[4e] Labor Day Dungeon

[Deacon Blues]

I bit the bullet and DM'd my first session of D&D 4th Edition on Labor Day. This was my second time touching the system - a friend had run a bit of Keep on the Shadowfell for me about a year ago. But I wanted to try it with an adventure of my own.

I assembled five players with varying degrees of RPG experience:

Al-Nisroc, a deva avenger of Erathis (isolating)
Stratagem, a tiefling warlord
Thomas, a halfling sorcerer (wild magic)
Rupert, a human wizard
Cairn, a longtooth shifter warden (panther form)

I statted them up well in advance of the first session so I'd have plenty of time to prepare.

Preparations

To make my world unique, I reskinned a lot of level 1 opponents. This gave me a lot more gruntwork to do in making miniatures. Printouts of skaven from Warhammer, cut into 1 inch by 1 inch squares and adhered to thick sketchbook paper, made for good ratlings (reskinned kobolds, with a slightly different method of shifting).

I went back and forth on laying out several of the initial encounters. A chance re-reading of the Quick Start DM's Guide impressed two rules on me that I'd forgot: make interesting terrain and give them plenty of space. Most of my fights had been taking place in cluttered forest paths or tight dungeon corridors. So there was a lot of eleventh-hour restructuring.

The basics of creating encounters - selecting appropriate monsters, placing appropriate treasures - I think I got. It's the execution that fouled me.

Next post: A River Runs Into It.

[Deacon Blues]

Setup
As established in prior e-mails, the characters all work for the Ardenstone Silver Mines in some capacity. Thomas is their cook, Rupert keeps the books for them, and Al-Nisroc sits on a chair in camp and waits for people to do something wrong. This helps everyone get into character and begin bantering while I set things up.

I was fortunate enough in that every player at the table is an experienced improv comedian

Rupert: ... tremendous amount of experience with this sort of thing. I trained under Bigby himself, you know.
Stratagem: Hasn't he been dead for thousands of years?
Rupert There was a dimensional thing of some sort; you know how this goes ...

And it's at about this point that the raft they've been riding on rams into a log.

Lowering The Boom
A massive tree trunk has been dropped across the river, arresting the raft's progress. Two ratling scurriers scamper across the top of the log, bashing the hilts of their bone daggers against their chests. At the same time, two ratling bombardiers and four ratling brood emerge from the underbrush on either side of the river.

Our heroes also note that the log barring the river smells of pitch.

4x4 raft in the center of a river with 2 squares of water on either side. Scattered underbrush on the river bank acts as difficult terrain or concealment, but lots of empty spaces. The log, 2x10, takes an Athletics check to clamber on top of.

I didn't take play-by-play notes; this is going largely from memory.

Stratagem sprints across the raft, vaults the eight feet to the right-hand riverbank without much trouble, and bull rushes the ratling bombardier between him and a safe landing. He spends most of the battle engaged with ratlings on this side of the river, lending the occasional bit of tactical aid.

Cairn is the first to find out what the ratling bombardier's missiles are made of: ratling feces.

DM: The bombardier targets you with his offal sling ...
Cairn: "Awful" sling is right.

The missiles do more damage to his dignity than his health, and bombardiers immediately become everyone's least favorite ratlings. Cairn makes the jump to the left-hand side of the river and immediately becomes flanked by ratling brood.

The offal slings didn't do that much damage - d6+3 and a -2 to attack rolls for a turn. But the notion of being constantly pelted by rat feces makes players squirm, for some odd reason.

Al-Nisroc calls out one of the ratling scurriers, bringing him down off the log with an overwhelming strike: hooking between his legs with a greataxe and yanking him to the raft.

In retrospect, if the log was high enough that it needed an Athletics check to climb, it was probably high enough not to target someone on it without reach. But it was such a damn cool visual that I couldn't say no to it.

