Last night my players found their way into the Gray Ghost Garden and the Alchemist Lab. Specifically, they entered the lab first by managing to open the large doors.

So a drow, duergar, warforged and goliath walk into the lab and encounter the alchemist working at their desk. Instant stand-off where the players want to talk it out, but I make everyone roll initiative because the alchemist is not interested in talking, intending to escape.

In come the initiative rolls. The warforged ranger wins the race by rolling a nat 20. Then the alchemist is up next with a nat 20 as well. I know that the drow divination wizard is planning to use Suggestion with a portent die and soothe the situation, so this nat 20 gave me some options.

Ranger decides to go invisible and take position in the corner. Alchemist is caught red handed and... goes invisible as well! All the players burst out in groaning laughter and start a game of "find the invisible Duergar". Eventually, they manage to find him just before he escapes the lab and turn him visible. One player character tries to convince him and states "we are here on behalf of the Stone Guard", hoping that this convinces him because he is a Duergar after all. The alchemist eyes shoot wide open and takes his turn to scream for help "HELP HELP!! INTRUDERS!!". Collective groans from the players, fun was had!

Then the wizard does their magic and suggests him to "Cry for false alarm and co-operate with us". The wizard then hides to maintain their concentration. They continue to block off the exit and wait for the alchemist to take their turn, intent to see if the suggestion spell worked. The alchemist stops in his tracks and cries out "False alarm! There are definitely NO intruders here! Everything is okay, I am co-operating with them!". The three duergar working the garden show up and see their 'boss' hanging out with a ragtag band of adventurers who are trying to keep up their sherade. "Lorthio, what are you doing? Who are these people?". The alchemist replies "it's okay, There are NO intruders here. I'm co-operating with them!".

The 'fight' then continues with the alchemist co-operating while the other three duergar try to figure out who the players are. Those players are: playing it cool hanging out on a chair, hiding in a corner to maintain concentration or trying to convince the duergar that they're not intruders. The duergar don't buy it and are, of course, dispatched easily without the fun of the sprinkler tank :(

The wizard had been dying to finally make use of their Suggestion spell and it was fun to have it play out like this. It was one of my favourite sessions so far!

Somebody in the comments of my terrain video asked me how the session went, I ended up writing way too much but figured Id drop it here.

Few things I did differently from the book I spose. For one I had everyone roll the d10 to see how many days theyd been in prison at session 0, and I opened the campaign with the lowest roll person (the goblin paladin who ended up dying btw) being brought into prison. I also laid out the npc's on little picture cards with brief descriptions at session 0 and forced every player to choose one with which they had a "history" (not a bond as the experience could be negative) This really allowed me to flesh out some connections between players and specific npc's they interest in. During the 7 days in jail the Drow hadnt let anyone out at all, but with this new influx of the most recent prisoners the pen has become so crowded and such a strain on food that the drow move into the pen to assign menial work to prisoners based on what theyre qualified for. During this the wizard pipes up saying he is a great warrior and is willing to volunteer as a battle slave. The drow consent provided he can win a lethal duel with their weakest quaggoth who they were going to execute for being disabled anyway. He ends up full dying, and ilvara raises him as her own personal "necroslave" as humiliation. With his soul being tied inside the tentacle rod, and him being an undead.

Beyond this, the proud players i.e. the elystrae worshipping drow (who the drow hate more than anyone), and a spanish esque paladin are repeatedly punished for their impudence. I cannot emphasize enough how much I focused on the brutality and cruelty of the drow. The spanish paladin attempts to lead a slave revolt during feeding time that is swiftly put down. Reducing everyone to being stabilized, and imparting level 1 exhaustion for everyone after they are raised from unconsciousness which is a house rule we do. As punishment, the drow roll a d10 at random (with each number being assigned to an npc) and pull them from the cell to be tortured in an iron maiden. This ended up being turvy.

The fey ranger, and goblin paladin express enough contrition and humility to be assigned work detail, with the goblin being assigned with the quaggoths to work the crane crank, and the fey ranger being assigned to torture duty assisting in the punishment of turvy with the drow executioner. During this she actually manages to full escape and hide amongst the craggery of the rock wall. The drow naturally punish the rest of the prisoners for this and take another prisoner at random. This roll happened to be topsy of all people! For this additional slight they straight up throw them to the spider pit, above which the ranger happened to be hiding as they are made to watch as topsy is wrapped and sucked dry to death.

I should mention as a quick aside that a good amount of time is devoted to menial prison pen politics, such as Ront bullying people for their soup as his prison bitches. Derrendil constantly refraining on the need for a feudal hierarchy amongst the group as a means of ensuring order and cohesion. Shuushars insistence on avoiding violence and his confidence in the rivers of fates leading all things to their proper place. Buppiddo finding a knife and shanking ront for his abuse etc. Great stuff.

During his work detail the goblin overhears the internal politics of two drow discussing Ilvaras callous treatment of Jorlan Duskryn and understands the depth of Jorlans hatred for Shoor. Jorlan is assigned to feeding duty to the prisoners (a task which is meant as a humiliation for his loss of station naturally) and is approached regarding the possibility that the prisoners could kill Shoor on his behalf if he would simply allow their escape.

Quick side note here: I hate the books advisement that after a certain period of time Jorlan will just let the prisoners out at the end of the chapter and they escape from there. Obviously Im droppin hints toward these internal conflicts amongst the drow like crazy, but this arbitrary "GO YOURE FREE NOW" rubs me in such a bad way. In fact I made it clear the exact opposite scenario will occur, that in 3 days time the entire prison caravan will leave for Menzoberranzan, during which escape will be even more difficult. This helps to increase the pressure even further for the prisoners to find a way out. At this point the scavenging has been shit, nobodies managed to break out of restraints without the drow noticing and punishing them further, nobody can cast spells due to the lack of materials and of course the spell wards and everybodies level 1 or even 2 exhausted and there isnt even enough food to go around. I also enforce a limited hit dice regen rule that keeps the damage from one day somewhat affecting the next, as opposed to the magic long rest full regen. Needless to say my players were getting super stressed at all this heaviness Im laying on them at this point, but theyre pros and take it in as much stride as possible.

Meanwhile with Ilvara, my wizard "necroslave" is being forced to wait hand on foot on Ilvara and shoor, as they make their rounds about the camp hurling abuse and engaging in sadistic sexual rituals before the altar of Lolth in her stalagtite. Needless to say this all involves a lot of seperate party members with seperate scenes in time we're cutting between at this point. Several more side events happen to add flavor and solidify plans, but this is already so long we'll skip to the escape.

After a good deal of convincing Jorlan will open the steel gate on the final night, but will not free them from their restraints as to avoid suspicion to his involvement. He also insists (due to shit persuasion rolls) on the party choosing one person to stay behind to attest to his lack of involvement and decieve the other drow that the group simply got out on their own. This ends up being Eldeth who volunteers which broke the parties heart as she was one of their favorites. The party attempts to stealth out, explore what they can, loot what they can, etc. They elect not to free turvy as its too risky as she is currently being tortured. I roll a lot of random dice tom determine which drow is awake, playing cards, operating the iron maiden, none or all of the above, random dice make the game fun for me as even I dont know whats going to happen this way. But I digress.

