Go to Part 1

At this point in Call of the Netherdeep, the PCs are supposed to (a) be aware of the Jewel of Three Prayers and (b) have received a vision of an unidentified prisoner who begs them for help (either directly or as a kind of psychic static if the Rivals were the ones who touched the Jewel first). Structurally, the PCs are now supposed to leave Jigow and head to Bazzoxan.

If the PCs have the Jewel, the transition works like this:

• Elder Ushru tells them he also had a vision of the same mysterious figure.
• He identifies the Jewel of Three Prayers as a Vestige of Divergence, i.e. “an enchanted relic from the time of the Calamity.”
• He tells them that they should go to Bazzoxan because “there is no place in Xhorhas where the memory of the Calamity lingers more strongly than in Bazzoxan.”

If the Rivals have the Jewel, the transition works like this:

• The PCs overhear someone saying that (a) the Jewel is worth at least 1,000 gp and (b) the Rivals have left town and are heading to Rosohna.
• ???

The idea seems to be that this will prompt the PCs to hunt down the Rivals and rob them. Although even if they do that, the campaign doesn’t really include any mechanism to then point the PCs towards Bazzoxan. So the connection here is either broken outright or outrageously fragile.

But even the first version of this hook is pretty problematic. The core problem is that the PCs are not actually given a reason to go to Bazzoxan. Yes, the “memory of the Calamity” lingers there, but that’s not actually a reason. To understand the distinction, consider the immediate follow-up question from the PCs: “And what do we do when we get there?”

If you can’t answer that question, then you don’t actually have a reason to go. This is why, when the PCs get to Bazzoxan, the book assumes they’ll just kind of wander around until they bump into the plot.

(There is, of course, a metagame reason for the players to have their characters go to Bazzoxan — the DM has mentioned a place name and is waggling their eyebrows suggestively. But (a) that’s a bad table experience and (b) doesn’t solve the underlying structural issue here.)

The other thing to ask yourself here is, “Why are the PCs even talking to Elder Ushru?” Well, because he had the vision, right?

But why did HE have the vision?

Because, in the absence of a reason to go to Bazzoxan, the adventure needs an NPC mouthpiece through which the DM can say, “You’re supposed to go to Bazzoxan.”

My rule of thumb, though, is that if I have an NPC doing something really cool (and I count receiving enigmatic visions from proto-gods on the list of really cool things), I should double-check and make sure I couldn’t design things so that the PCs get to do the really cool thing.

So let’s clean all of this up.

UNIVERSAL VISION

When anyone touches the Jewel of Three Prayers (whether it’s the PCs or the Rivals), everyone in the Emerald Grotto receives the vision of Alyxian the Apotheon.

This means that PCs and Rivals alike have a unique connection to the Apotheon and they have ALL received the campaign’s call to adventure, regardless of who actually ends up in possession of the Jewel of Three Prayers. This connection to the Apotheon, of course, can (and will!) persist through the entire campaign, drawing both PCs and Rivals inexorably towards the Netherdeep.

It also means that the vision can be used to clearly establish the bridge from Jigow to Bazzoxan. There are a couple of ways that we can do this.

EXPLICIT VISION

In the vision as written, Alyxian says:

“I am imprisoned, please help me.” […] “My name is Alyxian. I am lost in darkness. Long ago, I prayed to the Change Bringer in the heart of a temple of evil. I beg you, take my jewel and…”

The easiest fix here is to just change the vague reference to a “temple of evil” and make the call explicit:

“You must find me! You must bring the Jewel to the Cyst of Avandra within Betrayer’s Rise beneath Bazzoxan!”

This is every bit as direct as the DM waggling their eyebrows while pointing at the flashing neon sign saying, “The book says you need to go to Bazzoxan, dummies!” But, of course, it has the advantage of being diegetic: It’s the PCs, not the players, who are being given a clear instruction.