Thomas uses storm walk to deliver a thunderclap on the bombardier on the left bank. He then tries a chaos bolt on the scurrier still atop the log. This fries the scurrier's brain a bit.

Rupert sees the bombardier and some ratling brood flanking and harassing Stratagem on the right bank. Licking his thumb and sticking it into the wind, he judges the range for a scorching burst and fires. The burst slays a broodling, toasts the bombardier and rolls harmlessly off the tiefling's back.

"Taking advantage of my infernal nature!" Stratagem crows. "Excellent tactics!"

"Erm ... right ..." Rupert says.

Thomas's second chaos bolt backfires. A belch of magical energy blossoms on the raft. Everyone on the banks stumbles a few steps. Several barrels, and Rupert, are knocked off the raft into the water.

"What happened?" Cairn yells.

"I got a headache ..." Thomas apologizes.

That natural 1 on wild magic's a bitch sometimes.

The heroes did not need much longer to dispatch the ratlings, though the bombardier pelted both Cairn and Thomas with offal more times than either would have liked. They slaughtered the remaining ratlings or drove them scampering into the woods.

Cairn and Rupert, both well-acquainted with ratling behavior, thought that this indicated a remarkable amount of foresight on their part. Perhaps the ratlings had some sinister backers?

Aftermath

Not bad for my first time out! The 4x4 raft didn't prove too crowded, especially since the log provided congress to both riverbanks and Stratagem led the way with a bold first move. This was a deliberately "average" encounter, giving both me and the players a chance to stretch their muscles.

Errors and considerations:

(1) I forgot that I gave the scurriers the anklebiters power: an attack vs Reflex that does minimal damage and drops the target prone. This would have made them more of a threat.

(2) The ratlings were reskinned kobolds. I took away their shifty power - too distinctly kobold - and gave them the underfoot power: they can shift 2 squares as a minor action, but one must be through a square occupied by an enemy.

(3) One of the scurriers started threatening to ignite the log, provoking a mad rush to tackle him and knock the flint and steel out of his hands. Doing this sooner would have made things more tense; as it is, everyone got to gang up on him.

(4) I forgot to award treasure. It wasn't much - parcel 10 - but 1st-level heroes need every gold piece they can get.

Still, a decent first showing. Both the players and the DM had tried the system, seen what their powers could do, and been happy with the results. Confidence was on the rise.

Next post: TPK, TKO

[Deacon Blues]

The heroes resumed their raft-ride to the town of Ardenstone, set up to serve the mining camp upriver. The encounter with the ratlings had put them behind schedule, so they arrived late at night. As the raft drifted into town, the heroes noticed no one came out to greet them. There weren't any lights in town, either.

Thomas crept into town to investigate under cover of darkness, while the others scouted around and searched for tracks. After several hours, they formed a theory: something had provoked a massive but orderly exodus from the town. Signs of a struggle cropped up in a few places, but nothing indicating an invasion or plague.

I put my method of doing skill challenges to use here: namely, not announcing the skill challenge. I simply let the players roleplay the normal process of investigation, quietly ticking off successes and failures. If 3 failures had accumulated, I would have thrown an encounter at them that had the information they needed.

A brief squabble ensued, with al-Nisroc insisting that the party press on that night to find the villagers and Rupert suggesting a nap would be in order.

al-Nisroc: I shall not rest until we have determined what's happened to these people.
Rupert: You don't have much of a sense of humor, y'know that? Oughta try telling a joke sometime ...
al-Nisroc: I'll tell you a joke. What do you get when you cross a thousand lifetimes of reincarnation with the unflinching will of Erathis?
Rupert: ... what's the punchline?
al-Nisroc: Justice. The punchline is always justice.

The heroes set off in the dark, first raiding the armory and taking some spears to arm any villagers they found on the way. They tied these spears to mules in bundles, resulting in a long and clanking baggage train.

