Nick's Campaign/Synopsis

## Session 1 - 8/19/2018

Five people, including Barlow the halfling bard, Gronk the human barbarian, Dahlia the tiefling rogue, Cob the gnome wizard, and Alirion the human warlock, all from different backgrounds, gathered in the small, backwater village of Briskridge and all accepted an offer from a representative of the famous Hunters' Guild. They met with a dwarven blacksmith named Ivan Blackstone, who first sent them on a small errand to eliminate a group of bandits who called themselves "The Horde". While Cob, Barlow, and Gronk took care of things around town, such as visiting local merchants, critically stabbing trees and using the sap (and too much corn) to make bladed weapons, and harassing a local farmer to get said corn, Dahlia and Alirion left town and scouted ahead in the surrounding woods, going off of the trail that is the North Road to the general area where they were told the bandits were most active. Following footprints up to a creek and through the thicket and eventually coming across the bandits' empty campsite. The rest of the group caught up and discussed various options on how to fight the bandits, deciding to wait until nightfall for them to return. The bandits eventually returned, revealed to consist of two orc brothers named Durgash and Voltag, a goblin named Krang, and led by a hobgoblin named Torkang. While the orcs and goblin started the campfire, Torkang had apparently scouted ahead and noticed the party waiting just beyond and was stealthily approaching them, but Cob noticed instinctively cast Sleep on him, allowing Dahlia to quietly slit his throat.

The party decided to use Torkang's fresh corpse, whose neck was covered with a scarf to absorb the blood and hide the wound, as a puppet to distract the bandits. Barlow cast Invisibility on Gronk, who held up the dead hobgoblin while Alirion and Cob used Mage Hand to control the movements of Torkang's face, and Dahlia used her innate Thaumaturgy to mimic a hobgoblin's voice. Altogether, they managed to, at the very least, distract the orcs and goblin enough that they easily ambushed and slaughtered them, two of which were killed by Cob's Scorching Ray. Returning to Briskridge, they party rented a single room at an inn and collected their payment from Ivan the next morning. During that visit, Ivan, now convinced the group was worth something, gave them the real task: to find and rescue his daughter, who had went missing the week before and Ivan was certain she was kidnapped.

The party, having a hunch about a cave system up north, had their suspicions confirmed when they overheard a hermit named Greywald yelling out to an ignoring crowd about devilish lizard people. The party stopped and asked him and Greywald told them of how he had recently seen lizard people carrying an unconscious female dwarf up to the caves the party was on their way to investigate. Greywald led them to the caves, where Gronk was nearly captured by a bugbear. The party made their way through the caves and encountered a roper. After a long and frustrating fight, they roper was defeated.

## Session 2 - 10/12/2018

### Cave Crawl

As Cob was finishing harvesting the teeth of the roper to add to his tooth necklace, the rest of the group started ahead. Dahlia scouted ahead while Gronk rushed forward as soon as they spotted some type of floating ball in the darkness that turned out to be the illusion of a flameskull, which faced them and charged forward, dissipating into fiery green smoke as they were suddenly blasted with a strong magical force that seemed to disable their sight. Alirion, with his Devil's Sight that allows him to see through magical darkness, notices Cob and Dahlia's spooked expressions when their darkvision doesn't return. Instinctively looking up, he sees three darkmantles slowly descending near, and latches themselves onto the heads of Dahlia and Cob. During the ensuing scuffle with the darkmantles, Barlow casts *Sleep* on two of them, knocking the darkmantles out. They were finished off when Cob stabbed the one on his head and, with the help of a couple of teammates, cuts out their beaks and adds it to their necklace.

With the veil of magical darkness extinguished and their senses returned, the party hears the sound of rushing water in the distance. Following the sound, they find a large cavern with a large, raging river, on the other side of which held an entrance to a room illuminated by torchlight. Crossing the river (Gronk braved the water and came out covered in leeches (which he ate), Cob entered Alirion's backpack and Alirion long jumps, Barlow just tumbled, and Dahlia pulled out a rope and tightrope walks across), they enter to see the corpse of a kobold holding a broken vial of red liquid, which Barlow identifies as a potion of poison. The party finds nothing else in the room out of the ordinary, yeets its corpse into the river, and crosses back to venture through the rest of the cave.