ENIGMATIC VISION

There are, however, a number of reasons why you might want the players to work for this a bit:

• I’ve previously mentioned Getting the Players to Care. One of the techniques described there is making something a mystery: the process of unraveling a secret will invest the players in the lore, and also give them a sense of accomplishment and reward when they figure it out.
• If they need to figure out what the vision meant, it will probably also focus their attention on the Jewel. (Whereas if they’re just explicitly told where to go next, they may not spend much time thinking about the Jewel at all.)
• While the PCs are taking action to figure out the Jewel and/or vision, you can use the actions they take as a vector for feeding in other Lore of Alyxian.

You can accomplish this by basically just stripping information out of the vision to dial in the desired level of enigma. For example:

“You must find me! You must bring the Jewel to the Cyst of Avandra within Betrayer’s Rise!”

… okay, but where’s Betrayer’s Rise? This is fairly easy to figure out (ask almost anybody or just look at a map of Xhorhas).

Or you can strip out even more information:

“You must find me! You must bring the Jewel to the Cyst of Avandra!”

Well, Avandra the Change Bringer is obviously well-known. But what and where is her “cyst”? The PCs now have two vectors they could pursue: The Cyst or the Jewel.

Note: I’m enigmatically referring to the Prayer Site of Avandra within Betrayer’s Rise (CotN, p. 72) as a “cyst” of good within the evil of that place.

And, of course, you can go one step further:

“You must find me! Bring my Jewel to me!”

Which would obviously leave the PCs with the Jewel as their only vector.

Regardless, your structural goal is to point the PCs in the direction of Bazzoxan. So, depending on the vectors you’ve provided, this ultimately boils down to:

• Identifying that the Cyst of Avandra lies within Betrayer’s Rise (e.g., it is said that during the time of the Calamity, Avandra blessed a site within Bazzoxan; it is described in some demonic texts as a “cyst” which blighted that temple of the Betrayers Gods).
• Discovering that the Jewel of Three Prayers is depicted on the walls of Betrayer’s Rise. (We previously looked at how this research might work when we were discussing campaign agendas; e.g., Elder Ushru tells them he saw a drawing of “this very Jewel” there when he was younger.)

Once the PCs start digging into this enigma, you may find them pursuing other lines of inquiry unrelated to the Apotheon’s vision. If so, remember once again that your goal is to point them to Bazzoxan.

For example, they might become curious about the ruidium outcroppings in the Emerald Grotto. (Identifying and researching the red crystals reveals that there are similar outcroppings in Bazzoxan.) Or they might try to do historical research into the history of the Emerald Grotto/Jigow to figure out where the hidden temple came from. (This would be an opportunity to drop some Lore of Alyxian, including perhaps a reference suggesting a connection with the “Cyst of Avandra,” which would lead them back into the research trail for the cyst.)

As you begin pointing your final vectors into Bazzoxan, it’s worth noting that the ideal hook — for reasons described in the next section — should also imply an action of “talk to the local scholars” when they get there. If the PCs had to do research themselves to get there (while still having lingering questions they want answers to), this probably follows quite naturally. But, of course, you can also make it more explicit.

WHAT ABOUT THE RIVALS?

As noted, the Rivals received the same vision the PCs did and will likely have a lot of the same questions.

If they’re working together, this might be a good opportunity to “split the party” by having the Rivals pursue one set of leads while the PCs pursue another. (This might eventually include the PCs heading to Bazzoxan while the Rivals pursue “other leads” and only join them later.) If the PCs fail to identify Bazzoxan as their goal (for whatever reason), then you can use allied Rivals to deliver the lead. Alternatively, maybe it’s the Rivals who fail to identify Bazzoxan, but still uncover some ancillary information of interest.

If they’re not, then think about how the Rivals might pursue their own research: Perhaps they journey to Rosohna to peruse the libraries of the dark elves or seek out a major temple of Avandra in Asarius in order to identify the Cyst. (If you’ve followed the Three Clue Rule and prepped multiple vectors that the PCs might follow to Bazzoxan, then you can just choose a research path they didn’t pursue and give it to the Rivals.) You might consider giving one of the Rivals a research journal summarizing their conclusions that the PCs might discover later.