A few miles up the mountain path that the mass exodus had taken place on, they found that a new trail had been broken off. Stratagem knew that trail led to a logging camp that had been abandoned years ago. Thomas snuck down the trail to do some advance scouting. He found that impromptu earthworks had been created to fence off the trail about a mile ahead. He also passed a huge burned swath of forest.

The smell of ratling near the earthworks was strong.

Thomas doubled back and suggested that the party sneak into the fortified camp from the side. He led them into the underbrush, with Cairn using his knowledge of nature and Stratagem his keen perception to muffle their steps.

I turned this into an impromptu skill challenge, with everyone else's skill checks aiding Thomas's.

Also, by sneaking into the side of the camp, the heroes completely bypassed the encounter I had at the front entrance. "Oh well," I thought. "Those guys can always come up later."

The party burst from the underbrush on the left side of the camp. In a massive clearing before them stood a dozen tripods of heavy logs - impromptu cages, too heavy to move from beneath without disturbing the balance and bludgeoning everyone inside. Women, children and older men from the village huddled in these (really bad) cages.

A pile of stinking furs and skins in a corner of the camp served as the ratlings' lair, made obvious when the largest ratling they'd ever seen - at a commanding five feet, five inches tall - strode forth. Shaking his axe, he yelled at his ratlings to "get them!"

Which they very nearly did.

Rupert made good use of a thunderwave to knock two ratlings back. One of them fell into a tripod cage covering a pit, where the imprisoned humanoids fell upon him. The other was knocked off the "tower" (really just a hastily lashed stack of logs that made ratlings two heads taller than most people) and toward the gate.

al-Nisroc declared an oath of enmity on the ratling boss and charged him, swinging his greataxe with vigor. The ratling boss sank its jaws into his forearm, poisoning and immobilizing the deva. But al-Nisroc hadn't planned on moving too far, and his radiant axe continued to hack at the corpulent rat king.

This wasn't a bad tactic, since the ratling boss was built to move around and gang up with his followers. By using his isolating avenger powers, al-Nisroc neutralized those benefits.

But a 1st-level deva does not have the hit points to trade body blows with a 3rd-level elite brute.

Thomas took cover behind a "tower" and peppered a ratling bombardier with chaos bolts, while Cairn and Stratagem moved to engage ratling scurriers in the center of camp. The battle felt grim, but victory wasn't impossible.

Then the ratling who'd been knocked off his tower earlier pulled a lever.

Two sickly hyenas bounded into camp from near the gate, helping the ratlings flank Stratagem and Cairn. At the same time, two hungry-looking stirges swooped in as well. One stirge made its way toward Rupert in the back, while the other darted in for Cairn's exposed neck.

Both the stirges found blood, locked on and began drinking deep. Rupert hadn't the strength to dislodge his. A lucky thunderwave knocked it off long enough for Rupert to catch his second wind, but soon it was back on. Stratagem - the party healer - got dropped by a hyena on his way to help Rupert.

Thomas launched a dazzling ray across the camp to scorch the ratling boss. But even the blood sizzling off his raw, burnt belly didn't slow him down. He dropped al-Nisroc with a savage club across the head.

It's at this point that I started fudging numbers.

Thomas sprinted across the field and gave Stratagem the basic first aid he needed to staunch his bleeding. Inspired, the tiefling warlord lurched to his feet and aided Rupert in shaking off his stirge. Rupert pushed it further with a thunderwave and Thomas finished it off with a chaos bolt.

The rules say a forced move, like a push or slide, dislodges a grab. In the interests of not killing everyone, I ruled that a power that gave a grabbed person a special move - like most of the warlord's powers - would also dislodge a grab. I think 3/5 of the players knew this was bullshit, but nobody else wanted to die.

Cairn, surrounded by a ratling, a hyena and a stirge, refused to back down, transforming into a panther and rending his enemies with terrible foreclaws. He sustained a tremendous beating yet stayed conscious.

al-Nisroc regained consciousness long enough to hear Stratagem's inspiring words. Clambering back to his feet, he put the ratling boss down with his vengeful blows. As the boss died, many of the remaining creatures fled.

