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Message: <blockquote data-quote="THEMNGMNT" data-source="post: 8576622" data-attributes="member: 6809274">36th session of my Neverwinter campaign. Three 7th level characters: half-orc vengeance paladin, human genie warlock, drow evoker wizard. Running a modified version of Hall of Harsh Reflections -- an adventure from the Age of Worms adventure path in Dungeon magazine -- which is part of ongoing, longterm plotline about a cabal of aberrations scheming to destroy Neverwinter.In this session, the player characters are on a mission to neutralize a thieves guild of rogue drow. They're investigating the guild's activity in the slums of the city. What they don't know is the drow are allied with a mind flayer they tangled with several sessions back.The PCs took a room at an inn for a long rest. While they slept they fell under the mental control of the mind flayer. They awake thinking they are in the real world, but actually they're in a dreamscape that shows what Neverwinter will be like under the rule of the mind flayers.The inn is now abandoned, decayed. The surrounding neighborhood is in ruins. There are few signs of life. The streets are patrolled by spectators and other beholderkin. The sky is strangely dark and a beam of purplish light radiates from the center of the city.At this point, the players think they're in some sort of time loop.They ambush a spectator and kill it. Embedded in its skull is a strange black gem. Examining it, the drow remembers an ancient legend nearly lost to time about a massive, magical gem known as the Nightstone. The Nightstone was an artifact once controlled by the drow. Drow who underwent a ritual at the Nightstone were bound in alliance to anyone else who underwent the ritual as well -- so even sworn enemies could not fight or betray each other. It was a way for scheming, backstabbing drow to unite against a common enemy. But that was eons ago. And the Nightstone was lost somewhere deep in the Underdark.Then the PCs realize it's the Nighstone that's the source of the purple light shooting up into the sky.(I'm stealing/adapting this idea from the Pactlords of the Quaan in Monte Cook's 3E adventure The Banewarrens...which I'm currently running with a different group.)The PCs decide to stick to their plan when they first entered the neighborhood -- to infiltrate a warehouse where the drow thieves are known to lair. When they enter the warehouse things get even more meta -- because it has the exact same layout/map as a warehouse the orc paladin's player infiltrated in Waterdeep. But he didn't infiltrate it in this campaign. He infiltrated it in another campaign, running concurrent to this one, where he plays a halfling rogue.More on that later...Next session: The Sodden Hold!</blockquote>

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