowing globe in which a strange rune resembling an eye drifted. The rune disappeared as they touched the globe, but none of the adventurers were aware of what the rune meant. A wand of magic missiles was retrieved from its storage place, as well as a number of coins, before the adventurers were sure that they’d discovered all the secrets of Lance Rock. The necromancer’s body burnt to ashes, they returned to Red Larch to great acclaim.

The Players and their Characters
Michael is playing Krovis Thorn, a LE human fighter 1/paladin 2 working for the Lord’s Alliance.
Josh is playing Grigori, a CN human fighter working for the Zhentarim.
Danielle is playing DDG, a rock gnome cleric working for the Emerald Enclave. (The character doesn’t like the name her parents gave her, so is referred to by her initials).
Dean is playing Zed Lepplin, a human warlock.
Callan is playing Jakesy Flagons, a halfling rogue.
Shane is playing Monkey, an air genasi monk.
Harry is playing Francis Copeland, a human fighter.

DM Notes
Neither Mikey nor Noah joined us again, and Josh was away on camp, so I was contemplating the problems associated with running the session with only three characters, before learning that Callan’s table was also hit by cancellations (work, illness and car trouble). The solution was easy: I merged the tables for this session. Next session we will likely split again; I doubt we’ll be missing so many players again! We also had one new player joining us for the first time: Dean. I’m not sure which table he’ll play on long-term; it rather depends whether my table or Callan’s needs more players!

There are a number of details in this report that I worked out when writing it rather than explaining them in-session. One example of that is the number of days that passed between the events of the last session and this one. Writing these reports is quite good for working out the passage of time – it also helps me to remember the events more clearly. There is a lot of banter and discussion that doesn’t make it into these reports, unfortunately.

Dean chose to go to the shrine in town before leaving a give an offering to the gods. I rewarded this with inspiration, one of the uses of the mechanic I may repeat in later sessions. I will likely consider how significant the offering is to the character. A 1 gold piece offering is significant to a first level character, but not to a tenth level character. There has to be some element of sacrifice involved!

You may note that Michael has suddenly jumped to third level. Where have all the XP come from? Well, they’ve come from adventuring in the D&D Expeditions adventures! I’m not particularly a fan of jumping characters from one campaign to another, but I’m rationalising it by saying they were adventures he had before coming to Red Larch. Interestingly, he’s also now taken levels in paladin. His choice of Kelemvor as his god was made during the session (he had some other god chosen at first) as he realised how much he liked the deity and its interaction with the undead. Michael was also the one who last session made the mistake of telling the necromancer they were sent by Kelemvor… it seems he was correct!

Michael was all for destroying Thumbalina’s corpse, which would have distressed Danielle. (She intends to go back to running Thumbalina next session). This is one of those times when I make sure I step in as DM to ensure the players’ actions don’t cause problems. Michael agreed to let Thumbalina survive, and so we have the mountain dwarf back next session. Josh made a choice to leave his PC dead, so he’ll have a new character next session, although I don’t know what it will be!

This was also a good example of what a DM needs to do to make the setting react to the actions of the players. It didn’t really make sense that the necromancer’s caves would be exactly the same the next time the party went back, so I added in replacement undead, put in a new trap, and added in reports of the undead attacking travellers.

With the destruction of the necromancer, that ends Episode 1 of the adventure. There will be a new event at the beginning of the next session which will start Episode 2. I hope it also means more role-playing in town, something that we didn’t do that much this session primarily due to the process of introducing new characters.

 

[sirgaric]

Does it make sense for a Paladin of Kelemvor to be Lawful Evil?

 

[MerricB]

Does it make sense for a Paladin of Kelemvor to be Lawful Evil?

I'm not sure if Michael's still LE, but I think it's entirely possible. Kelemvor is LN, and it's obvious that Krovis lacks the compassion, although he takes the tenets of "Destroy all Undead!" very seriously...

It makes for quite an interesting character. I hope we get to develop the tension between what he does and how others expect him to do it!

Cheers!

 

[Nemio]

With that, the only further passage led to the necromancer. The group were somewhat stealthy in their approach, but the necromancer and his skeletons were a long way back in the cave. Grigori moved forward to the slabs around where the severed hands were stored and used a thunderclap spell to destroy them all, alerting the necromancer to his presence. The necromancer cast a high-level
magic missile spell, causing five missiles to strike Grigori, killing him instantly.

Was it a deliberate choice to let the Necromancer attack?
Because the text says he runs away when confronted.

I used the PotA intro adventures to introduce 5 new players to DnD.

