4U Update 17-27

Note: I suppose it’s time to reveal that the heart of this campaign was an adaptation/reworking of the adventure The Emerald Spire (from Paizo, made for Pathfinder), but disguised as “The Obsidian Fang” instead. The green/emerald stuff became purple/obsidian. Also, the players didn’t want to do a huge dungeon crawl, so parts of what would have been levels of the Emerald Spire just got moved around to other locations.

The RPG SAGA continues in the 4th Universe

The team: Kori the aasimar arcane archer, Aegle the winged elf monk, and Malath the half-elf rogue-bard

4U 17: After dealing with the Umberlee-worshipping sahuagins, the group returned to Waterdeep. They recruited the NPC cleric Nesmira (a half-orc from Nesme). They ventured back to the swamp, where Klauth had destroyed the Bayou Brigade fortress. They fled and ended up getting a coin from Koil.

18: Lady Faeyna’s agent brought the group through a portal to her palace in the fairy plane. The group received info about the Floshin family, who were guardians of an old elf temple with a portal that could go to the plane of Shadow. They had a run in with the temple guardians and Koil. They went to the plane of shadow, did the Shadar-Kai rituals – turning Malath and some NPC hirelings into Shadar-Kai.

19: [This was a re-visiting of part of the module Scourge of the Sword Coast] The team left their hirelings at Elvenport, with enough training to continue advancing on their own. Nesmira and Doth accompanied Kori, Aegle, and Malath to the Floshin family estate. The team fought the possessed Shalindra and a green dragon; they saved Shalindra, who then romanced Malath (which might result in a child). The team reported back to Lady Faeyna, who told them about Ryali’s goal to vanquish Tharizdun; Malath left the Koil coin with Faeyna.

20: The Green Wizard recruited the team to go fight some devils in the 9 Hells, which resulted in a huge battle. An Erinyes surrended to the group and romanced Aegle (which could result in some children in the future). Malath communed with his shadow dragon patron (named S’dothian). The next day the team killed the mummy lord druid dragon while the Erinyes made plans to start an uprising and free her people from the ice devils.

21: Malath went off wit the Green Wizard, but Puff arrived with a mission for Kori and Aegle on the fire elemental plane; there is an artifact that they could get that can transfer energy and could help them in their future battle against Klauth. In the City of Brass, they almost got tricked in a tavern called The Blue Leprechaun, but they eventually made their way to battle the palace forces of an evil prince and princess so they could get the orb of transference. They took a portal to Kalibruhn, where they made a resting silver dragon champion of Bahamut.

22: The team finished off the servants of the prince and princess from the palace in the City of Brass. After looting the place, they once again spoke with their new silver dragon friend. He took them to a secret kobold temple in the sewers of Waterdeep; Puff trained to transform into a bronze dragonborn of Bahamut. They spent a month of downtime.

23: Puff needed to go work for some nobles to pay off his debts. Malath returned with news from the Green Wizard. A tiefling woman (who seemed to be working for Kennara) came with a warning that a group of fiends was about to try to assassinate the team, but offered that if they gave the orb of transference to her mistress that she would stop the fiends for them. They refused the offer and there was a huge battle in the Yawning Portal. Nesmira’s soul was devoured, but the team defeated the assassins.

24: Durnan (of the Yawning Portal) suggested the team recruit Wally Flake, the wizard – who needed the team to help him rescue his cleric brother Cham. The team accepted, went through Undermountain, fought some Shalathel worshippers, and went through a portal to fight the Erut (alien plant people). Malath had to keep submitting himself to some bloodsucking vines to get the team through secret passages, but they defeated their foes and overcame the traps. After rescuing Cham, they took a bunch of dwarven artifacts they collected back to a temple in Neverwinter.

25: The Green Wizard showed up in Neverwinter and took the team to the planet Yarth, to trade magic gear with the wizard lord of Blueberry Farms; unfortunately, he also brought news that Prince Marsellan (of Elvenport) had been petrified and was in the Green Wizard’s portable hole. In fact, Elvenport had been attacked by the Skull Lord and other servants of Orcus (who went there in retaliation for Ryali trying to take over the part of the plane of shadow that Orcus controls). The team went to Elvenport and fought the forces of the Skull Lord, defeating all but the Skull Lord himself (who teleported away).

26: Kori, Aegle, Malth, and the Flake Bros were at the ruins of Elvenport when the ground exploded and the phoenix – along with several fire and air elementals – were released; a rift to the steam elemental plane had opened up along the edge of the river, going through the center of the village. Wally and Kori were both killed. Malath managed to teleport himself and Cham away with Kori’s body. Aegle saved Wally’s body, but had been split off from the core team. In Waterdeep, Malath had Kori resurrected and then said he was going to retire from adventuring. He offered to recruit a replacement for himself.

27: Kori and Cham met Malath’s replacement, the tabaxi known as “Page in a Book.” Durnan told the team there were “Barbarians at the gates of Waterdeep” and the city leaders needed a team to go find out why there were there. The group agreed to deal with the problem, but found out these barbarians believed Ryali had sent them to take over the city and convert it to Ravendeep, a city of Ryali followers. They also saw Puff, who claimed to have infiltrated the Steam Lord and organized a parade before flying off in airships. After coordinating with Lady Silverhand, the team convinced the barbarian King Slayer and Shaman Supreme (who called Kori “The Conduit”) to stand down and accept a temple and manor instead of trying to conquer the city. King Slayer also agreed to go with the team when they try to defeat the forces of Orcus on the plane of shadow.

