Daggerford: Mistcutter Isle (Part 3)

Game Date: 4/17/2021

Location: Roll20
Campaign: Daggerford, Session 14

System: D&D 5e
DM: Mike

The Party:
Azul (Cliff) Dragonborn Fighter
Khemed (Rusty) Half-Elf Wizard
Neven (Steve) Elf Monk
Sylvester (Steven) Drow Warlock/Doctor
Vanya (Matt) Half-Elf Bard

The Session:

Last week we left off right before the boss fight.  We decided to take a long rest next to the creepy well.  A few hours into our rest, we started hearing some loud noises, and saw some eyes watching us from the dark.  A small monkey stood in the hallway, holding something in its hand.  We gave it some food, and befriended it.  It was holding what looked like a small doll made of sticks.

We saw a second monkey peeking out from farther down the hall, and came to join the party.  More eyes glowed from the distance.  Eventually we had a full monkey party going, with a variety of different types of monkeys.  

They all held similar stick objects, with a skull on one end and a triangle on the other.  The objects looked similar to an iron key Sylvester found earlier on the island.  Sylvester pulled out his key and showed it to them, and the monkeys swarmed him.  

Khemed cast Sleep on the swarm.  We realized there was an arcane eye watching us from the ceiling, and Sylvester destroyed it with Eldritch Blast.  Then he set the sleeping monkeys on fire, and we attempted to finish our long rest.  More loud noises interfered with our sleep, but we waited it out.

We proceeded to the giant room at the end of the North hall.  The room had an open ceiling.  Three trolls were feasting on a dead Allosaurus.  We rolled some bad stealth rolls approaching the room, but they were too occupied to notice us at first.  As we approached the room, they started taking cover.

We engaged them, but they seemed more interested in hiding than fighting at first.  Khemed cast Enlarge on Azul.  Neven stepped into the room and was attacked by all three trolls at once.  We concentrated our attacks and used Sylvester's "Create Bonfire" spell to keep them from regenerating.

We used some good strategy, but it still wasn't easy.  Azul, Neven, and Khemed each went down at least once, but Vanya healed them.  Azul finished off the final troll, and we moved back into the hallway to assess our damage.

There was a raised platform in the room, surrounded by four statues of scaled beings.  In the center of the platform was a dark pit.  Sylvester couldn't resist investigating the pit.  He tied a rope to the statue.  With Neven's help, Sylvester started to climb downward.  At the bottom was an altar made of bones.  

Neven and Sylvester were hit by blasts of pollen and gripped by vines.  Khemed enlarged Azul, and Vanya used Featherfall on him so he could jump down to help his friends.  Sylvester was drugged by the pollen by this point, and resisted Azul's attempts to rescue him.  

A vine monster in the pit implanted some seeds into Sylvester.  Those of us at the top of the pit stressed to find ways to help our allies.  Vanya tried a Shatter spell, which helped a little.  Azul's breath attack proved fruitless, as the creature was immune to lightning.  Neven hit the creature with a powerful set of punches, finishing it off and causing all the vines to come crashing down into the pit.

Sylvester dropped to 0 due to the spores.  After Vanya revived him, he used a potion of gaseous form to remove the spores from his body.  Still at the bottom of the pit, Azul and Neven searched the area and found some loot:

A white pearl (worth 300 gp)

A blue/green pearl (value unknown - might be magical)

A silver statue (worth 100 gp)

They also found a keyhole on the altar.  They decided to try the key from earlier - the one with a skull on one end, and a triangle on the other.  Which led to one of those classic DM questions: "Which end of the key are you going to stick into this thing?"  Eep.  They picked triangle.  

A secret door opened up.  Everything started to glow and we could all feel waves of magical energy emanating from the altar.  They started climbing the rope, but took some radiant damage as a beam of magical energy shot past them.  Neven couldn't survive a second blast, so dropped back down and ducked into the secret door.  

In the secret chamber, an evil being revealed himself to Neven, and thanked him for activating the device.  We ended the session on that cliffhanger.