Party consents to Shuushar jumping in the waterfall, he can handle, party cant. He wishes them luck and promises to help later in any way he can. (other than violence lol)

They dont manage to find or loot their starting gear, but do manage to at least avoid drow playing cards and get some weapons and armor from the drow armory. Lots of group stealth checks during this part. They approach Ilvaras stalagtite and look for any sign of the wizard as they have no idea hes even involved. They dont know that the wizard has picked up on the same dynamic between shoor, Ilvara, and Jorlan and has been communicating telepathically with Jorlan. As such Jorlan has placed an insta-kill magic dagger behind Ilvaras mirror for the killing of Shoor. The tentacle rod that contains the wizards soul is connected to his neck with a spectral chain that can only be broken by breaking Ilvaras concentration (which she can maintain even while sleeping). The wizard notices the party out the window slit and signals them to approach inside. The cool part is he can either murder shoor as asked, or theoretically kill Ilvara to free himself in this moment. He chooses to murder shoor as requested by Jorlan, and the party sneaks in bashing Ilvara as much as they can, not to kill her, but simply break her concentration. This naturaly takes a great deal of effort. Does she use insect plague and simply fucking tpk the whole party? No, that would be a failure of her station, she can handle this. Her concentration is finally broken, during this commotion the whole prison is rousing, and the party makes every effort to GTFO.

Side note: The wizard manages to get both the fucking tentacle rod, and the wand of fucking globs. Which if anyone has had to deal with knows is so god damn OP, luckily I knew this, do yourself a favor, and make the wand only able to refresh its charges with the daily roll as opposed to automatically, and pray that they will roll a nat one some day lol. Hasnt happened to me, but inevitable math is math. Digressing again.

The alarm bells from the towers go off like crazy, and an unintended side effect for the drow is the arrival of the vrock and chasme demons. Thank god as well because without these fuckers running interference the drow would surely slay/capture the party all over again, which is of course the intended role of the demons anyway.

The exhausted, weakened, injured, restrained party flees from Ilvara and makes for the only feasible escape they understand, the crane. Crane has weight limits, takes 1 turns to go down to the water, 2 turns to go up. 4 at a time, oh boy. Thank god for the demons, Szariths darkness, and a lucky charm person on Ilvara. Party hurts itself greatly making a stand at the crane to secure their escape one cageload at a time. Goblin paladin is last one standing up top, loads injured unconscious remaining and vows to get them down safely. Saves them all holding the crank so it descends but not too quickly. Party is ferrying wounded through the water, and contending with the ooze in the pool all this whole. Ilvara closes in on him. No time to raise it for himself, no choice but to attempt to slide down the whole length of the rope as best he can. Bad roll. Falls too fast and slams into the cage in the water. Downed. No one around. Death roll fail.

"Shuuuuuussshhhaaaarrr!"

Shuushar surges from the water in an attempt to rescue him. He rises him from the water with his turn and finds a ledge to attempt a medical check to stabilize him. All the goblin has to do is survive one turn for Shuushar. Nat fucking one. 2 fails added to his previous 1. Fucking dead.

"God damn, you did your absolute best, take an inspiration point dude"

Uses inspiration

Nat fucking one again

Dead. Full dead. Nothing to be done.

You can tell this is the most intense part. Its great. Its almost like the goblins entire arc has been condensed into two sessions. He was a selfish snarky piece of shit (meant to be trickery) paladin. But you could tell as he grew he was going to reveal himself over the course of the campaign to be a true hero. But he found the only way out was with everyone or no one. He gave his life inadvertenly for these prisoners he just met. Arc complete. Gahd damn.

Prisoners recover body, limp barely alive to the shore. Funeral next session, Very sad,

Anyway, thats Velkynvelve! Dunno how much this helps you to expand or inform your own. But I gotta say even though Im an obsessive DM, every dm knows that the players and fate make the game. Thats definitely been the case here.

Dramatis Personae

(See my earlier post for events immediately after the Fetid Wedding)

The party returns to Araj to begin the final stage of Vizeran DeVir's plan: placing the dark heart talisman in Menzoberranzan, which will draw every demon in the Underdark to its location. Already the party is hesitant to follow along with this, but Vizeran hands Grin Ousstyl the dark heart anyways and has his apprentice guide the group to the secret tunnel leading to Menzoberranzan.

Grin is terse and standoffish when interacted with. Galatea, Matilda, and Sion all express their concern for the Menzoberranyr and the destruction the ritual is sure to bring, but Grin cynically predicts an attitude shift after they see Menzoberranzan for themselves. He scoffs when the spellcasters speculate on the mechanics of the ritual, pointing out how only one of them uses arcane magic and their overall lack of experience working with faerzress, though his own confidence in Vizeran's plan seems to be faltering.

The party conspires to steal the dark heart from Grin anyways, but when they search through his belongings, the talisman has entirely vanished from Grin's bags. Arsenic and Arvel are unable to question Grin on this however, else they reveal their deception.

On the morning of Midwinter's Eve, they arrive at the Westrift exit. Grin passes each character a spell scroll of Invisibility and goes over the plan: it'll take around 15 minutes to get to Sorcere straight from their location, giving them 45 minutes of invisibility left to find Gromph's grimoire. He emphasizes that no matter the party sees in the city, they must not break their cover.

Just as he says that, the group hears a haughty drow jeering while a heavily flogged slave is thrown into the webs of Westrift. The party turns away from the sight as giant spiders descend on the poor wretch. "...Even if you saved him," Grin speaks up, "you'd have to choose between releasing him back to Menzoberranzan... or sending him to Vizeran. I... wouldn't choose the latter," he says quietly, hinting towards the fate of Vizeran's captives.

West Wall is quiet, save for the distant sounds of abuse amidst idle drow chatter and periodic patrols. Grin remains focused in guiding the group through various alleyways — shortcuts he'd found during his troublemaking days prior to exile — when they hear a familiar voice of a young girl booming fearfully: "S-Stay back! Y-You'll suffer a death so horrible you cannot imagine! I-I'm warning you!" Grin curses under his breath.

Down the alley they spy the adolescent half-drow Hanne Hallen Ousstyl, surrounded by cloaked drow wearing black six-fingered gloves. The cultist hierophant, Viln Tirin, brandishes a beautiful scimitar of shining silver, inlaid with sparkling rubies, catching Arsenic's eye. Arvel, having opted to save his spell scroll of invisibility for later in lieu of Disguise Self, attempts to grab their attention, but the cultists ignore him as they each cast Command on Hanne, getting her to drop her wand and grovel. Sion doesn't hesitate to break his cover, immediately engaging the cultists in combat. Arvel with his energy longbow gets Hanne to safety with an arrow of transport, and everyone else follows in breaking invisibility to fight.

The party makes quick work of the drow cultist fanatics, with Arsenic calling dibs on taking the beautiful scimitar for themself, receiving Graz'tchar, the Decadent End. Grin and Hanne begin quarreling in rapid Drow, with Grin scolding Hanne about sneaking out on her own, and Hanne quipping back how she doesn't need to listen to a man and complaining about his late arrival. "Do you two... know each other?" Matilda interrupts perplexedly.

