DND Blog

A place to keep DND session recaps, from various campaigns.

The Hundred and Twelfth Session

November 23, 2024, Campaign: As the ground quakes, evil wakes

We spend months journeying across the Red Sands, and encounter some strange things.

Table of Contents

  1. Last session
  2. The Tenth Day
  3. The Scouting Weeks
    1. The first week
    2. The second week
    3. The third week
    4. The fourth week
    5. The fifth week
    6. The sixth week
    7. The seventh week
    8. The eighth week
    9. The ninth week
    10. The tenth week
    11. The eleventh week
    12. The twelfth week
  4. Next Steps

Last session

It turns out that Dirius is part of the Circle of the Burnt Tree: a Belladonna worshipper.

The Tenth Day

We come to the next station on the Water Line, guarded over by a tower. Like the first well we encountered on The Water Line, this one is a really deep and wide well. The tower has bucket hoists going down into the well. The wellsite is fortified, well-defended against marauding animals.

Dirius calls for her Pavilion to be set up to serve as a home base for the parts of the expedition that will stay at the fort while the scouting parties go scout.

The scouting parties are:

There are mixed feelings and disappointments among the expedition; they're all very disappointed that Dirius gets the Magnificent Mansion all to herself.

That evening, Dirius summons Ryltar again to her chambers.

Now that we know that Dirius is a Belladonnist, Percival has enhanced the murals behind her bed. There's now a 5% opacity belladonna tree there, overlaying the other images.

In Dirius' room, there are three students kneeling in front of her, with their shirts pulled off, and Dirius is inscribing brands onto them, drawing with her finger. Like she's sewing with shadow: as the thread goes in, the thread blackens and swells. The students oddly have no icons of affiliation with Drow houses on their clothes.

Dirius: "See, Ryltar? You are among friends. There are always those who wish to better themselves, to save themselves from whatever will come."

Ryltar: "You keep talking about a perfect world, but there is no perfection without imperfection. Who is to say what is right without what's wrong?"

Dirius: "We make what's right. Would you like to join us?"

Ryltar: "Not a tattoo kind of person, unfortunately."

Dirius: "This is no mere mark of the skin. It runs deep."

Ryltar: "I'm not convinced that letting one entity decide what's right and wrong, and run everything, especially if it comes at the cost of burning everything. Maybe you can show me, I don't know. "

Dirius: "These marks protect us from what will come. Is there something, someone, who is worth that sacrifice?" She begins to stitch the third student.

Ryltar: "I don't know if I understand the question. You're asking me if I know someone in my life that I would give it up for? Those who I would are physically capable; they'd do it for me, too."

A whispered chant begins.

"Whatever story you're trying to rewrite here — the story doesn't mean anything without the journey," says Ryltar. "I'm inclined to guess that all of us started, maybe not where we wanted to be, but my friends and I have gained power by fixing the things that we did bad."

Dirius: "Would you walk away, to save those who protect you? Go home, give up?"

Ryltar: "You make a big claim to a world you have explored so little of. This has been stopped before; it will be stopped again."

She takes a pause at that, but continues the ritual for her students.

Ryltar asks: "Who brought you into the cult?"

Dirius: "A whisper in the wind told me that I could rise above my position, or stay in the deeps. Underneath a great tree, I stood before it: our patronage. I have power and influence within the Harbingers, within our culture, but all of that does not matter when it comes to the life of your children."

Ryltar: "So what's the purpose of bringing me here to this ritual?"

Dirius: "As a display of understanding that there are those willing and able to decipher what happens, that I am not alone in these ideals."

Ryltar: "We already know that. Everyone's trying to pick the winning side right now. It's just unclear who that is. Thank you for your candor," he says, and leaves.

Outside, Percival is convincing the Drow to show off their skin through a drinking game. We don't see any new tattoos.

The Scouting Weeks

Ryltar nabs a chip from the well to serve as a return teleportation marker.

The first week

The first week, nothing happens. Dirius comes up to tell Ryltar and says, "There's no need for us to speak anymore."

The second week

Nothing the second week.

The third week

Nothing the third week.

The fourth week

Time passes yet again.

We cross a dune, and the wind picks up. The horses spook, and there's concern among the group. Jerry sees a sandstorm coming. Jerry asks Percival to open the Mansion. The storm is upon us, and Percival cannot cast the Mansion fast enough to protect us from the storm.

By sheer erosion, the ice sphere is being sanded down. It falls apart, and Ryltar recasts Ice Wall again, inside.

After 20 minutes of sandstorm, it dissipates.

We continue on into the desert, where it remains quite hot. Jerry becomes exhausted. That night, Percival gives her special attention in the Mansion, and her condition gets worse. Two points of exhaustion!

The fifth week

Nothing happens.

The sixth week

We don't find anything.

Another party phones in to say they found something of historical significance, but not the Library. After they describe it, we find something like it.

A set of narrow stone pillars sticking up out of the desert. Nothing seems to align with anything else; no stars, no sigils, no iconography. We do see that, within a 120 foot area. These spires are about 4" in diameter, but aren't stone. Percival's horse kicks one at the bottom, which falls and shatters. It's irregular and chipped, but glassy. We all take samples, and that night in the Mansion, we determine that it's naturally-made lightning glass, in a rhombus-shaped area.

