101st session on my main campaign. Player characters are 16th level, on the cusp of 17th level. Aasimar vengeance paladin, elf arcane trickster rogue, halfling lore bard, tiefling shadow sorcerer, human beast master ranger.
This session started with a huge reveal. IRL six months ago, the bard's soul was mistakenly lost to an archdevil and now his body is secretly possessed by the soul of an amoral, vainglorious rival bard in thrall to the archdevil. Some of the bard's more questionable actions (such as executing the Open Lord of Waterdeep and taking his place) have recently made some of the other players suspicious. The rogue's player loves this kind of shennanigans, so he gleefully recruited a network of spies to clandestinely watch the bard. As such, he was well positioned when the bard communed with the archdevil and the conspiracy was revealed. We played this scene in the open with all the players present. So now they all know that the bard is no longer who he appears to be. But as for the characters, only the rogue knows the truth. He's still mulling over what to do with this knowledge...and how to determine where the bard's real soul is.
Soon after this reveal, the party teleported to an island a few miles from Waterdeep. There, they needed to recover two magical staves and free a paladin held by the Cult of Tiamat. The cult intends to use one of the staves--the Dragonstaff of Aghairon--to lower the magical wards that protect Waterdeep from dragon attack. Once those wards are down, Tiamat's dragons will destroy the city. The cult used the other staff--a rod of resurrection--to bring back five dragons that the party had previously slain. And those dragons are in the cult lair beneath the island.
For the cult lair, I used the map of Bhal-Hamatugn, which is from the Zenith Trajectory adventure in the Shackled City adventure path. It's a fun three-level map built around a central chamber with a lot of verticality. I've been eager to use it for a long time. However, I didn't have a chance to properly key the map before the session, so I had to make up most of the encounters on the fly. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I did a damn fine job.
The PCs busted out a bunch of new tricks to bypass most of the cult's guards. They utilized the passwall spell to basically turn the lair into swiss cheese. One definite highlight was a dragon-themed trap with poison gas and lightning pillars in the room holding the rod of resurrection, all of which I made up on the spot. As the dragonborn guards swarmed the room, the PCs used passwall to escape through the ceiling, leaving the traps to kill the guards. On the floor above, they shoved more guards through the hole into the trapped room below. Good times.
By session's end, they had both of the staves but were still searching for the paladin.
Next session: Five dragons!