While most of them went towards the chests 2 of them split up and scouted the other tunnel.
They spotted a zombie which didn't spot them and decided to continue anyway.
Meanwhile the chest trap triggered and severely injured one PC.
(Never split the party, doh)

While the battle with the zombie and crawling claws was still going and with everyone regrouped they decided to attack the Necromancer thinking it would help in ending the fight quicker.
Do you think that would that have worked?
It would made sense for the Necromancer to use his concentration to keep control over the undead much like the PC's have to do when doing this with a spell.

The Necromancer was just standing there taunting them from behind his skeletons.
Their attack made him run away and the skeletons were brought into the fight sooner.

Their bow attacks decimated the party.
I was rooting for my players to turn the tide of battle as they kept getting up and dropping again.
Some unlucky death saves (2 nat 1's) decided otherwise.
I killed my first 2 PC's that day and didn't feel good about it
Especially because they belonged to 2 players who decided to rescue the ones that split off.

They felt it was realistic though and it indeed shows that they need to be careful in the future.

 

[MerricB]

Was it a deliberate choice to let the Necromancer attack?

Yes. It derives from his easy victory in the last session; in addition, the original encounter was triggered with the group making him furious by invoking Kelemvor's name. I'm not bound by the adventure text.

(Never split the party, doh)

Yeah. Send them through some Call of Cthulhu adventures. They'll get the idea quick enough!

It would made sense for the Necromancer to use his concentration to keep control over the undead much like the PC's have to do when doing this with a spell.

It seems entirely reasonable. The rules just give you a starting point; it's up to you how to interpret them. To a large extent, once interaction starts its pretty hard to keep referring back to the text to see what the designers think "should" happen. I'd much rather do what feels enjoyable and fun.

Their bow attacks decimated the party.

The bow attacks can be extremely dangerous, especially to poorly armoured (or unlucky) 1st level characters. This battle is really, really hard.

They felt it was realistic though and it indeed shows that they need to be careful in the future.

Indeed. Killing PCs early on isn't actually that bad, especially if it shows how nasty their opponents can be.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

Red Larch. The Dessamber Valley. 20th Mirtul. 1491 DR.

A few days had passed since the adventurers’ triumphant return from Lance Rock. Monkey, Francis and Jakesy said goodbye to the other adventurers, and continued on their travels, while Diablo and Gimbel returned from their own travels and rejoined the party again, where they were regaled with tales of all the trouble the adventurers had experienced with the necromancer.

These stories were interrupted by a rumbling sound from outside; moving quickly to investigate, the adventurers discovered that a large part of the village green and a few children were disappearing into a chasm that had opened up.

The group dashed to the scene, with Thumbalina throwing herself right over the edge, where she landed safely on a great pile of dirt to her great delight. In no time at all, she had cheered up the children that had followed her down, while above the rest of the adventurers attempted to calm down the terrified townsfolk. Their efforts were not helped by several of the village elders, who sought to send everyone back to their homes. This behaviour was deemed suspicious by the adventurers, and they were soon sure that some of the elders knew about what lay beneath the town; Thumbalina called back letting the group know about a tunnel and door down in the underground space.

To confirm their suspicious, they decided to investigate the complex. It was a dungeon. They’re adventurers!

While they were preparing for the descent, Kaylessa, the innkeeper, organised a rope fence around the hole, and generally kept the townsfolk in good spirits, while the elders mumbled and muttered nearby. The fence did little to stop Thumbalina and the children of the village, who were throwing themselves into the depths with great glee, landing on the dirt pile, then climbing up a rope for another go!

Eventually, everyone was organised and the group descended. They chose to investigate the door, which led to a long, worked corridor, adorned by reliefs of dwarven warriors. It proved that two of these reliefs were actually doorways, and so the group turned north through the left-hand door, and proceeded for a long time. Eventually they reached a room in which several human bodies were being gnawed upon by giant rats. The rats defended their meals, but were soon driven off by the adventurers. The bodies proved to be those of travellers, each with a symbol etched into their foreheads, deep enough to cut the bone. No-one could identify the symbol, but it was certainly disturbing.

The next room they investigated was less grisly, but no less unusual: a 20-pound rock, floating in the air, was its only adornment. The adventurers poked and prodded at the rock, until it eventually fell to the ground, but they could not determine what made it float in the air. Shrugging their collective shoulders, they moved onwards.

