Skyfell - Rise of the Glutton : Session 33

 

Introduction

A little while back I started a once-per-month Dungeons and Dragons campaign in my Skyfell setting that I call The Rise of the Glutton. I wanted to provide my players with a log of their adventures and then realized that such a log might make for fun blog posts. See Rise of the Glutton in my Session Index for a complete listing.

The cast is:

Tabbi (played by Jeff) - male tabaxi, Sorcerer monk (Divine Soul)
Drekzhar (played by Dan) - male minotaur, Bardic rogue (College of Swords, Swashbuckler)
Tauffae Twofeather Topshelf (played by Rodney) - male orc, Fighter (Champion)
Meribore Softwalker (played by Laura) - female fitbolg, Druid (Circle of the Moon)

Session 33 - Little Roots Burrow : Midgloom Waking

Preparation

This arch is heading in a particular direction that I am hoping unfolds in the manner I expect (and want). Of course, if it doesn't do that, and the players go off in a wholly different direction, that's super cool too. I've learned the hard way that a crafter of story must let the story tell itself. They cannot force it to conform to their ideas and their imagery.

That said, I did need to prepare for that finale. First, I had to create the stat block for the runabout that the characters have been using as their primary means of travel around an island. (I mean, really, I should not have been surprised by this. The class name identifies its purpose. I runabout. I ranabout. I shall runabout. Unlike caravel. I caravel? I shall caravel? I don't think so. Not without a few drinks first, at least.) Creating that stat block made me revisit the original caravel stat block as well. I had to go back and make changes so that the two were reflective of their relative sizes and initial purposes. This also meant doing a little more research in the history of caravels in general. 

That research was more than just an escapist deep dive. I needed to create the stat block for The Necromancer's airship The Venom. I've been dropping hints of that ship over the last few sessions. I've even offered some additional description of it through an eye-witness account from one of the gnomes of Little Roots. The vessel's debut is fast approaching, and given how my players throw curve balls at me all the time, I need to be prepared for the unexpected. But, of course, designing that ship meant designing additional airship classes which meant additional research. 

Let's be honest. Dungeons and Dragons is sort of an ageless setting. By this, I mean, it's not exactly medieval. Nor is it the Renaissance or any of the earlier periods/eras of human history. It's a blend of all of them with a healthy helping of fantasy thrown in for good measure. So, honing in on the "right" kind of sailing vessels to include in Skyfell took a little digging and some creative re-imaging. Ultimately, I fell back to Ghosts of Saltmarsh for guidance and mirrored some of those ship classes. 

Of course, after creating all those ship classes, I wanted to share them on this blog. That meant revisiting my writeup on airships and air travel so that I could include the new stat blocks as examples. I burned an entire Sunday working through all of that. It was so much fun. And I didn't even get to the larger vessels, such as juggernauts and citadels. Those will be coming soon.

And to be totally honest, I had forgotten many of the rules I'd worked out for airship travel since writing that post and I needed a refresher. 

And of course there were the maps to be built with Heroscape tiles. As with previous sessions, I built out a couple different ones so that I might be ready for any event.

Pre-game

After recapping the story, we jumped right in.

In-game

The howling seemed to echo out of the mists that had closed in on the farmland atop the burrow and from the thick, rolling clouds above it. The calls were made all the more ethereal as splinters of lightning ripped through the skies.

The party quickly woke and gathered their wits. Just a short distance away, a pair of ranger gnomes were scanning the forests to the northeast. The party met with them and quickly understood that the howls were coming from the same direction of a known cavern entrance to which the gnomes had once tracked the beasts. 

Our heroes determined their best bet was to track the howls and meet the creatures on foot. The gnomes communicated some general directions to Meribore. With that information, the party left both the runabout and Mother Wind (Tabbi's flying ostrich mount) to plunge into the forest. They would head for the cave entrance but alter their direction each time more howling rolled up out of the fog. They planned to deal with the creatures and then explore the cave before mid-gloom had fully passed into equi-light.

It soon became clear that there was an entire pack of creatures on the hunt. The party found them after an hour of following their calls back and forth to each other. As the party closed in on the creatures, the creatures closed in on their own prey. The entire pack was swarming around a pachycephalosaur that they had taken down and were systematically tearing apart. 

The Party Finds the Creatures

The pack was led by the same sort of hideous creature that the Glutton's followers had kept as guard animals back on the Dead Island (see Session 23). This one, however, seemed just a little bit bigger than those others. It was possible that all of these creatures were part of the same brood.

Possible Adult Version of the Pack Leader
Source: Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, 5e

With it were several of the smaller, pale creatures that had spawned from the Glutton's statue back in Moss Creek. 

The Others in the Pack
Source: Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes

Before our heroes could sneak up on the monsters, the monsters caught their scent and immediately abandoned their prey to move against them. The leader snuck away and out of sight while the smaller aberrations split off into pairs. 

Meribore wild shaped into a giant scorpion and advanced on one of the pairs while Tabbi and Drekzhar moved toward the other. As the opposing forces met, Tauffae and Tabbi were both aware that more creatures were outflanking them. It occurred to Tauffae that these other, unseen, enemies were likely attempting to close in from behind. Not wanting to be left behind in that sort of mess, he opted instead to charge straight for the nearest of the smaller creatures. 