In either case, it’s probably most interesting — even if the PCs and Rivals both successfully identify Bazzoxan as their next goal — for each team to collect related, non-overlapping lore in their investigations.

Go to Part 5: The Scholars of Ank’Harel

Go to Part 1

The Emerald Grotto is a great dungeon:

• The underwater setting is both refreshing and establishes an aquatic theme that will persist throughout the campaign.
• The bifurcated route does a great job of structurally reinforcing rivalry.
• The key itself is filled with a lot of delightful details and clever ideas.

But there are two problems bracketing the Emerald Grotto that I would want to address: the broken premise at the beginning and the fragile conclusion at the end.

ESSENTIAL HOOK: THE RACE

At the end of the festival, the Elders of Jigow choose the two most successful teams to compete in the Grand Finale race through the Emerald Grotto. One team will be the PCs. The other will be the Rivals.

An elderly orc, dressed in deep blue robes, stands atop a platform of crates. He smiles at the crowd… “The main event, as you know, is yet to come. Only two teams will be chosen to compete in the final challenge—a race through the Emerald Grotto, in the depths of which the greatest prize awaits!”

And this is a little weird, because literally none of the contests up to this point have been team-based events. In fact, “teams” have only been mentioned in order to explicitly prohibit competitors from participating as a team (in J3).

This is a very awkward continuity glitch to have squatting right on top of the event which is the lynchpin for the entire campaign. But I don’t actually have a great solution for it.

HAVE TEAM EVENTS: One option would be to revamp the Festival of Merit so that it would feature team events. Unfortunately, revamping the existing events to be team-based instead of individual-based isn’t very practical. So you’d basically be creating a whole new slate of team-based events.

THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF YOUR STORY: Alternatively, maybe the PCs aren’t actually a group when the campaign begins. They become a group because they are the individual athletes chosen by the Elders to form one of the Grand Finale race teams, and then their fate is inexorably bound together by the vision of the Apotheon.

Unfortunately, there are a couple problem with this.

First, what if one or more of the PCs don’t actually do very well in the contests? How would you justify the Elders picking them as the cream of the crop? (This problem also afflicts the team-based approach.) You might address this by running the Festival of Merit as a Dungeon Crawl Classics-style funnel, where the players are all running a bunch of introductory characters and only those who score highest in the competitions become the PCs. (Although since Call of the Netherdeep starts at 3^rd level, it would be a very unusual funnel.)

Perhaps just a straight up lottery would work? It doesn’t matter how well you actually did in the various competitions at the festival, because the participants of the Grand Finale are selected by lot.

Second, you’d want the same logic to apply to the Rivals. But their backgrounds are all built around them being an existing group of aspiring adventurers. So you’d basically have to scrap them as characters and rebuild them from the ground up. (Which isn’t very appealing, since the Rivals are one of the strengths of the campaign.)

Like I said, I don’t really have a completely satisfying solution here.

Here are some possibilities though:

• Lottery. Participation in the Grand Finale is determined by lottery. Festival members get a number of entries in the lottery equal to the number of medals they win. (Using the lottery system bypasses the, “What if the PCs have rotten luck during the festival?” as long as the PCs win at least one medal.)
• Individual Competition. If the PCs are competing individually (and being drawn together by fate during the Grand Finale), then you can frame the Rivals as being last year’s champions. (They won, have been hanging out since then, and have decided to try their hand at adventuring. This requires some minor revision to their back story, but not so much as to require a complete rewrite.)
• Group Competition. Alternatively, people sign up for the Festival as a team. The team gets a number of entries in the Grand Finale lottery equal to the number of medals they win.

Obviously the fix is in and the PCs and Rivals will be selected no matter what. This is, after all, the instigating event of the entire campaign. The goal here is not really to take your thumb off the scale; it’s to make your thumb invisible enough that the game world still logically makes sense.

ESSENTIAL HOOK: TRIGGERING THE EARTHQUAKE

When the PCs get to the end of the Emerald Grotto they see a shark with the Emerald Eye strapped to its side. They then fight the shark and, when they defeat the shark:

The dying shark slams into the stone pillar in the south end of the cavern. The pillar cracks under the force, teeters, then crashes down against the south wall. The wall fractures and collapses, revealing a passage awash with golden light.

