A DnD Tale: Tomb of Annihilation - The Death of Many (12)

 

Time to join them.

So it was a while. We couldn't get a game going in september 2025 so it was October instead. And it continued from the room with all the statues. How was they gonna leave the room? There was three runes of teleportation and of course they couldn't go into the same rune, they instead split up. Freya went into the western rune and ended up at the room with the destroyed mirror. Immeral went into the northern rune and ended up at the same place, but caught in a magical explosion due to the malfunctioning rune. Hope and Destinova went into the southern one and was polymorphed into quippers, some kind of fish. The others put them into vessels of water to carry them to the other companions. None can help them since they are warriors. Instead Immeral uses the last two charges of the ring with stored spells that have the dispel spell stored.

Returning to humanoid shape they head to the final rooms of the fourth floor. They enter the corridor and ends up at a door with a riddle above the door. They are supposed to feed the serpent statues blood to allow the ghouls hidden in the wall to open the door. They don't get it so go into the corridor leading to a treasure chest just standing in the opening. They see a room beyond it, but the treasure chest is more important. Of course Hope unlocks it and open it and a boulder starts rolling from above the stairs. They run into the room and the floor below them crashes down. Hope and Freya is able to catch the edge while the others fall into the acid pit trap. Biff Longsteel dies immediately and dissolves into the acid. The others are damaged, but with the help of Freya and Hope that climbs up and get the rope to get the others out of the pit. Freya heals them with a mass cure wounds.

The others check the room and finds a sarcophagus that changes colors every 6th seconds. It has a keyhole so Hope returns to the broken chest and finds an invisible key. Doesn't help them so they look into the mural above the room. Freya touch the mural and ends up in a magical maze which opens the secret rooms with 10 skeleton minotaurs out for blood. Since they all are up on the stairs Hope, Immeral and the woman warrior blocks the stairs so that Destinova can fry them with fireball. Zaal the minotaur enters the maze to help Freya. Freya is able to find a gold key after something like three rounds and returns to the sarcophagus with skeletons all around, but just the next round they all been defeated. They wait for Zaal to find another key until he gets the purple one and returns as well. Immeral gets the gold key and uses it as it turns gold, unlocking and opening it. He's granted the power smell precious metals and gems for three days (they don't know how long, just that he can) and is branded with a demon head on the chest. 

He also picks up the robe with the slime pouring out of the pockets and gets possessed by Unkh. They also find a passage from one of the hidden rooms and find a clock that they open and grabs the jewel at the tip of the pendulum. Of course not later than that it strikes which ages Freya and the warrior woman 10 years. After getting the jewel it stops and they realizes that it's the Navel of the Moon that the tabaxi searched for. They head back to the door they couldn't open and after a bit more searching they find the blood and get Zaal and Freya to give enough blood to open the doors. There they see the murals that the blind dwarfs are painting about the things happening in the dungeon, one doing the leader of the Yellow Banner while the others are busy with our own adventures, being attacked by the beholder, being crushed by the chest and so on. They notice the throne and the scepter. They don't touch it, but finds a hidden door toward another sarcophagus with a sun revolving around it. They open it and finds the queen Napaka that oversaw the destruction of Omu. They just steals from her and then finds the scepter which they switch with the one at the throne. Nothing happens so they take both scepters which unleashes the necrotic gas that kills Zaal. The warrior woman stays with her queen and our heroes continues on and find yet another hidden door that leads to a staircase down to level 5. We end here since everyones getting tired and sleeps to heal up. 

Dragonsbane: Betrayal (Drakar och Demoner: Sveket)

And now it's snakes, wonder what the third book cover will be.

Well, I had to read the continuation, only took me a year. I read the first two chapters and just had to stop since Tamea did the most stupid thing ever and I just couldn't handle it. Verven and Gizma have been doing some shady things to provoke fights to get money from people. This time it goes awry and they are set upon by the city guard and Tamea can't help herself by showing them Verven's gold coin, you know, the greedy corrupt guards that have no qualms taking from the people that we where shown earlier in the chapter? I just tapped out from reading it that time. I could also have been that I got some games worth playing that just took my interest as well, but it took some time getting back, and then I read the rest in two evenings.

The most interesting question on everyone's mind, how was the writing? Much better, there was only one instance in the whole book with an english word, "sorry". The rest perfect. So story after the early debacle is that they are helped out of the prison the guards threw them in by a duck crime lord that task Gizma with bringing her the head of Tamea's mother. She was last seen in the forest of Verven's elven clan. They go there and not to be killed they have to kill the elf-ear hunter in the tower out in sea. They get there and it turns out that the orc shaman living there isn't an ear hunter, but Verven's true father  which unravels all the lies his mother told him about his birth and such. His father seems to kill himself in realisation that his love he waited 18 years for wanted to kill him. They return to the elves and all hell breaks loose since it turns out Tamea's mother is still alive, but the Verven's mother tried to kill her son since the union of an orc and elf is the chosen one to begin the end of the world as he is destined to awaken the sleeping dragon and when that happens the demons will awake as well.

Well, they escape and the hunt is on. I really like the book. A lot happens in 200 pages and it goes by fast. Lucky the third book will be released in September 2025 (August 2025 as of writing). Kirby the Forgotten Land for Switch 2 will be out in a week so we will see if I'm in a reading mood or if that will have to wait until next year when the signs align and the window of opportunity for reading opens up again.

A DnD Tale: Tomb of Annihilation - The Unseen Eye (11)

 

I see you!

Well, started where we left off, fighting the invisible Beholder. Freya still hanging from her spear on the sphere in the air. This is a fight for their life. The invisible beholder firing eye beams every second he got and hitting them paralyze and such things. Freya even getting hit with a death ray once leaving her with only 3 hp. Destinova got in 2 fireballs until he got caught in telekinetic ray that put him in the anti-magic cone. He even got hit with petrification rays twice. Still, Immeral get the idea to get the cover back over the orb to release Freya from it and then put over a cape to both "see" the beholder as well as stop the anti-magic cone. After defeating it they slept and got all the treasures.

And now they headed for the 4th floor. They first went to the room with the mirror that trap people. Freya is the only one that enters the room. And she just shatters the mirror after seeing different shadows in it. Everyone gets released so a big fight begins. Our heroes fight of an invisible stalker and a troll while another person gets killed by a stirge, a woman and minotaur teams up and fights a gargoyle while a drow uses his magic to help them and lastly another person that just tries to run and hide. They make short work of the enemies and get the minotaur and women to join them together with the coward Biff. The drow just leaves.

They find a stone slab with the image of a person holding up his arm so Freya puts her hand there and the slab opens toward a "maze".  They find yet another headless skeleton and a opal crown. After deliberating (and me pushing that it seems to be worth at least 5 000 gp) they take it and here stone moving, two thumps and then some heavy breathing (I tried to emulate the regenerators from Resident Evil 4). Freya looks around and behind her two bodaks appears. They make short work of these, but as they try to leave they notice the slabs have returned to its original state, but the picture is now of a man missing his arm. The book hints that a person can put their arm in the sphere that exists in the mouth of the devils face. Their first instinct was to cut the hand of Biff since he is just worthless (not knowing that he is a doppelganger so he could probably grow his hand back), but they get the skeleton instead and cut its arm and uses that. I checked on the net as we sat there and people saw that as an alternative to open the doors. Which takes away some of the deadliness of the trap, but still.

Next area they discover another face in the wall where there lives a lizard that can talk and belonged to the Yellow Banners (that included Biff). He shows them a secret door that leads to a room filled with heat, our heroes enters and the doors closes. After some arguing they blow out the candle and ends up in the room without air. It takes a long time to get them to understand that they are supposed to take the bones of the aarakocra and suck the air inside them. I even hinted that they broke them loose and they heard the hissing of air. Their first thought was using it to light the candle on fire which only exists to waste time. They got very frustrated here and reading it the day before I deduced they needed time here so no point in getting a time limit, had it been a sierra game you just had to restore your game until you figured it out. 

With that they enter Shagambi's tomb, an area filled with terracotta soldiers and I heavy hint at the warning left at the balcony that talks about the sleeping army in silence. They figure they need to be quiet so Immeral just walks over the ceiling and gets to the tomb... and then just opens it, starting the trap that is just music box activating all the statues. They hobble up in a corner and uses Destinova to cast fireballs on them. The first one leaves most of them with only 1 hp. The second one gets all of them (mostly because I was tired since we neared the end of the session so I just hide that they succeeded on their dexterity save to just end it. They slept and we ended it here. I missed that they should have entered the tomb randomly by the teleporters, but I will see if I can still use it for them leaving the tomb when we play again in september or such.

A DnD Tale: Tomb of Annihilation - The All-Seeing Eyes (Part 10)

 

Grave robbing is always a risky business.