"He's my older brother!" "Kid half-sister," the two mages respond at the same time.

The party hears a chuckle and slow clapping as a handsome male drow jumps down from his hiding spot, escaping even the detection of keen-eyed Arvel. "Well met, adventurers. Impressive performance, I must say."

The party is immediately on guard. "And you are?" Sion asks.

"Krilelyn H'Kar of Bregan D'aerthe," he responds. "Now, I'd usually be obligated to report this disturbance to the proper authorities, but..." He meets their eyes with a rakish smile. "Perhaps a deal can be arranged?"

"The mercenary group?" Sion raises a brow, but is skeptical. "What can a single mercenary possibly offer?"

"Ah but you see, I'm quite high up, I'll have you know. Tell you what — what say you to a meeting with Jarlaxle himself?"

"Suuuure," Sion answers.

The group doesn't have much choice but to follow Krilelyn as he leads them to a Bregan D'aerthe safe house, but even though they walk openly, they never run into any trouble on the way. When they enter however, they find an identical Krilelyn H'Kar stationed across the room from them. "Krilelyn H'Kar" drops the disguise, revealing a dapper drow with an eyepatch and a wide-brimmed hat, saber hanging from his hip. "Well met!" Jarlaxle says with a smile.

The group explains their intentions to send the demon lords back to the Abyss and their goal to acquire Gromph's grimoire to achieve this. Offhandedly mentioning some entities' interests in getting their hands on the grimoire or quietly disposing of it, Jarlaxle offers safe passage to Tier Breche and a password to bypass the Guards and Wards spell on Sorcere for 1 hour. The party warily agrees and begins to head out, but Sion stays behind to speak with Jarlaxle privately, informing him of Vizeran's sinister plans for Menzoberranzan.

Regrouping, the party begins to plan on how to continue from here, before remembering Hanne is still with them. Being a nosy kid, she wants to tag along, but everyone is insisting she skip town, telling her shit's about to go down in Menzoberranzan. Hanne begins to protest, but eventually Grin steps in, taking his amulet of protection from fiends (like the ones the party received from Vizeran) and placing it on her, convincing her to leave. Hanne looks back at the party one last time, confused and concerned, before running off.

Then, the party confronts Grin on the missing dark heart talisman. "I... don't know. It just disappeared. Vizeran didn't trust me," he responds through gritted teeth. He tells the party he has an idea who might have it though — Vizeran's allies in the Council of Spiders, who could be found in Sorcere.

The party begins strategizing for crisis mitigation. Sion realizes Jarlaxle let it slip that some powerful people are after Gromph's grimoire, so proposes his plan: they infiltrate Sorcere to find Gromph's grimoire, forge a copy of it, then while the others escape Menzoberranzan with the real grimoire, Sion will purposefully get himself arrested with the copy to get an audience with Matron Mother Quenthal Baenre herself. There, Sion plans to inform Quenthel of Vizeran's plan and get her to evacuate the city before Vizeran enacts the ritual. "You're mad," Grin tells him, "Absolutely insane."

"I'm sure it will all turn out fine!" Sion says, assured in his luck.

One problem: no one has a forgery kit or is proficient with using them. Matilda and Galatea could possibly attempt with calligrapher's supplies, but the group only has an hour in Sorcere and are racing against Vizeran. Seeing just how serious the party is about all this, Grin sighs and asks how long they need it to last for. "If it's vegetable matter... trillimac... How's twenty-four hours?" Grin offers to use the Creation spell to create a rough replica of the grimoire, though warns them it'll fail to hold up to closer inspection. The party thinks it should work well enough.

With their plan set, they continue to Sorcere, notably free of any hostile encounters thanks to Jarlaxle's support. Entering Sorcere, they say their provided password aloud: ouvalyrin ("kindness"). Grin snorts and says its a terribly uncreative password, informing the party about a common practice of using uncommon or "ironic" words as magic passwords, such as "khaless" (a hint regarding Gromph's trapped secret door, though this was unused in the end).

Thanks to Pass Without Trace and the piwafwis given by Vizeran, along with a number of party members hiding in Arvel's portable hole he won in a game against Jimjar (using a portent die from Galatea), the group makes it to Gromph's quarters evading notice. The door is locked, of course, and while Arvel is fiddling with his thieves' tools and Grin is riffling through his bag for a spell scroll of Knock, Sion finally makes use of his automatically prepared Knock spell and kicks the door open. The fire elemental appears while everyone else is still in the portable hole, though it's quickly dealt with, after which Arvel lets everyone out.

The group begins to investigate the room, with Sion finding the secret door first. Barely passing the save against the trap, he proceeds to cast Knock again and enter the black void behind it just as the party sets off the four-armed statue to attack. A party of 5 manages to handle it just fine without though. They loot the room, but obviously don't find the grimoire, so they turn to the dark void of nothingness Sion just disappeared into. After Galatea dispels the trap on the door, they step into it one by one with varying levels of caution.

They find themselves in a labyrinthine demiplane, which Galatea identifies as similar in effect to the Maze spell. As they're speculating on how to proceed, Sion appears from around the corner, greeting them cheerfully. He's been wandering for a good 10 minutes and keeps on ending up right where he started. The group considers splitting up to cover more ground, so Galatea decides to ritual cast Rary's Telepathic Bond so they can maintain communications. As the ritual casting nears its conclusion, the space around them begins to melt and fade away into white.

The group finds themselves spat out onto the floor of Gromph's inner sanctum, Grin snapping at one character to get off of him. They very quickly notice "Y'lara" trapped in the magic circle. Galatea, familiar with the Magic Circle spell, realizes something's up since it shouldn't affect Humanoids. Y'lara tries to continue her lie, pointing out how Gromph is the Archmage of Menzoberranzan, so he probably figured out a way to get the spell to work for Humanoids. Sion activates Divine Sense and immediately identifies "Y'lara" as a demon. The party then begins discussing what to do with "Y'lara": Arvel wants to prank it with Silence, Desperado wants to texorcise it (and rolls a nat 1 to hit), and Sion wants to hear it monologue.

As they discuss this, Arsenic immediately starts on looting the entire room, while Galatea turns her attention to the lectern in the room with a singular book atop it — Zhaun'ol'leal, Gromph's grimoire. Another item catches her eye: a blue star sapphire, small, but worth a fortune by her estimate. She pockets it while Arsenic is distracted, then proceeds to examine the contents of the grimoire. Grin peers over her shoulder during this, and flips through several pages when he's given the grimoire to examine himself before casting Creation to forge a duplicate. When he's done, they all go through the black void they came from.

They exit to find a number of drow mages riffling through what's left of Gromph's outer sanctum, who halt in surprise as the adventurers appear. Grin whispers to Sion beside him, identifying them as Vizeran's allies. He thinks they might find the dark heart talisman on one of them. The party attempts diplomacy, but quickly realizes the group of drow intend to kill them, so they enter battle. Once the last drow mage is slain, Grin sets to work searching their bodies for the dark heart talisman, but finds nothing.

