DND Blog

A place to keep DND session recaps, from various campaigns.

The Thirty-Ninth Session

February 20, 2021, Campaign: As the ground quakes, evil wakes

The Party goes shopping, and then teleports to Wint's Lair in the Lost City of Storm's Eye. Wint's Lair has been ransacked, so we head north. Leen is covered in webs, and the gang is trapped in a forge's chimney by spiders.

Table of Contents

  1. Last session
  2. In the morning
    1. Bugfood's dream
  3. The next morning.
    1. Off to Wint's Lair
  4. A nautical episode
  5. Towards Leen
  6. Leen
  7. Next session

Last session

Ryltar connected the prophecy to two potential things:

In the morning

Ryltar asks about the Burning Blood. Is it something that anyone knows anything about?

Ren says that it's something that Thalia never talked about.

We discuss how we might want to get back to Quadroads. If we teleport into the Ice Lord's lair, we'll still need a plan to get out of the middle of the lake. That might require a boat, which we don't have. We think we might be able to buy a collapsible boat at Sky Diamond.

But if we're going to Sky Diamond anyways, and might as well go south around the lake to avoid the Mummy Lord at Barehold. Has the Mummy Lord's domain been growing?

We learn that Ren isn't going back to Sky Diamond Academy, because he had a falling out with his replacement. We don't know who his replacement is, and he doesn't describe the problem further.

We describe Ockoh, seller of oosas, in the hopes that Ren will be able to Message Ockoh to learn where is, where the Drow are, and if he's still with the expedition. But we don't want this question to be attributed to us. Ren does send the Message, and … Ockoh doesn't respond. Ren can't tell if Ockoh is dead or extraplanar, so he tries again. Still no response.

So Ren, who is a master diviner, does some divinations to see if he can find out what Ockoh and the expedition are up to. He casts Scry and discovers that Ockoh has been petrified, in an icy chamber. We do have a de-petrification potion, so we can rescue him once we're down there.

We think it'd be pretty cool to gain access to the Ice Lord Wint's lair and use that as a base of travel.

As part of our travel planning, we mention the Mummy Lord, and it turns out that Ren wasn't aware.

While we're explaining the Mummy Lord, we mention seeing the Jester again. Ren explains that that's Nilbogism, a disease that infects Goblins. They want to make the world laugh, he reads to us from a book. We'd need to trap the Jester and the spirit that inhabits it. That would require a variation of a common spell: an inverted Magic Circle.

We go to bed.

Bugfood's dream

A grassy field full of wildflowers. A child in a yellow dress, skipping along. Bugfood stands in the entrance to the field. He sees her from behind: long straw-colored hair. She squats to pick flower.

He approaches and asks, "Hello?"

She turns, holding a small bouquet of white and yellow flowers. She looks at him with ocean-blue eyes, the same color as his own.

He wakes up.

The next morning.

Bugfood, over breakfast, announces: "I think I might have a sister."

There is some consternation, but he explains it as him having forgotten about her. He chose to forget a lot of things.

Salris Disguises Self in the form of Leon Ziki, and tries to hide the ruby in his palm. It slowly succumbs to the spell.

We set out looking for a folding boat. Bugfood prays to his god, the god of knowledge, for knowledge of what a folding boat looks like. He receives a flash of memory, from his youth before the abbey. He remembers that he's seen boats, he's seen a specific boat, way back when.

We go to the Market, and Bugfood spends some time drawing a circle on the ground, as he casts Locate Object, to find a boat. He senses the salty sea air, and follows that. The party follows.

We come to another market, between the trees, full of food and textiles. The smell leads Bugfood to a looming entry to Dezrin's Delicacies, which appears to be a multilevel store, perhaps once a very big restaurant? Bugfood pushes his way inside. The Party follows, and we see that what looks like a restaurant is a multilevel warehouse, with a big open well in the center that descends into a pit in the center of the building. Staircases crisscross the open space like a spiderweb.