So we continued onward through the third floor. No preparations from my side, I just winged it as we went along since I had forgotten we were supposed to play. Still worked rather well. We continued from the last area and entered a room where there was a shrine with things and frescoes. Immeral, caught by the greed of Nangnang, began pocketing some gold coins and all that. My sisters couldn't bother trying to solve the riddle of the room so they forced Destinova to use the knock spell to open Kubazan's  sarcophagus . That of course triggers the trap that unleashes a prismatic ray on all the players. Destinova got it worse since he dropped 39 HP. Freya snapped up the treasure inside the sarcophagus. Some bracers that (I now realizes we never added the benefits from the actual item... oops!) allowed Kubazan to enter her and become pretty much the same as the other possession, but now more heroic. That and she got 23 in Strenght meaning the bard is now the most buff player of them all. 

Next room was just some tapestries and a boar head that enchanted Freya to put her head inside the boar head. Hope jumped her to keep her away from the boar while Immeral breaks open the head after seeing some treasures inside the mouth. They went back to the staircase and went to the northern corridor where they saw a jackal head were they witnessed a scene where a dwarf enters a room with a sarcophagus and promptly gets eaten by locust like in the Brenden Frasier the Mummy. Not being able to do anything they head to the eastern corridor. Turns out to be a corridor with running water. Freya finds to secret areas, one with an eye she pockets and another crawling space. Immeral meanwhile triggers the trap that floods the area and damages them all. They made Destinova use control water to get past the waterfall and find the other eye on the other side.

They then see the room where the dwarf died. Immeral enters alone, robs him and then walks on the ceiling toward the sarcophagus. Sucks to be him, they were forced to solve the riddle, which was basically realizing that at the door there was a mechanism that told them which floor to stand on to not trigger the trap until they reached the sarcophagus. And then it disarmed the trap. They found a horn belonging to I'jin, the rabbit god. No more evil and selfish. They continued and began looking into the crawlspaces. Freya headed in first and triggered yet another trap and was caught as the whole area rotated. After a while Immeral and Destinova headed in and noticed a body in the middle of the crawlway. Immeral rushed forward and triggered the trap again, releasing Freya.She got out in the water corridor and headed back to Hope. They went and got the gold sarcophagus of I'jin and heated it up to form it into a ball to use as a trigger of the trap so that Immeral also could get out. The body had an eye as well, and they begin to realize that they probably need every eye they can find. 

Next room they find is a room where Hope enters and there is a shadowy figure in front of her. They experiment until they realized that it was a mirror shadow of the first person that entered the room. They also got that the font with the green goo probably hid something, especially when they got it was an illusion. At least they also caused the others to get damaged by seeing the visage of the shadow figure, meaning Destinova now blacked out and was healed back to 17 HP. Great. In the goo they found another eye.

Next area was south of the water corridor where they had floating platforms and I don't know if I read it correctly since with the push from Kubazan Freya just jumped on to the platforms while Immeral ran over the walls and pulled the lever after listening to I'jin which unleashes the winds of madness. Hope begins screaming and crying on the floor while Immeral passes out. It opens the hands of a statue that allows Destinova to get the eyes inside. Freya just stod at the platform... I don't get how she wasn't affected. She jumped over the platforms and turned the lever again. This time Destinova pulls out a rope to tie Immeral up since even in this form he is a liability. Next room... the golem pit. Immediately they begin turning one of the pedestals and summons the golem from the pit. It dies within one round so they can search the pit in quiet. Especially since Immeral can walk down the pit without using the teleportation pedestals. They continue through a corridor and finds a mirror and ten holes for the eyes they have been gathering. And here they spend the longest amount of time arguing what to do. They put in the eyes and notices their reflection getting sicker. This for some reason scares them so they begin thinking there must be a certain order of the eyes so they pull them in and out trying to see if anything changes. It doesn't and in the end Immeral grabs a cloak or something and holds over the mirror so that they won't see it while putting in the eyes.

Finally inside they notice the floating sheet, Kubazan urges Freya to attack it and with the scream "Kubazan have never failed me" she rushes forward with her spear and tries to pierce it, but the sheet flies away revealing the black orb that magnetize the spear to it and gets stuck as it lifts and rotates with Freya holding on for dear life. Hope and Immeral begins picking up some treasures and a voice can be heard in the room and an eye stalk appears and fires a ray at them. And here we ended the session.

A DnD Tale: Tomb of Annihilation - The Management Don't Approve (Part 9)

Let's speak to the manager!

And the trek through the tomb continues. We start of were we left of, fighting the mummy. Only takes one attack to kill it off from Hope and Freya picks up the mace of terror, and fails her saving throw allowing her to be possessed by Wongo, the Su-Monster. Makes her very rash and violent without care for the others. They only have one room left on the first floor so they head there finding a corridor with a demon face and through the mouth they can see a room with yet another sarcophagus. Now, Freya just jumps in and Destinova follows. Hope pushes Immeral through due to the aversion of the Obo'laku possession. The trap of course works and the mouth champs down on Immeral. It misses so he gets through and Hope follows. Meanwhile Freya have seen a crystal monter with a flameskull inside and gets curious. It begins talking through telepathy and seems to be a lost child who wonders what's happening. She find that boring and is more interested in the sarcophagus which she opens. The others realize that Immeral is gonna be a problem with the hyper cautious attitude so the other gangs up on him and forces him to touch every item in the sarcophagus trying to get him possessed by another god. This one fails and Destinova is pushed to take the staff of the python to get possessed by the jaculi god Moa who always tells the truth.

As they do this the flameskull screams a cry that shatters the crystal case and and aggravates the spiders in the nest so they begin pouring out. They try to take care of them so Destinova nukes the spiders with a fire ball while the others wail on the flameskull. After defeating the first wave they hear even more spiders coming from the burrows around the room. They rush to get out and Freya jumps through first and then Immeral that gets chomped at again. This time it actually traps him. Destinova puts up a wall of force to keep the spiders out and Freya and Destinova tries to pull him out. Freya tries to break the mouth open from the other side with the mace of terror. They get him out and the mouth opens. Immeral shadowsteps across instead of trusting the mouth again. The other crawls through and gets out. 

They head back to the room with the tomb dwarves and tomb guardians to clear the room and find a magical lantern with the spirit of a moon elf named Starfallen that was brought by the Company of Yellow Banners in order find a certain jewel in order to resurrect the elf. They are all dead now and since she can wake up a character that's been downed Freya grabs her and intend to attune. They continue and have now found themselves through secret corridors that doesn't have traps in them. They enter the first room and there sits an old wight named Withers that acts like an amusement park engineer that constructs and keeps the traps working in this place. Freya and Hope begins robing him blind taking every that isn't nailed down... lucky Destinova didn't do the talking since he would probably have spilled the beans. Immeral meanwhile is tied up, gagged and blinded so that he can't try to escape or cause anything. They find some journal belonging to Withers, a spellbook belonging to a Blackflame or something, a manual on clay golem creation and a control jewel for a slaad. They also pull the mask Withers where and the black skull amulet, but they seem to have forgotten about it so I need to remind them next time.

They get to the room with the slaad and Hope uses the control gem to keep the slaad in check. Freya just walks forward and tries to open the sarcophagus, but needs Destinova for help. It's the tomb of Nangnang and they bring forth Immeral and pushes him to touch every item in it. The urn is wasted on Immeral since he just can will away charmed spells, but an egg inside releases the god and after a short tussle Nangnang expels Obu'laku and thank god for that. Nangnang is just cruel and selfish, but everyone prefers that over cowardly scared. They go back to the backrooms and head down to the third floor finding another Tomb Guardian and kills it in one round. They learn that it was standing guard by a lever that it was supposed to pull when people entered a room on the other side of a window starting it to rotate and fills it with gas and so on. They find what I assume is a ventilation thing that they take over to another room where they find a golden skull that Freya just have to touch which curses her with a dead wise-cracking jester that from now on will disrupt them doing anything unless they feed it 10 000 gold of jewels (which they don't know other than it being hungry for jewels). Of course at the moment it has just berated them and pulling bad jokes, but it will be better when it begins disrupting them for real. They searched the room and found a secret door into a corridor and fought two more tomb guardians. After that we quit cause we where tired after something like 4 hours of play.

A DnD Tale: Tomb of Annihilation - Genie in a Bottle (Part 8)

 

The players are gonna be so pissed when they realize I already left this puzzle solved!

First post for 2026 (first post written for 2025... I can't seem to get into the groove to play games at the moment). A continuation of the last session. So, I prepared for them to clear the floor so I though it was enough to read only that... no, they of course decide to get down to the second floor immediately. I also recalled the fact that spells like teleportation or such things malfunctions and takes them to a room filled with rotten corpses and an eye stalk that they would appear like the trash-compactor monster in Star Wars (making them think that the whole chamber would crush them). Sadly I read up on it and it's only if they try to teleport out of the tomb, things like shadow-step and arcane gate works just fine. And they won't get to try the black hole lever. 