Our heroes freed the prisoners, all of whom were grateful (except the ones who'd been clawed by the hyena that Rupert thunderwaved into their pit). Searching the boss's corpse, they found his sylvan hide armor, a potion of healing and some loose silver.

They also found an odd talisman - a circlet with branches curving inward like blades. al-Nisroc, experienced with planar history as he was, gasped as he saw it: a cult fetish of the Prince of Demons, Demogorgon.

Why Demogorgon? Because fuck Orcus, that's why.

Aftermath

1. At its height, five 1st-level adventurers were now facing a 3rd-level elite brute, two 1st-level skirmishers, one 1st-level artillery, two 2nd-level lurkers and two 2nd-level skirmishers. In my haste to make the encounter more dangerous, I made it patently unwinnable.

The stirges and the hyenas, along with a fire beetle, would have been the encounter at the camp's front entrance. A ratling on guard sees some armed adventurers, panics, and releases some guard beasts to buy the rest of the rats a few minutes. Four 2nd-level monsters and one 1st-level monster are a tricky but entirely survivable encounter.

But in the heat of the moment, I felt like the five ratlings - even though one of them was a 3rd-level elite - were too little for the PCs to deal with. So I brought a few reinforcements.

2. I like the way skill challenges worked: everyone contributed as much as they were comfortable. I felt the skill challenge was almost too easy, as even a DC 15 - a "hard" DC - is well within the reach of a PC playing to his specialties (+4 ability modifier, +5 trained - that's a 75% chance of success). Some modification may be in order.

3. Whether or not this is kosher, I explicitly told the players toward the end of the fight, "Yes, this will probably be the last encounter before an extended rest; use your dailies now."

4. Hyenas are nasty! Stirges, too. Either of them complements a standard monster posse very well. Both together? shudder

Next Post: Rag, Mama, Rag

[Deacon Blues]

Our heroes freed the women, children and elderly from the tripod-cages scattered around the camp, then promptly passed out.

Refreshed the next morning, they interviewed the townsfolk for clues on where the other prisoners might be. Their story confirmed what the heroes had suspected - that signs of a massive forest fire had lured most of the town's able-bodied men and women into the woods, and that the ratlings had surrounded the town thereafter and herded off everyone left. Stratagem found a towheaded elven kid who'd seen even more.

Elf: ... and my dad was all like, "you can't come with us," but I'm even older than a lot of the other guys, because I'm almost fifty, so I snuck after them, and then I saw these other guys, wrapped up in yellow scarves that were all stained, capture everyone and make them go up the hill, and they marched them through this camp, and my mom was in one of the cages, and she said, "Get over here!" so I did.
Stratagem: That was very helpful. Thank you.
Elf: Can I go now?
Stratagem: Yes, y--
Elf: *takes off*

The MM2 says that Demogorgon preys on carnage and encourages his followers to the same. Since I wanted to get away from cultists in anonymous robes, I decided Demogorgon cultists wore yellow scarves, wound around their body like mummy wrappings, soaked in the blood of their enemies.

Some discussion amongst the Ardenstone townfolk and the heroes suggests that the cult might be holed up in a played-out lode of the mine that's further down the path. The heroes suit up and head out.

Once the heroes reach the cave, Thomas takes point, sneaking down a winding passageway. At the bottom, he overhears insane, incomprehensible chanting and sees the flicker of torches. He trucks back outside and relays what he heard.

Thomas: ... blah, blah, chanting.
Cairn: Like some call-and-response?
Thomas: No, like they'd all forgot their hymnals.
Stratagem: Maybe they're new at this.

The five of them advance down the corridor, weapons ready. As they reach the bottom of the downsloping passage, the chanting shuts off like a slamming door.