Additional loot from the secret room in the pit:

Staff of the Python

Sword of Life Stealing

Two does of Oil of Sharpness in a clay amphora

900 gp primitive jewelry and assorted trinkets

An axe

Unearthed Arcana: Draconic Options

There's a new UA out today, "Draconic Options".  It includes alternate versions of the Dragonborn and Kobold races, as well as some new dragon-themed feats and spells.

Overall, I like it.  It splits the Dragonborn race between Metallic, Chromatic, and Gem.  Chromatics get a power that lets them make themselves temporarily immune to certain damage types.  Metallics get a second breath weapon.  Gems get telepathy and spectral wings.  

Kobolds get one of three "Draconic Legacy" abilities, and a roar ability.  I like the new Kobolds better than the previous one; in fact, I might even consider playing a kobold now.  (It's still pretty low on my list, though.)  

One of the spells is named after a Dragonlance character, giving hope to those who have been waiting for a 5e DL campaign setting.  

I do wish they let Dragonborn players pick whether their breath weapon is a line or a cone.  As it is, Chromatic Dragonborn get lines, while Metallic and Gem get cones.  I really don't think it would break anything if the player could choose line or cone every time they use the power.  It's not a big quibble, it just seems like the kind of thing that Dragonborn would learn through practice (like learning to whistle), rather than determined by the type of their scales.

I don't have much else to say about it, but I'm a big fan of the Dragonborn race, so I might use some of these options in the future. 

Candlekeep: Shemshime’s Bedtime Rhyme

I'm only about six chapters into Candlekeep Mysteries, but I wanted to throw out a special mention of chapter 5: Shemshime’s Bedtime Rhyme.

I love this one.  It feels like a Doctor Who episode (specifically, "Midnight").  The adventure features a small cast of characters, confined to a basement beneath Candlekeep.  The party and the NPCs are all afflicted with a killer earworm.  Everyone gets the same nursery rhyme stuck in their heads, and they self-quarantine so it doesn't spread.  

It's the kind of story where things just seem a little off at first, only for the weirdness to escalate to disturbing levels.  Like Midnight, it's the type of story a TV series might pick when they need a low budget episode to flesh out the season, only to find it becomes one of the most beloved episodes of the series.

Unfortunately, it needs the right kind of DM to pull it off, and maybe the right kind of group to enjoy it.  Hack-and-slashers need not apply.  This is a story that requires the proper use of tension, and players who enjoy investigation.  

Candlekeep Mysteries has already proven worth the money, and I'm not even a third of the way through it.  I hope it has at least a couple more stories of this quality.

Candlekeep Mysteries

I think one of the more underrated books for 4e was "Dungeon Delve."  It was basically a compilation of 30 mini adventures, one for each party level.  Each adventure had about three encounters (and let's face it - given the length of 4e battles, three encounters could easily take multiple sessions).  Of course they were light on plot, but that just meant you could drop them into any campaign.  The main draw was that you always had a quick adventure ready if you decided to hold an impromptu game.

5e's "Candlekeep Mysteries" is a lot like that.  It contains 17 standalone quests, one for each party level 1-16 (there's two for level 4).  But unlike Dungeon Delve, CM's adventures center more on plot than fighting.  I'm about three adventures into it, and so far, I'm really liking it.

The book opens with a chapter describing Candlekeep - a huge library containing rare books from all over the world.  It's a short chapter, but detailed enough that it could inspire many adventures.  Each of the 17 short adventures involves a book in some way.  Maybe you're hired to recover a stolen tome of eldritch lore.  Maybe an absent-minded wizard attempted an unfamiliar hex he found in an ancient spellbook, and you have to clean up the mess.  Maybe an old diary contains a map to a mysterious treasure.

In an odd way, it kind of reminds me of "Friday the 13th: The Series" (no relation to the movies), where the owners of a cursed antique store had to hunt down several lost artifacts, each episode centering on a specific artifact and the trouble it caused.  

If you were to build a campaign around this book, it might start to feel a little repetitive after a while.  Although if you were specifically wanting a "Librarians" themed campaign, this would be a good start.  Otherwise, you might want to pick and choose which adventures to use.  Save this book for a night when you don't have anything prepared, and run whatever chapter is appropriate for your group's level.