So on the second floor they find the second warning and also notices a skeleton with a decapitated head. In actuality they are trying to find the skeleton keys to open the door on the fifth floor (one key per floor), but I thought it would be funny if the keys are already taken and put into the door by someone, for example the one trapped in the chamber behind the final boss, for example Toby that would lead into the next adventure as he soloed the dungeon. Cause Toby is the best!

Still, they look around and find the door to the south the most interesting to enter. They hear the gurgling moans from some zombies that are chained to the door. Hope uses her sun sword to chase them away that opens the door... or that is what I interpreted the chains doing due to the second warning about the undead disliking sunlight. The less battles the faster the games goes anyway and they wanted faster games. 

Inside they see transparent cauldrons with bones in them, a sarcophagus and four statues. They pretty much say f*** this and looks for something and finds a hidden door leading to a corridor that leads into another room. In that corridor they also finds a bottle. They inspect the bottle and it talks something they don't understand. Hope uses Comprehend Languages that allows her to understand that the dao in the bottle wants to be freed and will give them riches if they do so. Greed gets the better of them, they open the bottle and are in fact rewarded with several gemstones making the trek at least profitable (if they get out). They enter the next room and finds a pentagram in salt with a sarcophagus in the middle. In reality an invisible grey slaad hides in the pentagram, trapped by the salt and if you disturb the pentagram it will be released and attack. Since Immeral and Hope already met an invisible slaad I actually gave them a hint that they felt the same creepiness as back in the Amber Temple so they decided to avoid the room for now.

Back in the corridor they backtrack and enters the eastern corridor until they reach the intersection. They find the body to the north and get the journal and treasures (especially the staff of striking that Immeral intends to attune to so that Freya can get the magical spear without knowing that the staff curses the attuned wearer to become a half-goat, gonna be fun next session) and decides to continue and appears at the intersection again, but the body to the north is gone. They tie a rope and head back, but this time the rope is gone from the south. They go south and suddenly the rope appears in front of them and behind them. Destinova deduces that it must a dimensional gate here. So now the game halts for 15 minutes as everyone tries to grasp what this means. They decide to continue east at the intersection without the dead body where they find the room smelling with wine and a glittering chest in sunlight. As they check and find that the sunlight is an illusion Immeral uses their ring of storing with dispel magic to take away the light. I assume that works since it's an illusion and they open the chest with the words "drown your sorrow" and nothing happens... they are a bit disappointed with the room and head back. They go back to the staircase and check the northern passage that leads to the room with a mask on the floor... nothing else there. They go back and check the pentagram room and stumbles upon the bottled dao again and open it and gets a double set of jewels. Head back through the ring and the jewels disappears in a puff of smoke telling them that the dimension door isn't quite real and get that this is the "real world". They redo all the stuff in the wine room (I almost made them forget to turn off the sunlight) and since the same exact thing happened there was nothing there either. 

Now they went back to the first floor and headed north until they reached the room with the magnetized shield. First they see another decapitated skeleton and then Freya is the only one to fail her saving throw and getting slammed into the shield taking 15 damage. No damage to any metal equipment since she wasn't carry anything. North they find a fountain, no one dares drink the waters which is a shame. They go south and finds a dead end. Searching they find two hidden doors. They enter the south door first and finds a room which they saw earlier last session through a crystal window. You are supposed to cover the eyes on a bronze disk to avoid the wights awake and attack them and then use the masks to open the sarcophagus. I let them cover the disk while being seen since I just don't feel like battle right now. Hope unlocks the sarcophagus and they finally have a magical cursed item in their reach. Immeral picks it up and instantly gets possessed by the Zorbo god, meaning she's even more risk averse, but she got a ring of protection that boosts his AC and saving throws with +1. That and he can now attune to 4 magic items. They don't really have that many, but there is a couple to get in the tomb. They look around and find another hidden door made of flint. Freya opens it and it ignites a gas cloud that knocks her down a bit. They head back to the fountain and rests for the night.

They return next moring and look across the waters. First they follow the river till they reach a waterfall with a ledge across it and a treasure chest. Using their daily arcane gate they can reach it without jumping across. Since it's a mimic it attacks them as they try to see if it's dangerous so they say f that and return back to the origin of the river, finding another chest hanging across the pool of water. Hope hop upon Freya's shoulders and unlocks the chest and get everything from it without triggering the trap. They check the other hidden door in the corridors and see some dwarves creating a tomb guardian and decide that they better retreat. They enter the other northern passage of the first floor and avoid setting of the fan trap and finds another sarcophagus and three chests. After a while they figure out that they need put someone in a chest so that they can turn the key to make a button appear on the sarcophagus to activate a trap and the unlocking mechanism. Freya enters the iron rusted chest and since she have no non-magical metal on her she is pretty much fine. She then enters the onyx one, but survives the trap with 1 HP intact. Also kinda funny that Freya was 6 foot meaning she was a bit cramped in the 5 foot chests.

They put Destinova in the final chest of silver and frost. He only took 39 damage so he didn't get bloodied, although that just 1 HP away. Pushing the buttons now make the sarcophagus to be transparent and crystaline. They see a mummy and a mace in it. Hope picks up her crowbar and swings at it and the whole sarcophagus cracks and the mummy awakens, ending this session. Next session they wanted some maps since they are really bad at localize themselves in their minds. Also, gotta get Immeral to feel itching to start the curse that transform him into a half-goat... hehe and Immeral wanted to get cursed, but that was by a were-tiger hehe, the player gets what she wanted! Hehehe!

A DnD Tale: Tomb of Annihilation - Entering the Tomb (part 7)

I think it was this face they saw in the tomb.

Returning to look for the other 3 cubes in order to enter the tomb of annihilation. And I basically focused on going for the puzzles and skip the fights. I lure them up the waterfall to let them see the vision of Ohm being destroyed to add some mystery to the whole ordeal and then allow them to see the final shrines as they look out of the city. And they basically went on a straight line to get them all. First was the shrine of Nangnang the Grung (a frog like creature). It's supposed to be full with grungs that guard the treasure and if you haven't saved one of the sons of the leader there is a big battle, but that takes to much time so I just skip that idea. Right to the puzzle, how to enter the locked door. Well, the first obstacle is the first door where you are supposed to use strength in order to push it open. None of the characters have that so after two tries I just check my spell list and see that Destinova have Knock so I cast that spell to just enter. And then we have the puzzle door. You are supposed to figure out that one person have to gather the fake treasures in the room and from there go the door and let it open, If there is another people with treasure it doesn't open. We just used knock again since they aren't that smart so why bother?

Next was the shrine of Obo'Laka the Zebo. It was an interesting premise. You first enter a corridor with 8 torch holders and then in the next rom you find a pool where there is a sun in the roof, but a moon in the reflection of the water. After some speculating they jump in and ends up in a room with a moon on the floor, but a sun in the reflection of the pool. There's a door they enter and in there they find a another cube, but there is a petrified statue of a Thay Wizard standing beside it and 8 lit torches around the room. Here there is a problem which I get from reading the book. All characters in the campaign can use mage hand and since they don't get in direct contact with the cube, they won't be affected. You are supposed to deactivate the trap by finding a secret door leading back to the beginning of the shrine so that you can take the torches and put them in the first corridor, since they will extinguish in the water of the pool. To not trivialize the whole ordeal I made the pool water dispel the mage hand so that they actually have to do the puzzle. 

The final shrine was the shrine of Moa the snake. It was the most fun shrine in reading. First it stands on top of a pillar in a lake of lava, but they clear that with an arcane gate spell. Then they enter the shrine and finds a cube standing in the middle of a room guarded by stone archers. They grab the cube with mage hand and the statues begin rotating and firing arrows at them, they get back in the corridor and the trap floor activates trying to send them into a pool of green acid. All four clears the saving throw, they get out and the cube turns to a puff of smoke. They return, search the room again and finds a secret door which leads to a room with a broken snake statue. They grab the cube, once again get fired at from the statues, avoid the trapped corridor, gets out and... the cube turns to green smoke. I find this rather funny. They return and looks again and find yet another secret door and another room, this time with a whole statue. They get the cube and the traps don't activate. They now got all the cubes.