The tunnels now turned south again and they found themselves confronting eight men in leather armour marked with the symbol they’d seen inscribed on the corpses. Conversation was not a strong point of the men, who attempted to kill the adventurers for their intrusion, describing themselves as the “Bringers of Woe”. It didn’t go well for the Bringers of Woe; a couple were captured, but the rest were slain. Those captured had little to say to the adventurers – mainly on account of being unconscious and the group mindful of the need to push on. That said, the room they was interesting. It held the broken statue of a dwarf, with a small plaque giving its identity as a petrified Ironstar(?) dwarf, found 32 years ago in the Red Larch West Quarry; a ring of gravel surrounded the dwarf, and a number of valuables surrounded it. Heedless of what might occur, the group collected the valuables – silver pieces, gold pieces, and a few gems – as well as a bloodied dagger.

Continuing east, they discovered one of the elders of Red Larch – Baragustas – who had been absent from the commotion above. He pleaded with the group to not proceed, in case they woke the “wrath of the Delvers”. This wasn’t enough for the adventurers to stop investigating, so they proceeded onwards after tying him up.

The group finally reached a great, huge chamber of many stone monoliths, some standing alone, while others were set in great trilithons. The adventurers were not alone, although it took them a little time to discover this – an evil priest lurked in the darkness at the back of the cave, and cast a slow spell on the adventurers soon after they entered. The adventurers rushed forward (some quite slowly), but they were not able to catch the priest before he made his escape through a secret door, collapsing the tunnel behind him.

No further items of interest presented themselves to the adventurers, and so they made their way back home. Along the way, they found a mentally-challenged half-orc who seemed to be torturing a young boy; in fact the boy was being punished for failing to follow the orders of the town elders – or “Believers”, as he referred to him. The half-orc, Grund, made little good conversation, and needed to be subdued before the adventurers to escort the boy home.

The return of the adventurers to town caused great uproar amongst the townsfolk when it was realised that several of the elders had been capturing and killing travellers to appease the “Delvers”. There would be an accounting in Red Larch…

The Adventurers
Michael is playing Krovis Thorn, a LE human fighter 1/paladin 2 working for the Lord’s Alliance.
Josh is playing Grigori, a CN human fighter working for the Zhentarim.
Danielle is playing Thumbalina. a dwarf barbarian working for the Emerald Enclave.
Dean is playing Zed Lepplin, a human warlock.
Jesse is playing Jandar, CN human fighter, a criminal working for the Zhentarim.
Mikey is playing Diablo, N gold dragonborn warlock, a sage working for the Lords’ Alliance.
Noah is playing Gimbel, CN forest gnome rogue, a criminal working for the Zhentarim.

DM Notes
The biggest problem with this section of the adventure was simply that I hadn’t been able to properly set up enough of the NPCs in town. This was the first time the players had met the elders, so they weren’t really aware of their importance in the village. As I’m running this adventure in Encounters-format (2 hours per session), it doesn’t leave a lot of time for role-playing, although it’s also true that I tend not to be a big role-player at any time.

However, the session did serve to continue setting up Kaylessa as an important contact and NPC; she’ll be mayor next session, and I hope to use her to provide commentary on the effects of the actions of the players as the campaign continues. Being the innkeeper, she’s likely to hear most of the gossip in town…

XP-wise, this section is too light to get players to 3rd level. As a result, we’ll be starting the main adventure a little light; however, some of the players have augmented their XP by playing in some of the Expeditions adventures. That and the number of players we have will likely balance the encounters, so I don’t have to adjust things too much.

Yes, the priest escaped. This will become relevant later on. I’m not quite sure exactly how he’ll come back into it, but there are also a lot of hanging plot threads about the elders that I’ll try to explore in upcoming sessions.

I’ve also advanced the timeline another 7 days, to reflect that the adventurers do spend time off when they’re not adventuring. My old-school tendencies keeps it at “+1 day per real day not adventuring”. This may change depending on circumstance, of course!

 

[Rabbitbait]

Thanks Merric. I'm really enjoying your updates. You write very well. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens now that you are proceeding into the adventure proper and seeing how much your experience differs from mine. I am slightly ahead of you in that my players are now at the Featherspire and about to head out hunting.

 

[MerricB]

Red Larch. The Desamber Valley. 27th Mirtul. 1491 DR.

The Elders of the town of Red Larch were now imprisoned, or fled, or dead. The innkeeper, Kaylessa, had been acclaimed as the town’s temporary mayor, and her well-considered decision-making was winning over the townspeople. It seemed that soon she’d be acclaimed as permanent mayor of the township.

However, news of something more sinister was beginning to make itself known about the town: a trade delegation from the dwarven city of Mirabar had gone missing! Each of the adventurers were called in by the local representatives of their faction and told about this disappearance, and were set on the task of discovering what had happened to it!