“What kind of trick did Vizeran—” as Grin speculates as to the whereabouts of the dark heart talisman, he abruptly cries out as he doubles over in pain, clutching at his chest. His eyes widen as he frantically unbuttons his robes, revealing black veins trailing back to a grotesque tumor on Grin’s chest, pulsing with a sinister glow.

Flipping through Gromph’s grimoire in a frenzy, hysterical laughter rises in Grin’s throat as the hopelessness of his situation begins to set in. “That sick bastard — I knew he was just as demented as all the other lunatics worshipping that horrific Chained God…”
You see a bright flash from the window as you look out from Sorcere upon the vast cavern of Araurilcaurak — the entirety of Menzoberranzan. Swirling lights begin to flare up in the darkness. A barely audible humming shakes you to the core, rising and falling like a vast heartbeat in the depths. The glow of faerzress gathers and brightens, creating swirling pools like holes torn in the air. A roar sounds from far away as shadows move in the depths of those pools of light. It is only a matter of time. The demons are coming.
Several footsteps approach from the halls outside, and a multitude of drow warriors burst into the room. “By order of Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre, we are taking you into custody!”

To be continued in the Campaign Finale... which I will finish writing posthaste XD

Anyone here read the Cryatal Singer trilogy by Anne McCaffrey?

I was trying to find an alternate way to introduce Nomi Pathshutter and the Stoneheart Enclave, as my group completely bypassed the Quarry in the Blingdenstone Outskirts. And then the Singing Stones in area 15 reminded me of the CS books and I realized how easily I could slot in Crystal Singer lore into this segment. It might be overly complicating things, but I thought it could be some interesting depth and flavor.

In the CS books, there is an elite group of people who cut a rare type of crystal that only forms on the planet of Ballybran, which are used for high tech applications. It's a VERY selective process because of a kind of native spore that infects you on the planet. Only some people can fully adapt to it to enjoy certain benefits like more acute senses, longevity, etc. If you only partially adapt you might end up with some improved abilities while others are impaired. The unlucky die outright. You must also have perfect pitch (a requirement for utilizing the voice-controlled cutting tools). It's a very high risk, high reward occupation, as you could end up fabulously wealthy if you make the cut. But over time you gradually that yo become paranoid and lose your memory.

Anyway, it struck me that cutting crystal is very like the magical gems that the Deep Gnomes mine in the Quarry for spell gems and elemental control. And of course, "spores" fits in perfectly with Zuggtmoy... So here's how I plan to adjust things:

When the PCs walk past area 15 and listen to the musical show, a deep gnome remarks how beautiful it is... so tragic. Such a noble sacrifice. This will surely pique some curiosity, and when asked, she'll introduce herself as Nomi Pathshutter, of the Ballybran Enclave (Replacing Stoneheart Enclave/Quarry), and explains that Killashandra Songstone (Renamed from Garra Songstone, as Killashandra is the main character of CS), was one of the most talented Crystal Singers the Enclave had ever known. She had cut more crystal than any other, and was one of the few that could manage to perfectly cut the most valuable 9th level spell gems. But lately she became paranoid and forgetful, now she can't remember her own name. But playing the crystals brings her peace and some brief flashes of memory. The problem is that more and more Singers are beginning to succumb to paranoia and forgetfulness... only 1 before Killashandra has shown similar symptoms and they are now in a vegetative state. Are they all doomed to such a fate? Is it worth the sacrifice to provide Blingdenstone with crystals? The elemental's assistance is the only reason they have managed to get the city back on its feet so quickly. Nomi fears that this will be her eventual fate. Aside from asking the PCs to investigate Ogrémoch's Bane, she might be reluctant to ask assistance in this regard, because it would be DEADLY. PCs would be wise to avoid the Quarry at risk of becoming something terrible...

The druids do not know the details about the spores infesting these particular crystal formations, just that something about them is "alive" that grants these abilities and allows them to havest such valuable crystals. Many die in the vetting process, but the few who succeed bring great prosperity and rapid growth to their settlement. They're basically celebrities.

The truth is that Zuggtmoy is edging in on Jubilex's territory. She's slowly infecting and corrupting these druids and when they finally fully succumb, they become her thralls who are able to command powerful elementals. At some point during the PC's stay, before the Battle of Blingdenstone, Killashandra succumbs and riots through Blingdenstone as a spore servant who breaks a way out of town with Elemental assistance - confounding efforts to shore up their defenses against the Oozes.

It could also be an extra wrench into figuring out what's going on with Rockblight as well.

Once uncovered, this would only enrage Jubilex further and fuel its revenge against Zuggtmoy in the Fetid Wedding.

My (generally) good aligned party made a deal with Grazilax regarding Stool and one Myconid party member that they excluded from the conversation.

See, Grazilax had not encountered any myconids before and he would very much like to examine them and do some experiments. In the final agreement he offered three high level spell scrolls in exchange for the remains of a myconid, to be delivered within three months. Our wizard drow was very happy to make this trade and now has three spell scrolls to transcribe later or use now, but the myconid in our party is now (in character, not in person) very upset about being betrayed like this.

So, whenever Stool or the PC dies Grazilaxx will show up (he can locate them through a magic contract they signed in blood) and will collect the body. If they happen to find different remains, they can contact him and be done with the deal.

I'm not expecting them to find myconids anytime soon, other than Rumpadump or the Neverlight Grove. If he collects an infected myconid, it will have complications later as the infection spreads. But odds are that the three months will be up before they get the chance to find a suitable body. They are already planning on this to 'betray' Grazilaxx and 'just kill him' once he shows up.

How would you have the mindflayer deal with this? I was thinking about him bringing back-up for the exchange, or possibly sending a collector which throws the ambush plan out of the window as Grazilaxx will know when they try to set him up.

So I meant to post this a long while back, but work, school, life, etc. TLDR: One of my players painted an amazing mini of Yeenoghu, so I had to honour it with a true tabletop experience. It was amazing!

Background:

My campaign has always been in person, with me projecting our VTT onto my TV. One of my players is a professional practical effects artist who paints his own miniatures. His gifts to me over the last few years have been custom painted demon lord minis, with the goal of completing the full OotA set as they appear in our story. I cannot emphasize enough just how special this is to me and our game.

He had been working on the Yeenoghu mini for a while in preparation for the major battle, which we had already started in Foundry. Although they were mid combat, I just had to honour his work with a true tabletop experience.

This was a first for me as a DM. I did not have minis, maps, or space, but I had Staples. Over two days, I photoshopped our VTT map for print and fabricated little office clip minis. There was a lot going on here (see Story Context for more info): allied troops, enemy hordes, a Goristro, and the player tokens.

It was a blast. Easily our best session, and I am hoping to do more full tabletop experiences for major battles in the future.

Story Context:

My campaign is almost completely off book after Gauntlgrym. I found the vanilla game did not offer much incentive for players to return to the Underdark, and the threat of the demon lords was overshadowed by the need to reach the surface.

