We couldn’t play at our normal time this week, so we rescheduled our game to a Sunday morning (for most of the group – for me this was 11pm on Saturday night). Playing in the evening was a nice change for me. Despite it being so late, I had plenty of energy and most of the day to prep. Actually finished my prep before the game started, for once. Go figure.
Characters:
Anabelle, half-elf ranger 14
Trick, human bard 14
Truck, human barbarian 14
Keren, tiefling warlock 3/paladin 11
Retainers:
Adea, Etruscan ex-slave, level 11 human mercenary retainer (Flee Mortals p.166)
Regular disclaimer: we’re playing in 5E. We’re all getting a bit sick of it but it’s the game we’re stuck with.
This week the party continued exploring the Lost Tomb of the Fifth Tribe beneath the city of Caelidia, in hopes of finding the Red Dragon Mask. Having made it past the Tomb of Tinas last week, they now began exploring the main necropolis proper.
The party immediately encountered a series of magically sealed doors scattered throughout the complex. Some of these were smaller and required specific keys tied to the symbols inscribed on their seals, while one led into the Tomb of the Last King of the Etruscans, and seemed to necessitate the building of another three-part key.
The party decided on which trial to complete first and Anabelle dived past a group of electric eels in a submerged cavern to claim the first key, taking a lot more damage in the process than she expected and being forced to use two charges of the Talisman of Tinas, found last session. The party quickly used the key to unseal the boat door, and inside discovered a shrine to the gods Tiur and Tivr, which granted them the benefits of a Hero’s Feast. They also discovered the first part of the three part key.
Bolstered by their early success, the party leaped across the underwater river carving through the necropolis to find the next sealed door. Here, they proved their honour by granting hospitality to a series of increasingly undesirable illusory guests, culminating in the spirit of Sir Pelliton (a long-time much-hated foe they had recently defeated) who handed them the circle key. Behind this sealed door the party discovered the legendary sword Zyríva, also known as Balance, which Keren claimed.
Leaving the chamber of the Trial of Honour, the party began the Trial of the Storm on the shores of the river. With some clever footwork Trick used his Winged Boots to fly around the titanic waves which rocked the shore, dive past bolts of lightning in the miniature storm conjured by the trial and claim the whale key. Unsealing the door of the whale, the party discovered the second part of the three-part key and the Sword of Cliniar, which could only be claimed by someone with Etruscan blood in their veins.
Reluctantly the party’s Etruscan guide Adea grasped the Sword of Cliniar, and with fear and horror the party watched as a column of magma fell from the ceiling to cover her form. When the magma passed and cooled, with relief the party saw Adea still standing, now with a new burn curling up her right arm in the shape of a storm, and the Sword of Cliniar in her hand – the symbol of the kings of the Etruscans.
A tense discussion followed, Adea rejecting her fate declaring “I’m not like you. You’re heroes, you come from across the sea where dragons and magic are real and problems can be solved by the blade. But I’m not like that, that’s not me. I’m of the people that get beaten and trampled underfoot, enslaved and killed. I don’t know what to do with this. I don’t know how to be like you.”
The party handled the situation with delicacy, telling Adea there was no such thing as a fate she had to follow. If she wished she could leave the sword behind and forsake all it meant, but they thought she knew what world she wanted to live in, and that if she wanted to make it happen here was the power to do it. She asked for their help, and they said they would be with her every step of the way. They are heroes, after all.
The party settled down to bandage their wounds and take a brief respite from the trials of the dungeon. They only need one last part of the three-part key, and then they can open the doors to the Tomb of the Last King of the Etruscans and hopefully find the Red Dragon Mask.
Of course, it’s not going to be that easy…
Notes
I like putting these moments in front of the players. Reminding them being heroes is not just about power and steel, but also leadership and responsibility. That the vast majority of the people in the world do not possess the power the characters do, and those people (the good ones maybe) often have doubts or questions about their own worth and ability.
One of the big themes of this campaign has been the idea of the party becoming familiar with the idea they are not normal, and will never be normal again. They first interacted with this in the north with the Duravir (my viking analogue) who were the first to name the party god-touched and treat them with reverence. There was a pretty brutal conversation at one point where an NPC accused the party of being reckless with their gifts, pointing out how their mere presence in the region had already disrupted the Duravir’s complex system of religions and beliefs, and permanently altered the delicate culture of those people. It was really fun for me to watch the players have to grapple with the enormity of their responsibility.
And now, this theme is developing as the party adventure alongside Adea, and explore a dungeon which seems to repeatedly call out to her as the saviour of the Etruscan people. To their credit the party are responding wonderfully, coming into their own as they guide Adea into becoming the heir to the Etruscan throne, encouraging her to stand up and fight for her people.
It’s a fun narrative arc, and I think of it as a more subtle adventure: the challenges of assuming power, and how the party use that power for good in more delicate, social ways.
I was also really happy with my design for this dungeon. I’m using a dungeon map from Dysonlogos (which is a first for me – I think I’ve drawn every dungeon map I’ve used prior to this, but I just didn’t have time this time round) and my prep is very modular in design. I’ve come up with a handful of trials and rewards, scattered them around the dungeon and used whichever seemed appropriate whenever the party encountered a sealed door. We’re using Owlbear which works really well for exploration with its fog of war (see below), although I do slow down play a fair bit as I do some manual ray tracing and reveal the map out to the extent of the party’s darkvision. This isn’t a terrible thing though. It seems to be building anticipation as the map gets revealed little by little.
This dungeon isn’t designed to be explored completely. Next session I’m going to introduce a spanner in the works to shake things up a little, and then we’ll really be off to the races…
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| Screenshot of our Owlbear setup with fog of war. You can see where I’ve done some manual ray tracing down the bottom left. The green, red and black circles are the range of certain characters' darkvision, and the blue lines are the remnants of the Trial of the Storm I drew onto the map. Some other details: orange doors are seals, the blue circle is where Anabelle went swimming and the oval shaped room with the raised platforms in its centre was the Trial of Honour. |
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