If the PCs follow the golden light, of course, they discover the Jewel of Three Prayers, the essential McGuffin on which the entire plot of the campaign is based.

There are a couple of minor quibbles here:

• The PCs are in the middle of a race. So, yeah, the glowy light is interesting, but they’re heavily motivated by their immediate goal to NOT check it out right now. Generally speaking, you want scenario crucial actions to flow from the established goals of the PCs, not in direct contradiction to them. (The same is true for the Rivals, of course, but since you control their actions, it’s easy enough to route around this problem.)
• The players might have some questions about how the shark got into this cave, since it’s too large to fit through any of the passages. (This might particularly be true if they decide to lure the shark away from the grotto for some reason.)

But the far bigger problem is that the PCs don’t have to fight the shark.

In fact, fighting the shark is probably the dumbest way for the PCs to get the Emerald Eye.

Even if you overrule an Animal Handling check (although there’s no reason that you should), that still leaves alternative solutions like mage hand (to grab the amulet), animal friendship, or even just making a Stealth check (perhaps assisted by invisibility).

(It should be noted that the writers KNOW these options exist, because animal friendship is how a druid of Jigow got the amulet on the shark in the first place.)

The short version is that if the shark doesn’t get killed, then it has no death throes. No death throes? No pillar collapsing. No pillar collapsing? No glowy light. No glowy light?

The campaign doesn’t happen.

THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: My recommendation is that grabbing the Emerald Eye triggers a thunderous voice which declares that SO-AND-SO HAS WON THE RACE. This booming announcement pulses through the water, echoes across the shore… and also triggers an underwater cave-in that reveals the glowy light.

(This also, you’ll note, ends the race immediately, so that the PCs no longer have a competing motivation driving them to ignore the glowy light.)

Go to Part 4: Road to Bazzoxan

Go to Part 1

The community of Jigow is really cool. A literal jumble of villages which have smashed together as they’ve grown around giant mangrove trees. It’s the chaos of urban growth in real-time as large chunks of the town are literally mobile:

The villages and townships that make up Jigow are loosely divided into three major areas: the Meatwaters, the main dock area on the shores of the Ifoon River; the Wetwalks, a collection of houses on stilts closest to the wetlands and marshes; and the Jumble, the most densely populated region of the city, where houses are built among giant mangrove trees or on the backs of horizonback tortoises and used as traveling homes.

As written, Jigow is a unique and very flavorful community.

Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell the cartographer:

To be clear, this map is a beautiful piece of artwork. But instead of presenting the unique city of the text, it presents a very generic community with the same kind of urban planning that we’ve seen in lots of other fantasy city maps.

Only three tortoises? Why is the thick mangrove forest depicted as scattered trees? This is not many communities that have collided, but a single community built around a central common area.

Aesthetics aside, the key is confusing at best. You’ve got the Meatwaters district on the shore, the Wetwalk stilt-houses near the wetlands, and the Jumble between them. But:

• J2 is in the Jumbles and J6 is the Wetwalks. So where is Meatwaters, exactly?
• J5 are the rice paddies on the edge of the wetlands, but J1 is also in the Jumbles… so where are the stilt-houses of the Wetwalks supposed to be?

Jigow, as described, would be a real challenge for a cartographer. (If nothing else, large chunks of the town are mobile.) On top of that, based on the keyed locations, I would assume they were given bad notes to work from. (The turtle tracks are a lovely touch, though.)

I am a huge, huge fan of using city maps to draw players into an immersive urban environment. In the case of Jigow, unfortunately, I would strongly recommend not using the map.

The other option would be to heavily modify the text to accurately reflect the map’s depiction of the city, but given how much more interesting the text’s version of the city is, I think that would be a mistake.

MOTILE LIFE: I want to take a moment to reflect on what I see as the motile life of Jigow. There are clustered “villages” of static structures, but lots of people and even more businesses live and work on the tortoises.