I hadn't planned this far ahead so it was a bit of improvising, but I recall most of the beginning traps, with the fake door in the beginning. They get to the obelisk, get the clue and finds the passageway and the tunnel. They also see the three gargoyles standing looking down on them. They enter the tunnel and see torches light up as they pass and even finds Unkh's statue and get the pendent that hanged around it. They go to the passageway and finds the trap, block the air flow for the gas and starts putting in cubes. I think it was a bad idea to do this in the afternoon with one of the players being out until way after midnight. She can be a bit... thorny when she hasn't slept properly and puzzles isn't their greatest forte. They try so many combinations on the first door and none work, they read the text on the obelisk over and over again so in the end I have to step in to point out that there seems to be something missing since their is only 8 holes for the cubes, when we in fact have 9. They go out again and as they pass the obelisk the pendent begins showing them to the hidden passageway. And here they get stuck again since they get that Unkh should be in the middle, they get that the other cubes should be oppose each others, but they just can't figure put that Unkh always should be in the middle (missing the diagonal cubes). So I have to step in and the youngest sister is so feed up with all this. 

They get to the next door, the timer shows up and Freya in panic pulls the lever and the floor opens and the other three falls down on the spike taking damage in different ways. They get out and enter the T-section with the poisoned arrows and trap plates (I assume they got this from Indianan Jones). They begin by meticously check for traps, reach the statue head and see the darkness. Freya puts in a stick and it gets destroyed by the monster inside the mouth so they decide to just leave it. They head right to the grand staircase, decode to back and finds the grate with the rushing water and then see the crystal window that shows them the room with the skeletons on the thrones. They go back to the staircase and from here we call it quits for today. 

Finally getting somewhere, but if my sisters don't get their sleep before playing the next time I assume we might never finish this module as everyone is angry at each other. I think on the other hand that we haven't that much time on our hand with the trajectory of all our lives, but that is just me. Happy New Year everybody, see you in 2026 (although as of writing it's only a couple of weeks away from 2025 beginning.

A DnD Tale: Tomb of Annihilation - Quest for Cubes (part 6)

 

The Dangerous Snail!

The quest continues in search for the cubes to enter the tomb of Annihilation. To speed everything along I again tell them the shrines as scouted out by the other companions that aren't main characters. First is the shrine for the eblis god guarded by crocodiles. They skip the fight by using an arcane gate... I might think they have to many powerful artefacts for these battles. They enter the shrine and stumble upon a chamber with six statues and a pedestal. They find a text written below the pedestal which contains a riddle, Immeral at once knows that it is shadows so they put up a light spell at the centre and can see that one of the statutes have a hidden corridor behind it that only appears when a shadow is cast there. They follow it and find a grid... and here they get stuck since they can't get that they should put the riddle in the grid. So I have to spell out that the grid has the same amount of bricks as the letters in the riddle so they begin jotting them down and sees that certain bricks are darkened, as if they are in shadows. Those letters form the words Cover The Eyes... so they stand a minute covering their eyes until Immeral points out that maybe it's the statues in the room prior that needs to be covered. They go back and Freya wonders how they are gonna be able to cover the eyes of the six statues when they are only four which makes Hope stare at her and just say we can use blindfolds. They do and the cube appears,

On the way back they can't use the arcane gate since they only can use it once a day so Destinova uses a lightning bolt that that kills all four. They wade into the water on the way with Freya carrying Destinova since he otherwise have the water up to his neck. Of course this have angered the mother of the crocodiles so they get attacked by a giant crocodile. It doesn't have time to do anything when the others just kills it, Destinova finishing it off with a magic missile and they head for the next shrine, the shrine of the su-monster (some kinda monster monkey). The shrine have 5 entrances and using light they see that the middle one seems to go to a middle room in the shrine so they enter. They find a statue of a su-monster and four masks that they can gaze into corridors so they realise that the other entrances goes into the others side. They go to the other sides of the mask and I'm able to lure each and everyone to look into different masks and in them they see a blue ray of light fall on different arms and legs and together with small riddles they get that they have to figure out which mask tells the truth. It's a basic logic puzzle and Freya had it from the beginning, but they begin overthinking it so they almost ends up with the lion, until they go back to it again. They figure it out, Freya pour water on the statue and a voice gives her a choice, either directly take the cube and be cursed or wait and fight some monkeys. I'm once again able to manipulate them into taking the cube directly and the curse take effect, all fail their constitution saving throw and Freya is turned into a lion, Hope into a boar, Immeral into a zebra and Destinova into a vulture. I'm so happy!

I allow them to be able to communicate with each other, but not the other companions if they headed back to the camp (maybe Eku would have understood them, but since they avoided the others that never played out) so with that they decide to see what the water crossing hides since everyone avoids it since they have seen a shadow on the roofs. They notice a very confused tabaxi, but decide to ignore him for the moment, they find yet another shrine, this one belong to a flail snail. They look in the side room and find a lot of keys, but figure out that the key they need probably is hinted about in the shrine itself. They shove open the door and enters the shrine. They find a statue of a snail and six keys hanging around the room and a keyhole. Freya argues that she should be able to pick the lock of the keyhole since she has claws as a lion and we have all seen cartoons where they do... so I agree to that, they fail and the trap is activated causing the statue to shine with light which burns Destinova and Immeral, which breaks the polymorph spell which allows Destinova to dispel the magic on the others. Hope begins pick the lock, that also fails and the statue shines yet again. Freya begin using healing on Destinova that only have 8 HP. Hope during that time tried to pick the lock again causing huge distress in the other characters, but she succeed this time and they can get yet another cube. What you were supposed to do was take the 6 keys and put them together to get the shape of a certain key that you then would have found in the work shop. But this worked as well. The 6th cube gotten, 3 more left.

Now back in their humanoid forms they decide to take care of the tabaxi. Destinova uses an invisibility spell that turns them all invisible so they are able to sneak up upon him. They intend to cast sleep on him so that they can tie him up, but the spell fails and he attack Destinova that appears before him and makes a lot of damage. The others attacks until he is bloodied and he gives up. He invites them to eat soup with him and they agree. The intent was to poison them, but since Immeral just pushed the wine canteen they got from the Amber temple that turns poisoned liquids to sweet wine. So I changed it on the spot. The tabaxi is named Bag of Nails and talks about the Naval of the Moon, a treasure, and how he is gonna use it to find his son, which we name Hammer of Nails since it doesn't appear to be here. The gang tells him if they find the treasure he can have it. I probably gonna kill him off of screen with the poison if they return to him. 

And that was that for this session. A lot happened and we are on the door step of the Tomb itself. We have one more session in 2024 and we might get all cubes, but in 2025 we will probably have problems with getting together since my far-away sister have less time since her kids are getting older and have their own friends and things to go to. And my youngest sister is moving from town so there is changes happening that might affect the game forward. But at the moment it will continue. Really looking forward to the shrine with the trap door into the green slime pit (which they can solve with Hope's sun sword).

A DnD Tale: Tomb of Annihilation - The Hunt for Cubes (part 5)

 

It lived to ambush the characters another day.

We return after 2 month hiatus in real time. And since they still complain that it takes to long time I pretty much used all the other people we have in the balloon to scout out the place and indicate 2 shrines for them to check out. The first shrine being Froghemoth Shrine. And they obviously suspect something with the pool outside and the statue in the middle, but since they have 2 pieces of the rod of law they have access to the spell Arcane Gate so they just transport over it. And then they are stuck at the shrine entrance and a missing key. They got a thief, but they don't lockpick the door... sad. They figured the key was in the statue in the middle of the pool so Immeral used Shadowstep to get there and search the statue and finding the key in the mouth. I then sprung the Froghemoth on them by grabbing him with the tounge in order to bring him to it so that he could be swallowed up. And I roll a damn 1. So it bit its tounge allowing Immeral to Shadowstep away after being slimed and drenched in the murky water. But they got the key,

Behind the door they reached a room with spikes and beams across so that they are supposed to jump across the beams to avoid falling unto the spikes. Which Immeral sidestepped with the shadowstep ability... I feel a bit cheated on that. They also figured out that the message on the door about give what you take meant that they have to do the Indiana Jones thing with exchanging the cube on the pedestal with something of similar weight. Since they already have a cube they fix a bottle with oil that weighs something like that and Immeral intends to do the switch. She fails this time so I just wing it that the bottle slipped and rolled of the pedestal forcing the mechanism to activare, locking them in the room and then releasing poison gas. Destinova and Freya gets poisoned and takes damage. Hope lockpicks the door and is able to open it so everyone can get out. And then Immeral Shadowsteps everyone across the pool.

Onward to the Kamadan Shrine (jaguars with snakes on their back). They push open the door and goes into the shrine. They figure they need four spears to put in the statues inside the arena so they continue round the corridors until they stumble upon the trap that activates the 4 chultan warrior statues that they fight until they are destroyed. They take the spear, put them in the statue's hands and then the cube reveals itself. They take it and is attacked by 2 kamadans. One of them is putting Destinova to sleep so that Freya have to slap him awake so that he can use his magic on them. It isn't that hard for them even though they fought another battle just before. And with that they leveled up to level 10. Gotta remember to tell them that besides the abilities they also gained more HP.

A DnD Tale: Tomb of Annihilation - The King has left the building (Part 4)

It's good to be the king.

