Charon's DM Diary

[Charon]

I figured it would be fun to keep some info on the kind of shenanigans I get up to while DMing and who knows, maybe it will help other DMs with little tips and tricks or general ideas to steal as they go.

Some context to start. This is an ongoing 3.5e campaign with a loosely Stargate kinda vibe. The players have access to a mysterious keep buried in the plane of Earth, that has a magical portal. This is a magitech style setting with an emphasis on planar travel and high magic. The group initially began using the random portal function to go on some wacky adventures but soon realised they were in the footsteps of another group that had died fighting an enemy they came to know as the World Enders. The whole thing is very tropey (I mean that bit is practically Power Rangers) but also allows for intense wackiness, especially when the players discovered that, with caveats, the portal can also take them through time. They also quickly found out that Mystra is quite disapproving of any meddling with time and that should they overdo it, they risk drawing her attention and with it, her ire. At the moment, the only protection they have is their secrecy, protected it seems, to some degree, by Tymora, who has a vested interest in the project, having provided the luck that allows it to function.

Our party consists of Ori, a dragonwrought kobold warlock who has already caused a bootstrap paradox, being responsible for his own existence. With him is Hugo, a Zenythri Shadow Hand Monk. We also have a recently arrived druid in the form of Illia, an elf and worshipper of Silvanus. Fleshing out the group is an NPC, Cabot the halfling street fighter, a member of the original group who survived but was held captive and eventually rescued by the party.

The group have recently discovered that the World Enders are actually a cult seeking to free Tharizdun from his chains. They seek to hasten his release by increasing the amount of entropy in the world by destroying planets and their inhabitants. The party have met a couple of the World Enders, including B'hecki, daughter of the erratic wizard B'hin Bhaag and, if the crazy old man is to be believed, the result of a brief fling between himself and Mystra. They know B'hecki went to Carceri to seek knowledge from a prisoner there and have made an effort to follow in her footsteps. They made their way to Candlekeep and, curious to explore the basement, went back in time to its construction to build themselves a secret passage. This allowed them to meet (and free) the ghost of a dragon, Miiryum, trapped beneath.

There's been a lot more, including a delve through the Tomb of Horrors, but this is simply a summary. The last session was their first visit to Carceri, at a mere level 9. Well looted and armed with knowledge, I knew they could take a few beats in this trip, but didn't want to overdo it. Demodands are pretty high CR after all.

The actual place they're going is Skullrot Prison, lifted largely wholesale from Chris Perkins' adventure in the tail end of the Shackled City, with my prisoner simply inserted into the mix. Information on Carceri is fairly sparse and so this was the easiest way of doing things as I had already squeezed what info I could out of 2e Planescape. This module was designed for much higher level characters so I had my nerfing hat on, ready to bring things down to a more manageable level.

First up, I made it so they would have options on how to get where they need to be, meaning they could essentially teleport straight into Porphatys, the fourth layer, in the general vicinity of the Bastion of Last Hope. I didn't want this section to take forever, so rather than rolling 5d100 for the Plane Shift variance, I rolled 1d100 and plonked them 40 miles from the Bastion. This allowed for some good description as I painted a bleak and eerie landscape of Porphatys, based on an image I found online.

