Before I get to this week’s recap, I just want to note that with this session, this has become the longest running campaign I have recorded on this blog. Further to that, in a couple of days it will be two years since I started recording D&D sessions on this blog. I’m mentioning that now because I’ll probably forget on the day, plus I just think those two facts are interesting.
Anyways, we began the session in Kipth’s head, where he was having a nightmare. He was in a well-appointed – if somewhat muted – hallway, checking doors, but every door led to an unremarkable room, empty but for another door on the opposite wall. As wails of a nature indeterminate to Kipth echoed faintly through the area, he checked about a dozen doors before waking up.
The following morning, the party spent a little time learning more about the current status of the Resistance and Fallen Star as well as collecting some supplies for their forthcoming journey before making their way to see Freb again. He invited them into his home, where he gave them a brief (with prompting) summary of what he had discovered. Basically, he had no suggestions for where to find the adamantine staff and suspected the amethyst staff to be in the Dream, with the possibility that there might be temples dedicated to it in some of the cities. The opal staff, however, he had discovered should be reachable via the only known temple to Tempest, purportedly at the highest point on Brightwind. While the exact location of this temple was unknown, the party figured the floating mountains (which they learned Oldfather had specifically targeted and knocked out of the sky, causing them to be renamed the fallen mountains) would be a good place to start.
Sorting out their final preparations and making their goodbyes, the party left Fallen Star and set off on their speeder bikes, heading northeast towards the fallen mountains. Their journey was uneventful for the first nine days (with the only thing of note being that Brakken scried on Mortimer and discovered he was still alive and kicking, tinkering on some strange device in a mechanical, industrial-looking place of unknown location and wearing the very belt that Monk has been searching for for some time now). However, upon resting on the ninth night, things changed.
Brakken took the first watch and noticed nothing of note. Kipth took second, and likewise, nothing happened until the very end, when he noticed the most subtle tremor in the earth. Mentioning it to Monk as they switched over, Monk kept a slice of attention on it and thus noticed it slowly growing, until the point it was practically an earthquake.
Running over to wake the others, he readied himself as Kipth climbed up the crystal walls of the sheltered spot they had found to rest in just in time for a gargantuan armoured worm, with shards erupting from between its armoured plates and long, barbed tentacles surrounding its limpet-like mouth, to burst from the ground right by their camp, in the same spot Monk had been standing moments earlier. The dust hadn’t even settled before the worm went straight for the slow-to-react Brakken, grabbing him with its tentacles where he still lay on his bedroll. Pinning him in place, the worm then bit him with its many, many teeth, but he managed to avoid being drawn further into its horrific maw.
Brakken swung back, getting a couple of good hits with Godslayer despite being pinned to the ground. Then Monk rushed in, but as his first astral wing connected, the radiant damage it caused reflected off of the worm’s armour and caused equal damage to him and Brakken. Realising it was specifically the radiant damage, Monk switched to his staff before continuing to pummel the beast, even as Kipth fired a pair of arrows at it and found suitably painful weak points for both.
Then the worm bit down on Brakken again, and as it reared back up to turn on Monk, he was gone. Swallowed. Crushed into the burning hot gullet of the worm, doing his best to slash at it from the inside but unable to escape.
Monk and Kipth attacked again, doing more damage to the worm, but it was a strong, resilient beast, and despite missing Monk with its tentacles, it bit down on him and in a shocking turn, he failed his Dexterity save to avoid being swallowed by just one and thus was disappeared to join Brakken, who had started to literally be cooked by the worm’s superheated insides.
Sensing Kipth’s location on top of the crystal wall, the worm began to burrow into it to get to him, but drawing his rapier, Kipth leapt from the top, did an impressive midair flip that no one else was there to see, and landed on the tip of its tail before, in another shocking turn in the fight, striking twice and doing exactly enough damage to finish the worm off, down to the hit point. With Brakken being burned enough to require him to use his Relentless Endurance to keep himself conscious, and Monk being burned enough to give him a bunch of temporary hit points, the two of them were able to force their way out of the worm’s slimy gullet. With that, the fight was over, the party took a short rest, and Kipth harvested what he could from the worm – which included a strange membrane that had covered the beast’s brain.
However, the reprieve was short-lived. Upon completing their rest, Brakken and Monk heard noises coming from the tunnel the worm had erupted out of. As they brought them to Kipth’s attention, six Shardborn, zombie-like people that had been corrupted by the arcanite that had sprouted across the lands and bore clusters of crystals protruding from various places on their bodies, climbed out and began to advance on the party.
With Monk the first to react once again, he stepped forward and struck the first of the Shardborn several times, doing decent damage but also learning that these creatures were tougher than they appeared. Kipth then climbed back up to his perch on top of the wall, putting a couple of arrows into the same Shardborn (though still not felling it) before the creatures swarmed forwards. One of them pursued Kipth and began to climb the wall after him while the others attacked Brakken and Monk.
Over the course of the fight, Kipth made his way along the wall, being pursued but never caught by the Shardborn that had made its way to the top while he fired arrow after arrow into the ones below. Monk and Brakken hacked their way through those five, with the trio eventually bringing them all down, but not before the sheer weight of attacks (capped off by a pair of consecutive critical hits, one each on Brakken and Monk) managed to knock Brakken out and bring Monk quite low. Once the only surviving Shardborn was the one on top of the wall, it gave up on its pursuit of Kipth and jumped from the wall instead, stumbling over to Monk to bring him even lower.
Then the party heard clapping coming from the hole. As the conscious members watched in shock, a tall, thin, purple, tentacle-faced creature with a long cape and a mantle of crystals levitated its way out of the hole and stepped around to the side, sarcastically applauding the party before blasting them with a psychic wave of energy. With a 5, a 5, and a 3, collectively the worst saving throws the party has made this campaign I think (which makes sense, considering it was targeting their main weakness: intelligence) everyone failed, Brakken automatically failed a death save, Monk was brought unconscious, and all three were stunned.
As Kipth watched, unable to move, the mind flayer sent the Shardborn back up the cliff towards him while it knelt down and stabilised Brakken and Monk. The Shardborn reached Kipth and began to strike him, and he managed to regain his senses and shrug off the stun just in time for it to knock him unconscious. The last thing he was aware of was falling from the cliff, only to be caught by the mind flayer, before unconsciousness took him. He was technically also aware that he was stabilised, since, you know, he didn’t die.
And that’s where we ended the session. So, the party are now collectively unconscious and in the possession of a mind flayer, which is technically known as a Shardbinder in this setting and is not exactly the same as your standard mind flayer, but is close enough that – especially if you know anything about mind flayers – it’s still bad news. But exactly how bad it is the party will have to discover next week when – if – they wake up.
I’ll admit, it was nice to get back into a bit of proper combat for the first time in a fair few sessions now. It was also quite fun to throw what was essentially a three-tiered fight at the party, grinding them down with minions before revealing my hand and dropping the big gun – as any good strategist would do. The pawns go first, and this being the first fight in a long time with an intelligent creature and the pawns to throw away, I enjoyed it immensely and look forward to doing it again.
But first the party will have to figure out how to get out of this little pickle they find themselves in. They’re a wily bunch, though, so I’m sure they’ll figure something out. Be sure to tune in next week to see exactly what situation they find themselves in and just what shenanigans they get up to in order to get themselves out of it.