Thomas failed his original Stealth check.
The heroes stood near the entrance of a dome-ceiling cavern. Scaffolds lined the walls, leading to passages thirty feet or more above the cavern floor. Dozens of cultists in blood-soaked yellow rags stood on the floor of the cavern, drawing knives and cudgels from their pockets.

Atop the scaffolding stood a piebald tiefling with blazing eyes - Navura the Chosen. Snarling at the heroes, he gave orders to one of his lieutenants. "Dispatch the rest of the prisoners! I will complete the sacrifice myself. The rest of you: slay these intruders!"

Thomas: Everyone be cool. I think we can bluff them.
al-Nisroc: You will all be brought to justice!
Thomas: Not helping!

And the battle was joined.

Roughly an 8 x 8 square with climbable terrain on three of the four sides. Opposing the heroes were eight human rabble (more of whom would fill in as the first rows were depleted), two stormclaw scorpions and a spiretop drake.The cultists fell on Cairn, Stratagem and al-Nisroc with insane gusto. The three of them formed a sturdy line, hacking through the maddened mob and taking only limited injuries.
I thought that al-Nisroc was wasting his oath of enmity on these minions. But he gets it back every time he drops an opponent, so he's never tied up. And a lot of his powers do damage to enemies adjacent to his oath target, so wading into the thick may be a good tactic for him.

Also:

Cairn: Are these guys minions?
DM: They don't look distinguished, no.
Stratagem: No monocles?
Thomas: No Van Dyke beards?
al-Nisroc: No pictures in Who's Who of Cultists?
DM: ... screw you guys.The line advanced beyond Rupert, leaving him vulnerable to a stormclaw scorpion who scuttled in and poisoned him. "Not again!" he screeched as poison coursed through his veins and immobilized him.

Another stormclaw scorpion harassed Stratagem, inflicting shocks and zaps to him. But Thomas picked him off with an exceptionally potent chaos bolt. As the scorpion twitched and spurted blood, it made eye contact with the spiretop drake, who was also zapped. This drake made eye contact with a cultist, whose head exploded.

Chaos Bolt makes a secondary attack if you get an even number on the attack roll, and this (apparently) repeats for as long as you do. I narrated that this is how chaos bolt "hops" between enemies - by accidental eye contact.

Rupert pushed his scorpion back with a thunderwave, then fried it with a magic missile. And then the spiretop drake swooped down and stole his potion of healing. "Damn it!" he yelled.

Nothing teaches players to keep tight lines like constantly harassing the wizard.

The heroes dispatched the rest of the cultists with little difficulty, and a combination of chaos bolts and magic missiles finished the drake. Rupert sent a mage hand up to snag his potion of healing back from a crevice. Then they hurried up the scaffolding and down the corridor where the rest of the prisoners were about to be dispatched.

Next Post: Think I'm Going Down To The Well Tonight

[vultureboy]

Please sir, can we have some more?

[Deacon Blues]

Please sir, can we have some more?Glad someone likes 'em! These aren't going to come more frequently than once per day, but I'll put up the next encounter tonight.

[Deacon Blues]

Deciding that prisoners about to be dispatched took precedence over a sacrifice about to be completed, our heroes scrambled up the ladder to the scaffolding and entered a narrow, descending passage. They emerged in a flat room with a vast pit in the center.

At each of the four "compass points" surrounding the pit was a cauldron, suspended from chains. These cauldrons hung above a deeply grooved gutter that sloped down into the pit. The pit itself had two platforms circling its diameter: the first, a ten-foot drop from the cavern floor and broad enough for two people to stand comfortably; the second, a ten-foot drop below that, and slightly more cramped.

Like an amphitheater with every level of seating except the top two cut out, if that helps you visualize it.

The pit was eighty feet across, and the cauldron at the opposite end would not have even been visible were it not for the dull red glow of the fires beneath it. A Demogorgon cultist was hefting a chain behind the cauldron, slowly tipping its boiling contents into the gutter that fed the pit. The din of panicked yells from the bottom of the pit indicated where the prisoners were.