Spoiler

I had also planned a bunch of morale sapping sentences to feed to the party's warlock, via his eldritch whispers which he keeps permanently turned on. Unfortunately, he turned them off the moment the first one hit. There'll be more on that in a later post.
Initially I had hoped they might trek through the ankle deep ocean but Illia decided to rely on an eagle wildshape and so they took to the skies. This was fine as it gave me a good moment to unleash the acidic snow upon them. Described in Planescape as bitterly cold, I figured it would be more unnerving if it wasn't cold at all. They soon realised this was not only causing skin issues (for which they drank their prepared potions of energy resistance) but also eating away at the rope harness the eagle was carrying. Attempts were made to clamber onto the eagle's legs, but the monk took a tumble. A mere 40ft drop, not too much of an issue for a level 9. He was snatched back up with minor wounds and the journey continued.
I also didn't want to drag out the Bastion too long. The module makes it clear the items there are insanely overpriced so I described the place as essentially a black market of sorts, stuffed full of stalls selling all sorts of illegal and nefarious goods. Because it makes sense and would speed things up, I included an information broker, run by a group of demodands. A steep price of 2k was set in order to find the way to Skullrot which the group paid without any attempt to bargain. Social skills are not their strong point (both the party and the players, lol). A further 500gp was parted with to find out if anyone else had sought such information, which they hadn't, much to the amusement of the demodand. The party had been warned not to trust anyone. Still, as the broker pointed out, even that information could be considered valuable. Finally, as a cheeky way of hurrying things along (The players are notorious stallers) the broker advised they could follow two others who were just leaving. The players took the hint and scurried off to Skullrot.
The module has a random encounter table but the encounters are tough and nerfing them just makes them lacklustre. I didn't want this section to be too combat heavy as there's already 2-4 planned encounters and the ongoing adventure promises a lot of dungeon crawling coming up, so I ignored the random encounters and led with the thunderbeast, swapping out the behemoth in the module for one of the lesser beasts. It wasn't going to be a long fight, but the beast can dish out a bit of damage and has an interesting debuff to throw a wrench in the works. Cue one deafening roar and now Illia and Cabot are deaf for hours on end. Heh heh. That's gonna be fun. Anyways, some damage was dealt, Cabot spent most of the fight vomiting having failed his fort save against the beast's stench, healing resources were used and we left on a description of Skullrot Prison from the outside. Somewhere inside is the mad priest Venedict.

[Charon]

Ah Carceri. It's certainly going to be memorable for my players.
We pick up outside Skullrot prison in the wake of the fight with the thunderbeast. Healing is performed and much japes are had between Cabot (the NPC played by me) and Illia, the druid played by Pell (aka Cmdr Maxwell).
Lots of "What? I can't hear you!" as we slowly drive our other two friends nuts. Heh heh.
Eventually we get back on track and the group assesses how best to see the inside of the prison. Illia is sent to scout the roof, in eagle form, and this turns out to be a good idea.
Unknown to the players at the time, going in through the front is a bad idea. There are guards, unsurprisingly, and they ain't so keen on letting people wander into the prison. The roof however, has a central shaft that runs through the whole fortress, itself being a prison for an angelic looking creature, imprisoned in a sealed cage hanging from a winch and suspended 40 ft down this central shaft. We'll find out who that is a little later.