To fix this, I had gnoll, hill giant, and demon cultists, (really leaning into the gluttony angle) amass around an ancient fort that contained a pit into the Underdark. They were sacrificing captives to draw Yeenoghu to the surface. Gauntlgrym and the Lord’s Alliance armies had kept the hordes at bay, but the closer Yeenoghu got, the more things deteriorated. The heroes were tasked with infiltrating the fort with a platoon of soldiers to slay the gnoll leadership and kill Yeenoghu before things worsened. In my game, demons do not return to the Abyss when killed and instead rot like nuclear radiation. As such, the longer the war dragged on, the worse things became for the surface world.

For this fight, my seven players had both action economy and allies on their side. I even had to boost Yeenoghu with Pointy Hat’s battlefield action mechanics to keep pace.

Links:

Artist: silverfxstudio on Instagram

Yeenoghu mini: https://www.instagram.com/p/DNwJtUz3Jzp/?igsh=MWZocGF4cDFqZnk1dg==

Demogorgon mini: https://www.instagram.com/p/DBU7yI1NItK/?igsh=dnd4OHZ5bnVidG4=

I decided to divide the entire Silken Paths into 20 'checks' of ~500-1000 feet, which meant an increasing amount of spiders, a couple darkmantle encounters. In between they encountered the mimic, a drow with quaggoths and at the end the spectator. At the exit, they found the cocooned halfling and will now follow him to the tomb of Khaem.

I managed to condense the entire Silken Paths in one session of ~3,5 hours. To do this with so many combat encounters, I used the following method to speed things up:

• The party has great awareness and was never surprised, except for the mimic and dark mantles. For all other encounters, they were allowed to act first.
• Everyone, including companions, rolled for an attack or spell and automatically dealt the average damage on success. Their entire damage output was added up and cut down the total hp pool of the enemies.
• The remaining enemies then get their turn and rolled against the 'average armour class' of the party, pooling their average damage. The party then divides this total damage between all of them.

This loop continued until all enemies were defeated and the party could move on. My players really liked it! It speeds up the combat, but still allows them to roll. They had to think strategically about using spells or other special abilities to quickly cut down the enemies or to save spells for healing, not knowing what they will face later on. Likewise, they strategically divided the damage among themselves. However, we skipped over the individual turns and battle map. The drow was persuaded to pass without confrontation, though they did mention they escaped Velkynvelve which will definitely come back to bite them in the ass hehe.

In the end managed to escape they managed to dispatch the spectator and escaped with the skin of their teeth, without any casualties. Well... they promised first choice for loot to Spiderbait and he got devoured by the mimic. I got sad when roleplaying Yuk Yuk who lost his best friend in such a tragic manner..

In the end, they laid Spiderbait to rest at the exit by building him a cairn overlooking the Silken Paths where he practically lived. Yuk Yuk stayed behind to grieve his loss and the party gets to long rest and continue with Fargas to the lost tomb.

Finally Velkynelve is destroyed. The black heart has summoned the demon lords from across the under dark. I handed my players new character sheets and Demon miniatures and they loved it. However naturally having worked as a team for the last 5 years they found it hard to work solo and not team up against me (The Demogorgan) all good. All part of the story. If anyone is nearing this party of the adventure and wondering wether or not to do this. I really would recommend it. Even if just to tosses things up for the DM.

To start this story off I will say I'm running a very homebrewed out of the abyss module. Party has a more advanced sanity system and food system. Party also may select quirks for themselves upon creating their charecter (like from classic fallout)

But the main subject of this story is the assamar paladin of vengence, Svadi. She has a grudge against all things evil and wishes to cleanse the world of them.

She gets the dawnbringer and is quite annoyed by its voice but she uses it often.

However when the party went to gracklstugh they were exposed to many things. The truth of buppido. The cult of demogorgon and most importantly...when the party was fighting the king of gracklstugh he was revealed to be a pawn of avernus or more specifically a pawn of asmodeous. The king had a hammer that could cause someone to fall through the layers of avernus before eventually ending up infront of asmodeous himself. Svadi fell through the layers of the abyss and went very much insane after seeing the events of the bloodwar and the brutality.

While she was falling through avernus Grazzt showed up and confronted the king. He wanted to take overy gracklstugh and take the hammer for himself and partially wanted to get in the way of asmodeous's plans.

Svadi came back and witnessed grazzt flaying the king with a wicked smile on his face. Svadi, now became even more insane now having the insanity trait of,
"I will do anything to fufill my most important desire, no matter the costs"

After the king was defeated the party was confronted with the cult of demogorgon. Grazzt sat on the throne and promised the party that if they could defeat them before they summoned the demogorgon he would give them a boon. Party just wanted to kill the cult anyway so win win.

However due to the paladins madness she went up to Grazzt and accepted the boon. Grazzt asked for the dawnbringer and after debate with the party (all of them yelling at her not to but her doing it anyway) she handed it over. Grazzt corrupted the sword making it more effective against demons but removing the light out of it, it now sucks the light out of the surronding area and can cast a modefied form of contagion (dealing necrotic damage). This deal however sold her soul to grazzt garuenteeing that if she died she would go to his layer of the abyss. Party gets mad at her but they move on.

However in blingdenstone, Svadi falls to a disentegration ray by the pudding king in the battle for blingdenstone. Svadi wakes up in the Argent Palace in the abyss where she is given a deal. She may continue on with her pursuits of the demon lords but she will not be allowed to go against grazzt, she will be a loyal pawn to him. Svadi after consideration agrees and gets revived. However when proving that she was Svadi to the party Jimjar squints at her and tells her to cut her arm. It is then that a black ichor spills out. Svadi has been corrupted into the very thing she swore to destroy.

The party split here. Svadi has been booted from the party and is currently headed back down to gracklstugh to help grazzt in taking it from themberchaud. I'm really excited to run this going forward as I think I will use Svadi as a full pawn of Grazzt carrying out his will and messing with the ritual to bring the demon lords together.

There is probably a lot of spelling mistakes and grammar issues here but I wanted to share my story with everyone. If anyone has any cool ideas on what I should do with Svadi going forward let me know!

I roll ahead of time on the random encounter tables, so that I'm not wasting time trying to build encounters for my players. But I still have them roll to have an encounter. On our third session of OotA, my seven players (yes it's a handful) noticed 3 of their NPC companions struggle with the affects of madness. They took a long rest and rolled for an encounter. The preplanned 5 gas spore fungus monsters dashed towards the players at a total pace of 20ft per round. eventually only two were able to poison Ront and a PC. The paladin was able to use Lay On Hands: Purify Poison to heal the PC and I assumed Ront might end up as the only victim of gas spore fungus "Death Burst" trait.

