The Dragon of Icespire Peak Campaign Diary - Episode 8 - Village of the Dead

The prep...

A Bard with necromantic spells?

Since we didn't get all that far in the previous adventure, I pretty much kept all my prep notes the same from the previous session. I really didn't think they would get much further than the Shrine and Coneyberry. I was proven right, but not quite how I expected (Which is actually expected. The players never do what you think they are going to do). I was really hoping they would trigger my zombie attack. I mean we were playing the week of Halloween - it needed to happen. I will say this is the lightest prep I have done for the campaign yet. I reread my notes for Coneyberry and the Shrine, but that was about it. I felt like I was winging it a bit, but everything worked out well in the end.

I figured out what my issue with D&D Beyond was. It was user error. I was able to update The Rogue's character sheet using "custom" features. This will work fine for our little home game, and now The Rogue can use her Assassin traits. Sadly, these traits didn't come into play this session.

The story...

I spent a few moments going over The Rogue's new assassin abilities. She was pleased to be able to activate some serious damage at times. We then jumped into the adventure.

"It's about time for some orc slayin'."

This session I wanted to show them the dangers of unpredictable non-player characters (NPCs). Inverna had been playing well with them for the previous adventure. But this time they were going straight into battle with orcs, and she is not going to let good sense get in her way of killing every single one of them.

This was proven after the players explained to Inverna what they saw in the night. She was angry they didn't wake her up to kill the orcs. When they went to investigate the severed heads on the stakes, I described how angry Inverna got. She then proceeded to knock down the heads and spit on them. The players were disturbed by her intense hate. They tried to get more out of her about it, but she just said that all orcs were blights on the world and deserved death. I made it clear that any attempt to parlay with orcs wasn't going to happen with Inverna around. The group did notice that the severed orc heads did not have any signs of the tempest god Talos on them, unlike the orcs they ran into at the dwarves ruins.

The Druid did finally cast detect magic on the folded piece of green cloth she found in the treasure barrel. I told her it glowed with magical light and was part of the school of Enchantment. A really good arcana check revealed that it would boost charisma in some way. She messed around with the cloth and it unfolded into a classic green Robin Hood hat, complete with feather. Putting it on made the Druid suddenly more dapper and appealing. The players got a kick out of this items. And it can be useful since neither of them have a very high charisma score.

"Ladies..."

The characters started toward Conyberry. The rogue moved took to off-roading approaching the ruined village from the west. Doing some snooping she discovered the village was deserted, but she also found more signs of horse prints in the ground. The Druid and Inverna approached the village along the road. They encountered the only semi-standing structure still reamaining, an old church or town hall. Inside they found a huge symbol of Talos carved on one wall and inked in blood, three lightning bolts. They also found fresh dug earth and four posts with severed orc heads on them. Like the other heads these did not seem to have any symbols of Talos upon them. Inverna wanted to ruin this site too, but the Druid talked her down.

The rogue found the horses near the other end of the village, near a trail leading toward the ancient shrine that Inverna told them about. Both characters tried to use animal handling to approach the horses, but the Druid rolled an natural 1. I described how she approached and promptly stepped in horse dung which was much more distracting to her than actually trying to approach the horses. The ladies left them to graze and started down the trial to the shrine.

As they approached they saw the ruins of the shrine. They determined that it wouldn’t be hard to defend, with the huge wall around it. They saw a guard in the only remaining tower, and stealthily manuvered their way around the whole structure. They rolled really well on stealth, so they were succcessful at staying hidden. It was a good thing too, because they saw an ogre wandering around inside the shrine’s walls. The behemoth was too intimidating for the group so they snuck back to Conyberry, much to Inverna’a annoyance.

When they arrived at the ruined village, the two players let Inverna blow off some steam and destroy those orc stakes. They tried the animal handling again and this time rolled very well. The horses were befriended. They noticed that th horsed were branded with BAK. There was a bit of discussion about what that may mean but they didn’t have too much time to consider because Inverna cried out in horror. The two heroes raced over and saw something shambling out of the structure toward Inverna.

"Oy! We're here for the fancy dress party!"

Headless Zombie Orc corpses lumbered up front the fresh dug earth with one goal, to tear apart the ladies. The Druid used quick thinking to cast her Web spell on the doorway. This trapped the first zombie inside the doorway, and the remaining ones were too dumb to do much more than wander right into its back. The Rogue and Inverna took turns slashing the trapped zombie and took him out.

The Druid dropped her web spell and the remaining three zombies stumbled forward. The Rogue and Druid were able to avoid taking any hits, and did plenty of damage against the undead horrors. Inverna wasn't so fortunate and she took a bit of a beating. One of the zombies popped up one last time for a good scare before the Rogue dispatched it with a quick flick of her rapier. Inverna apologized for letting her anger get the better of her. The Druid healed Inverna and the three took to the trail again, this time riding the three horses they befriended.

[Side note: We aren't using miniatures so I had to once again come up with descriptions for each of the orc zombies. It was tough to come up with unique descriptors for headless monsters. Another DM challenge I hadn't considered. I ended up using names like "Grey", "Stump" "Hole" (huge gaping hole in his abdomen) and "Pegleg". It ended up being a bit funny sounding, but the players enjoyed it.]

Along the trail they ran into a wandering cow also with the BAK brand on it. The players came to the conclusion that the animals were somehow freed from the ranch, which only means more trouble. They were able to roll really well once again for animal handling (both of them again nailing it), so the cow was now following them to the ranch.

The pair finally arrived at Butterskull Ranch, and saw that it was indeed in disruption. Pigs were roaming the fields and orchards, it looked like a couple of buildings had been burned or smashed. There was no sign of anyone around (other than the pigs). With this eerie setting established, we stopped for the evening.

The post...

Looks like she rolled high on her Stealth check.

This was another good session, got a bit of roleplaying with Inverna in there. The players got to understand the depths of her hatred for orcs. This has made her a bit unreliable when it comes to battling these foes, so they will need to think about how to keep her from doing reckless things. So far they have been able to talk her down, and her mishap with the zombies was embarrassing. So we'll see.

They did some exploration, sneaking all the way around the Shrine. This actually took a bit of time, since they were moving slow and I was describing what they saw a little at a time. Those stealth rolls were so good, they were able to remain unnoticed. They also have a pretty good idea of the layout of the shrine. So if they wish to return (and it sounds like they do) they will have an idea of how to get in. They did spend a good bit of time talking about whether they should attempt the shrine before the ranch. Inverna wanted to, and wasn't afraid of any ogre. But the Druid player is a planner, and she didn't want to rush in without something place. She felt their mission was to resolve Butterskull Ranch, and they would handle the Shrine on the way back. So we got a good bit of roleplaying in that section as well.

Finally they got in some combat, as I had the reckless NPC trigger my zombie trap. Since I had been building up Inverna's frustration with not begin able to attack the orcs in the shrine, I think it worked out very well to have her lose her cool and start messing with things. The zombie battle went really well for the players. That Web spell is really effective, and it allowed them to remove one creature right away. The rest of it was just some damn good rolls by the players and poor rolls by the zombies. But hey, we had our Thriller moment worked in for the Halloween week and that was good.

All in all a fun session, and a great foreshadowing for the challenge looming next time.

Up next...

Session 9: Who Let the Cows In?