Well, another dive into the epic tale of our heroes trying to get to the Tomb of Annhiliation. We played for 2 hour and pretty much just fought some dinos in an amphitheater. They headed north from the last session and found this amphitheater which they saw on the map they had so they investigated and found this nest in the middle with some shining golden trinkets inside. They went in and found some treasures when they realise that they are surrounded by a pack of deinonychus which I learnt today was the real inspiration for the velociraptors in the Jurassic Park-series. The name was just cooler so Crichton went with that. What followed was something like 10 minutes discussing if they could tame them and ride around with them, but they abandoned that when they asked how intelligent they where and the got what, a 3 in Int? Which is kinda scary that they though the beast to dumb to tame. But they still complain that the campaign drags even though they are the one that derails the narrative all the time. They jumped into the nest for some protection as the dinos circled around them and then the King of feathers appeared. He walked into the arena, misty stepped up to them and spewed out a cloud of wasps. 

From here it went a bit out of hand. Immeral shadow stepped up on the back of the king, hit it with his spear, but failed to lodge it into its head in order for Destinova to use it as a conduit for a lightning bolt, but is able to stun it with a stunning strike (my fault since I forgot the legendary resistance it had) The battle with the king goes on for 3 more rounds until Immeral succeed putting it in and then Destinova frying the brain of the dinosaur. They hit the other dinos with the only problem being Freya who, while attacking a swarm of wasps that the king had spewed out rolls two 1's in a row for her multiattack, pretty much putting her on deaths door with 2 HP remaining. Then she gets knocked out by another deinonychus (I so wish it had been the wasps, it would have been so fun).

The other's clean up the rest and then goes back to camp to heal and look through the bounty. Some gold and a magic helm of telepathy. So 2 and a half hour amounted to just one battle and nothing more for this time. I think I need to speed up things, maybe say that the team left at camp scouted out some of the shrines so that they know where to go, look forward to the shrine with the froghemoth at the entrance. I got a tip reding how to handle the king of feathers to resurrect him as a zombie so I spent some time putting that into my excel arc I use to make the battles easier. Might start put in the roaming zombie T-rex scaring them at night and spewing zombies at them.

A DnD tale: Tomb of Annihilation - Lost in Omu (part 3)

 

They dream of following the path of the setting sun that leads to El Dorado and the Mysterious Cities of Gold.

So back at it again our brave heroes heads of with their newly acquired airship on their way to Omu, cutting the 60-70 days of traveling down to 3. The crew of the ship tells them that their destination is very close to the place where they were attacked by flying monster that made their ship crash. And as they approach 10 gargoyles attack them from all directions. Since they have two people that can use Cone of Cold they make short work with them even if they have limited range attack. After the battle we also learn that the blood spear Immeral is carrying actually gives a +2 magic bonus to attack rolls and damage... which is kinda typical us, especially since we used the last session to just fix the characters sheet, make new characters in case of and look up things that was written. We missed that detail though.

After that they arrived in Omu. Freya, Immeral, Hope and Destinova goes alone into the city to check it out. They encounter a destroyed Thay encampment where wild dogs are eating the corpses and below the rubble they find a man, dying of exhaustion. They save him and he tells them of the nine shrines of the gods and the poem that tells them about the keys that will open the way to the tomb. The players get that they should look for the nine keys so they continue walking. Here I gotta say I'm a bit disappointed in the official map set for this module. First, all the maps needed to be larger, and the hex crawl really needed better lines between the hexes so that you could follow along. And the city maps probably needed indicators where things where better since it didn't help my players so they gave me a direction and I had to push them to the different locations. Better than nothing, but still. 

They found the first shrine they could find with the unicorn rabbit. One of the easier shrines actually since there isn't a death trap that instantly kills you. But my sisters are still too stupid to understand the riddles. I had the floor plan for this shrine printed out with the different symbols and such and they stare at it for 10 minutes and then roll enough to get the answer from Destinova (my DMPC). They didn't understand it was the floor, but thought it was a wall mural... even though I clearly stated it was the floor. At least they are getting a bit paranoid. They avoid being hit by one of the axes since I rolled a 1 so it jammed the mechanism. They got the cube and left.

Next stop was the destroyed encampment belong to the Company of the Yellow Banner where they found the note about them getting into the tomb, hinting again about the cubes and such. Then they found the destroyed wagon where they notice the stone below it where they can copy the old Omu text so that they don't have to use a spell to comprehend languages every shrine or so. We end here since its around 15:00 and my sisters doesn't wanna end up in a shrine to figure it out again or in a fight. Good for them since next up is the colosseum and the fight with the King of Feathers. So I can prepare that so we have a great battle!

A DnD tale: Tomb of Annihilation - The Oracle (Part 2)

 

"Granddaughter, it's a foreign mirror

Taken from the jungle by crime!"

The adventure continues. After two of my sisters mentioned that they thought the adventure should be shorter I had to counter that with more setting up the game. So I spent a whole Sunday rolling dice to simulate the first 27 days for them to reach Orolonga and let me tell you, I haven't rolled that bad in ages. Several days where lost for my rolling of a 1 on the navigation skill forcing them to crash the boats in the rivers getting stuck, getting lost in the jungle and actually causing a tropical storm. And then I found out that I've mixed up Nangalore with Orulonga so I had to backtrack and guess how the travels would have gone. AND I missed that you are supposed to roll for morning, midday and night for encounters. So they only got attacked one night by ghouls. Which they handled with ease with a fireball and some use of the light sword. 

Anyway, they reach Orulonga and has to figure out the secret of the ziggurat. They won't even climb the first stairs. They look for footprints and since they haven't meet Artus Cimber and Dragonbait so I have them being with the naga, so they of course have gone trough the trails. And since Freja have talk with plants, they find out they took the black and purple orchids without meeting the Chwinga. So they do the same, to the flowers great terror, and clears the first trail. The second trail they actually begin doing things the book have foreseen, like Immeral first trying to bypass it by running up the stairs, followed by a shadow step. Both fail. And now they look around and find the second Chwinga that have the red feather so they go back and search around to find them and then run up the second pair of stairs, clearing the second trail.

This time they encounters the POISONOUS snakes that block the path. After trying to charm them to no avail, they look for another Chwinga, find the one that eats the snake and crawls past the other snakes. And then they have reached the top and enters the shrine to speak to the guardian naga inside. Artus and Dragonbait is already here asking about Mezro, the lost city and they get the answer that it will only appear again if Ras Nsi, the general of ancient time is gone and his wherabout is in Omu. Then it's our heroes turn and they are told that the rod piece they are looking for is in Omu and where that it. They also get the location for the crashed airship the Star Goddess. Since it's fairly close they decide to continue towards it. It takes them 10 days to reach it after some time getting lost in the jungle and as they approach they are called by the captain of the airship for help. Below the crashed airship a couple of ghouls are lurking so Destinova throws a fireball while Artus and Freya shots arrows on the two lasting ghouls. Freja, Dragonbait, Artus, Hope and Immeral climbs up to help the survivors down, but the trees begin rumbling and three girallon zombies comes rushing through the jungle on the path to fight our heroes. Hope rushes first and uses her sun sword to burn the first girallon. And then it makes it's five attacks, which she wasn't prepared for. Then Artus just takes off his glove and uses a cone of cold on all three, killing the first one and badly injuring the other two. Dragonbait follows with an attack with his sword, killing the other one with two strikes. Then Immeral attacks the final one until it falls down and die.

After rescuing the crew of the ship they start fixing the ship up. And for two days straight they have a tropical storm so they mend the blimp during that, after 4 days the crew have regained their strength after being without of food for several days and they fix it up and 10 days later sails back to Port Nyanzaru to fix the last bits, bunker up with more rations and bug salves. And here we ended the session. Next time they either get to Omu or get drifted out to other areas of interest. Someone mentioned the ideas of fighting the red dragon near the Dwarven area, the Terrorfolk home at Firefinger and obviously the gargoyles attack around Omu. Need to find some damn rules about aerial combat though. 

Dragonsbane: The Awakening (Drakar och Demoner: Uppvaknandet)

 

Why does it have to be spiders?

As noticed, I haven't been playing games lately, but reading books. Finished up reading the collection on H.P. Lovecraft after 5 years. Interesting concepts in his stories and such, but man, it was hard reading at times. So afterwards I read through this book that is part of the new release of Sweden's own Dungeons and Dragons game, Dragonbane or Drakar och Demoner (aka Dragons and Demons, most speculate that direct translation would have been to close to actual Dungeons and Dragons). I actually bought it since it had an adventure for the game in it and I actually wanted a book in Swedish since otherwise it's just english books like Dragonlance, Jules Verne or Tolkien I have laying around and Tolkien is the only one I have some Swedish versions of, but new translation with the worse names and such. 