Continuing on, the group enters into another portion of the cave and convinces a very reluctant Greywald to stand guard. They come across a large pool of water with a message scribbled in Abyssal onto the wall above it: "*If you choose to continue on, beware of what may come. Great danger is ahead, should you intrude on us.*". A suspicious Gronk swims to the bottom of the pool. He notices a circle-shaped incision into the stone floor and presses against it, but it doesn't budge. Swimming back up, he tells the group of their findings, but the party decides to continue on. Swimming to a small offshoot to their right, they find what looks like a less naturally-formed part of the cave that is, after some magical inspection, revealed to be an illusion.

### Teleportation Circle

The party steps through into what is revealed to be a hallway (and soon rejoined by a frightened Greywald). As they enter, stone doors close on both ends of the hallway, and Gronk randomly charges forward with Barlow on his shoulders while the rest of the group notice bloodstained metallic slits on the hallway's halfway point. Oblivious to this, Gronk steps on a pressure plate and is immediately shot in the arm and side by three poison-tipped spikes that have been shot out of the wall. As the spikes are being mechanically reeled back in, the rest of the party attacks the ropes attached to them to essentially disable the trap; unfortunately, only Cob's *Fire Bolt* severs the rope. The party cautiously steps over the pressure plate and walks to the other end of the hallway, where Barlow tries to pull down one of the torches, triggering another trap in which the floor underneath him crumbles into a spiked pit. He manages to barely cling onto the torch and tumbles back to the group. The party lowers a rope into the pit and notice an outline of a hatch in the pit, and *Mage Hand* the torches on both sides of the close door above the pit, causing the hatch to open up. With the gnome and halfling leading the way, the group ventures on.

It takes a few minutes, but the hatch eventually leads to the other side of the door, into another corridor that leads to a room with a large, circular dais in the center. Also in the room are a few kobolds and a robed figure. The party immediately went to work, casting *Sleep* on the two standard kobolds and cultist while their leader, a kobold dragonshield, looked on in surprise and horror as his companions started dropping unconscious. The dragonshield, aided by two kobold archers, attacked the party. The archers were put to *Sleep* as well (eventually allowing Alirion to climb up the towers they were perched on to kill them) while the unconscious kobold and robed humanoid were swiftly killed. The dragonshield eventually falls, and the group turned its sights on a second robed figure in the back corner who was previously unnoticed. The party cast *Suggestion* on the robed figure and interrogated him, revealing that a sacrificial ritual was going on, the directions to it, how he was a cultist, etc. The party pressed hard for more information, eventually apparently crossing a line when the cultist suddenly gave the party a look of troubled defeat and, to their surprise, promptly stuck one of the party members' drawn blades through his skull.

With the guards taken care of, the party puts on the cultists' robes (the two small party members climb into the medium ones' backpacks), finds a Scroll of Teleportation on the body of one of the cultists, and identifies the dais as a Circle of Teleportation. Taking the circle to the other side, they are transported to a cafeteria-like room with empty chairs and tables to their right, storage rooms with barrels and crates in front of and behind them, and a stairway leading down on the left. Following the directions of the cultist, the party immediately heads down the stairs, but are stopped by a half-orc man with a handlebar mustache and a chef's apron. The half-orc, seeing the group dressed as cultists, points out that the ritual is still ongoing. Walking down the stairs, they enter into a small room with two entrances on opposite ends of the hallway on the wall to their left. On that same wall is a large mural, depicting an ancient war long-forgotten of an army of men in togas and snakes for heads wielding scimitars, apparently followed by a gargantuan serpent and some sort of angelic deity wielding a longsword and covered in tattoos. This army of snake-men was fighting against a legion of armored humanoids of varying races.

### Infiltrating the Dungeon

The party decides to split up to cover both sides of the room. The entrances lead to both sides of a dungeon. Shackled on the outer walls are deceased commoners with tortured, gaunt appearances. Imprisoned in the dungeons on the inner walls are various monsters (a chuul, nothic, bugbear, axe beak, fomorian, and an imprisoned goliath. The goliath introduces himself as Goron and warns the group that the cultists, who he confirms to be Yuan-ti, are planning to perform a large ritual sacrifice and have been experimenting with various types of magic. Goron requests that the party free him and they comply, agreeing that Goron pretends to still be imprisoned (Alirion *Prestidigitates* a basic cell key for him to use). unless he hears a commotion, in which case his assistance would be welcome.