Spaced out along the stepped terraces were two more Demogorgon cultists, bulky under their wrappings, and four skeletons armed with bows.

al-Nisroc charged into the fray, dropping awkwardly onto the first tier and twisting his ankle. He charged into one of the bulkier cultists, bellowing his oath of enmity and laying into him with his greataxe. The cultist, insane with strength, circled around and pushed the deva off the tier! Nimble as he was, al-Nisroc rolled out of the fall and landed with little injury on the second, narrower tier.

I designed the pit with stepped terraces because I wanted a deep pit, but I didn't want a fall to be invariably fatal. So a hero could suffer a 10' drop twice, but would then have to be very careful about avoiding the final 20' drop into the pit of prisoners.

Also, taking the "interesting terrain" suggestion to heart, this gave the heroes multiple ways to approach their target - the lurking cultist sixteen squares away, about to pour boiling oil on the prisoners.

Cairn and Stratagem circled around to engage the second, brawnier cultist. Stratagem had to double back, however, when al-Nisroc fell under the combined onslaught of skeletal arrows and the first cultist's mace.

Rupert and Thomas dissuaded the lurking cultist near the back from continuing to pour oil, with a combination of magic missiles and chaos bolts. Snarling, she loped around the top rim of the pit to engage the heroes. However, Cairn picked her off with little difficulty.

I feel I've been skimping over Cairn's contributions, but:

(1) He's a defender, so it's not his job to deal sexy sexy damage. It's his job to get up front and be burdensome to opponents. He's like the right guard in (American) football - you only notice him when he hasn't done his job.

(2) He's a warden, and I don't know enough about the warden class to remember what his powers did.

(3) He's an experienced player, so I was paying less attention to him than some of the other folks.

Unfortunately, Cairn advancing gave one of the remaining cultists the chance to slip past him toward Rupert. Rupert had just attempted a graceful drop down to the first tier, jamming his knees in the process. When he realized a Demogorgon cultist with blood-soaked rags was charging him, he tried to hoist himself back up. This proved difficult.

Cairn dropped down to the narrowest tier and ran at the nearest skeleton. Grabbing it by the shoulders, he flung it into the pit, where its bones were dashed by the twenty-foot drop. He repeated the process on the other skeletons with tireless ferocity.

Technically, grabbing someone and moving them shouldn't be possible in the same turn without an action point. But these skeletons were minions, and they'd stuck around long enough to fill their role: create a low din of damage over the course of battle without being too much of an obstacle.

Rupert, unable to climb back up a level, forced the cultist back with a thunderwave. This put him within flanking distance of Stratagem, who had sprinted back to help the wizard. The two of them soon finished the cultist off.

Tying fifty feet of rope to one of the gutter's crenellations, they helped the prisoners out of the pit and, after a short rest, charged off to deal with Navura.

Aftermath

1. In my original version, the prisoners would all be in a cage suspended by a rope over an underground lake. The cultist would be winching this cage into the water, eventually cutting it if the PCs got too close. I nixed this because (1) that'd have to be an awfully thick rope, to support a cage of any real size; (2) that wouldn't be very many prisoners in the cage; (3) there'd be no reason for the cultist not to cut the rope if her instructions were "kill all the prisoners" and (4) I couldn't imagine how the PCs would get the prisoners out of the cage, once the rope was cut, without a lot of them drowning.

2. The lurking cultist in the back had the power to daze and push, which would have been useful in this fight. She had zero chance to use these powers, though, as everyone ganged up on her with ranged attacks to stop her from tipping the cauldron.

3. al-Nisroc keeps going unconscious.