Still, this book was written by E.P. Uggla and follows the adventure of Tamea, a 13 year old girl that one days awakens when her tattoo begins shining and causing pain on her. She believes it has something to do with her older brother that have the same tattoo, but it causes her father to decide on marrying her away so she leaves on her own.

Also on the adventure is Verven, an half-elf, half-orc that lives on stealing from passersby that gets caught in a swamp and the assassin mallard Gizma that are looking for revenge on Tamea's brother for killing her assassin clan. So basically, no one trust each other and there is snark to go around for this group. They have to fight elf-ear collectors, spiders and avoid Tamea's bodyguard that looks to bring her back home. I enjoyed it for what it was. Easy to read and a fun adventure with the right emotional payoff in the end. Worst offender for the book is that it pretty much ends on a cliffhanger and a couple unanswered questions so I guess I have to lookout for a continuation. 

Well, that's for the story, the real worst offender (and the reason I had to write about it and get it of my chest) is that the language they use at times is atroucious to my sensibilities. Probably hard to express in english, but take for example in the early chapters they talk about "tjejer", which means girls, no problem, the problem is that is a loanword from Scandi-Romani from the 20th Centuary. It's a fantasy setting, it breaks my immersion and they used it twice. And I know it's nitpicking but I can't stop thinking about it. Another example is that they peppered the text with english words as is. One instance Verven thinks about how stupid this is that he is walking to the Vale of Mists with the exact quote (except where I censured it, gotta think of the kids) "Dimmornas f***ing dal". What are you doing? They also throw in "Fine" and "Yes"! It's probably fine in a roleplaying game table, but I'm trying to get immersed in this world and english words that come out of nowhere is kinda bothersome! I know it's petty since there is only 5 times this happened in a 200-page book, but it bothers me! Not only me, I read a blog reviewer also mentioning it!

Doesn't help that I've been listening to Prancing Pony Podcast that talks about Tolkien's world in the Silmarillion and so on, and they stress that language came first and then the world. Language forms the world and therefore the world is so easy to get lost in since it's coherent. Here they break that immersion with the language. Adding insult to injury a long time ago I myself tried writing my own fantasy world and books around it and I got stuck at the language. I deduced that since I wanted different languages, but since I wasn't a linguist I made some choices. The Gods would have closer to latin since I equated them with Romans both in dominance and appearance while the elven kind was closer to ancient greek and philosophies and such. Names reflected that and names for places and such could have different names, but the same meaning depending on who said it and so on. It makes the world more alive, and this is just the cheapest way you do it. And they didn't bother here! Hell, I began looking for different names for elves since it wouldn't jive with the languages and therefore I made them different from the elves of Tolkien or Warcraft or whatever, the language creates the world. It's the same reason there's this discourse in social media (in February 2024) about the yellow paint in game design. In visual media the design creates the world and when someone paints the ledges yellow without reason it breaks immersion. I so have the pulse on the world 1 year after the discourse that will probably die away within a week! Better throw in a Cerveza Cristal reference while I'm at it!

What a strange time on social media

Now, I ended listening to an interview with the author on youtube and she explained that apparently she had very little time for writing the book, and maybe its just an effect of that, and I can understand that. Still, one might have thought that one of the biggest book publishers in Sweden might have someone proofread and actually question some choices, but I guess the cash needs to flow and we don't have time for that (or afford it). Who cares about quality, right? She also mentioned that the second book is on it's way in august 2024 and she had more time writing it this time. Maybe it gets fixed, but since it's part of the first book that's part of the world now I guess! Yeah, 3 paragraphs for 5 words in a 200-page book might be overkill for my part. Then again, reading about the Dragonlance books (which I'm reading at the moment) someone mentioned that the harshest critics seemed to have the thoughts of "I could have written that", and truly, it might just be jealousy.

Drakborgen - Bokspelsäventyret (DungeonQuest - The Book Game Adventure)

The greatest fantasy board game Sweden ever produced! Now in book form!

Haven't been playing that much video games since Christmas 2023 (it's February as of writing, so my usual video game fatigue). So instead I've been reading books and one book I got was the choose your own adventure of the board game DungeonQuest (or Drakborgen, aka Dragon's Keep) that was released in 2023 and I got my hand on this January. Written by one of the original designers of the board game, Dan Glimne. Basically you play as an unnamed swordsman (or woman) going to the dragon's keep and trying to get your hand on some treasure and survive the ordeal.

Sounds easy enough, you generate a character, grabs some dice and head in. Dubbed my character Tyrell the Swift after my Dungeons and Dragons Bard I used in my characters backstory back in 2012... I'm feeling rather old all of a sudden. Anyway, we go in. Enter one of the towers, pass a door (since I know about the traps from the board game I stay away from there) and sees two dark elves guarding a passage, trying to ward me off. Offence is the best defence so I attack and does rather good. I continue and suddenly I'm attacked by invisible bees (?) that stung me to death. That was that, The Keep 1 - Tyrell the Swift 0.

Tyrell the Swift the second went the same way, but lets try the door this time and... Tyrell gets his hand pierced. Knew it. Well, let's continue down this corridor and.... fail the luck check by 1 and gets swallowed by a trap door, killed again. The Keep 2 - Tyrell the Swift 0

Well, Tyrell the Swift the third went back and was more lucky to notice the trap door and jump over it. Meets a mountain troll I quickly dispatches without taking a hit.  Entered a big room with a statue. A red jewel adorned the head of the statue and greed begins to flow within me... but I decide to continue. Fight a though skeleton. Fall through some stairs, find a key that I use to open a secret door that takes me to the treasure chamber! Third try baby! Of course it's Tyrell the Swift the Third that gets there!

I grab 500 gold coins and decide to get out of here. Runs through a corridor, I hear a scream at one end of a room, decides I better go on the opposite side and just runs for it. Well, I'm prompted to guess two numbers, roll the die and one of them shows up. Immediately a spike pierces the foot, the torch goes out and the character just gives up. Dying in darkness. I had to look it up and had I just rolled another number I would have gotten out. The Keep 3 - Tyrell the Swift 0.

That was fun, now I got a craving to sit with the book and chart it in excel to find the most efficient way (or maybe the one with highest probability to survival). I maxed dexterity and choose a rather high luck since I knew that in the board game it was important (apparently it didn't help Tyrell the Swift the second). I also tried to map it out with pen and paper, but after some rooms it wasn't as descriptive about if it was left or right or such things, probably mirroring the fact at the character getting more lost in the keep as the day goes on. There's 500 passages in the book and there is some fun things with the numbers like, the treasure chamber is pretty close to the middle of the book (you have gone halfway through the adventure) and that if you loose a fight against a monster, you get to passage 13 (the unlucky number) and the adventure ends. 

Only exist in Swedish as far as I can see while writing this (February 2024) so if you can't read Swedish though luck. If you can read it's rather interesting. There's also pictures in the book, mostly taken from the different cards of the games. As mentioned, the author Dan Glimne have added things that doesn't appear in the original game, like the statue for example. Haven't played these kind of book games before so I can't compare it to anything. I don't know if the character sheet and die use is that common with these kind of books, but it make it more authentic to a DnD game at least. A pity that you can't change weapon since sword is a bit of a cliché and you can't roleplay as most of the characters from the game. So go and read it if you get the chance.

A DnD Tale: Tomb of Annihilation - Across the Great Sea (Part 1)

 

It's no mine, it's a tomb!

And so the adventure continues. Having found the vault of dragons and getting the hand on the second piece of the rod of law they have been hooked in by Volo to travel to Chult in order to find another treasure in the jungles. They spend three days preparing the departure, getting passage with one of the traveling circus ships and loading it with Volo's books he plans to sell in Port Nyanzaru (which my middle sister realized means something like cat ape which probably is a reference to the Tibaxi catpeople who lives there). Parker has no intention of following them so he sends word to Candlekeep to his college Destinova Blackstar, forest gnome wizard that arrives to Waterdeep on the day of departure. They travel for 21 days across the ocean until the ocean where they face of the giant dragon turtle Aremag who guards the bay, who they are able to convince that they don't have any money, but he warns them that he will have an eye on them when they leave, IF they leave. They then began looking at what they had an they realized they have something like 7 000 gold each... oops!

They enter port and finds the quiet inn and see the bill board with the guides and have to decide where to go. They spend the next day gathering information on what is going on in Chult. They find the tale of the missing airship the most interesting since they see a way to get out of Chult while avoiding the dangers of Aremag. They get provisions to survive 60 days in the jungle, 2 canoes, insect repellent and four rain catchers to make the travels bearable. They also learn that they need a charter from the flaming fist in the fort up north. They decide to head there by themselves without guides since they want to save in on the fees for the guides... I told you they had 7 000 gold each right? Unbelievable cheapskates! The trip to the fort goes rather smoothly really. The only incident is when Destinova looses his rain catcher when a group of flying monkeys fly by them. They get to the fort, pay for the charter and learn that the flaming fist takes a cut of half the treasures they find which spurs them to get the airship even more as well as push away some guides since they fear they will snitch on them. 

