I've decided I'm going to keep this all on one thread, just for ease's sake. I won't bring chapter one in, but I'm going to rename the sessions accordingly.
Session 13
Orwin and Aripos ate some funny seeds, and dream strange dreams. They dream of orcs and goblins and elves dancing around a fire. Two men, an orc and an elf shake hands, while a human woman looks on in anger. In the sky above, an enormous thing disappears into the clouds, and an impossibly enormous eye stares down at them. Attracted by their dreams, an antlered serpent dragon attacks them. They manage to defeat it, and sleep soundly through the night.
In the morning, the party say their goodbyes. Papuvin asks them if they've seen Vuhl. No one has seen him since shortly after the fight with Indomitability.
Start of Chapter 3
The party leaves, and begins traveling to Seaquen. Leaving the forest, they're reminded that it's winter, and wrap themselves up tightly. Tiljann has never lived anywhere colder than a lake in a forest fire and is freezing, but excited to leave the forest. Gruz tells her the story of the Dawnbringers, a group of heroes in some long-forgotten realms who defeated a vampire lord. He then swaps stories with Diashan about military life, and learns that she is also a captain, who served in Ragesia against the Morusan Empire, and then joined a diplomatic delegation to Innenotdar. Gruz shares that his company did somewhat shady work in Ostalin, and they were all wiped out by a strange creature, leaving only him alive. Mishka and Eluriah think they're flirting, and tease him endlessly. Diashan is oblivious to the whispers.
On the road, they pass a group of hobgoblins, a woman and her three husbands. Eluriah heals one who had a nasty wolf bite, and the hobgoblins tell them that they're going to try and find elven treasures left behind in the forest. Gruz convinces them to stay away from the Elfroad, as all of the best loot has been taken there. The hobgoblins warn the party about wolves ahead.
What do you know, dire wolves attack. Thanks to Eluriah's watchful eye, the party is ready for their attack, and the wolves are summarily executed.
Post Session Thoughts:
This session was fun! The dream elemental fight was a bit of drag, because the elemental didn't land a single hit. In a strange way, that kept the players' fears alive longer, because they didn't know how much damage it would deal, or what would happen to them in the dream world. Ah well.
I forgot the tower along the path had a lock until they had entered it, so I made them make a check instead of auto-avoiding the fight encounters. Nothing above a 10 with advantage.
I'm beginning to feel the strain of too many companions. Not because of fight balance, but because I don't have the bandwidth to include every character in a session. This session, Haddin and Crystin basically didn't exist, and Diashan disappeared a few sessions back. I can't wait til Seaquen so I can start shedding them. Not that I dislike them, I just feel like I can't do any of them justice while I'm spread so thin.
Changes to the adventure
I made the dream elemental stay in the dream world, just to keep the fight short. If they had been hit, I would have had other characters notice them convulsing, and waking them would bring them out of the dream world. What would have happened if they died? I don't know, I didn't plan that far ahead.
I changed the hobgoblin encounter to a non-combat, and made it a brother-husband situation just because I found a single female hobgoblin portrait among 100 male ones, and thought it would be interesting.
End of Chapter 2 Thoughts
If I were to go back, I don't know if I'd change much, other than a few fights I feel like I could have ran better. I maybe would have presented the truth behind the start of the fire a little more clearly, but it's been fun trickling it out as well. The two highlights were uncovering the love triangle, and the tower mini-dungeon that was more dangerous than Indomitability's test.