My only complaint is the map.  It comes with a foldout map of Candlekeep, which is not fully repeated in the book itself (the courtyard part is repeated, but not the Inner Ward).  I keep my maps separate from my books, so they don't fall out while reading them, and I honestly would have found this map more useful if it were inside the book.  

It's not a particularly useful map for campaign strategy, like the overland map in Rime of the Frostmaiden or the hex map in Tomb of Annihilation.  This map seems to be more for flavor, and I'm surprised they bothered to make it a foldout map at all. 

But despite that little nitpick, I think it's a great book for any DM to have.  These adventures require a little more prep time than the ones in 4e's Dungeon Delve - and by that, I just mean you'll actually have to read ahead a little.  But it's still a lot more "grab and play" than the adventures in "Ghosts of Saltmarsh" or "Tales from the Yawning Portal".  

Definitely worth a read.

Daggerford: Mistcutter Isle (Part 2)

Game Date: 3/20/2021

Location: Roll20
Campaign: Daggerford, Session 13

System: D&D 5e
DM: Mike

The Party:
Azul (Cliff) Dragonborn Fighter
Khemed (Rusty) Half-Elf Wizard
Neven (Steve) Elf Monk
Sylvester (Steven) Drow Warlock/Doctor
Vanya (Matt) Half-Elf Bard

The Session:

Last week we left off in the caverns below Mistcutter Isle.  We began the session in waist deep water.  We took a short rest in a dry cave, waited for the water levels to lower a bit, and explored the deeper tunnels.  We encountered another shark, but it was trapped by the low water levels.  We finished it off so it wouldn't attack us later.

We entered a tunnel that was glowing with a bluish light, with skeletons arranged like trophies.  In another tunnel, a patch of kelp tried to grab Neven and pull him under.  Sylvester fired an Eldritch Blast at the kelp, to help set him free.  As Neven finished freeing himself, a Merrow (an ogre-sized merman) joined the fight.

The rest of the party stayed in the shallower water and fired ranged attacks, while Neven kept punching the creature.  Vanya finished the Merrow with a well-stated insult.  After the fight, Neven noticed a lot of bodies at the bottom of the chamber.  Apparently this creature had been working with the kelp to make meals of visitors for a while.

In the next chamber, Sylvester and Neven found a statue of a maiden with a marred face.  There was a skull sitting on a rock shelf, which contained a black pearl worth 500 gp.  Then they met a woman, who thanked them for saving her from the Merrow.  She claimed the monster had trapped her, planning to eat her later.  

She lied.  When they tried to leave the cave, she revealed her true face - a sea hag.  The hag used Drowning Glare on Neven, which left him gasping for breath.  It was harrowing at first, but we made some good attacks and brought her down in a few rounds.  Sylvester delivered the final blow using Create Bonfire.

We backtracked and explored a large chamber to the West.  There was a small island in the middle of the cave, surrounded by deep water.  We saw movement on the ceiling, possibly bats.  Sylvester swam to the island.  He saw something moving in the water.  He tried to reach out to it with Awakened Mind, but only detected anger and pain.  A pair of Sea Tigers burst from the surface and attacked.

These things hit hard.  Their first attack nearly wiped out Sylvester, who went down the following round.  Khemed enlarged Azul, who soloed one while Sylvester and Neven fought the other on the island.  Azul delivered the killing blow on both monsters.  We healed up a little and went North.

The next passage led to some stairs.  While searching for traps, we triggered one.  A large cylindrical stone rolled down the staircase.  We climbed over it and proceeded upwards.  To the West we found an altar with a water-filled well.  Of course Sylvester was the first to check it out, and he was attacked by a Water Weird.

It grabbed Sylvester and pulled him into the well.  While Sylvester made underwater death saves, the rest of us wailed on the Weird.  It tried to slow us down with blinding attacks.  Sylvester rolled a 20 on his a save, climbing back out of the well right after Azul finished off the Weird.