The proprietor, Dezrin, sits behind a white desk on the second floor, up a flight of stairs that lead straight to him from the door. When we walk in, he perks up, and cries, "Come in, come in!"

"Sir!" cries Bugfood. "I am looking for your boat. The box boat. I need it and I'm on a mission from God. Ryltar, buy the thing."

We haggle a little with the proprietor, but Bugfood is prepared to spend all the gold he has on him. (None.)

The bottom level of the store is in a pit, full of lots of suits of armor and artifacts from all different makers. The boat is a 6" cube, engraved with swirling waves. The proprietor hands it to Bugfood to test, and the boat expands. It's 10' long, 4' wide, 2' deep, with oars, sail, and it holds four medium creatures. There's also an option for a larger, 15-passenger boat.

We discuss whether we'd all be able to fit in this 4-person boat. Bugfood can summon riding dolphins for 4 hours, which might be enough for our purposes.

We don't have the requested 8000 gold, but we discuss trade. Bugfood offers a Hat of Disguise, a Blinding Rune, and a Magic Bean. The shopkeeper says he'll take that, plus 1500 gold.

Salris offers the Hot Pot, and really sells it, because he knows that the shopkeep is a collector of cool things, which the shopkeep knows. He succeeds in selling it; we part with those items plus 200 gold.

We do some other shopping there. Vurguron bugs 50 feet of silken rope. Jerry sells an Orb of Direction for 200 gold. The proprietor shows off a suit of light armor that allows fast swimming.

The proprietor recommends an apothecary to us, who we go visit. The store is tended by an Elven woman, who is applying an ointment to a customer. She has no de-petrification potions, but is willing to take Jerry's three basilisk heads and give us six de-petrification potions in a week's time. She's also willing to buy the dragon claw and remaining 15 dragon teeth. The Zouyu tailfeathers were not given freely, and so are unlucky. She is not willing to take them. She has three small healing potions, one large one, and a tiny blue potion of courage.

In exchange for all that Jerry has to trade, save the feathers, we receive the promise of 6 de-petrification potions in a week's time, the potion of courage, and two healing potions. Salris buys the Potion of Greater Healing for 450 gold.

Jerry buys a goosefeather pillow from the market and stuffs the Zouyu feathers in it, crafting the Unlucky Pillow.

Off to Wint's Lair

We head back to Ren's house, and Ryltar sets up the spell circle. Ren's circle is well-documented; it has descriptions of how to use it. The circle we saw in Wint's Lair is very primal, undocumented, practically carved in place from first principles in the form of a snowflake. Ren is intrigued by its design.

We ready ourselves. The spell circle triggers just as Ren says, "Jerry, one more thing!"

The room drops in temperature; we're pulled in all directions and compressed. We land with a thump; Ryltar falls over on something slick and lands on a ridged thing.

The room is lit in the familiar spectrum of drifting, glowing orbs, emitting a dim light. We look around for any danger, and see only a 40' circle room lined with a semicircle of ice pillars. Ryltar has landed on a blond-haired corpse, frozen in the very act of crawling. At the second pillar from the left is a frozen elf. On the sixth pillar is a young half-elf in clerical robes. In front of the first and fifth pillars are piles of ash. And in front of the fifth pillar is a statue of a middle-aged dwarf, wearing an apron, hands held out, mouth open, staring at us. It's Ockoh.

Ockoh is currently made of slate-gray stone.

The figure at the second pillar seems to be a Drow, frozen over. It's hard to realize who they were. At the third position, where Ryltar fell, is a corpse similarly hard to understand. At the sixth position is also hard to see.

We recall that the floor around here was inconsistent, and so we progress by probing the floors. We take the clockwise exit from the room, and we remember the pattern of the snowflake floors.

The next room we find has an inverted Teleportation Circle: for summoning creatures and binding them to this plane. The floor is strewn with ice and snow. Bugfood and Ryltar think the room is safe.

We continue clockwise, casing the joint. The third room is a workroom, with an icy workbench covered in wood shavings and pine needles. Some white crystals, which seem to be pure quartz, chipped from a larger crystal. Jerry gathers 75gp worth.