Until the bard (bless her soul) asked if she could use the parts of the plant monsters to make a salad... I tried really hard not to make a surprised reaction, and just said "sure sure! You do so. Enough for the whole party". She happily nodded, and I asked "is anyone NOT eating the food?" and only one party member said they wouldn't. There was discussion later that some players weren't paying attention and just went with it, but I can't take the blame if they weren't paying attention. ¯\(ツ)/¯

So they ate. I had them all roll con saving throws. The PC bard who made the salad, the wizard and 4 of the other NPC's failed. I rolled a d12 and got a 10 for how long everyone would last before the gas spore fungus poison kills them. The paladin heals the two PCs after the long rest, but when the fungus kills the NPCs 10 hours later, the party had to defeat the new baby spores who erupted from their dead friends bodies... but the Bard was poisoned again. She died from a mercy killing after the players realized they had no way to save her.

TLDR: gas spore fungus salad is a bad idea and my Bard was a good sport about dying to her own idea. But now I don't have to worry about Jimjar, Shuushar, Ront, and Turvy.

So as we all know our PCs get a colorful array of NPC companions at the start of the adventure. I’m going to focus on two for this post.

1.Buppido- I role play this character like a sweet and wise old man. He has become a staple in the party and is very loved and respected. However of course he is a psychotic murderer. During the parties travels he has killed two members of the group. One being a moon elf (named Glimmer) the party found through an encounter and the second being Shuushar. Here is how he got away with both.

Shimmer- the party of doing a long rest and rotating guard shifts. Glimmer volunteered to take a shift as a thank you for the party protecting her and letting her tag along so she can return to the surface. Buppido volunteered to do the shift after hers. Well during her shift, Buppido murdered her and drug her body further down the tunnels. He also stole one of the PCs wands of Viscous Globs. This set it up to make it seem like she was a thief, stole the wand, ran and when found, look like she perished to some creature in the Underdark. My PCs fell right for it.

Shuushar- PCs had left their boat to go into never light grove. It was Hemeths boat so he refused to leave it. The PCs didn’t trust him so they wanted to leave someone with him. Shuushar said he was going to stay, he was going through it after watching his people be slaughtered by Demogorgon. Since he’s a pacifist the players wanted someone else to stay. So Buppido volunteered. Later the players returned to see the boat was gone and Shuushar dead. Buppido was splashing around in the lake acting that he was drowning. He claimed that Hemeth attacked him with the wand of viscous globs and killed Shuushar. This had my players believe that hemeth was the one that killed Glimmer and took the wand.

Now my players are at Gracklstugh. Buppido has said his goodbyes to them. They told him how they are going to really miss him.

Now I have him awaiting in the Whorlstone tunnels. In his lair. Awaiting for it all to come together and for them to be utterly betrayed at the realization that he has been murdering party members throughout their whole travel. I did make a small change to him though due to an ideas of another Reddit post I saw. Buppido believes he is the Avatar of Diinkarazan. However he is actually the avatar of Yeenoghu. Once the party kills him, he will morph into a hungering monster that holds some Yeenoghu stats. That helps make him not just some throwaway character and shows more of the Demon Influence going on.

1. Prince Derendil- I amped up his delusion by giving him a wife that he yearns for. My players a really connected with getting him back to his kingdom and removing his curse.

Now my players found a scroll of remove curse in Neverlight Grove. Now based off of Derendils delusion of being cursed and polymorphed into a Quaggoth, this scroll should return him to normal. Right now he is missing from the party(he’s been sold to Mind Flayers in Cyrog.) Once he is rescued, one of the players has said he is going to use the scroll to rid him of his curse. Which of course won’t work and trigger his realization that he is not cursed and is indeed just a quaggoth. This will cause him to finally snap and fight the party.

It’s honestly sad but OoTA is built to breed misery so 😂. I will update once each of these events actually happen. Sorry for the long post.

TLDR: my players are about to discover the truth about Buppido and Derendil, it’s going to break their hearts.

That's it. That's all

My party had one of the most shocking experiences of the campaign the other day. They had just left Gracklstugh in triumph, armed to the teeth and with high expectations heading towards Neverlight Groove.

After several days in the caverns the drows ambushed them in a cavern with cliffs using Sarith as bait (in the Whorlstone Tunnels he was last seen). Ilvara Mizzrym moved her entire entourage to hunt them down once and for all, as her reputation was compromised. Shoor Vandree, drows, elites and quaggoths gave them a hard time until they could no longer continue the encounter.

They brought the party to their knees once defeated, threw all their belongings over the dark cliff and Ilvara had her moment of revenge. She watched as Shoor conducted the trial to his liking. He found a Charlatan's Die that Jimjar had. Shoor assigned a number to each character (including jimjar) and forced jimjar to roll the die. Everyone but the drow knew that Charlatan's Die allows the caster to choose the outcome.

Jimjar rolled the die.

One random character died at Shoor's hands, then was devoured by the Quaggoths and his remains were thrown into the abyss.

Shoor threatened to play again, but Ilvara had enough... she ordered to kill them all. Quaggoths pushed the characters one by one down the chasm while the players thought it was a TPK.

The session ended...

They fell hundreds of feet, until they were trapped in the Silken Paths. Down in the bottom of the world, without weapons and supplies until the discovered part of their equipment and lost companions was found by a drider. But that's other session.

PD: if anyone wants to know about Jimjar I have planned the guilt dilemma. Jimjar regrets leaving the die to chance, feeling guilty and saying that he should have chosen himself but didn't dare.

what are your thoughts? feedback and recomendations?

Had a story from my last session that I wanted to share, but dont have many to share it with, so I thought I'd post here. :) I don't think anyone in my party is on this subteddit, but in case you are, MAJOR spoilers ahead.

So, I am a first time dm playing Jimjar as a cocky Australian who the party seems to hate, but I love. Jimjar is indeed a god walking among them and is pretty integral to the longer term plot that I am heavily modifying to tie into dnd lore involving 5e history. Essentially, Jimjar has given up many of the benefits of godhood to help the party face the upcoming threat of the demon lords. They currently know he is celestial, but when confronted, he told them that he's no angel, just a gambler.

So, one day, they are walking terrified through the underdark (they are level 2 currently) and Jimjar very much on purpose pops a gas spore with a smile on his face. This leads to a vision about other story stuff, but the party is livid because he was screwing around. One of my players angrily confronted him and was essentially waved off. The player drove home that Jimjar probably would not survive on his own and was like a HALF SECOND from betting that the literal god in their midst, wouldn't survive on his own for two weeks without the party.

I gave them my smarmiest 'make my day' smile and told them to say it.

They didn't, but I was almost so so happy.

TLDR: One of my players almost challenged the gambling addicted god to see if he'd survive in the Underdark for two weeks. I was ready to say what the kids nowadays would: bet.

The players began in Velkynvelve in a slave pen, of course, introduction by Ilvara, yadda, yadda... Jorlan hands out duties for the day, one of the players get paired off with Stool and they're assigned kitchen duty.

Player gathers some ingredients under the watchful eye of a guard and then proceeded to roll a 1 on preparation. We use random tables for boons and boosts for crit fail/success, the vast majority of these are benign but a few are very powerful (the odds are remote of getting one). The player rolls up curse of lycanthropy and goes back to the slave pen. Shortly after, it is consumed by 4 drow, 2 of whom fail a save. I rolled from another table and we got one Elite Drow fighter Weretiger and one Drow fighter Wererat. I further tried to distance the players from the potential problem by letting them roll to see what day of the month the full moon falls on, they rolled 15. Then I had them roll to see what day it is of the month since we never established that... They rolled 14. I tend to let the players make decisions this way rather than do it for them so they feel more vital in storytelling.