Something glittered at the bottom of the well.  Neven swam to the bottom, and gathered up 1,350 gp worth of coins and small gems.  Down the next hall we saw some large murals.  Two statues (Coral Golems) tried to hide within the murals, but we noticed them.  Vania started the battle by casting Shatter twice, getting us off to a good start.

Khemed enlarged Azul again, and he took point.  The Golems had a few immunities which made things difficult.  Azul went down, but Sylvester managed to finish off the last one with an Eldritch Blast.  The end of the hall opened to a very large, square, "boss fight"-looking room. 

We didn't go in yet.  We were low on resources and time, so we took a long rest by the fountain and ended the session there.

Unearthed Arcana: Folk of the Feywild

This month's Unearthed Arcana was of special interest for me.  Finally a fairy!  As I mentioned in my bucket list post a few months ago, I've always wanted to play a fairy character in a tabletop RPG.  Judge me if you want, but I used to play one in NeverWinter Nights, and I really enjoyed it.

It looks like a decent race - it gets flight, a couple of innate spells, and the ability to squeeze through tight spaces.  I definitely look forward to trying this out, and will instantly preorder whatever splatbook it eventually appears in.

That said, overall this edition of Unearthed Arcana was a bit of a letdown.  Four races: Fairy, Hobgoblin, Owlfolk, and Rabbitfolk.  For a Feywild document, it's not Feywild enough.  I would have preferred Dryads, Nymphs, and Satyrs to all these animal folk.  And we already had a playable Hobgoblin the Volo's Guide to Monsters, so I'm not convinced we needed another one.

Of course, that's just me.  I mean, I have to be in the minority, wanting to play a fairy.  I'm sure that for every oddball like me, there's someone out there who has always wanted to play a rabbit person.  So, sure, throw in more animal people, see if you can pull in the furry crowd.  The more fringe groups we can get to try D&D, the better.  But I hope the final book also includes Dryads.

I'm also a little wary of the new stat system.  A few months ago I read Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, which has optional rules for stat generation.  Side note, I've been rereading Tasha's recently, and I think I must have been in a bad mood the first time I reviewed it.  It's still not as useful as Xanathar's, but there's definitely some stuff in there I can use.  I particularly like the Monk subclass that can heal their allies by punching them in the face.

Anyway, Tasha's took the first steps in D&D's push to eliminate racial stats.  It presents the optional rule that during character creation, you can trade out stat bonuses for other stat bonuses.  This allows you to play characters that grew up in non-traditional environments for their race, and distances the game from problematic stereotypes.

This Unearthed Arcana continues the trend by not having set stat bonuses at all for these new races.  Instead, it just says, "When determining your character’s ability scores, increase one of those scores by 2 and a different score by 1, or increase three different scores by 1."

This is a great system, but it might have gone over better if they had included some suggested stat increases for each race.  After all, that "pick whatever stats you want" rule was supposed to be optional, and not every group intends to adopt it.  Even if you intend to trade out the suggested stats, some people are going to wonder what stats would be traditional for that race's society.

But I guess even asking that question is to skirt racism.  Saying "Most Orcs are stupid, but your Orc is smarter because they were raised by Elves" is no better than saying "All Orcs are stupid".  And since some people draw parallels between D&D races and real world ethnicities, it's probably best to just drop automatic stat bonuses going forward.

If only they could have made that realization during 5e's playtest phase, they could have worked it into the system, and maybe let stat bonuses be come from your class instead.  As it is, this late-stage change makes the system feel sort of messy.  Hopefully they will reprint the PHB at some point, so that the core book is more consistent with the follow-up material.

Until then, I think they're doing the best they can.  I can't wait to try the fairy.

Daggerford: Mistcutter Isle (Part 1)

Game Date: 3/6/2021

Location: Roll20
Campaign: Daggerford, Session 12

System: D&D 5e
DM: Mike

The Party:
Azul (Cliff) Dragonborn Fighter
Khemed (Rusty) Half-Elf Wizard
Neven (Steve) Elf Monk
Sylvester (Steven) Drow Warlock/Doctor
Vanya (Matt) Half-Elf Bard

The Session:

Today we switched our DM with one of our players.  The session took place in the same universe, but may or may not be canon going forward.  We started with some haggling to sell our loot from the last dungeon, selling to a guy who was obsessed with teeth.  Then he presented us with this week's plot hook.