So they head back to port, this time experiencing extreme heats causing them exhaustion several times, they find a trio of sea hags near a canoe trying to lure people near the water to drown them. Our heroes hit them with a mage hand in order to see if they really where dead, which they weren't so after that they have been haunted by the canoe over the rest of the days, so from now on the sea hags is after them. They find a tibaxi hunter that tell them to get a guide, a chwinga spirit steals Hope's crowbar and leaves a couple of nuts in exchange. They pass by a group of lizard folk and some red wizard group and a couple of dinosaurs. They only got lost twice while traveling. After a tour of 22 days they have returned to Port and decides to go with the guide Eku after Shalida gave them strange vibes. Which might speed along the game. She will probably hint them towards Nangalore and the spirit Naga and from there straight to Omu, unless they first wants the wreck of the Star Goddess. And here ended the first session.

Overall, I will probably use the excuse of the guide to heighten the encounter DC to 18-19 instead of 16 since it happens to often otherwise for such small things (especially when they don't need to level up since they already are level 9). Another thing is that I got the dungeon master screen for the game and it speeds the game along really well. A miss in accessories on the other hand seems to be the game mat maps you could buy. I thought that would help and avoid using the map in the book, but hex grid is really hard to see making it hard to count the hexes and they are a bit smaller so the little screw that represents the party is just a bit to big, but not with the map that came with the book. The city maps on the other hand in the set works really well. But it's the hex map that I would wish worked better. So if they find the airship and fix it I might let them turn it upside down so that they can see everything. But I also assume they will go the airway towards Omu and fight the gargoyles guarding the city.

A DnD Tale - Waterdeep: Dragon's Heist - Wizards In Winter (Finale)

 

*SNAP*

And so begins the finale of Waterdeep: Dragon's Heist. They continue from where they last left off in this interdimensional mansion belonging to Manshoon. The first thing that happens is that the Manshoon doppelgänger melts into water. They begin raiding the place finding a room with an ice coffin, a library where they pilfer a collection of books they plan to sell and the sleeping quarter of all the dead guys where they pilfer all the items. And then they meet the big guy himself. They try to persuade him to give them the skull, I won't waste 2 months of preparations so after some awkward laughter from all involved the battle starts.

They begin in good mood as Immeral begins the charge and begins hitting him... and he just hit with a dirty 20. When they realise that they went "oh no". Then it was his turn. And I changed my way playing since we usually play it mechanically, you do this and this happens. This time I described it more, the air vibrated with unknown forces and I asked Hope's player to roll a d8 to see which character would get the blunt of the spell. She of coursed rolled a 7 which meant Parker, their cleric and only one that could raise them if they died. I cheated a bit before the game since none of the players had counterspell which meant that they couldn't stop the incoming spell, Power Word Kill, that instantly kills a person below 100 HP. So I gave Parker counterspell so they wouldn't be completely left to chance. So described that he felt something grabbing his heart and then I told them about this level 9 spell. This time they went "Oh No". And then I described Parker raising his hammer summoning the symbol of Moradin as white light as a ray of green light shot like a laser toward Parker. I asked Hope to roll a d20 and told them that to save Parker they needed a 19. Now it was "OH NO!". She rolled a 19 on the die. Parker was saved.

With that I had Parker using Death Ward on the players while Manshoon shot lightning bolts on them and the others tried to take him down. Since he was alone they wouldn't have a problem and after 3 rounds he was pretty much dead, but with the DM Fiat I let him break his staff over his knees, teleport away and sending a shock wave across the room that did 160 HP. Would have killed everyone if I hadn't Death Warded them and Parker rolled rather good on his Dex save having something like 5 HP left. Even if they are overleveled for most encounters that thaught them hopefully that they can still die. They rested up, leveled up to level 9, searched the rest of the mansion and found a ledger with names in it, Manshoons spell book and the skull. They got the rings from the dead henchmen and return to Waterdeep, bluffing their way out of the towers and back to town. They get the rest of the skulls and uses them to get to the Vault of Dragons. 

I sped through here as well by describing much what happened. As they opened a door Parker gets charmed by a Fresco so he can't leave... so Freya got to use countercharm for the first time, singing a rendition of Hellfire from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame. They get to the second floor and the three bridges. As they cross the middle bridge Parker, Hope and Immeral jumped over while Freya rolled a 1 and fell down in the hole. Immeral, being now able run up walls jumped after her while Hope threw a rope toward them. Immeral misses, but Freya is able to grab his leg while Hope and Parker pulled them up. They get in, solve the puzzles and get to the vault and meet the dwarf protector. And since they only want a piece of a staff they get it and leave... and Freya once again rolls a 1 on the jump, and this time Parker hangs from the other side. Hope pulls Parker while Immeral, again tries to grab Freya... and misses again. Freya has to save herself and throws a rope toward Hope and Parker is able to roll a 20 to stop Hope from falling backwards and let Freya do a pendulum swing with the rope so that they all arrives on the right side of the bridge. 

They leave and on the way out they are stopped by Jarlaxle and his troops as he arrives on order of the Open Lord of Waterdeep, They give the spellbook to them, they get 50 000 gold from the Open Lord and then they leave. They go back to the pub and goes to bed. they have a dream of Mishka within his spider cocoon as they see his face in it. The next day they get visitors that need payment so they loose 20 000 gold at once, begin selling everything and as they open the pub again all the people they met are their until Volo comes by with a treasure map to an jungle island where they will find the third piece of the rod of rule. The End!

We will continue in February of 2024. Maybe it overstayed it's welcome, but I believe it more has to do with not playing as much as we did before the third sister joined. Now it might be 9 times a year when we got something like 12-18 sessions a year before. Had we played more often I might have went through with playing all dungeons (we skipped Jaraxle) and maybe have more pub adventures, but now it was to get the story going. Need to read through Tomb of Annihilation and create a new DMPC to help them around, don't know if a wizard, warlock or ranger is the thing to go. Need magic to balance the team, but a ranger might be easier to explain in game... of course, reading through the book it's probably use the guides mentioned, let the players make the decision. And now the final parting words of the session:

Will our heroes find the third piece before the Spider-Demon is released?

Will they survive in the Jungles of Chult!

Will Immeral find a were-Tiger to be bitten by?

Find out in "Tomb of Annihilation", unknown time, same blog!

A Dnd Tale - Waterdeep: Dragon's Heist - Castle Between Dimensions

 

A bit more purple and it might be Manshoon's place!

Continuing the story, I've went away from the original idea to let them fight through the last two lairs. Mostly because I'm beginning to bore on the setting, after two years and nothing happening pretty much does it for me. So I scrapped the Jarlaxle chapter and let them stalk out the docks. They get the submarine and discovers that the main circus ship has something attached to it so they intend to sneak aboard by putting a boat atop their submarine as a decoy. They go to the fisherman that took them to the dragon in the bay and begin to haggle with him to buy his boat. While Freya and the fisherman haggle Immeral tries to help the negotiations by poking a hole in the boat in order get him to lower the price. His spear is stuck on the boat and as he tries to get the spear out Freya begins to raise her voice to sound really upset so that the fisherman is distracted. Immeral gets the spear of the boat by rolling a 1 and throwing it into the water and falling in himself. In the end they get it for 200 gold and dinner for seven.

They then spend the rest of the week modifying the ship to have an air lock to their submarine. As they  finish and have a day off, they sail out in the night and as they approach the ship a fog appears in the bay. Hope that steers the contraption sees that the submarine beneath the ship detach and going toward the docks, so they change plan and follow. They sneak near the sub and as it resurface three drows emerges and goes toward an ally. Our heroes split up with Parker and Freya hiding at the entrance of the ally while Immeral and Hope goes up on the roof and watches the group. The drows have the silver skull and leaves it in the middle on the ground together with a letter and then disappears. Immeral, seeing no one jumps down to get the skull, but an invisible person uses Timestop, picks up the skull and appears before him. It's Laerel Silverhand, the open lord of Waterdeep. After a bit of talking where it becomes clear that they just looks for the part of the rod and not the 500 000 dragons, she gives them the key and the information where to find the last key, in the Kolat Towers. 

They hide the skull back at their pub and then they try to enter the towers. They use a charge of dispel magic to pass through the shield around them. Hope investigates the windows and openings and tell the others where the people are. They decide to use the same tactic as they used in the Xenathar lair, just walk in. Freya leads them and roll high enough that the first group just accept it and takes them to the teleport circle in order to send them to a castle between dimensions where their leader is. As they arrive they don't care about the voice that tells them to wait for the master to arrive so they walk in to the next room and start looking around. The Master arrives and they just begin bluffing as much as possible, until Ustrul Floxin appear, the person they fought back at the Graalhound villa. He screams at them, sets of an alarm and a battle starts as from every door henchmen of the Zhentarim appears. A tough battle, but they win and with that have reached level 9, which have to wait till the next long rest.