You “commute” to work by having your tortoise head up to the paddy fields. The bakeries follow you, arriving at the Wetwalks midday to sell lunch to laborers taking a break from the high noon heat. When lunch is done, though, the bakeries will head down to the Meatwaters for the mid-afternoon dock breaks.

Having a soiree? It’s likely that you and some or all of your guests will bring your tortoises together in a clutch and drop gangways that will temporarily link your residences into a single big party locale.

At night, you’ll see the bars moving to drop off their drunken patrons (or at least the ones who tip well) so that they don’t have to walk home.

THE FESTIVAL OF MERIT

The campaign starts with the PCs standing in the middle of the Festival of Merit. Locations J1 through J7 are different festival games or challenges, and the festival is introduced like this:

All around you, colorful signs and banners point toward festival booths surrounded by cheering people. On this street alone, you can see a meat-pie eating contest near a shop mounted on the back of a massive tortoise [J1], and on the other side of the road, a banner emblazoned with the words “Riddles and Rhymes: Unbeatable Riddles!” That banner points toward a three-story temple in the center of the Jumble. [J7] The town is yours to explore—where do you want to go?

So the PCs are standing in the street between J1 and J7 and they’re told, “Where do you want to go?”

Obviously they’ll hit J1 and J7, but then the expected experience here is unclear to me. Are they just going to randomly walk around town and hope they run into keyed content? Or is the DM supposed to show them the keyed map and have them just point to which keyed location they want to go to? (That’s not exactly “the town is yours to explore.”)

To put this another way, you want the scale of the PCs’ decision to match the density of the keyed material. You can do street-by-street navigation in the City-State of the Invincible Overlord because there’s content keyed to every street. But that doesn’t work in Jigow because there’s not enough material keyed to make those decisions meaningful.

OPTION 1: FESTIVAL GREEN

One option is to latch onto “all around you, colorful signs and banners point toward festival booths surrounded by cheering people” and collapse the festival down into a single location. (This would probably be J6 on the map if you’re using it.)

Some of the competitions — the harvest race (J5), the Ifolon river plunge (J3) — are specific to other areas of town. For those competitions, create horizonback hawkers in the festival green who ferry people to the other festival centers: You load up onto a horizonback tortoise and the hawkers sell you their wares (drinks, baked goods, trinkets, etc.) while the tortoise walks you through town.

(These hawkers will also be a good exemplar of the motile life of Jigow.)

OPTION 2: FULL FESTIVAL

A more complicated option is to use the Festival game structure described here on the Alexandrian.

The key thing here is to communicate to your players that there’s stuff happening in all three of Jigow’s districts. The meaningful choice for the PCs is now, “What district do you want to go to?”

And you can still present that choice as, “The town is yours to explore—where do you want to go?” Because whatever answer the PCs give, you can parse it through the lens of, “What district are they in?” and pull up the material you’ve keyed to that district.

This means splitting up the festival games described in Call of the Netherdeep, and I would do that by following the natural divisions of Jigow and divvying the games between the three districts:

• Meatwaters: J2, J3
• Jumble: J1, J4, J7
• Wetwalk: J5, J6

You’ll probably also want to add topics of conversation. I’d look to seed these with stuff establishing the festivals’ big finale at the Emerald Grotto; rumors from afar to bring players up to speed on Xhorlas; local color; etc.

Tip: No matter what structure you use to prep the Festival of Merit, you’ll probably want to treat the Emerald Grotto finale as a revelation. Seed three clues throughout the festival so that the players can become aware of it, anticipate it, and get excited about it.

ADDING MORE FESTIVAL EVENTS

Adding more festival games, events, and activities for the players to experience can be a great value add here.

If you’re looking for some fantastical ideas in this vein, you might check out the Numenera Tavern for inspiration. (You’ll likely want to change some science fantasy explanations for straight-up fantasy ones. Although even that may not be necessary if you have an artificer or two tending the games.)

As you’re adding more events, there are a couple things to keep in mind.

First, Call of the Netherdeep does a great job seeding the Rivals into the keyed contests. You’ll want to continue doing that with your new events, while also being cautious not to water the interactions down to the point where they become empty of meaning.