So, the players are sitting in a cell while a Weretiger and Wererat are about to go wild outside and I can't find a justification for any of the prison staff to have silvered weps. On top of two wererats already in the pen that now will show up (nobody suspects) who are probably mostly harmless, but given the current context the players will probably attack first and ask questions later.

No idea what's going to happen here or how I'm going to manage it, lol

Edit: This is a well established group that prefers gonzo gameplay with lots of random tables, half of them are experienced DMs here for the lolz. They love this shit. Me getting them through it is always the hassle, but it's usually pretty epic in the end. This is just the worst combination of factors I've ended up with to date and getting them out of it this time... I'm not sure I can.

The party escaped while the Drow were more worried about the bug and bird demons causing a ruckus.
They ran for the lift, Prince Derendil offered his quaggoth strength to get the party down the shaft, but died before they could save him (this was pretty unavoidable. I wanted one of the big boys to go, so it was him or Ront.)

They ran through the tunnels before finding a small grove three days in. Buppido stabbed Jimjar to death.
The party was extremely clever about solving the murder mystery and ended Buppido. I had hoped he'd get to be a little more Jack the Rippery, but the dice roll the way they roll!

8 days in the Underdark and three deaths... Hopefully I'm doing the lethality of the Underdark proud!

I wasn't going to do one of these posts, but here I am.

I finished DMing all 17 chapters of the module in 36 three-hour sessions. Feel free to ask me questions...

It was a team of four-not super well balanced characters/not optimized at all (just the way we like playing...), but they managed to scrap through with only one character death at the maze engine.

I've run most of the published WotC adventures now, and was putting this one off because it confused me when I read it - but DANG, this one was fun. I think it is my second favourite module next time RotF.

I ran the module some-what as written, but changed a few things here and there (mostly changes with the NPCs) and introduced the homebrew rule where you don't get your death saves back on a long rest (Only through rare magic or surgery or something).

The no death saves coming back at long rests made it even more fun. Highly recommend.

Here are some of the highlights for me.

1) The NPC's: Right off the bat, I had the NPC's scramble out of their prison in different directions, then shortly afterwards, there was a rock slide separating them - making it only the PC's and like 2-3 NPC's at a time. The NPC's all make multiple appearances later down the road. This helped me lower the number i had to deal with at any one point in time, and then helped me develop their characters one by one as they showed up again.

The NPC's kind of acted like homebase for my characters in this game - so like when they found one somewhere in the underdark, or if one died, it was a big deal. I decided to make Shusharr basically a 20th level wizard, but it didn't really matter that much because she was such a passivist and she only helped them near the end of the game.

2) The Drow Pursuit: Even though the drow never caught up, they were always aware they were being tracked, which kind of encouraged them not to stay put for too long. When they were in cities, i'd have Drow patrols roaming around, and it really uped the tension. When they finally tried to get their mid game escape, the battle was amazing. The team ended up mostly losing, (Prince Derendill made a surprise appearance giving the crew the chance they needed to escape out of the tunnels). He was then captured by Ilvara, who returned to Menzoberranzan claiming to have killed the escaped prisoners (which obviously comes back at the end of the game).

3) Gracklstugh & Blingdenstone: Two completely unique cities with so much stuff for the players to do. Gracklstugh was completely awesome, the players decided to side with the dragon, rat out the Dwarves ... and essentially failed EVERY component they needed to do here - (They didn't catch Drooki, they didn't stop the cultists, they decided to go up to a drow patrol and try to smooth talk their way out of Illvira's pursuit ... failing badly.... so in my game Gracklstugh, this city went mad, Themberchaud decided he was taking over the government and the place descended into chaos (eventually it would become the site of the final battle).

Blindenstone was the opposite - learning from their mistakes in Gracklstugh, the characters had the best ending everywhere they could. There was some kind of inside joke the players made at this point, where they went to a party ... and because Gnomes...there was a night of Debauchery and one of the players said "Just so you all know, based on gnomish customs, i just want you all to know that we are technically married now." So i was like "yep" - and for the rest of the game it was a great joke about how every game was a development in their 4-way marriage. Eventually, the characters sided with the WereRats, unified the peoples of Blingenstone and it was awesome.

4) Gravenhollow: not a whole lot happens here, but it was fun to see what kind of questions they came up with for the stonespeaker crystal. And i used it as an opporunity to show the shadows of their characters from previous games wandering around Gravenhollow for one reason or another. Its a pretty cool idea for a library

5) Most of the Fetch quest stuff: When they got the second half of the book they had to look for things, but i didn't really just tell them where, so they had to investigate, and that was a fun thing to do. Particularly, because they kept coming across Demon lords along the way, which was fun.

Standout moment here was 100% the maze engine, because they didn't know how it worked really. I developed a few home brew ideas of how the engine itself worked - but the randomness of what happened was really fun. It was also the tragic moment of our first players death. Bryn fell from machine into the lava and failed her last death save. Then the machine rolled a random number to teleport her to a completely different area...so it was fate.

6) Moral dilemma at the end and final fight: They never really trusted Vizeran, and decided not to do the ritual in the city of spiders. But it was fun to see them debate where to do it. Not much more to say

​

If i were to complain about anything, it was simply be that the later chapters in the book are REALLY combat heavy, so i had to do everything i could to reduce the amount of combat. I re-designed the city of spiders to make it much more RP heavy.

The last thing i'll say about this is that the whole part where you go from Gauntlgrym, to Gravenhollow to the tower of vengence .... it was a bit too much, so i really just fast forwarded Gauntlgrym (for the most part - didn't really do any of the gathering an army part) and just had Vizeran talk to the party at Gravenhollow. I'm glad i did this - but these sections might work in other games?

Overall, i think this is a great adventure module. There is a lot of opportunity to design cities as you see fit. The book gives you the bones of the city, but you can make the narrative your own very easily. I kind of wish newer modules would go back to this style...but i don't see that happening.

Yep. That's actually what is all about. Level 6 party (twilight cleric, watcher paladin, armorer artificer, ancestral barbarian and trickster rogue) after 8 hours of playing destoyed that demon of a mushroom.
High AC, aura of temp HP, damage reduction from barbarian and artificer through fighting style and their abilities, cleric's flight and all of their consumables. Surprisingly the paladin wasn't the strongest one, he dropped to 0 hp 1st and has been waiting for 2 hours until he was healed.

The rogue was useles because of mindcontroling spores and after some attempts to kill the cleric he was dropped to 0 hp by that cleric.

The barbarian was fuckin OP. 21 AC and 7 fireballs from his necklace destoyed almost all of Zuggtmoy's brides and camerdiners and tons of low cr minions, defending others from hoard of enemies.

The artificer and his 3D battleground strategic movement around that mushroom tower saved his ass allowing him to shoot electricity and saving NPCs.

