So it has been a wild few months, hope everyone survived the holidays as we now enter the dystopian days of 2021. My group has been continuing their journey in our Rappan Athuk campaign and we're roughly 15 sessions in as I type this next blog post up. When we left off the group was taking some R&R in the small town of Zelkor's Ferry which has served as their home base throughout the campaign. They have recently funded to have a nearby castle rebuilt and made livable, but the working staff and supplies have not yet arrived to make that possible.
I had updated the bounty board in town to provide some more choices for the group, one of those for the group to delve further into Rappan Athuk and drive out any Orcus cultist...can't say I didn't try to get them in there. They took the hook to search out a troll lair on the neighboring marshes north of town. Heading into this encounter, I was a bit worried. There was nearly 20 trolls living in the lair and they were leaded by an arcane casting shaman that was CR7 by the 5E standards. I must compliment the group here as they really were organized and strategic, bottlenecking the trolls even as they were slowing encircled. Finally dealing with the shaman as the HP totals for all member were getting dangerously low. I did hold back a bit here, not sending all of the trolls at once and the encounter balance turned out to be just right. Once the shaman had been dealt with, they were able to to intimidate the rest of the remaining trolls into scattering back into the marshes. Nice work team.....also, the conversion for 5E on Rappan Athuk is basically still working with 3rd edition treasure totals and well they definitely got hooked up here. A subject for another day, but I really hate how 5E does treasure and magic items anyways.
Scratch one off the list, next up is a gang of kobolds led by an ogre. The group is all roughly level 7 at this point and this whole encounter was a joke. A few fireballs and some diplomacy and the group was sit to collect some more castle funds. Following this, I had set a few set piece encounters as the agents of Orcus are slowly pushing to the surface as the group continues to ignore the threat there. One of these encounters was quite large and again I underestimated the overall striking power of my players. 5th edition players are super heroes, they are so pushed in this edition I'm really not sure why I continue to play it, but again a subject for another day.
Some of the kobolds had given a lead on a group of goblins occupying a nearby fortress that just so happens to be one of the many surface entrances into Rappan Athuk. Once the group had driven off the Orcus minions for now, they decided to take on the goblins. A series of encounters as they marched their way through the fortress did not prove to be too taxing. They managed to take one of the goblins prisoner before a few of the others could flee to their city deep within Rappan Athuk setting off a dead fall to block the passage behind them, this though opened a side passage to lvl 3 and the purple worm nesting grounds. The group briefly explored here before getting cold fight and returning back to the fortress. I was sad, as there are some really memorable encounters to be had on this level....but alas....I'll just have to continue to homebrew way to kill my players on the surface.
Between sessions, I gave each of my players some private motivation to further plumb the depths of Rappan Athuk. The groups druid took the bait and ran with it. Seeking a means to expand his growing power (Circle of Fire druid), which is pretty busted already, he started receiving whispers from an unknown beings prisoned on a connecting level to the goblin fortress. This level just happens to be full of lava to go with the fire theme and there is a real nasty monster here that I've tacked on a magic item to drop from should they encounter and defeat it. Much of the lava level is fairly mundane, a trapped bridge and friendly fire giant that just wants to fish for the lava carp that swim nearby, and of course the alien princesses being prisoned. The group finished the last session having just discovered the river of lava flowing through this deep layer and the druid had wandered off, the magmamoid monster surging to his location....will they survive? Probably, because 5E player characters aren't supposed to die apparently...but I'll keep trying, until next we meet!
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