People were having nightmares of ill omen, possibly related to some evil priest activity.  Clues pointed to an old pirate outpost on Mistcutter Isle.  We set sail aboard a ship with a lizardfolk captain. 

It was dark when our ship reached the island.  After scouting a landing location, we decided to wait until morning to row ashore.  Early in the morning, our ship was attacked by a large sea creature.  We all headed topside so we could start firing at it.  After a round, it leaped out of the water and landed on the ship.

It ate one of the pirate crew.  Azul hit it with lightning breath, bringing it down to bloodied.  Neven finished it off with a bunch of punches and psychic attacks.  We patched up the ship, and had a funeral for the fallen crewmate.  We spotted some caves at the base of the island, near an arched outcropping with a large statue.  

We rowed our boat ashore (hallelujah), landing north of the outcropping.  Sylvester and Vanya investigated the arch, spotting a large square stone at the end.  It looked like the stone was originally the base of the statue, which had later fallen into the water down below.  Sylvester found a rune-covered metal rod, which he tucked into his backpack. 

A large snake attacked them, but Neven showed up and scared it off.  They rejoined the rest of the party.  We set up camp, and all had bad dreams about being dragged against our will to an underground temple.  At about 3 AM, a blast of purple appeared in the distance.

No going back to sleep now, so we went to investigate.  It looked like the blast came from above the caves, so we headed towards the cave entrances.  Water kept rushing in and out of the caves, and we came upon a brown slime.  

The passage was very narrow at this point, making it difficult for anyone but Azul to attack the monster.  Another slime appeared on the ceiling above us.  Azul attacked one of them, and it split into two.  We tried to favor magical attacks for the rest of the fight.  

Once they were dead, we continued to explore the caves.  The water got deeper, and we had to use dancing light spells so Azul could see.  Pretty soon we couldn't proceed without swimming.  Neven scouted ahead, and was attacked by an angry shark (doo doo doo doo doo doo).

The rest of us were too far back to know he was being attacked, so he had to solo the shark for a few rounds.  Eventually he managed to swim back to us, leading the shark towards us.  We attacked it with ranged attacks, standing in water too shallow for the shark to reach.  Azul finished it off with a crossbow.

Sylvester and Khemed went down one short passage, and found a puzzle involving a skull and some seashells.  There were four colored seashells - yellow, green, brown, and blue.  They managed to trigger a few traps while figuring it out, taking damage from falling blocks.  (They didn't know how to use the four seashells.)

After some experimentation, they found the correct order to press the seashells.  They were awarded with some pirate treasure - a pearl handled comb, a decorative curved dagger, a painted hand fan, a golden locket, a gold earring, and a silver chain.  

We stopped the session there, with the benefit of a short rest.  We will pick it up in two weeks.

Daggerford: When Water Attacks

Game Date: 2/6/2021

Location: Roll20
Campaign: Daggerford, Session 11

System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Azul (Cliff) Dragonborn Fighter
Khemed (Mike) Half-Elf Wizard
Neven (Steve) Elf Monk
Sylvester (Steven) Drow Warlock/Doctor
Vanya (Matt) Half-Elf Bard

The Session:

We started with a well-earned long rest, in the room with all the pools.  There were six pools, each full of a different kind of liquid.  One was full of bubbling water, with an iron-handled chest in the bottom.  

Neven and Azul pulled the chest from the pool, but it was followed by a water elemental.  Khemed used an enlarge spell on Neven, for some fun kaiju action.  Azul attempted to calm the elemental by tossing the chest back in the water.  No such luck - it kept fighting and swallowed Azul.  Neven used an attack that teleported the elemental back into the pool.  