Second, this is a great opportunity to look back at your campaign revelation lists and start seeding in clues. Obviously you still want to keep your campaign pacing in mind (don’t overdo it!), but a little imagination can easily suggest opportunities like:

• A play depicting events from the Calamity.
• A hawker is selling mysterious red gemstones (ruidium) that have been washing up on shore.
• A fortune-teller who “reads the red rays of Ruidus” to tell your future. (It’s a scam.)

And so forth.

MAZE & RIDDLE

The maze and riddle contests in the Festival of Merit are, in my opinion, somewhat flawed in their execution. Two of the riddles, for example, are resolved with an Intelligence and/or Wisdom check. One of them can ONLY be resolved with a skill check (because the player doesn’t have access to the visual images required to solve the riddle.)

Basically, any place in the game where the DM is saying, “Here’s a situation, give me a check” — without the player making any meaningful choice — and the entirely reactive check completely resolves the situation is not a great experience at the table. (The game is playing itself.)

I much prefer the approach taken in the third riddle, for example, in which successful Intelligence checks provide the player with clues, but ultimately the player still needs to find the answer.

I discuss how to handle stuff like this in more detail in Random GM Tip: Rolling for Riddles.

Go to Part 3: Emerald Grotto

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 29B: A Knight in Mourning

And then he knew what he had to do. This entire place reeked of evil and these creatures clearly had foul intentions. He and Rasnir had charged into battle. During the melee, the crone who had opened the door managed to duck through it. But moments later Kalerecent had fought his way to it and wrenched it shut.

“There was another flash of light and the door sealed shut behind me. But even in that moment, one of the creatures – a half-leonid fiend – slew Rasnir. I killed several of the goblins, but the other creatures escaped.”

A really common trope in D&D-style fantasy is the dungeon that’s been “sealed for a hundred years” (or a thousand or whatever). It’s a great trope because it makes the dungeon redolent with the enigma of age: Who knows what forgotten lore or antique treasures you’ll discover?

But then you go into the dungeon and there are three dozen different monsters who have all coincidentally moved in during the last week. It’s like Indiana Jones and the snakes in Raiders of the Lost Ark, except often without the clear explanation for where the goddamn snakes are coming from.

The reason this happens, of course, is because combat encounters are an expected part of the D&D dungeoncrawl, and “stuff to fight” is kind of the antithesis of “sealed for a hundred years.” You can use undead, of course, but that can get monotonous. And so the temptation to add a big ol’ hole in the ceiling and explain that a clan of yuan-ti moved in last Tuesday grows strong.

But so what? As long as you’ve got some sort of plausible explanation, there’s no problem… right?

Well, yes… but also no.

This sort of thing certainly can be done right. (The Mines of Moria, for example, have been “abandoned” for centuries in order to set up the twist that the balrog and goblins who sacked the place never actually left.)

But one of the really cool things about the “sealed for a hundred years” concept is that it means the PCs are the first ones to step foot here in a hundred years. It makes the PCs special. They’re doing something momentous. They’re experiencing something unique.

… unless, of course, a yuan-ti clan, a tribe of goblins, a couple of ogres, and a flock of kenku all casually beat them to the punch.

Then it’s not so special.

THE OTHER GUYS

But… combat! Gotta have combat!

Well, not really. But for the sake of argument, let’s roll with it.

A good way of squaring the difference here is to have another faction (or multiple factions) actively pursuing exploration/exploitation of the dungeon at the same time (and possibly for the same reasons) as the PCs.

That’s basically what you’re seeing with the Pactlords of the Quaan here. (Technically, the Pactlords were the ones who got here first and the PCs are the ones following in their wake, but that will shift back and forth as the campaign proceeds and different sections of this ancient dungeon are breached. The competition to be the first one to discover or enter a particular section of the dungeon can actually be a great motivator in its own right.)