Before Tabbi and Drekzhar could get very far, the pack leader surprised them, cutting them off from the rest of the party and letting lose a chilling howl that filled both of them with a paralyzing fear. The creature lunged at the defenseless Tabbi, ripping into him with both tooth and claw. The very thought of being attacked by the creature cut deep into Tabbi's mind, causing a deep mental trauma and pain.

Meanwhile, more of the smaller creatures did indeed close in on our heroes from behind; a pair came at Drekzhar while another pair moved in on the scorpion Meribore.

Enemies Close in From Behind

Slowly but surely, our heroes dispatched their enemies. Among the first to fall was the pack leader. As it died, it let out a wounded, frightened yowl that reminded Tauffae of the death cries of children who had been murdered during raids in which he had participated (and had subsequently rejected) as a child. An answering howl came from high overhead in the skies, a noise filled with anger and sadness. Tauffae recognized it as the sound of a parent learning that its child is being murdered and they are wholly powerless to stop it.

Shortly, the rest of the pack was destroyed but not before Tabbi was nearly killed. Our heroes took a moment to gather and recover. While they did, they noticed iridescent reflections among the clouds every time a streak of lightning cut through the sky. They recalled Far-seeker's report that he had seen an airship whose hull reflected light in the same way that a beetle's carapace did. The party concluded that this must be The Necromancer's ship. 

They quickly abandoned the idea of exploring the cave and instead decided to return to the burrow, retrieve their own airship, and then hunt down The Venom. Meribore wild shaped into a quetzalcoatlus to carry the party back to the runabout. All the while, they kept an eye on the reflections (ie, the ship). It became clear to Tauffae and Drekzhar that it was in a standard sort of orbit around the island.

Of course, the howling had already set the gnomes on edge. So, when a giant winged monster appeared in the sky, they panicked. Someone fired an arrow into the sky that whistled loudly before exploding like a small firework. 

The Gnomes Fire a Flare
Source: Pixabay with Digital Manipuluation

The explosion lit up the sky as arrows peppered Meribore. She quickly dropped off her cargo and headed for higher altitudes to avoid any further attack.

The flare didn't go unnoticed by the The Necromancer's airship. It broke from its orbit, turning instead toward the mountain. 

The party explained to the gnomes that the winged monster was really Meribore. Cautiously, the gnomes let her land so that she could revert to her true form. The party also explained that the monsters were now dead so the gnomes should go investigate the cave while it was still mid-gloom. The party would follow after The Venom before it escaped.

By the time our heroes were underway, The Venom had disappeared behind the mountain. Once again, they found themselves searching the area  for any place where a ship might hide. (Recall that the back half of the mountain was essentially sheered off vertically, exposing the stratigraphy, caverns, and other formations of its interior.) They flew in a search pattern while they carefully surveyed the landscape. Eventually, they found only one place that could be big enough for a ship to pass. This was a large opening that sank into the base of the mountain.

Cautiously now, they flew the runabout into the opening. The cavern turned slightly. At this turn were large, horizontal scrapes on the rock as though an airship had grazed against walls. Encouraged, they continued further into the cavern until they arrived at a dead end. Tabbi, riding Mother Wind, investigated the wall, looking for anything unusual. He eventually found an area of rock that was sweating in much the same way as the wall in the talus cave they had investigated the previous day (see Session 31). Soon after, he found the same sigil that they had found in that smaller cave. 

They concluded that The Venom had returned to wherever it come. They also assumed that it would be back the next mid-gloom.

Armed with this discovery, our heroes decided to lay a trap for The Venom and its captain The Necromancer. Such a trap would require a battle-ready The Howling Wind II. With this plan in mind, they returned to the burrow a little after equi-light. Far-seeker greeted them as they landed the runabout. He was bruised and dressed with fresh bandages. He had clearly been in a fight for survival. 

"This proves it," he said. He thrust a crumpled, bloodied piece of parchment at Tabbi. "This proves the Flan-seg are behind all of these troubles."

The "Evidence"

End session 33.

Experience earned:

Drekzhar - 1900 (63.382 total)
Meribore - 2002 (63,065 total)
Tabbi - 1924 (62,987 total)
Tauffae - 1975 (63,486 total)

Supplemental Materials

I felt a need to state what might be obvious to some. The miniatures that I use in the game do not always represent exactly the creatures that I'm fielding. I have a veritable horde of beastly miniatures I've collected from HeroScape and HeroQuest in addition to those that are actually from Dungeons and Dragons. I've also picked up miniatures from other games.

The Miniatures

My point is that anyone looking at the pictures will know that the the juvenile howler is not a howler miniature (it's a Marrden nagrub from HeroScape) and the wretched sorrow sworn are not wretched- sorrow-sworn miniatures (they're deathreavers). 

I'm sure I'm not the only dungeon master that does this. Heck, I was just in a game where we had to use d6s to represent an army of skeletons. I mean, ultimately, the map and miniatures are only there as aids to the game and not meant to be a perfect representation of what is going on. And I guess that is my point. 

Perhaps I'm just overthinking how important this is. Oh well. What would life be without a little overthinking? Boring, right?

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