More importantly, we get our first glimpse of the maddening layout of this place. It's complicated, but basically it has four spiral staircases that run down the interior of the building like DNA helices. Inside, this means each staircase only gives access to a quarter of the cells, in alternating quadrants by floor. When Illia eventually ferried the party up and they explored this it soon became apparent that finding Venedict in this place is gonna be like finding a needle in a haystack. The 150ish cells have no windows or way to see inside and even if they could, they have no idea what Venedict looks like. It's almost like there must be some other method. Perhaps something thematically tied into the whole concept and the overarching narrative of the entire campaign. Hmmm.
The party spot an annis hag with two flesh golems that appears to be feeding some of the prisoners and they quickly figure out how to avoid her by slipping down another staircase. However, with no immediate ideas on how to proceed, they undo all the stealth they've achieved so far by proceeding directly down to the main chamber on the bottom floor to confront the demodand warden, Hexavog, hoping they can bribe him for information. Naturally, this doesn't work. Not just because this is a prison but because, like pretty much everyone else in this place, Hexavog is completely insane.
He sings, thanks Chris Perkins, so I had to break out my goddawful singing voice and deliver his melodic diatribe. I think I did a passable job as he bursts into song that quickly makes it clear he's mad and hostile and about to attack.
Now, this is a high level adventure, so I nerfed this CR 19 demodand down to a respectable CR9 for the group but he still has some nasty surprises. First up, the stench! Yeah it's back. Cabot immediately nat 1'd his fort save and began puking again. This time, Illia followed him with another natural 1.
2 out of 4 party members now unable to do anything but take a single move action. I was already panicking at this point as this has TPK written all over it. What's more, unbeknown to the players there's reinforcements coming in 8 rounds. On top of that, two more demodands arrive from the adjoining room at the start of round 2 (to act in round 3). For his first turn, Hexavog uses Summon Demodands to summon 1d4 more demodands. Luckily he has only a 60% success chance and I rolled a 78 so that's one bullet dodged. Still, it ain't looking great.
Thankfully, it didn't get that far. With the two tankiest party members out of action and two more demodands slithering into the room, Ori decides it's time to bail. Realising the two pukers are gonna struggle he runs over to them and touches them both and attempts to use his return bracelet to return to the Timeless Keep. Now, the party know they can take a person with them when they port back but have never tried with multiple. It turns out, it isn't possible. Only Illia is teleported back with Ori. Thankfully, Hugo beat Hexavog's initiative by 1 point and is going first. He attempts to manoeuvre around Hexavog to get Cabot outta there, drawing an AOO as he goes, but luckily his shadow stance concealment causes the AOO to fail. He activates his bracelet and arrives back with Cabot in tow.
Cabot and Illia spend the next minute puking their guts up until the stench of the demodand fades. Ori quickly pulls the return co-ordinates from the central computer, allowing him to calculate temporal co-ordinates for a portal so they party can return there (or potentially a little outside it) and they settle into a debate of whether to go there earlier in time. Hugo suggests they could cut out the middle man and simply go back in time and prevent B'hecki stealing the book in the first place but this plan has many flaws that are easily apparent. First up, directly interfering with B'hecki's timeline is bound to draw the ire of her mother, Mystra.
Second, preventing her stealing the book doesn't stop her finding some other way to get what she wants.
Thirdly, they don't know where B'hin Bhaag's tower was at the time she stole the book. They also don't know when it was, as B'hin Bhaag's tower teleports through time and space as well, much like a TARDIS.
Simply put, it's not simple at all. Finding Venedict and learning what B'hecki learned is still the best plan. It seems the party will be returning to Carceri next week... or maybe last week, from their perspective. XD
Time travel is wacky huh.