I’ll be discussing how I actively played the various Banewarrens factions in more detail in future Running the Campaign posts. This first instance was fairly straightforward, and more or less taken directly from the Banewarrens campaign book: As described by Sir Kalerecent, the Pactlords had retreated, but (a) the lamia Demimach remained in Area 11 and (b) the rest of the team, with reinforcements, was planning to return. “Nevertheless, at some point while the PCs are in the [Broken Seal area], the rest of the Grailquest Team returns.”

Once the PCs were hooked into the Banewarrens, I simply added a section to my campaign status document:

BANEWARRENS STATUS

PACTLORDS: GQT1 has retreated from the Broken Seal area and will return shortly.

As I said: Short and sweet.

Now I had an open proactive event at my fingertips which I could choose to trigger at whatever time felt appropriate. As it played out during the actual session, this seemed most dramatically appropriate:

At that moment, Tee and Tor caught up. Seeing itself badly outnumbered and already seriously injured, the lamia turn and ran towards a staircase at the far end of the hall. It howled plaintively…

… and was answered by a second howl!

Howl for howl.

Campaign Journal: Session 29C – Running the Campaign: Looting Consumables
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 29B: A KNIGHT IN MOURNING

September 20th, 2008
The 16th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

“Who are you and why have you come to this evil place?”

Tee met the gaze of the angry, armored man. “You’re the one standing over a dead body. You first. What are you doing here?”

“Do not mock me, woman. Those I have cared for have died. Name yourselves and your purpose.”

The tension was palpable. Everyone’s nerves were raw. It wouldn’t have taken much for blood to be shed. The man raised his hand to the hilt of his sword.

Fortunately, this movement allowed Tee and Tor to spot the ring he was wearing on his finger – the signet of the Order of the Dawn. Tor moved into the room, carefully slipping on his own signet ring and positioning his hands so that the man could see it. “We’ve been sent to investigate what’s happening here.”

“What is happening here?” Tee asked.

The armored man dropped his hand from the hilt of his blade. As he relaxed, his entire body sagged with exhaustion and sorrow. “My name is Kalerecent. This was my friend and comrade, Rasnir. Two days ago we came to investigate reports I had heard of strange activity and the sound of digging coming from a mansion in Oldtown.”

They had followed the tunnel and entered the complex. When they arrived, there had been a half dozen strange and monstrous creatures gathered in the room with the “tower of brass and iron”. Kalerecent and Rasnir were badly outnumbered, and so they chose to wait and watch.

One of the creatures – a warped and twisted crone with skin the sickly green of swamp moss and hair like twisted vines – had taken a ring out of a velvet pouch and held it against the door. There had been a bright flash of light and the door had opened.

Kalerecent had not been able to hear what they were saying before, but now one of them spoke loudly: “Hurry, it won’t stay open long!”

And then he knew what he had to do. This entire place reeked of evil and these creatures clearly had foul intentions. He and Rasnir had charged into battle. During the melee, the crone who had opened the door managed to duck through it. But moments later Kalerecent had fought his way to it and wrenched it shut.

“There was another flash of light and the door sealed shut behind me. But even in that moment, one of the creatures – a half-leonid fiend – slew Rasnir. I killed several of the goblins, but the other creatures escaped.”

Dominic offered to heal Rasnir’s wounds, but Kalerecent shook his head. “It has been more than a day. His soul has left this world forever. I tried healing them myself before it was too late, but his wounds were too severe. And when I tried to carry him out of here, I was attacked by the half-leonid.”

Tor knelt beside him. “It may be too late to heal him, but he should still be borne back into the city with honor. May I help you carry him?”

Kalerecent gave a grateful yet mournful smile. “I thank you. But the half-leonid creature is still loose in the complex and the others might return, if they are not here already. The door must not be left unguarded.”

It became clear that Kalerecent felt that Rasnir had died to ensure that the door would not be breached. He wouldn’t allow that sacrifice to have been made in vain.

“And it makes sense,” Tor said. “Whatever they came to the Banewarrens to find, it can’t be good.”

“Aren’t we here to find something, too?” Dominic pointed out.