The adventurers began by gathering as much news as they could in town on the disappearance. What they gathered was fairly slim: the delegation had been last seen in Beliard, four new graves had been found in the Sumber Hills, and a number of beautiful dwarven books had been sold in Wormford (Womford – see the DM Notes) that could have been taken from the delegation. Where to begin?

The adventurers – after much discussion – decided upon first going to the graves, then making their way south to Womford.

A local farmer guided them to the graves, where they discovered a few hastily-gathered stones covering the bodies, with vultures circling overhead. Uncovering the bodies revealed a dwarf in an artisan’s robe, a woman warrior dressed as a guard of Mirabar, a human warrior with a black cloak in strange stony armour, and a human in a white robe adorned with black feathers – all dead from arrow wounds or crushing blows. It seemed likely that the dwarf and the woman were from the delegation, but who were the others? The group then prepared to go to Wormford… first returning to Red Larch as they weren’t sure of their way through the wilderness!

The trip to Wormford passed through a wretched hive of scum and villainy named the Bargewright Inn. The members of the Zhentarim in the party felt right at home, and engaged with the Innkeeper there, Nalaskur Thaelond who gave them a little background information on the smugglers and river merchants that pass through the village of Wormford.

At Wormford itself, the adventures discovered a group of river pirates who had been selling the dwarven books. Initially, they negotiated with the pirates but soon enough the negotiations devolved into combat. With all the pirates dead, the group discovered a map showing a strange symbol – also present on many of the supplies in the hold – marked on the river, upstream in the Sumber Hills. It was time to investigate the map!

The Players and their Characters
Michael is playing Krovis Thorn, a LN human fighter/paladin (soldier) working for the Lord’s Alliance.
Danielle is playing Thumbalina. CN dwarf barbarian (outlander) working for the Emerald Enclave.
Dean is playing Zed Lepplin, CN human warlock, an entertainer working for the Zhentarim
Jesse is playing Jandar, CN human fighter, a criminal working for the Zhentarim.
Mikey is playing Diablo, N gold dragonborn warlock, a sage working for the Lords’ Alliance.
Noah is playing Gimbel, CN forest gnome rogue, a criminal working for the Zhentarim.

DM Notes
And so, we get to the main adventure. For those unaware, Princes of the Apocalypse is properly an adventure for levels 3-15 characters, with the main hook being the missing trade delegation. As the D&D Encounters program runs from levels 1-4 (and new characters in the D&D Adventurers League need to be first level), there’s a small amount of material that is meant to take characters from levels 1-3 and serves as a prequel to the main adventure. Unfortunately, the second of those sections (The Tomb of Moving Stones) has nowhere enough adventure material in it to get characters from levels 2-3. A few of my players have played D&D Expeditions adventures to get them to level 3 or higher, and I’m trying to scale the adventure so the group isn’t completely overwhelmed… mind you, when everyone turns up, there’s not much scaling needed! Seven players this week with the return of Mikey and Noah ensured that!

Investigations are tough to run in D&D, and they’re harder to write well. The mystery of the missing delegation starts out with very few clues, as a large part of the early adventure is trying to “Unearth the Deception”, and it’s not good saying “This place is full of cultists” when you’re meant to be unsure when you get there if they are cultists or not. So, vague clues that lead characters into the Sumber Hills and eventually to the cult locations. It’s entirely possible to run this adventure with the players having no idea what’s going on and just searching through the Hills for some sign of the delegation, and that’s fine. There’s no One True Way to run this adventure, much like the Tyranny series. Go with what works for you.

You may be wondering at why I’m using Wormford and not Womford. Doesn’t it say Womford on the map? It certainly does, but it’s meant to be Wormfood – a long ago map error (in one of the very first Forgotten Realms adventures) now enshrined in the latest adventure! “Wormford” gains its name from a small dragon being killed near that location. The standard explanation for Womford is that it’s the dialect of the settlement that renders it that way, but I think I’ll be calling Wormford from now on.

A couple of the characters have changed since the adventure begun. Josh’s replacement character after Grigori died is Ivan, a water genasi. (He missed this session, but the report of last session had me still cut’n’pasting his old identity). Meanwhile, Michael has recast Krovis as an ex-soldier rather than an ex-pirate (Strangely enough, Josh’s new PC is an ex-pirate), and has changed from the Zhentarim to the Lord’s Alliance.

I’ve skipped over much of the role-playing in this session in my notes, as it tends not to translate well to the text (when I can even remember the high points!) That said, it was a good opportunity to further the engagement of the players with the townsfolk of Red Larch, and something I hope to improve upon in future sessions.