Next Post: Come On, Baby, Light My Creepy Fire

[Deacon Blues]

Our heroes scrambled back to the cavern which Navura, the piebald tiefling who ran this chapter of the cult, had entered. There they witnessed a grisly scene:

Four stone columns stood twenty feet out from each corner of the room. These columns were solid, save for very narrow slots into which mortals had been wedged. Blood slowly trickled from these columns to a declivity in the center of the room, in which a blue and green fire glowed. Thirty feet behind this fire stood Navura, chanting unspeakable oaths.

I use "mortals" the way most other texts use "humanoids" - bipedal, playable races that probably have souls. It never made sense to me that a diverse fantasy world would use such a humanocentric term to describe orcs, warforged, gnomes and shifters.

al-Nisroc's player: Ah, the Thumbed races.
DM: ... actually, yes.

Four ratling brood and four decrepit skeletons were scattered around the room. Our heroes moved to engage them!

al-Nisroc diced his way through several ratlings and skeletons on the right-hand side of the room, while Cairn worked his way up the left. Stratagem tried to pry a prisoner out of one of the columns, only to realize that drawing near the column made his old wounds unscab and begin bleeding again! Dark magic at work.

Ongoing 2 damage to anyone who ended their turn adjacent to a column.

Rupert, cackling and rubbing his hands together, cast the spell he'd been waiting for days to try out: his flaming sphere. The spongy mass of fire plumped into existence next to a skeleton, incinerated it, and began to merrily roll along.

Stratagem and al-Nisroc closed with Navura behind his altar; Cairn remained at bay, since the tiefling had afflicted him with a curse that made Cairn unable to see him. Navura pelted his assailants with unholy flames and the effects of fear, but to little avail.

He had a ranged flame burst attack that recharged on 5,6. He could also shift all allies and give a -2 penalty to all enemies within 10 squares; that recharged on a 4,5,6. The -2 penalty didn't make much of a difference, though I may have forgot to adjudicate it once or twice.

As Cairn made his way to the fore and Thomas pitched in with some sorcery, Navura began to crumple under their assault. As an axe-blow by al-Nisroc drove a spurt of blood from his mouth, Navura's robe began to glow with red tracery. He vanished in a cloud of smoke, reappearing fifteen feet away, and pelted the heroes with profane fire.

Navura did not have any teleport power in his initial incarnation. But the fight would have degenerated into a 90s-rap-video beatdown if I let anyone else surround him. So I gave him a free teleport when he bloodied. This forced some people to move around a bit and did some damage when his flame burst recharged.

Even this legerdemain could not keep him from the heroes' swift vengeance, though, and he fell not long thereafter.

The heroes looted his corpse, taking his bloodthread robe and several rings set with rich jewels. They also freed the prisoners from the columns. As they dragged everyone toward the front of the room, the slow trickle of blood from the pillars toward the green-and-white fire stopped. As it did, the fire winked out.

Thomas: That's good, right?

A massive, incomprehensible shape leaped from the hole in the ground the fire had covered.

Rupert: That doesn't look as good.

al-Nisroc: It is an aspect of Dagon! Dark servitor of Demogorgon! Lord of nightmare and the deep!

Thomas: Definitely not good, then.

And the heroes turned and fled.

Aftermath

1. A less pressing boss than I might have hoped. The heroes had to use their dailies to beat him, but it wasn't an all-out struggle like at the ratling camp. Perhaps that's for the best, as the ratling camp nearly killed them.

2. Navura didn't have much personality besides "evil," which bugged me. At one point I apologized for how bad his dialogue was.

3. The life-draining columns (and the fire in the middle of the room, which was worse) didn't come into play as much as I liked. The heroes simply treated the adjacent spaces as obstacles and skipped around them. Next time, I should either include some enemies with forced movement powers, or make it impossible to completely avoid the zones.

4. Just because the DMG recommends a solo of level n+1 and an elite of level n as a hard encounter does not mean you can substitute eight minions for the elite. Eight minions prolong the fight, but don't make it significantly more challenging.

Next Post: Run To The Hills, Run For Your Life