There's been much movement of things in this room. People were looking for something in this room. They intended to leave a vision of chaos.

The fourth room once held a beautiful four-poster bed, a meditation space, a wooden wardrobe, a smashed dressing table.

The fifth room is familiar. It's the library which we ransacked. It's the same as it was when we last saw it: empty. "What kind of barbarians would do this?" asks Bugfood.

The sixth and final room is the room with the pine tree, growing healthily underground. Bugfood detects a magical essence of the room, some sort of Transmutation. There's mistletoe growing in the tree, but it's not mistletoe. The berries are red, like when he cast Goodberry, not white like normal mistletoe. The tree grows goodberries.

"This is a prison," says Bugfood. "You could leave someone here for a long time."

Ryltar thinks about carefully modifying the Teleportation Circle. He knows that it's possible to deface circles, and that it takes a year to make a new circle. He can use elements of the old circle to make a new one, but making a new one will still take forever. So we don't modify the circle.

We start the climb of the stairs.

We continue climbing the stairs.

A familiar warmth passes over us. We come to the top of the stair. Jerry and Vurguron push aside the slab, and we stand once more in the center of the crown of spiky rocks. Ryltar sets the Immovable Rod atop the slab. We spend the night on the island.

The waxing moon lies in a cloudless sky. Hopping noises come towards Ryltar and Vurguron: one toad approaches through a hole in the thorny stone fence.

Ryltar hits it with Ray of Frost. It pops into a plume of pink smoke.

The night passes without incident.

A nautical episode

Bugfood wakes up the group by announcing, "This is your captain speaking!"

He inflates the boat with the galleon-sized command word. We pile aboard, and head north, propelled by Bugfood's summoned apes. We come to land at noon, at the same spire that we landed at last time.

We head northeast, through the woods, to Leen.

Towards Leen

Night comes and we bed down. Night passes without event.

The second day's travel passes without event, riding summoned horses. We sleep well.

The third day brings us to the end of the forest, a day's travel south from Leen. Night falls.

The fourth day, around noon, we encounter spiderwebs in the forests. They're all on the left side, into the forest, and we arrive at the outskirts of Leen. It's covered in spiderwebs. Jerry casts Pass without Trace as we investigate the building.

Leen

We find nothing in Leen. There's no signs of occupants, or spiders. There layers on layers of spiderweb; the most-recent was a day ago, but the oldest is about three weeks. Jerry can't tell about the periodicity of the spiders.

Leen is a mining town, with lots of brick buildings. And there's a chimney building, a forge, with only one opening, which we all crowd into. Bugfood seals the building with Stone Shape, and Hearth of Moonlight and Shadow to hide us better. We bed down for the night, with the Immovable Rod holding Vurguron's

  1. Jerry's first watch hears nothing.
  2. Bugfood's watch hears nothing.
  3. Ryltar and Bugfood hear the wind pick up. A distant door slams in the breeze, for a while, before finally banging shut.
  4. Ryltar and Vurguron hear a skittering of eight-legged creatures, climbing buildings in Leen.

The spiders climb the tower we're in. Ryltar wakes everyone, quietly, and Jerry pops Pass Without Trace again to total +10 stealth from that spell and +5 from Bugfood's Hearth of Moonlight and Shadow, giving the whole party a +15 to their stealth checks. The lowest is 18.

We hear the clicking of legs and the slap of tentacles. And there's a faint sound of sizzling, like we heard in Renewal when that spider turned webs into acid.

Above us, in the forge's chimney, Bugfood's Stone Shape and Vurguron's shield and Ryltar's Immovable Rod form a new roof, unwebbed. There is no web to turn to acid.

The building next to our chimney collapses.

Web is scattered onto our building.

Ryltar whispers, talking about Misty Stepping outside, a thousand feet outside.

The spiders outside fall silent, and the wind blows.

Next session

We're surrounded by spiders.

Ongoing stuff: