Death’s Reach is the first adventure of the Epic Tier produced by Wizards of the Coast; it continues some elements raised in previous adventures in the Heroic and Paragon tier adventures, especially the fight against Orcus, whose minions have been the major foes in several past adventures (in particular H1 and P2). It was now time for us to embark on our play of the Epic Tier, which will probably last us most of this year.

Present for this session were the following players and characters:

Nathaniel – Lienatan, half-elf warlock 21
Adam – Sir Underscore, eladrin wizard 21
Greg – Shava, dragonborn cleric 21

Josh was unable to make the session. I played as the DM, and also had an NPC with the group: Splug, goblin thief 21. Splug has been adventuring with the group since Keep on the Shadowfell. I recently rebuilt his character as an Essentials thief, as it would be a lot easier to run in the session. As it turned out, it also required a lot of dice rolling: each round, he’d likely deal 2d4+3d6+4d8+23 damage – although I need to check the maths, as the new online Character Builder is dreadfully inaccurate. Shava’s character sheet was the other one we created online, and we kept finding new ways it was wrong.

As it had been about four months since we last played, we assumed that the characters had also had some downtime after finishing Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress. I asked each of the players what their characters had been doing, and discovered that they’d returned to Winterhaven (the location of their first adventure) and started spending their wealth there: as a result, it was turning into a thriving small city!

Underscore had built his own wizard’s tower, which he had near the tower of Valthrun the Prescient: the two had a bridge at the upper levels, so they didn’t have to go down stairs to visit each other. We didn’t discuss whether Underscore had apprentices, but he probably did – silent, invisible ones. In any case, he was performing a ritual of some indeterminate nature (in other words, it wasn’t important to the story), when it was interrupted by a manifestation of divine origin: a cloaked, hooded figure, who told him about a place called “Death’s Reach”, which had recently been breached, and held many artefacts of the Dawn Times. (Minor Quest: get an artefact from Death’s Reach!)

Shava, who had taken the Avatar of Io epic destiny, was preaching the faith of Bahamut everywhere (and, possibly secretly, also that of Tiamat). She’d created a temple, and other temples were being raised around the Vale to her patron. One night whilst sleeping, she was visited by a glowing figure that resembled her, who warned her of danger in her path: if she wanted to achieve her apotheosis, she needed to get the Raven Queen, goddess of winter and death, to relinquish her claim on her soul.

Meanwhile, Lienatan was becoming a merchant prince, owner of many taverns and inns throughout the land and many other businesses as well. He was approached by one of his contacts, who told him that servants of Orcus were preparing to attack the realm of the Raven Queen; as Lienatan was known as a foe of Orcus, he might like to alert the Raven Queen to this attack: it’s always good to have the Raven Queen owing you a favour!

The group came together, relating their various stories, and doing some research on Death’s Reach and the realm of the Raven Queen: it seemed that Death’s Reach was a place that souls used to go before travelling on to their final reward, but long ago had been corrupted by the Primordials so that souls that went there were trapped and consumed by primordial beings. The gods had managed to seal off access to Death’s Reach so that souls could no longer travel there, but it seemed that Orcus’s minions had found a new way in – Underscore’s rituals and sources of information were quite good. 

The Raven Queen was going to be attacked by a famous dwarven warrior – now a lich – and his servants… when? Lienatan wasn’t quite sure, but certainly it would be soon.

As they discussed this new information, a messenger from the Raven Queen arrived amongst them, summoning them to a meeting with the dread goddess. After delivering the message – and a scroll with a ritual that would take them to her realm – it departed. Events were converging upon the heroes and the Raven Queen!

Scarcely had they a chance to absorb this information when they were set upon by servants of Orcus: a lich, a cambion and two dark knights. This was our first chance to see Epic level combat in action and – ahem – it was a bit slow. Not unbearably so by any means (and, indeed, each combat still took about an hour to play through), but we were trying to get used to the new powers, remember the old powers, and work out what dice to roll. There was also struggling with Greg’s character sheet…

The first combat took four rounds. It was made somewhat more challenging due to the mounts and because the riders would mount and dismount during the game (and the mounts were “super minions” that could take two hits before dying). The combat was full of daze and immobilizing effects which were mainly affecting the enemies: Lienatan and Underscore are both very controller-type characters. Splug worked well in his striker role, and Shava absorbed most of the damage. (When Josh joins us next week, his character is the proper defender of the group).

By the end of the combat, it was obvious that the group was more than a match for the first lot of enemies, and that I probably needed to go and look at the maths for the enemies to make them a little more deadly. (I’d intended to do that before this session, but other things had distracted me – like a lot of board gaming!) I’ll restat the enemies for next week, however.

The group rested the night, and on the morrow travelled to the realm of the Raven Queen for an audience. Of course, it couldn’t be that simple, could it?

By no means. First, the group needed to go through several tests of worthiness before they could reach the Raven Queen: they’d only reached her Temple of Temples on the doorstep of her domain. One of her servants informed them of the requirements for passage onwards, and then vanished, letting them enter the testing grounds.

Unfortunately, when they passed into the testing grounds, they discovered that instead of priests ready to help them, they had servants of Orcus (undead and a few evil priests) instead waiting to help them into the next life, having already slain the Raven Queen’s servants! 

I managed to forget Splug’s mini: he’s represented by the dwarf near the ghouls. The evil cleric and the rot harbinger stand on the left, looking towards Lienatan on the right; Underscore and Shava are fighting the ghouls in the rear.

The group had to fight a Deathpriest, two Abyssal Ghoul Hordes, and a Rot Harbinger (an undead demon, which threw corruption globes at the group). Splug won initiative (rolling a total of 44!) and moved in to fighter the Harbinger, but the Ghoul Hordes soon cut him off from the rest of the party. Underscore teleported around the battlefield, moving to places where (he hoped) the ghouls couldn’t get to him, like the roof of the shrine, only to discover that the ghouls could climb!

From left to right: Greg, Adam and Nathaniel

Underscore on the roof, with the Ghouls

The combat lasted six rounds in totality; Underscore and Lienatan were resistant to necrotic damage, which helped greatly, and Shava used her radiant powers to great effect on the ghouls… when she could hit. Unfortunately, that wasn’t that often, and she didn’t have that many area attacks, so their “swarmness” worked against her. A very nice touch in the monster description was how when they were killed (or forced to move), they’d leave behind stragglers – individual ghoul minions. These ghouls didn’t do much: Underscore just slew them with scorching burst.

Once over, the group floundered about trying to work out the ritual they needed to perform, and flubbed a lot of religion checks. (Shava has a poor Religion score, comparatively). Eventually, I took pity on them and allowed them to complete the ritual: standing in the thorny bushes for three rounds. (Does it count if your necrotic resistance stops you from being hurt by the bushes?)

Paths now became visible to the group, leading along the plateau through the fog. A great obelisk began to glow in the distance, and they set out in its direction. After a half-hour of travelling or thereabouts, they reached the obelisk to find it made of dark crystal, standing in a great pool of clear water. It seemed significant, but its significance was lost on them, and no other paths presented themselves; the group headed back the way they came.

Taking one of the other paths, they came to a second shrine, with two great cisterns of water, which were being fouled by the Orcus worshippers who were there. Charging into combat, they slew the tiefling warlock, the two bone nagas and the abyssal ghouls that were performing the dark rites. This combat took four rounds, and saw Shava spent a lot of time immobilized and wishing she had a ranged weapon!

From left to right: Underscore, Splug (dwarf), Lienatan and Shava face the Tiefling Warlock and her two Naga

The tiefling actually had a a lot of interesting powers, but didn’t really get to use them because Lienatan locked them down in the first round with Claws of the Magpie, and she was dead by the time the third round came up: one Pall of Thanatos and that was it. Lienatan is very, very good at making solo or elite creatures be ineffective.

The second ritual – bathing in the waters – was then able to be completed. Oh, and the other great ritual: the taking of treasure. Both groups of Orcus worshippers had good treasures for the taking, both magical and monetary. Greg was annoyed that he got a good armour out of the deal as he’d just spent a lot of money enchanting his old armour! Oh well – he’ll make the money back soon, I’d imagine.

Two of the four rituals had now been completed, but we were out of time in this session. It’d been about four hours, some of it spent dealing with character issues, some in combat and some roleplaying and exploring. It was great to have the group back together, and we’ll do it again next week (with Josh as well) – by the end of the next session I expect the group will have their audience with the Raven Queen.

The entire adventure will likely take 7 or 8 sessions to play through. It’s begun promisingly so far – let’s hope it maintains its interest!