Meanwhile, Aegle should be flying back to Waterdeep with Wally’s dead body in his portable hole…

AL PC: Thoxina

Season 7 Play: Attained Level 4 (???)

The “Legacy Character” trend continues with Thoxina, the daughter of Thokson, granddaughter of Thok. For this character, I am torn with what to make of her leveling experience. In some ways the AL rule allowing players to rebuild characters at levels 1-4 is bad because it makes me second guess my characters. Thoxina started as a war cleric, then she was a wizard multiclass, only to then convert to full out tempest cleric. And now I don’t know what to do with her. I’m trying to balance out my characters (class-wise so that I am playing every class) and I already have too many clerics. I was thinking maybe arcane trickster rogue. I don’t know for sure, but I will need to decide before she levels to 5.

Appearance & Backstory

Thoxina is a fire genasi tempest cleric wearing splint armor with a shield, a warhammer, and a longbow. She is the secret daughter of Princess Amira Kessara (from the City of Brass) and the half-orc adventurer Thokson. She was raised by Thokson's mother in the Feywild, in a "time warp" patch where time went by much faster than outside in the rest of the multiverse. Absurdly, that means she and her twin brother are now almost the same age as their father. After spending time searching for spiritual enlightenment, she went out into the world to adventure and try to find her father.

Adventures

DDAL05-2 The Black Road

This session was deadly because only three players showed up, but we managed to survive.

DDEP07-02 Drums of the Dead

The epics are always fun, but I had only played them at Tier 2. I was curious what the Tier 1 experience would be like and I was not let down. It was a challenge, but we got a success in the end.

DDAL05-12 Bad Business in Parnast

Having DM’d this module over and over, and having played in it as well, I decided I would just have Thoxina kind of stand back and respond to things; I didn’t want to meta-game the mysteries and twists of the module. It worked out well and was an easy success for the team.

AL PC: Jergalath

Season 7 Play: Attained Level 5 (Death Cleric 4 + Necromancer 1)

My blog posts are riddled with spoilers on a regular basis so I don’t usually feel a need to put any sort of spoiler warning, but I will mention it this time: SPOILER WARNING FOR TOMB OF ANNIHILATION.

Jergalath is another character I made based on an NPC from DMing a campaign. In Tomb of Annihilation, in the final area before the big boss battle at the end of the campaign, there are these weird hags that have created a magical copy of one of the player characters and left it naked in a cage like an animal. It’s a weird part of the story meant to add to the creepy vibe of the place and give the players another decision to make. How do they deal with this frightened, childlike magical clone of one of them?

When I ran a Tomb of Annihilation campaign for AL Season 7 one of the player characters was a red dragonborn paladin of Tiamat and the weird NPC clone ended up being of him. The characters decided to basically just free the person and ignore it while they went about preparing for the final battle. As weird as it sounds, that inspired me to turn that NPC into a character. Thus I made a red dragonborn – but I decided that since he was raised by these weird hags in a room next to Acererak’s soulmonger that it would make sense he was obsessed with death. I used my DM Reward to make a death cleric!

Jergal is the retired Forgotten Realms death god so I named the character Jergalath. His Tier 1 adventures included: Parts 1 and 4 of a Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign (without parts 2 & 3, unfortunately; in part 4 one of the other PCs died battling the undead); DDAL05-2 The Black Road (with some fun ranged attacks); DDEX2-10 Cloaks and Shadows (in which another PC was killed, yet again); CCC-CIC-08 The Last Voyage of the Woolgathering Tidsoptimist (in which we shockingly all survived, despite the module being written with some forced failure in it); DDEX1-4 Dues for the Dead (which seemed easy for once); DDHC-HotDQ Hoard of the Dragon Queen Ch 7 (with the other players not wanting to take much loot because of magic item count).

I haven’t actually played him at level 5 yet, so I am still looking at my leveling up and potential multiclass options. I was going to build it as mostly death cleric with at least one level of wizard necromancer in there, but I still have some time to decide on the final build before he enters Tier 2 and is locked in. For now though, I think it’ll be death cleric 4 and necromancer 1. The full caster multiclass of cleric-wizard or wizard-cleric works out in a way that, as long as the main class gets 17 levels, it ends up with 9^th level spell options. That means the secondary class could get up to 3 levels (eventually), but I think I’m happy with just a 1-level dip.

AL PC: Jerp

Season 7 Play: Attained Level 7 (Tempest Cleric 1; Ranger 6)

Sometimes, while DMing, I get huge bursts of inspiration. I had been DMing a lot in Season 7 (because it was both fun and highly rewarding with the DM Rewards that were in place back then). During one of the Lost Mine of Phandelver campaigns, there was a situation in which the party argued about whether or not to just kill the goblin they had captured after combat. Once of the players insisted they keep him alive and use him as a scout. Thus Jerp the NPC goblin became a recurring NPC.

The player character that recruited Jerp took care of him and mentored him, training him to become a cleric as well. The NPC Sildar Hallwinter even convinced the goblin to join the Lord’s Alliance. Since the campaign took at least four sessions, different players came and went but the cleric that recruit Jerp was always there so I kept the NPC around for the entire campaign. When they fought the dragon in Thundertree, brave Jerp was killed by its breath weapon. They had the nearby druid reincarnate Jerp; he came back as a wood elf. I had already decided I wanted to use my DM Rewards to make an actual character of Jerp Cragmaw after the campaign, but with the randomly rolled wood elf body it was perfect for play.

After the campaign, I decided to create an AL character and name him Jerp so he was an actual character for me to play, as a cleric-ranger.