The adventure continues! Last time, our heroes arrived in the village of Kettle, fought some monsters, beat up some kids, hired a lot of locals to do their dirty work, and found a long lost hammer.
Play time: 4 hours
Adventurers:
- Aoede the Creation Bard (Professor of Performing Arts)
- Atticus the Order Cleric (Professor of Law)
- Cosmo the Artificer (Professor of Engineering)
- Kaze the Kensei Monk (Visiting Master of Painting)
- Ormr the Totem Barbarian (Janitorial Arts)
- Teth the Mastermind Rogue (Bursar’s Office)
Slow Start
After defeating the Dire Toad, the group went back to their houses for a long lunch. Professor Cosmo, a man of indeterminate age with large glasses, decided to join them. Atticus began Detecting the missing Master Tongs, and the spell led him back to the lake.
We then passed many long minutes as the group tried to convince a local fisherman to lend them his rickety little boat. They talked him down from 1 silver to 5 copper to rent his boat while he got lunch.
In Hot Water
The giant Ormr and nervous Atticus then paddled out onto the boiling hot lake in the tiny wobbly boat to try to retrieve the tongs for the smith. Teth stole a net for them to use. Ormer dropped the net, but when he pulled it up, the line tore. So the barbarian raged and jumped into the searing hot waters. Taking steady Fire damage, Ormr made several trips to the silty lake bottom. He retrieved a copper goblet, a broken white pillar, a gold necklace, and finally the Master Tongs!
But during his trips, he also capsized the boat, hurled Atticus into the scorching water, lost the goblet, and got attacked by an unseen creature with claws. So, a pretty average day in D&D.
Apple Picking
Not to be deterred by a little mayhem, the group headed west across the grassy fields to collect some Vile Apples from the wild orchard a few miles away. Just before they got there, they discovered a field crisscrossed by large churned furrows. Teth’s dead grandmother’s spirit warned them of “meadowsharks“!
Half the group tiptoed across the field to fetch the apples. Meanwhile, Professor Cosmo was distracted by a strange scaled waterskin spilling pine needle tea. Weirding Water! He tasted the tea and suddenly acquired weak telekinesis! But then the waterskin dried up and blew away like ashes.
After collecting the soft white-and-violet Vile Apples, the team started back. But Atticus and Aoede began yelling at each other. And that’s when Kaze started feeling tremors.
Then a huge toothy maw erupted from the ground and swallowed an unlucky owl whole.
Meadow Violence
The meadowshark burst from the ground, a massive bear-armadillo-mole monster, that rolled across the ground, crushing people in its path. Kaze’s sword failed to pierce the hide armor, and the rest of the team could barely make a dent with their weapons. Aoede was able to repeated batter the meadowshark’s mind with Dissonant Whispers.
Finally, after everyone had been crushed or clawed to pieces, Kaze landed the killing blow. Teth and Atticus immediately wanted to harvest the corpse for interesting materials. But three tall figures were approaching from the south.
Ormr, Kaze, and Teth started running away. But Atticus, Aoede, and Cosmo all slipped in the pooling blood and fell prone as three 9-foot tall talon-dashers stalked up to the kill site. Aoede managed to soothe one of them, and Cosmo hid from another, but Atticus just slipped and fell again. The third vicious bird leapt on the cleric, and killed him.
In the brief fight that followed, one of the talon-dashers was wounded and escaped. Another was killed, and the third put to sleep, and then butchered. But Atticus failed his Death Saves and was no more.
The group carried Atticus back to their houses. The cleric’s wife and children were distraught, and planned to immediately return to the city of Urva Songos. Aoede went with them.
And that’s where we ended.
DM Notes
I really enjoyed this session. We had some shenanigans on the boat, fishing for treasure. Then I got to use my Weirding Water table to create the waterskin of tea that granted telekinesis, which was extra great because it went to the newest player right off the bat! Everyone seemed to think that was a cool mechanic. I want to use that Weirding Water feature about once per session, if possible. (And not all of the outcomes are “good”!)
Then we had the brutal battle with the meadowshark and talon-dashers. The players rolled terribly, and I kept hoping they would run away, but like true D&D players they stayed until the monster was dead. And then another monster made the PC kill! I have no regrets about the death of Atticus, the player rolled so many natural 1s to miss his attacks, to fall down, to fail his Death Saves, that it was clear the dice-gods wanted him dead. So next game, we will have two new characters joining the adventure. Huzzah!