Regrouping, the party continues on into the adjacent hallway and Dahlia hears suspicious sounds coming from a nearby room. Stealthily entering the room to investigate, she is suddenly attacked by a red dragonborn, who jabs his electrostaff into her back. Dahlia successfully resists her body's urge to collapse. The dragonborn, whose name is revealed to be Skorvanos Dwendarian, is quickly aided by a Yuan-ti pureblood named Drezvina, who pulls out a scimitar and a brief fight ensues. During the fight, Drezvina quickly finds herself overwhelmed when the party charms Skorvanos into trying to mediate the fight, but a smirk creeps across the pureblood's face when she sees Greywald in the back. Staring at him, she mutters an incantation in Abyssal, locking the hermit into place and briefly sending his body into convulsions, apparently triggering a transformation as Greywald turns into a feral wererat and Drezvina. A ferocious Greywald lunges at the party and manages to sink his wererat teeth into Alirion's neck as the warlock feels a strange burning sensation almost overtake him. The fight goes south for Drezvina, however, when Greywald is quickly restrained by Gronk.

Goron, having overheard the commotion, joins the party. Drezvina is restrained by a charmed Skorvanos. Refusing to listen to her former ally's plea, Drezvina tries to fight, but is killed and Alirion takes her electrostaff as a trophy and new pact weapon. It was at this point that the party noticed the sudden absence of Skorvanos, but Barlow noticed a red tail *thwip* around a corner.

### Chamber Battle

The party and their new ally continues on through the corridors, one of which has a series of alcoves. Looking out, they see a large chamber populated by several dozen cultists. The middle length of the chamber has a chasme with green fog billowing out, giving the entire room a ghostly atmosphere. On the other side of this chasme a large stone statue of a cobra head with dull glowing emerald eyes, in front of which is an Archpriest surrounded by four cult fanatics. A fifth cult fanatic enters the room and whispers something into the Archpriest's ear, and the Archpriest nods and steps in front of the fanatics, visibly ready to give a small speech. The cultist-dressed party interrupts him, however, and Dahlia in particular tries to convince everyone that the sacrificial ritual would be better performed during the winter solstice. This causes a small murmur in the crowd, however the Archpriest, unfooled by their disguised, calls them out and rhetorically asks if they would like to perform the ritual themselves.

Deciding enough is enough, the party jumps down from the alcove and into the chamber. They cultists right next to them start to attack, and soon, an all-out clash ensues as the party starts fighting all the cultists (all the while the cobra statue's eyes glow a shade brighter). Gronk, Dahlia, Cob, and Goron start mowing down cultist after cultist. Dahlia is casting *Thaumaturgy* while fighting, half-taunting the cultists (at one point even *Hellish Rebuking* fire from her mouth, incinerating one) and half-trying to convince them to stand down. Gronk and Goron are just attacking, and Cob is using all sorts of magic at his disposal. Alirion makes a beeline straight for the Archpriest, casting *Darkness* on his dagger and thus making a large bubble of magical darkness centered on his dagger and dropping the gnome in his backpack on the way over. Barlow starts out with the cultists, but after seeing the cult fanatics working in unison to attack the party from a distance, turns his attention to them.

Seeing the magical darkness bubble speeding his way, the Archpriest tosses his staff, revealed to be a Staff of the Python, forward. As it moves, it magically morphs into a giant constrictor snake that moves to protect its master. Alirion's darkness bubble quickly proves useful, greatly hindering the sight. Barlow turns invisible and starts climbing over the rocks on opposite sides of the chasme. Having already drawn the attention of two cult fanatics, they make their way to the rock, but are swiftly kicked into the chasme. The Archpriest tries to escape, but Alirion cuts them off.

Meanwhile, Goron is having an easy time mowing down the cultists in the back of the chamber. Gronk is as well, with his raging and *Storm Aura* shrugging off nearly all the damage he's taking. Cob is having a rougher time, having found himself the target of a few of the other two cult fanatics' attacks as well as being surrounded at one point, nearly dropping him unconscious; a quick *Burning Hands* does the trick. Dahlia continues taunting the cultists, taking a few hits but at the same time using the cultists as knife-throwing target practice.