Khemed went down after a couple of rounds, which broke his concentration, ending Neven's enlargement.  We found that our best attacks were psychic, which Neven used to finish him off.  We rushed to heal Khemed, while Azul retrieved the chest once again.  The chest contained a suit of leather armor and a wineskin.

Then we went to the medusa we'd petrified last session.  We chiseled out her longbow, and cut off her head.  We returned to the room with the de-medusa machine, and used it to return the bow to normal.  The gas started to fill the room again, turning the medusa head back to normal, and turning Sylvester to stone.  We debated for several minutes the right way to go into the room and return Sylvester to normal.  Neven finally went in, covered up the medusa head, and pulled the lever that fixed Sylvester.  

While we were there, we asked the sphinx for the location of the elemental keys.  The spinx asked gave us a couple of names and told us that all four keys could be found under Illefarn (roll credits).  We also asked what the agreement was between Nadir and the black dragon in the Lizard Marsh.  The sphinx told us that there was no agreement, and that Nadir just took advantage of a situation.  

We went back to the room where the medusa and flesh golem had originated.  There was something interesting in each corner - a painted plaster statue of a knight in platemail, a four foot tall cast iron sculpture of a xorn, an alabaster urn, and a silver lined casket containing a corpse.  

We knocked around the room a bit and found an iron key.  The the xorn statue contained a keyhole, which we opened.  Inside the statue were several treasures - a platinum brooch shaped like the sun (worth 50 gp), a jade chalice (150 gp), and a gold crown with spires of crystal (500 gp), all resting on a bed of about 600 electrum pieces.

The room to the North contained a red mist, and Sylvester stepped through it.  The back wall held some runestones, like buttons.  Sylvester pushed the water rune, and teleported elsewhere.  He wound up in a room we'd seen earlier.  He pressed the fire rune and returned to us.  We all stepped into the room and pressed the air rune button, which sent us to a room next to a statue of a red dragon.

The statue was obviously rigged to breathe fire.  Sylvester and Neven worked to deactivate the fire function.  There was an urn in another alcove, which Sylvester investigated.  The urn was carved with images of horses and stags.  He opened the lid, which set off an alarm.  Two flesh golems teleported into the teleportation room, trapping Azul, Khemed and Vanya between them.  Not good.

They didn't take damage from nonmagical weapons, so we had to emphasize spells and Neven's psychic punches.  One golem critted an attack on Vanya, taking her out with one blow.  Neven did some pretty good damage, but got knocked out a couple of rounds later.  Azul borrowed the Staff of Charming from another party member, allowing him to finish off the first golem.

Khemed hit the remaining golem with a Chromatic Orb.  Azul, Sylvester, and Khemed worked on the golem while Vanya and Neven made death saves.  Azul finished off the second golem with the staff.  The battle was over, so we did some healing and resting.  That was a close call for some of us.

We decided it was time to depart the dungeon.  We reached the point where the stone block blocked our path.  Khemed used a reduce spell to shrink the block down so we could get around it, and we headed back to town without incident.  We ended the session with six weeks of downtime ahead of us.

Session reward: 1080 xp, bringing us up to 6734 (level 5).

Daggerford: Golem Soup

Game Date: 1/23/2021

Location: Roll20
Campaign: Daggerford, Session 10

System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Azul (Cliff) Dragonborn Fighter
Esmerelda (Christy) Halfling Rogue - Absent
Khemed (Mike) Half-Elf Wizard
Neven (Steve) Elf Monk
Sylvester (Steven) Drow Warlock
Vanya (Matt) Half-Elf Bard

The Session:

When we left off, we had found Darwa Dalion, but she was in statue form.  We decided to take a long rest in a stairwell.  We found a secret door in the room with the braziers, which opened to reveal a long, dark hallway.  After a turn, it ended at another secret door.

We all tried investigation checks to find the hidden catch, but failed.  Then we all tried athletics checks, but only Vanya succeeded, which was funny.  The door opened to a room with two statues of trolls and a sphinx statue.  We found a lever, which we pulled, causing gas to start filling the room.  We quickly shut off the lever. The troll statues returned to flesh form, and came alive.