[Charon]

What a roleplay week. First up, we had the session zero for our first ever Fate game. Learning Fate is going to pretty handy when one of our group goes on extended vacation for a few months later in the year as we can easily run Fate with just the two remaining players. We're playing a game loosely based on the concept of the video game Alien Swarm, the game where three of us met nearly a decade ago. I've toyed with the idea for a while, attempting to cobble my own system twice, then trying to fit the idea in Gurps before realising a flexible system like Fate will be a million times easier. Basically the players are staff at a mining facility on a remote alien world when a swarm of hostile aliens attack. I've got some really fun ideas planned and character creation went pretty well. We have a hacker, a drone operator and a chemical engineer with an intricately entwined backstory tying the three together. The game will be happening mid April most likely so something to look forward to.

Meanwhile, in our Dnd campaign, shit got real crazy, real fast.
Outclassed by Hexavog, the demodand, the players came up with a convoluted plan to defeat him. Realising the shaft was 200ft deep they began discussing whether they could simply drop something on him from a great height. The Rulebook™ came out and it quickly became apparent that the heavier, the better.
The plan evolved. The Timeless Keep is on the Plane of Earth, after all, so the druid got transmuting. We figured out the weight of a five foot cube of sandstone. Hexavog is a large creature, so why not four cubes? These then rapidly became columns, to maximise the weight.
What's more, Ori has been fiddling with the Keep long enough that he's discovered the fact that's it's morphic, just like a magnificent mansion, or a god on his native plane, meaning he can mentally reconfigure it at will. The plan evolved further. Ori created a tower in the Keep, so they could drop the stone columns, building up the momentum here, then placed the portal at the bottom. The other end of the portal would open five foot above Hexavog's head, giving him no time to avoid the impact.
The group sent the death columns in, then moved the portal back to its usual place and teleported themselves to the roof of Skullrot Prison, at the exact moment their previous selves left and the columns dropped, squishing Hexavog. 2'928d6 later and the poor head warden had eaten 10'250 damage.
As four demodand guards rushed in, the party teleported out, sent four more columns in and squished them too, before tping back in themselves at that exact moment.
Quickly the party scurry down one of the helical staircases. Ori has his whispers on this time and has begun hearing his voices again, only now, one whisper is overshadowing the others. Not clearer, in terms of comprehensibility, as is usual for the warlock, it's incomprehensible babble, but it's so prominent in his mind. Despite me laying it on thick, the hint was lost on the group and they scurried down further. Soon they passed a specific cell, where the babbling in Ori's head grew so loud it drowned out every other whisper. Surely, this was it. Maybe it was the bloodlust roiling in the player's veins but they simply didn't bite. Ori switched his whispers off and they barrelled down the staircase, pulling up stealthily on floor four to keep a lookout for the hag. They soon clock her, outpacing her golem guards as she runs down to see what all the fuss is about. Seeing the opportunity to gank her alone, the party descend rapidly too. Hugo easily outpaces her, arriving at the bottom first and lying in ambush. As he unleashes a stunning fist in the surprise round, the hag is stopped in her tracks. Ori and Illia attack with magic from the upper floors as Cabot leaps down atop the columns of stone to land at her feet and engage along with Hugo. They just about take her down before she can recover from the stun, the flesh golems still shuffling down the upper staircases, but this fight is far from over. No sooner has the hag fallen than the doors opposite burst open to reveal an angry looking lich, the Overseer of this prison, Myrakul. This fight will continue, with Illia's Call Lightning Storm still active, next week. They won't know for certain until they're done here just how many chaos points they have accrued with these shenanigans, but it might not be much longer before they start seeing the effects.
Will they defeat the lich Myrakul? Will they figure out where Venedict is imprisoned? Will they come up with any more crazy plans? I can't wait to find out.

[Charon]

So this session was mostly a bossfight. We left our adventurers mid peril last week, ready to face off against the lich, Myrakul. Although he has a formidable stat block in the module, throwing a CR 23 at my players wasn't practical. A standard lich is CR 13 which is still a monster so I did some dynamic nerfing to bring him down to CR 11. First up, I dropped his one disintegrate. Given how bad the group has been rolling, I figured this was for the best. I dropped his DR down to 10 instead of 15 and replaced his lightning immunity with lightning resistance 10. I shaved 1 off all his spell DCs but buffed his fear aura to hit any creatures of 10 HD or lower, albeit with a lower DC of 18. I also removed some of his possessions like the ability to summon a monster in. The combat was made more difficult due to the many 15ft high stone columns obscuring sightlines (the ones the players previously dropped on Hexavog and his cronies). I knew the group would struggle to deal high damage to him, so he'd still survive pretty well. I kept his AC intact and as the prison is unhallowed ground, so that's AC 23 against Ori and 25 against the rest of the party who are good aligned. So despite having only 74 HP, he's quite the tanky boy. The fight was made easier for him when his fear aura immediately screwed Cabot over, essentially taking the halfling out of the fight, with nine rounds of cowering in a corner.
Myrakul biffed his initiative roll, coming dead last, even with the party's terrible rolls. Not the best start, but everyone but Hugo had to spend the first round getting into position anyway due to the columns. It quickly became apparent to the party that Illia's lightning bolts were barely getting through and Hugo's adamantine siangham was similarly ineffective. Ori's eldritch blast hits fine, but Myrakul is immune to the usual sickening effect he relies upon.
Myrakul opens up with a Mirror Image but rolls a 1, getting only 4 dupes to play with. The party manage to focus all the images down across the following round. The lich follows up with an ice storm, dealing a decent chunk of damage to Ori, but Illia's efforts to rake the lich in tiger form fail to bear fruit. Hugo switches to his sai and manages to penetrate the lich's damage reduction. Myrakul responds by hitting Illia with a vampiric touch. Sadly he only rolls a 21 across 9d6, damaging her and giving himself temp hp. Ori uses his Eldritch Gloves to boost the damage on his eldritch blast and tries to nuke the lich down. He deals a big chunk of damage, 29 hp, leaving the lich with only 21 hp left. Myrakul has a decision to make. He could try to kill Ori with Scorching Ray, but if he does, he's gonna have to hope that Hugo and Illia can't deal 21 damage combined. The gambit is that he has a teleport spell. A little DM thought later and I decide he'd hit the teleport rather than risk the chance that Ori survives the assault and kills him. He teleports out to a safe location, many miles away, there to plot his revenge. This left the party free to loot up and continue the quest, having defeated the guardians of the prison.