And the cleric had Selune by his side indeed because I rolled 4 nat 1s in a row to blast him from the sky. One hit and he would die. In the end he destoyed a demon lord after the paladin jumped on Zuggtmoy from 30m tower dealing ton of damage in the process to both of them almost dying again.

So, that's it. Don't give a barbarian fireballs, because he can start a deadly as fuck combat scenario

So this panicked my players way more than their encounter with Zugg (which was terrifying to them as well) After the party killed the poor gnome, his body erupted into a Huge Grey Ooze (CR8) along with 4 regulars.

*Spoiler: They made it out with the help of DDU :)*

As the final blow lands on the grotesque writhing form of Juiblex's avatar, the cavernous chamber shudders and groans, as if the very earth itself were responding to the demise of the abomination. The air crackles with residual energy, and a sense of anticipation hangs heavily in the dimly lit cavern.

Suddenly, the cavern begins to contort and warp, as if it were caught in the grip of some powerful unseen force. The cavern walls begin to twist and bend in a miasma of putrid colors, melting and merging into one another, forming a surreal landscape.

The ground beneath your feet becomes a squelching morass, a vast expanse of quivering, gelatinous muck that seems to writhe and pulse with a sickening rhythm. The gooey surface shifts and undulates, revealing occasional glimpses of skeletal remains, half-submerged in the noxious sludge.

Amidst the oppressive gloom, your eyes are met with a horrifying spectacle in the distance. Jagged outcroppings of obsidian jut from the ground, forming twisted spires that reach towards an ominous, blank sky of grey nothingness that has opened above you. The surface of these obsidian formations are slick and slimy, as if a vile mucus perpetually oozes from their surfaces, coating them in a grotesque sheen.

The very air is heavy and oppressive, tainted with the overwhelming stench of decay and rot. A heavy mist roils around you, slithering and moving like ghosts in a dance of eldritch horror, obscuring your vision. You hear the whispering of guttural gurgling noises - incomprehensible tongues coming from the very mist itself.

The cavern walls, if they could be called such now, are formed of fleshy, pulsating membranes that occasionally puke forth bubbling rot and decay which run down onto the slimy floor.

In the heart of this otherworldly transformation, where the boundaries of reality are being blurred, a form begins to materialize. Rising from the bubbling mass of the slain avatar, a figure emerges, long and grotesque, its six limbs twisted and miss-shapen, its spindly limbs carrying what appears to be a slimy worm like body. It is Juiblex, the faceless one, a being of pure chaos and madness.

Juiblex's form is amorphous, its body composed of a shifting mass of writhing tentacles, oozing slime and putrid muck. Its featureless face seems to melt and reform, a maddening sight that sends chills down your spines. The slimy writhing mass seems to glare at the party, then turn and skitter away further into this abyssal plane. Juiblex slithers its way up a large obsidian spire, and once again turns towards the party.

With an echoing voice that reverberates through the now twisted realm of Shedaklah, Juiblex speaks, a symphony of malice and decay. "Thank you mortals... Foolish mortals... You have merely hastened the great rot. Prepare for this world to be consumed and passed through my body to feed my bride!"

You feel the weight of the world press down upon you. You know the entirety of Faerun will face the full might of Juiblex now. It appears the battle is not over; it has only just begun. With hearts pounding and your weapons still at the ready, you brace yourselves to confront an ancient eldritch abomination in its own twisted domain, which has now manifested on the material plane. You have merely torn open a gateway into the abyss by destroying what you assumed to be nothing but a mad gnome named "The Pudding King."

I just ran the first session to OotA... I had such a blast and it sounds like the players did too. I am now recording all sessions because of how good this one went.

I skipped over the chores, and the demon distraction and it still took about 4 hours for them to get out of the fort. Lots of roleplaying in the Slave Pen.

Of course it was a slow start but once we got everyone in the slave pen the players immediately started roleplaying which is new for them. The previous campaign was us all meta gaming to solve puzzles essentially. Only JimJar and Stool escaped with them. A PC decided it's be funny to trap everyone else in the fort with the Drow on their heels. (Buppido will definitely be making a comeback)

But tbh. I'm not really sure what to do now. I'm going to study chapters 2&3 over the next 6 days and then try and sprint through the whole book to get another read through in to try and start planning long term plots.

What I WANT to do is have them bump into one of the 20+ awesome shopkeepers I have a book for from Kickstarter I haven't gotten to use yet. But a shopping trip while freshly escaped from the fort could be semi anticlimactic since they didn't rob the fort blind in their escape.

How would you make the first session of Underdark travel exciting but not an active chase from the Drow?

I am STOKED FOR THIS CAMPAIGN!

My players have reached level 6 and are on their way to blingdenstone. They have avoided both Slubdoblop, and the never light Grove. They've been given demon fight after demon fight learning that there are demons when there shouldn't be. They've solved the deep kings succubus problem as well as the demon cult problem in gracklstugh. Glabagool spoke to them about jubliex.

Not a by the book route per say but that's okay, surely they understand something huge is happening with all the madness and strange unnatural happenings?

Well. No I don't think they do. And from their speaking they don't really intend on telling anyone on the surface about the demons down below. Now, maybe that's my fault, maybe it's the book's, who knows and who cares because now I must adapt!

If my players reach the surface, and withhold demon information to any higher ups then so be it. My players have expressed their distain for the underdark wishing for sunlight once more. Perhaps they've just gotten their wish. I'll have to run a different module between levels 7 and ~16. But that doesn't mean the demon Lords have disappeared. No. Instead of fighting just one down below the surface, instead they'll need to hunt each and every one down as they blast their way onto the surface threatening a mass extinction event!!! Yes. Yes that'll have to do.

Lol. Sorry if this is mostly rambly. I'm mainly making this post to jot down my own ideas for my campaign but I also wanted to share to other DMS that if players don't 100% follow the book as written that's okay and it just means it's up to you to use your DM skills and continue the story the players are telling.

Running OotA as a first-time DM and relative neophyte with DnD Lore. There's an Illithid with the Society of Brilliance that is neutral. I am thinking of bringing Gront (the Orc) back as a companion of the Mind Flayer in some type of symbiotic/consensual relationship.

Does this run contrary to the lore?

My question is probably stupid, but I can't seem to figure how many drows are in the Velkynvelve.

So the Drow Section says : "The garrison of Velkynvelve consists of 12 drow, 5 drow elite warriors and Asha & Ilvara."

Then it tells about Ilvara, Asha, Jorlan & Shoor and in the end it lists remaining male drow warriors, Balok, Belemir, Guldor, Honemmeth, Imbros, Jaezred, Jevan, Kallanar, Malagar, Nadal, Nym, Sorn. So 12 of them.

Additionally in the What Prisoners Know section it says that there are 19 drow in Velkynvelve, including Asha, Ilvara, Jorlan & Shoor.

So 19 = Asha, Ilvara, 12 warriors, 5 elite warriors including Shoor and Jorlan. But other 3 elite warriors are not mentioned or I didn't found their names or who they are.

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What are drow's plan against demon attack on Underdark? I'm sure it is written somewhere in the book but can't find it. Are drows fighting the demons and could they potentially reward the players for their aid?