A DnD Tale - Waterdeep: Dragon's Heist - Cult of Personality

 

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long years
Stole million man's soul an faith

So the day was finally here. It was the big midsummer festival and the Cassalenters have pulled no stops, hiring our heroes to cater food and drink to the masses. What our heroes didn't know was that the Cassalanters intended to kill 100 people and sacrifice 1 000 000 gold in order to release their children from a contract that would have turned them into monsters. So they show up at the party and make the excuse that they are checking the sound in the rooms for a performance. So they go around and check it all. They don't read the books or such so they don't get the clues, they don't attempt to get through the office of Vittorio so they can't get any keys and even though they find boxes filled with red robes and golden masks they don't know what they will do with them. They find a hidden dress belonging to a noble lady, but don't look for her. They are recognised by a guest whom they don't recall (which they now think is the Black Viper, but is actually a doppelganger from the Yawning Portal). They at least finds the poison Midnight tears and know what they do, they don't connect that the poison is in the lady's chambers and the party has an ending at midnight.

They find the hidden attic, but can't get in since they don't have the keys. So they go back down and through the cellar and finds the hidden vault that leads down to the Temple of Asmodeus. They hear chanting and goes down a staircase and finds the crypt of the Cassalanter. They find the tomb of the former Lord and as they speak with him he gives them a magical armour and mace, which only Parker can carry and use. They also notice the bearded devils standing guard so they go up again and find the balcony overlooking the chamber with 30 praying cultists and a statue of Asmodues carrying the golden skull they are looking for. They get Parker to use Control Water so that the river that runs behind them rises and drowns or sweeps away all the people for 10 minutes so that they can get the skull and then destroy the statue and fire beneath it. They at least left the golden skull replica they fixed in the last session.

And then they goes back to the party not to raise suspicion, says farewell to the hosts, toasts with them and then returns home without a care in the world. They hide the skull in the tower and then goes to sleep. As midnight strikes they awake to horrible pain as the poison course through their veins. In the morning they hear that over 100 people are missing and they suddenly realise that they forgot about the poison and what it was supposed to do. In the evening Vincent Trench arrives and gives them a hint about the whereabouts of the Jade skull. It belongs to Jarleaxle, the drow mercenary leader and the place where they know about drows is in the docks where they stopped the drow assassin. And with that the session ended. 

In my mind I had this great tale where they started investigating the Cassalanter mansion and would find this different clues, like the journal hinting them about the search for the treasure and why, breaking into the study and finding the Black Viper maybe giving them hints about the Asmodeus activities and the real truth behind their recent fortunes... and some clues about Jarlaxle hinting them toward the right place without me using Vincent as a crutch. I was gonna tuck their heartstrings about the transformed children and the desperate pleads from the parents, but alas. At least I had to use all my things to create maps in order to cover the temple and the mansion floors.

A DnD Tale: Waterdeep - Dragon's Heist - The Beast of Many Eyes

 

You can lie for yourself and your minions

You can claim that you haven't doth qualm

But you can never run from or hide what you done from the eyes!

So the battle with Xanathar continues, they have him bloodied and after two turns he is passed his health, but I make him escape instead since he is a bit important to the world. They dive into the fish tank to get the chest out and inside they find the stone of Galoor. They follow a tunnel out, grabs the statue of the gnome that lead them here and bluff their way out with being on statue duty and putting it in the room with statues. After that getting back and do their days till they have attuned with stone, after writing a contract between the three of them (Ulf have left since my sister had a fallout with the player at work) sharing the treasure between themselves, Parker and an extra fund making it an even 100 000 split.

Freja is chosen to use it and gets in contact with the aboleth Galoor. She is bestowed with another cantrip spell, but she also have an an aura of death killing any plants she touches with her necrotic touch. Galoor shows her where the door is and that they need three skulls to open the door. Freya and Hope goes to the door which they find below the theatre. They don't get any clues there so they go to Vincent Trench if he can help them about the skulls. He knows the gold skull with emerald eyes since the gold is something the Cassalanter is into so it is there, they pay him 100 gold to look for the other two.

They get to the Cassalenter and gets to serve at the Founder Party at Midsummer which is two weeks away. And there we pretty much ends. Not much this time, but that is due to the players pretty much skipping the Guild dungeon. Next session wont be until September 2023 (meaning when this is released we have gone forward some sessions). 

A DnD Tale - WaterDeep: Dragon's Heist - 20.000 Fathoms Below the Sea

We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine!

As of writing it's the last days of April and spring is finally appearing after the longest Winter... or more accurately the most winters in one winter. It was just snowing two weeks back. So what better than playing through yet another dnd session. I planned it all out for us to dive into the Xanathar's Guild and retrieve the stone of Galorr. But my player's decided to side-track. So Hope and Freya headed to the harbour and the Apparatus of Kwalish that Glindra left so they could investigate the harbour. The apparatus is pretty much a submarine in the form of a lobster. After getting in and figuring out the controls (and almost submerging it with the hatch open) they head out for a look. On their way they are suddenly attacked by the giant shark Obliteros, with the obvious appropriate music:

It becomes an epic battle as the two submariners duke it out with the shark. They attack it with their claws and tries to grapple it while the shark gets loose and tries to bite the submarine. During the fight Freya rolls a 1 on the attack so what's more fun than destroying the lever controlling the attack so they are stuck on grappling the shark that begins dragging them down into the depths. Hope brings out some pliers from her equipment bag to use as a substitute lever and and is able to damage the shark so that it reaches bloodied. And I already decided that the shark is smart enough to leave the prey behind if it it is too much of a challenge. The sub is a bit beat up so they head back and get Parker to fix it the next morning. Which he does with a mending spell and some elbow grease to bang his hammer on it to even out the bite marks from the shark.

The next day they begin thinking about heading out again, but to speed on the plot I return with Vincent Trench that have stalked out Xanathar's hideout and found the entrance and given them a map to use. He also warns them that Xanathar is dangerous and only listen to someone called Syglar. They head down and enters the place. Everywhere is blinking stone eyes watching their every move. In the first room they find a hidden door that they carefully open and finds a hallway lined with stone statues of different people and an insane gnome jester laughing and cartwheeling all around. They all say no and close the door. They look at their map and realise that that secret door is probably the best way to go around so they cast pass without a trace and tries to sneak up on the gnome. Freja approaches him and he's just glad to see someone, he will show her to the boss if she can answer his riddle. 

The answer to the riddle is laughter, but she get hang up on the "In Slaughter I rest" and we have to pause the game to explain it for her. She got the answer but interpreted that part to mean that if you massacre people it isn't fun and took forever to get that laughter is part of the word slaughter. And then he show her the way to Xanathar introducing her to a drow with a grell and then bringing them to the sanctum. There they see a dwarf feeding a fish in a bowl and hearing a voice complaining he can't tune to the stone since he don't dare untune to his magic rings.  She reads the dwarfs mind but don't get that it isn't Xanathar, but just a minion. So I reveal him as he turns the jester to stone (since he grown tired of the gnome). Freja begins playing for Syglar to keep Xanathar in the good mood while the others with the pass without a trace tries to sneak up on him to backstab him... don't think that would work and I'm really suspicious over that ability, but they are in for it now. Freja tries to mind read Xanathar to see where the stone is, but is blocked by his ring of mind shielding which I interpret must warn him that somethings happening... on the other hand, his gaze would mean she couldn't use magic so whatever. The battles starts anyway.

And it turns out to be the toughest yet. They try to attack him, but with an AC 18 they have a hard time hitting, and since I use a legendary action after every attack in retaliation I'm finally doing some damage to them. Immeral gets hit by a Death Ray that takes 45 damage. Freja and Hope avoid their disintegration rays while Ulf get caught in a telekinetic ray and lifted to the roof. Ott, the dwarf, grab Syglars bowl and runs over to the larger fish tank and dumps him in their and then run off. Freja talks to the coral plants in the tank to get them to catch and kill Syglar and then puts up an illusion that Syglar actually is dead to trick Xanathar... which just makes him pissed, but since the illusion dissipates at his gaze he just gets even more mad. Hope gets paralyzed by an eye beam and the floor turns into goo as the lair itself acts to stop the intruders. And here we pretty much had to end the session since others had to do stuff, they might have finished if they didn't try to use the submarine.

It still was a fun session and it feels like they actually affects the story. Thinking about letting Xanathar run away if he gets bloodied, but we will see what happens. I think they would appreciate the EXP since it's a lot. Need to see if there is some magic items that allows long distance conversation (I think I heard about it, but it could have been some homebrew thing).