The seventh week

Nothing happens.

The eighth week

Nothing happens.

The ninth week

Nothing happens.

The tenth week

Ten weeks. The spring equinox is only eight weeks away. The sun beats down; Jerry takes another level of exhaustion, Percival takes his first. We spend 100gp of diamond dust to reduce Jerry's exhaustion to 2.

After a particularly good night, we regain some energy. Another level of exhaustion removed.

The eleventh week

Another level of exhaustion removed.

The sun continues to beat down, but we're getting better at bearing it.

The Tree

We crest a hill, and see a structure out in the distance, a dome, a tree at this distance. There's movement, things swaying in the breeze. We approach with caution. It's 30 feet tall, wider than that, expanding out in a big dome. The tree doesn't have leaves, but it does have rustling noises, of thousands and thousands of medallions and amulets clinking against each other.

There's no distinct magic here, but the power of the Weave is strong. They're all holy symbols. In the cracks where the wood has dried, where the bark has peeled away, there are more holy symbols wedged into the tree. We worry that this might be where people abandoned their faiths to pursue Belladonna, but there's no symbolism of Belladonna here. A mound at the base of the tree reveals shields covered in dust. The holy symbols here are from gods we know, and gods we don't know, and some might have been here from before the Divergence.

Percival checks his Pockets and pulls out a small bag of toenail clippings. With a meditative air, and a cultivated feeling of letting go, he puts them into the tree. Nothing happens.

Percival pulls out his sword, Mythcarver, and plants it in the ground in front of the tree. He tries to cast Speak with Plants, and what resonates back is: dead. Everything is worn away.

Ryltar pulls a symbol of Denier from the tree. He holds it up in front of the tree, and gets a good mental image, and then draws the tree in the journal he uses to communicate with Denier. Charisma save! 14. Ryltar feels influences come into his body, and the image of the tree scatters out into words, phrases, prayers, psalms, songs, words that he doesn't know the language to, scrawling across the pages, one after the next, furiously scrawled across the pages. Everything passes through him and out of his pen, which he doesn't understand, voices, drawing out his prayer.

We all notice Ryltar writing and writing. Choppy, across what he's already written, without rhyme or reason. Percival tries to remove the book from his hands; Ryltar follows after the book. The book closes and he tries to write on the cover.

Ryltar has Detect Magic up. He sees that all of the arcana on the tree is being siphoned through Ryltar, a lens through which all that potential magic is flowing. All of the prayers given here are running through him, to Denier.

Percival tries to plead with the tree. As the words escape from his mouth, they get pulled out, falling more and more from his lips, with other words coming, other people's prayers. Percival has the feeling that whatever deities that these symbols represent, these dieties are hungry. They are hungry for faith. He understands this. He believes that his performance alone is enough to appease all the gods, and he stands there, a master of craft, and the discord becomes a melody. He pulls out an instrument and plays, each chord a prayer, and yet something is taken from him.

Whatever hunger these higher beings had, they had fed. This tree has the power to feed what gods lay dead.

Ryltar and Percival snap out of it.

Jerry shoves a spell cypher of "animate small object for 1 hour by Tiny Servant" into the tree.

What happened?

The wind dies down. The tree is still there.

Jerry turns to the Harbingers and asks, "Would anyone else like to try communing with the tree?"

They would not.

The Door

We come across a door. There are stone steps leading up to the front of it.

It has a knob with two holes, where you might insert a key. It's not really obviously magical. Hinges are on the back side of the door. On the other side, it's the back side of the door.

Percival tests the doorknob, without trying to open it. It won't turn.

The door has a stone frame, with words carved in it. The words are written in all languages.

A world beyond a door A key to turn A time and return Once and no more

Ryltar chips a piece of stone off the doorway.

It's a Door of Plane Shift.

We move off.

The twelfth week

Time passes.

The Statue

In the distance, atop a dune, we see a humanoid, standing atop a dune, unmoving.

We approach: it's a statue. The statue doesn't seem angry or emotional. It looks northwest. A human, no weapons, no magical emanations. It doesn't respond to touch. It's been abraded by sand over time.

Percival rearranges the body with Stone Shape to return the lost flesh from the clothes.

Ryltar slathers it up with a Potion of Depetrification. Embersia stands ready to heal; Jerry stands ready to apply benevolent death. The Harbingers watch.

Stone reveals flesh, and muscle, and bone, and the flesh sloughs off the body. The body melts with gurgling noises. Percival transplanted pieces of the body all over the place, without good attachment. Half-flayed. The organs fall out. The body falls apart, and falls over.

Percival casts Resurrection on the person. It takes an hour, as a ritual. Ryltar adds a Goodberry spell scroll. Jerry adds a pair of Sea Dragon scales. Percival, still under Glib from the Stone Shaping, makes medical words of encouragement.

The spell tries to knit the wounds back together: Flesh starts to regrow and stitch the body back together. But the desert takes and is devoid of life. The resurrection tries to reclaim something that has been long gone, and it fails. The face is of an older man, tanned. We bury him.

We continue onwards.

The second statue

An hour's travel to the east, we run across another statue, of a young woman, newer, less worn, still stoic, halfway up a dune.

Next Steps