The first stop is the golem lab Myrakul came from where the party finds the last components they need in order to finish constructing the golem in the Timeless Keep. This golem was found in a partially built state, an abandoned side project of the wizard who built the Timeless Keep, Stephan. Once complete, the golem should be able to control the Keep's computer, able to calculate each portal without error, including opening portals to locations that the player's don't currently have co-ordinates for. Only one piece of that puzzle remains, how to bring the golem to life. Stephan abandoned the project after travelling to Eberron where he found the original creator of the warforged had taken the secret of their awakening to his grave.

Next stop is the adjoining room, Myrakul's office where the party find a treasure chest stuffed with loot and the records. Luckily for them, only Ori entered the room, as there was a magical trap that would trigger if anyone good aligned entered. Ori checked the records and soon discovered that, surprise, surprise, Venedict was in the room he had previously noted with his eldritch whispers! They took the key from the hag's corpse, Ori holding it after it burned Illia when she attempted to pick it up due to her being good aligned.
The party trudged up to Venedict's cell to finally find out what B'hecki learned. They opened the cell to find that Venedict has been here so long, he has long since become an allip. The babbling hypnotises Cabot, who is really not having a good time down here at all. Ori and Hugo are strong willed enough that they eventually manage to decipher Venedict's babbling, piecing together a riddle hidden within the insanity.

Beneath the darkest veil of all
Where earth is black as night
Where madness tunnels through the mind
And howling winds take flight
Where fire burns in evil hearts
And blood, the price of war
The skull-topped towers of Demogorgon
Where roiling waters roar

They peace out, back to the Timeless Keep to sell their loot and pick apart this poem, having picked up only the one chaos point for their time travelling shenanigans, for a total of three.
Have a go and see if you can make sense of the riddle. The answer is in the spoiler tags below.

Spoiler

Using a combination of player wits and in character rolls, Illia realises that each couplet contains one of the classic elements and Ori notes that each one points to a specific plane. Hugo identifies the Plane of Shadow and Illia recognises Pandemonium.
After some debate about whether the third is Avernus, Hugo eventually decides it must refer to Hades, the actual battlefield of the Blood War.
Finally, the party agree that Demogorgon lies on the 88th layer of the Abyss, known as the Brine Flats to Hugo and the Gaping Maw to Illia.
Illia wonders if there are elemental stones they need to retrieve on each plane?

Well, we'll find out exactly what the clues lead to next time. For now, the party decide to begin with the Shadow Plane. As a Shadow Hand monk, Hugo is well versed in this place, and warns the party to prepare for draining attacks. The group chip in for a partially charged wand of restoration and Cabot upgrades his armour with death ward. Hugo is also excited to enter the Shadow Plane as he is seeking a Weapon of Legacy, long lost to the Shadow Hand monks. Next week we journey into darkness.

[Charon]