Azul and Neven worked on one, while Sylvester and Vanya worked on the other.  Khemed was late to the party, but his presence was very welcome once he arrived.  He managed to finish one off with a Chromatic Orb.  The second troll lasted a few rounds longer, but eventually we took him out.

After the battle, we investigated the sphinx statue.  Despite being a statue, it answered the questions we asked it.  We asked it where the elemental portal key was, but it would only tell us that it was in someone's possession.  It would only answer one question per person, so some of us held off in case we needed to come back later.  

One pedestal in the room contained several valuable-looking figurines, which we took.  We also found a six inch figurine that kept changing shape.

We realized, belatedly, that we could have used the lever to turn Darwa's statue back to flesh, but we had already decaptiated it.  We considered using a mending spell on the statue, but decided against it.  After a short rest, we opened a door in the Northwest corner.

In the next room, there was something interesting in each corner.  In the NE was a statue of a knight.  The NW was a statue of an egg shaped creature with three arms and legs.  In the SE was a small bronze urn on a pedestal.  In the SW was a propped-up casket containing a withered corpse.  But the room's most oustanding feature was the monsters in the center - a Flesh Golem and a Medusa.

We closed the door, sealed it with pitons, and ran for our lives.  We fled South, through more doorways, but they kept following us.  We fled, fled, and fled some more.  When we reached the top of the stairs, we opened a new door to the South.  It contained a chandalier with three gargoyles, and some water flowing across the floor.

We continued to flee North, now pursued by the gargoyles as well.  The gargoyles were more annoying than dangerous, but they did make it more difficult to keep up the pace.  We used a bonfire spell on one doorway, which made the Flesh Golem afraid to go through.  We fought the gargoyles while running down a long hallway, unfortunately using up a lot of party resources we would need against the Medusa and Flesh Golem.  

This chase took up most of the session.  We made our way towards the room that had mirrors on the ceiling, hoping to trick the Medusa into looking at it.  In one hall, Sylvester went down, but we had to leave him and keep running.  He succeed on three death saves, though, so at least he isn't dead.

Khemed used Mage Hand on a hand mirror to surprise the Medusa as she came through a door, and used a Portent roll to make sure she failed her save.  She petrified herself, and we were left with one gargoyle and one angry Flesh Golem.  The gargoyle latched on to Vanya, but Neven ran to her rescue.  Khemed and Azul tangled with the Golem.  By this point, we had led it into the room with all the pools of different liquids.  They planned to push the Golem into one of the pools.

Azul taunted the Golem from the other side of a pool, but it ran around it.  Khemed used his TK attacks to push the Golem towards pools.  Khemed even physically pushed the Golem, but couldn't match the monster's strength.  Then Azul managed to push the Golem into a pool of brown liquid.

The pool teleported the Golem into another pool, one filled with boiling water.  Then a nearby statue shot fire beams out of it's eyes, hitting Azul and Khemed.  We spent a few rounds forcing the Golem to stay in the pot of boiling water, since it was the only thing that seemed to hurt him.

Wash, rinse, repeat, and eventually the Golem was boiled to death.  It was an incredible fight, one we will talk about for years.  Our fourth level party managed to take down a Medusa and a Flesh Golem, despite not having any magic weapons.  We ended the session there, exhausted.

1810 xp

Daggerford: What's Eating Khemed?

Game Date: 1/9/2021

Location: Roll20
Campaign: Daggerford, Session 9

System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Azul (Cliff) Dragonborn Fighter
Esmerelda (Christy) Halfling Rogue - Absent
Khemed (Mike) Half-Elf Wizard
Neven (Steve) Elf Monk
Sylvester (Steven) Drow Warlock
Vanya (Matt) Half-Elf Bard

The Session:
Last session we barely survived a run-in with some wraiths (actually wights).  We began today's session still in the crypts, licking our wounds.  We took a short rest in one of the crypts, then went through a not-very-secret secret door to the South.

We followed a hallway South, then East, until another secret door led to a throne room.  We saw a shroud-covered figure sitting on one throne, and a clockwork cat at her feet.  There were also four alabaster urns, each representing one of the four elements.  (Where's Leeloo when you need her?)

