Location: Over the Inlet
Makenna and Meagan met with me on Labor Day in the Orc’s Forge shop at the Tuttle Mall. Our session lasted from about 12 noon to 2:30. I should have taken photos to add to this post, because we had a fantastic time playing there and my geeky heart enjoyed the amount and variation of merchandise in the shop.
After leaving Casamir and the traveling yuan ti slavers, Agile and Marilla first navigated back to the camp to reclaim what’s belongings they had left. They recovered the materials and the supplies they’d amassed, but the dinosaurs had run away during the initial kidnapping and River and Flask had returned to Port Nyanzaru with the assumption that the party members died. Agile plans for a dramatic reunion with his husband.
Agile, after making a DC 15 Intelligence check, remembered his and Casamir’s encounter with the Red Wizard several weeks ago. The Red Wizard had surrendered and confessed the directions to the Forbidden City of Omu, and Agile reasoned that this was probably where Casamir had been taken. With that logic, Agile and Marilla took off in a southernly direction, towards where the yuan ti had taken Casamir. Within the day they arrived at the port that the Mershaulk’s Hope had taken off from, and Marilla used her Move Currents feature to carry Agile and herself over Kitcher’s Inlet.
To speed up the travel, I took a page out of James Haeck’s book, or specifically this blog post on the D&D Beyond website. I set up the players to complete a Skill Challenge that required four successful checks and had a limit of three failed checks. Also, to double-down on the survival aspect of the campaign, I required Agile and Marilla to make a few Constitution checks. Agile, with apparently hardy Tabaxi constitution, held up well, but Marilla contracted mad monkey fever for about 3 days. Thankfully, she succeeded the next Constitution check before any radical madness symptoms manifested.
Unfortunately, the party accumulated three failures and encountered a group of su-monsters as they set up camp for the night. The battle took almost twenty minutes in real time, and without Marilla’s healing hands spell, the characters would have fallen in a few spots. Agile’s sleep spell was used according to the rules this time, and it was good to have an experience following the actual rules, and the battle seemed more real when the sleeping su-monster eventually woke up.
During their travels, Marilla was interested in trying to find a few of the things in the “legend” I wrote up for her. She and Agile made several Nature checks looking for the black orchid mentioned in the riddle, but succeeded only in finding a yellow orchid which the then painted black with Agile’s ink set, and later found a dark purple orchid. They decided that these flowers were “close enough” and ceased searching for black orchids.
Marilla and Agile also stumbled upon a deep sinkhole in the forest, which rainwater had filled up to three feet with water. Dark orchid- and lily-like flowers dotted the surface of the water, and frogs and other pond life were visible, as well as a 30-foot-tall rib cage covered with vines. After a Perception check, Agile noticed an outline in the rock that appeared to be a door about three-fourths of the way down the sinkhole’s wall. To safely descend down to it, Agile cast feather-fall on himself and Marilla, after the mermaid had put on the Lenses of Duck. They inspected the door for a few minutes before Marilla noticed that the vines and the flowers around the door had been killed by poison. Initially this increased her alarm about the potential lethality of the murky water, but after some liberally applied hints from me she realized that perhaps an application of poison was what opened the door.
Using the alchemical jug, they poured liquid poison on the door. It swung open inwardly to reveal a modest dragon hord complete with a wand of fear and a neat box made from two dinosaur skulls slotted together.
Because the party failed overall in their Skill Challenge, they got lost about 2/3 of the way to the Forbidden City. At that point the session had ended, and Makenna and Meagan agreed to try heading toward the city of Omu again in their next session.
After leaving Casamir and the traveling yuan ti slavers, Agile and Marilla first navigated back to the camp to reclaim what’s belongings they had left. They recovered the materials and the supplies they’d amassed, but the dinosaurs had run away during the initial kidnapping and River and Flask had returned to Port Nyanzaru with the assumption that the party members died. Agile plans for a dramatic reunion with his husband.
Agile, after making a DC 15 Intelligence check, remembered his and Casamir’s encounter with the Red Wizard several weeks ago. The Red Wizard had surrendered and confessed the directions to the Forbidden City of Omu, and Agile reasoned that this was probably where Casamir had been taken. With that logic, Agile and Marilla took off in a southernly direction, towards where the yuan ti had taken Casamir. Within the day they arrived at the port that the Mershaulk’s Hope had taken off from, and Marilla used her Move Currents feature to carry Agile and herself over Kitcher’s Inlet.
To speed up the travel, I took a page out of James Haeck’s book, or specifically this blog post on the D&D Beyond website. I set up the players to complete a Skill Challenge that required four successful checks and had a limit of three failed checks. Also, to double-down on the survival aspect of the campaign, I required Agile and Marilla to make a few Constitution checks. Agile, with apparently hardy Tabaxi constitution, held up well, but Marilla contracted mad monkey fever for about 3 days. Thankfully, she succeeded the next Constitution check before any radical madness symptoms manifested.
Unfortunately, the party accumulated three failures and encountered a group of su-monsters as they set up camp for the night. The battle took almost twenty minutes in real time, and without Marilla’s healing hands spell, the characters would have fallen in a few spots. Agile’s sleep spell was used according to the rules this time, and it was good to have an experience following the actual rules, and the battle seemed more real when the sleeping su-monster eventually woke up.
During their travels, Marilla was interested in trying to find a few of the things in the “legend” I wrote up for her. She and Agile made several Nature checks looking for the black orchid mentioned in the riddle, but succeeded only in finding a yellow orchid which the then painted black with Agile’s ink set, and later found a dark purple orchid. They decided that these flowers were “close enough” and ceased searching for black orchids.
Marilla and Agile also stumbled upon a deep sinkhole in the forest, which rainwater had filled up to three feet with water. Dark orchid- and lily-like flowers dotted the surface of the water, and frogs and other pond life were visible, as well as a 30-foot-tall rib cage covered with vines. After a Perception check, Agile noticed an outline in the rock that appeared to be a door about three-fourths of the way down the sinkhole’s wall. To safely descend down to it, Agile cast feather-fall on himself and Marilla, after the mermaid had put on the Lenses of Duck. They inspected the door for a few minutes before Marilla noticed that the vines and the flowers around the door had been killed by poison. Initially this increased her alarm about the potential lethality of the murky water, but after some liberally applied hints from me she realized that perhaps an application of poison was what opened the door.
Using the alchemical jug, they poured liquid poison on the door. It swung open inwardly to reveal a modest dragon hord complete with a wand of fear and a neat box made from two dinosaur skulls slotted together.
Because the party failed overall in their Skill Challenge, they got lost about 2/3 of the way to the Forbidden City. At that point the session had ended, and Makenna and Meagan agreed to try heading toward the city of Omu again in their next session.
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| Agile and Marilla's route from their old campsite to the end of the session |
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