Well, we meet once again, ready for adventure and gearing up to face the horrors of the Shadow Plane. Potions of Body Ward are acquired and Hugo, the party's Zenythri and planes expert racks his brains for info. We learn some flavour details of what to expect in the Plane of Shadow and that there is a portal that can be used to enter, hidden in the graveyard of Neverwinter. It's easy enough for most of the group to get to Neverwinter, but this exists within Cabot's timeline which means he can't use the portal to go to Faerun unless it's before he was born or after he dies, so he has to go the long way, to Sigil, to the Outlands, to Faerun. It's not that big a detour and he meets the party outside the gates of Neverwinter where it is 11pm and snowing. The party make their way to the graveyard and locate the portal, stepping through into the city of Evernight, Neverwinter's dark shadow.
A ghoul lounges on a gravestone, overseeing two ettin skeletons who are loading a wagon. Attached to the wagon is a second wagon, the kind with bars that holds prisoners, and two skeletal horses hitched up front. From behind the bars, a male Shadar-kai pleads with the party for his freedom, offering payment. The ghoul tries to deter them, pointing out the prisoner has no money and interfering would draw his master's ire. The party pick up on the context clues that the ghoul's master is a vampire and turn a deaf ear to the Shadar-kai's plight, abandoning him to his fate, to be hauled to Thay and sold as a slave.
Hugo knows that in order to find more information on the riddle and the artefact he is seeking, the group will need to locate a hidden library belonging to the Twilight Cabal, a cult of shadow mages. The best place he knows of to find information is Duskrift, a town hidden in a deep chasm on the seabed of this oceanless shadow of the Sword Coast. Duskrift is a haven for people who prefer to conduct their business here. Natives like Shadar-kai and Illumians, material humankin with the dark template and even everyday humans, drow, wizards seeking secrets of shadow or necromancy or difficult to acquire spell components, smugglers, slavers and other such ne'er-do-wells. The group march off across the seabed, lost in the mist of the Shadow Plane, barely able to see twenty feet ahead even with their light sources. A couple of hours later, veered slightly off course by Hugo, they run into a Greater Shadow and a couple of Shadow Mastiffs. It's a surprisingly one sided fight and the party manage to dispatch the group with relative ease. Illia casts Know Direction to help ascertain relative North and Hugo gets his bearings and leads the group to the chasm. They use their troll gut rope and an immovable rod to abseil down the sheer chasm, to the bottom, 150 ft down. From here they simply walk along for a few minutes til they find the dimly glowing globes that mark a secondary crack, leading to a vast hidden chasm beyond that houses the town of Duskrift. If this place had a sea, Duskrift would be a pirate port, the perfect place to buy or sell goods of questionable provenance and legality. A place where one can hide out and drink shadow wine, with inns, taverns, even a brothel, all in place to see to the whims of any shadow travellers. While the party is unsure where to begin, the decision is easily made for them, as the door to one of the taverns opens and out steps a familiar gnome, Jamna Gleamsilver, who recognises Ori from a previous meeting.

Sidebar. Jamna Gleamsilver is a gnome rogue and member of the Zhentarim from the 5e module Hoard of the Dragon Queen which is the first campaign I ran these dudes through. We played another 3e campaign after that and then in this one, I decided to bring back a few notables as this is essentially set a few years after the events of HOTDQ. This means Ori's previous character, a dragonborn bard, is currently the governor of Waterdeep, having taken over after Laeral Silverhand went into hiding after unleashing spellfire on the armies of the Cult of the Dragon in the epic Helms' Deep style army combat I ran near the finale. A couple of other NPCs made it through, Taern Thunderspells and Jamna Gleamsilver. The party have also ran into Laeral's sister, Alustriel. Anyway, Jamna was such a party favourite NPC the first time round that I brought her back. This party, or rather Ori, Firion and Krak Flak, ran into Jamna in Silverymoon where they hired her to lead them to the Tomb of Horrors. They tried to pay her to come in with them but she fancied living a few more years. Close call, as that module would see Firion die, to be replaced with Illia. Krak Flak would also meet his doom, being replaced with Hugo, who also died, though that death was ultimately prevented by Ori going back in time to leave a specific door unlocked, earning his first chaos point.

So meeting Jamna again is a matter of fortuitousness and naturally she claims she can guide them to the hidden library, being familiar with the Plane of Shadow as a Zhentarim agent, for a price of course. 700gp later and we leave the party, clambering back out of the chasm, following the diminutive rascal as she leads them onwards to the next part of their adventure just like she shepherded their first group from Baldur's Gate to Waterdeep nearly a decade ago.

I would like to point out that right up until the party descended the chasm, I had no real idea what was going to happen in Duskrift. The idea had been rolling around my head all week but it was only at that exact moment that I realised it would make so much sense, and be such a great moment, for it to be Jamna who bumps into them. Sometimes you just gotta go with the flow.
We resume DnD in three week's time due to one player's real life plans, but we play Fate Core on the 18th so that will be the next update.