The figure greeted us, and asked us if we were another group of tomb robbers.  We asked her which way previous robbers went, and she said they went down the stairs.  She even gave us her clockwork cat.  We asked her if the cat had a name, and she answered, "You can name it as you like."  So the cat's name is now "Azulike".

We went down the South stairs.  In a large room, we saw a statue of a Fire Giant, and some cauldrons filled with different liquids.  We examined the different cauldrons, whose liquids were of all manner of consistencies - one bubbling, one still, one syrupy, one shimmery, one icy, etc.

We experimented with some of them.  From the NE cauldron we pulled out a staff with a stone hand still attached.  It gave off toxic fumes, but they quickly dissipated.  The hand had come from a statue inside the cauldron.  

A room to the North was full of debris and mirrors, with another door to a hallway leading East, then South.  It stopped at a door that appeared to be giving off light.  Neven opened the door to a 20x60 room with wall murals featuring exploding undead.  Beyond a portcullis, two ax-wielding minotaurs gathered up scraps of armor.  They turned toward Neven and charged.

Only Neven and Sylvester were in the room with the minotaurs.  The rest of us were all the way down a long hallway, and took a few rounds to join the action.  The first minotaur lifted the portcullis, and the other attacked Neven.

As we came running down the hallway, one of the minotaurs rushed up to meet us.  Azul engaged with the hall minotaur ("hall monitor", *snicker*), while Neven tried to survive the other one's onslaught.  We concentrated on Neven's foe first until it went down, then ganged up on Azul's opponent.  Once both enemies were down, we did a little healing and looted the minotaurs.  

The white marble doors to the South gave off extremely bright light.  They opened to a another 20x60 room, this one with murals of sun priests with donkey heads.  There was a horribly mutilated corpse on the floor.  Afraid the room might be trapped, we used magic to drag the body closer to us.  We examined the body, and found bruises and bite marks. 

We saw something dark and leathery moving on the ceiling, and we started shooting at it.  A few turns in, the doors closed.  We considered leaving, but our cat was in there.  Vanya mustered the strength to hold the door open, and Azul used pitons to keep it from closing again.

The creature flew towards us, and we fought it in the doorway.  It had damage reduction, but we kept hacking away.  We used a combination of spells that lowered its saving throws so that further spells were more likely to hit.

After a few turns it flew above our heads, which was unnerving.  It grappled Khemed, and Sylvester cast a magical bonfire under the creature.  Unfortunately the damage was split between the monster and Khemed.  The monster smothered and squeezed Khemed until he was at zero hit points.  Azul finished the monster off, and we healed up Khemed.  We identified the monster's corpse as a Lurker Above.

We found a secret door in the Lurker's room.  While walking through the room, part of the floor attempted to attack Khemed.  We rolled initiative and fought a Trapper.  Azul charged in and hit it hard.  The Trapper tried to engulf Khemed but failed.  Sylvester threw a bonfire on it.  It moved towards Khemed, provoking OAs from Neven and Azul.  

The Trapper engulfed Khemed, who was apparently really tasty today.  He might want to consider switching to a different cologne.  The Trapper let go of Khemed to attack Azul, who finished it off.  We ignored the door to the South for now, in favor of the secret door to the West.  It opened to a staircase, and down we went.

At the bottom of the stairs, we found a room with an altar.  A second clockwork cat was playing with a mouse.  There was a statue of a surprised-looking woman, leading us to believe there might be monster capable of petrification nearby.  After a party huddle, we decided to look around the room using Vanya's hand mirror.  

Neven tried touching a hole in the altar with his pole (get your mind out of the gutter), which triggered a bolt of lightning.  We recognized the statue as Darwa Dalion, the wizard we've been looking for.  We cut off the statue's head as proof that we had found her.  Sylvester tried tossing an electrum coin into the hole, and received a major shock.  

We decided to take a long rest in the stairwell.  While resting, we examined the staff we'd found, and discovered it was a Staff of Charming.  Thus endeth the session.

XP: 1,000