After discussing their options, they decided to track down the half-leonid creature while Kalerecent continued to keep watch over his friend and the door. Once that was done, Tor and Kalerecent could carry Rasnir’s body back to the surface while the others remained behind to keep a watch on the door.

THE LAMIA ROUTED

Kalerecent accompanied them back into the room with the warding generator. He was able to indicate which of the southern corridors the creature had fled through after their last confrontation. Then he returned to his vigil over Rasnir.

From Kalerecent’s description, Ranthir was able to identify the creature as a type of lamia – a rare and unnatural hybrid of human and lion. “It will be very fast and more than capable of using the claws on its lower limbs.”

The southern corridor led to a wide hall which widened before being abruptly interrupted by a 20-foot square pit. Four thick, rust-covered iron chains were hanging down into the pit, fastened to the wall with heavy bolts.

“It must have gotten to the other side somehow,” Tee said. “I’ll try climbing—“

A giant hand – at least five feet across at the palm — reached up out of the pit and grabbed the side.

“By the gods!” Tee drew her dragon pistol and fired, striking the hand. It reared back and then crashed down again. A moment later the giant levered its way out of the pit with a roar.

Ranthir released a bolt of arcane energy which caught the giant squarely in the chest. The blast seemed to leave a scorch mark, but from the interaction between bolt and body Ranthir’s trained eyes were able to catch the tell-tale marks of an illusion. He shouted out a warning to the others.

Once they had been warned, most of the others could see the illusion for what it was. But not Tee – her mind was still being fooled by it. “Are you sure?” she shouted, diving out of the way of a back-handed blow from the giant.

“I’m sure!” Ranthir shouted.

Agnarr moved up to the edge of the pit and looked down, but the dim light cast by his sword left the lower portions of the pit in deep shadow. A moment later, however, a bottle of fine crystal flew out of the pit and shattered on Agnarr’s chest.

As the bottle shattered, a magical whirlwind burst out of it – snatching Agnarr into the air and hurling him into the nearest wall.

Tee, seeing Agnarr walk through the illusionary giant, finally shook her belief in it. She moved up to the edge of the pit with her sunrod and looked down. At the bottom of the pit she spotted five different lamias. “Oh shit!”

She fired at one of them. The force blast struck… and the lamia disappeared. It was another illusion! With a snarling growl, the remaining lamias started climbing one of the chains out of the pit.

Ranthir tried to throw a flask of oil onto the chain, but his throw went wild and smashed uselessly into the wall. Tee tried to line up another shot, but the whirlwind came sweeping back the other direction and hurled Agnarr into her and her into the wall.

Seeing Tee caught up in the whirlwind, Tor quickly pulled out a length of rope, formed a lasso, and threw it around her. With a sharp tug, Tee came free.

The lamia, meanwhile, had nearly reached the other side of the pit. Tee, while struggling to untangle herself with one hand, snapped a shot off with the other – trying to break the chain the lamia was climbing. The shot hit the heavy iron chain, but didn’t break it.

The lamia reached the other side of the pit and ran for the door. Elestra and Tee fired with their dragon guns, but only succeeded in striking (and banishing) more of the illusionary lamias.

Agnarr turned and raced back out the door they’d come through. Dominic, who hadn’t even managed to get into the room yet, yelled to him as he passed by: “Have we killed it yet?”

Agnarr circled around and managed to intercept the lamia in the outer hall. The lamia spotted him and the two of them cautiously approached each other. Agnarr took a couple of jabs at the snarling creature, while narrowly avoiding its heavy paws.

Ranthir – who had followed Agnarr at a slightly slower pace – came around the corner and sent out a barrage of arcane blasts – leaving multiple scorch marks on the chest of the true lamia and eradicating the last of the illusory doubles. With the illusions gone, Agnarr was able to get his first clear look at the creature, noting the serious wounds already marking its flanks.

At that moment, Tee and Tor caught up. Seeing itself badly outnumbered and already seriously injured, the lamia turn and ran towards a staircase at the far end of the hall. It howled plaintively…

… and was answered by a second howl!

Running the Campaign: Abandoned Dungeons – Campaign Journal: Session 29C
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index