Barlow eventually makes it to Alirion, aiding him in the fight against the Archpriest and giant constrictor snake. The other two cult fanatics have also fallen into the chasme, so it's only the snake, priest, bard, and warlock on this side of the chasme. On the other side, most of the cultists have been slain, but the remaining cultists, for whatever reason, refuse to back down. Cob has had a few close calls, but one good hit would knock him out. Gronk and Goron, while now visibly injured and exhausted, are still taking.

Alirion has found himself in a bit of a predicament, having taken a nasty bite in the shoulder from the giant snake. Barlow arrives and helps Alirion finish off the Archpriest, pushing him into the pit and seemingly killing him. The giant snake, thinking its master dead, turns its full attention to the one enemy it knows it can attack without worry: Barlow. The snake proceeds to wraps its large body around the halfling and starts constricting, hard, knocking him out. Helpless to do anything, the party watches in horror as the snake bites the bard hard enough to claim his life. Gronk, in an unusual fit of barbaric rage, charges over to the snake, grabs it by the tail, and proceeds to spin it around, tossing it straight into the cobra statue. The snake hits the statue with such force that the statue itself cracks, and the snake falls to the ground, lifeless, turning back into a Staff of the Python which then shatters.

While this is happening, Dahlia falls victim to a cultist's blade. Seeing this, Goron rushes over to her, managing to stabilize the rogue, and starts to carry her to the safety of the hallway outside. She is given a healing potion, restoring her to consciousness. The party, at this point battered and exhausted, finish off the few remaining cultists that are still refusing to surrender. Gronk rushes over, carrying the cold body of his friend as the party starts to flee the chamber with one question: What now?

## Session 3 - 11/10/2018

The party wakes up, not remembering falling unconscious, in a corridor adjacent to the ritual chamber. The first thing that catches their attention is the floor no longer littered with the corpses of cultists. Rather, their bodies seem to be disintegrating into a large mass of black smoke above the room, feeding into the large emerald eyes of the large cobra statue across the chamber's chasm. Deciding to ignore their suspicions, the party searches the entire tunnel system for any sign of Rose Blackstone, to no avail. Furthermore, the dungeon floor with all of the imprisoned magical creatures is empty, with its inhabitants seemingly escaped or released. However, Alirion does manage to find out where the Archpriest was apparently attempting to escape: a gargantuan cavern, with a seemingly bottomless pit. Calling the party over, they experiment a bit, dropping a few lit items down and seeing the darkness swallow them up. Taking a leap of faith, the party jumps down, and a mysterious gust of wind knocks them off their trajectory, onto a separate landing.

This landing has a small passageway that leads up to the kitchen area, where the party is greeted by the same half-orc chef as before. Cob takes an immediate interest in the chef, who introduces himself as Drak. Drak offers to cook up some venison for the party while they talk. After some negotiation, Drak agrees to leave his solitary life as a chef for the Yuan-ti behind and work for the party. At around this time, Dahlia hears some commotion over by the staircase to the dungeon floor and goes to investigate, and sees a chuul, nothic, and an undead bugbear, the same creatures that were imprisoned below the previous day. There is a brief fight, resulting in all of the monsters slain.

The party finds another Scroll of Teleportation and travels back to the cave system. On their way back, Alirion becomes interested in Goron's Frostaxe and requests a look at it. Inspecting it, Alirion requests ownership of it. Goron, understandably reluctant, declines. After much pestering, Goron reveals why he is attached to his weapon: it is the last thing he has of his father, who died in battle to save the family herd from an unidentified necromancer's army of undead. Unfazed by this, Cob casts *Suggestion* on the goliath, essentially charming him and making him more compliant to such a request. Goron and Alirion make a deal: his Frostaxe for a few pounds of gold and a future favor.

During this exchange, Dahlia tries to intervene, to no avail. Frustrated by the wizard and warlock's treatment of the prisoner, coupled with the stress of the situation (having only recently returned from a full-on battle) and further frustration in the lack of progress on their mission, Dahlia decides to leave the party. She leaves with Goron, who has to leave as he was already on a mission prior to being captured by the Yuan-ti.

The party returns to Briskridge and stays at the hotel for the night.