Seeking revenge for the destruction of Westbridge, the adventurers returned to the Sacred Stone Monastery and made their way through the mines beneath into the Earth Temple. They were hampered by several attacks by Earth Cultists and gargoyles as they crossed the Great Bridge. The broken doors to the Temple were well-defended, with a porticullus preventing them from progressing further while with cultists used missiles and spells against them in the entrance chamber. Krovis used his great strength to lift the porticullis, allowing Thumbelina to slip underneath. The barbarian dwarf (giant!) slew many cultists before reinforcements flooded the chamber and forced her to retreat. However, she’d caused great losses to the cult. The adventurers returned to the surface to recuperate. That night, the cultists sent assassins against them, but the party were watchful and were able to detect them before they attacked – the assassins didn’t live long enough to really disturb the party’s rest!

The cult had made ready to defend their stronghold during the night, but a dimension door from Zed allowed the warlock to slip into the side tunnels where he surprised and slew several of the lesser cultists. As he made his way back towards the main group, he ran into a priestess of the cult who was interested in negotiating with the warlock: her name was Yarsha. She explained that she was unhappy with the cult’s actions and she was willing to betray her leader and help the adventurers. Zed accepted her aid, and Yarsha proved her worth by calling off the few remaining cultists (the battle had been raging in their absence), and gave the adventurers directions to find the Earth Prophet. The group chose to rest before dealing with him.

So it was the adventurers were guided by Yarsha to the quarters of the Prophet of Elemental Earth. They found him animating stone golems from the remnants of great statues carved by the dwarves of Tyar-Besil. He was not going to go down easily, with his golems attacking the party as he threw spell after spell at the group. Most of the party were kept busy by the golems, with Thumbelina taking the bulk of their attacks, her rage protecting her somewhat from their blows. Krovis and Ivan fought the prophet toe-to-toe, and eventually were able to overthrow him, with even his last desperate attempt to become invisible and flee proving unsuccessful.

Yarsha was very pleased, and promised to turn the Earth Cult to gentler pursuits and away from the destructive path they had been taking. The group, satisfied that Westbridge had been avenged, left the temple and returned to Red Larch for some much needed rest.

However, it the rest of the cultists were still threatening the area, and more and more elemental manifestations were wreaking havoc in the Sumber Hills. Trade was down, and the folk of Red Larch were getting very concerned. So, the adventurers mounted another expedition – this time to investigate Rivergard Keep.

This was not their first time visiting the river fortress. Then, they had been rebuffed by the soldiers who lived there, when the group had completely failed to prosecute any sort of useful negotiation. This time, they weren’t working from vague rumours; they’d discovered from interrogating prisoners of the cult that the pirates of the keep had been involved in the ambush of the trade delegation. However, how does one assault a fortified keep?

Well, in the case of these adventurers, by scaling the walls, killing everything that moves, and not giving the folk of the keep enough time to react. A few fireball spells may have been involved as well.

The leader of the keep, Jollivar Grimjaw, proved no coward and died in the battle, along with all of his men. It was a long battle, but the adventurers were skilled enough to not have to retreat and come back; something which definitely would not have been the case if they’d attempted this as novice adventurers. They gained a few nice valuables in the process, which they’d convert into coin – and likely healing potions!

Investigating the area revealed a river flowing from underground, with boats neatly pulled up on its banks. The adventurers found this intriguing, and used the boats to traverse the river into the depths of the earth, where they discovered the entrance to the Water Temple. It was well-defended, but the party were stealthy enough to pull up at the dock and attack from the shoreline – although some of them were soon pushed into the river where water creatures attacked them. Unfortunately for the guards, they were outmatched and no reinforcements were nearby, a flaw in their planned defences. And so the adventurers were victorious, and they pressed onwards into the Temple. A prison cell was long-abandoned, and they were able, once more, to surprise another guard post, slaying all within in seconds.

They crossed a bridge over one of the canals that flowed through this area of the Temple, and came across a number of aquatic trolls who proved to burn just as well as regular trolls. The adventurers were witnessed by a group of lizardfolk, the Blackmaws tribe, who sent a representative to negotiate with the adventurers; it seemed the lizardfolk were being oppressed by the human cultists and needed help in getting rid of them. Ivan was quite taken by the idea of helping the scaly ones (and Jandar let the lizardfolk know that the Zhentarim were always happy to help!)

The cultists who were busy doing whatever water cultists do in nearby chambers were thus quite surprised when the adventurers, armed with the knowledge of the cultists’ locations, attacked in force. Few were even able to attack before being slain; those that succeeded, were soon defeated.

Unfortunately for the alliance between the lizardfolk and the adventurers, the heroes stumbled across a sea hag and her ogre bodyguards and slew them all. This proved to be the “mother” of the lizardfolk tribe, which led to a few amusing moments of realisation by the adventurers and the lizardfolk as to what had transpired. And then to a short, bloody combat, that did not go well for the lizardfolk! So much for their short-lived reign over the water cult!

Another stone bridge led to the heart of the Water Temple; the glyph on it was discovered by the adventurers so it did not trigger, and the group successfully reached main Temple of Elemental Water. A hezrou demon and more lizardfolk guarded it. Thumbelina was greatly amused by the demon, and smashed it again and again whilst Diablo and Gimble stood back throwing eldritch blasts and firing arrows into it. Two priests came to aid the demon, but a fireball spell soon put paid to those ambitions. With the demon slain, the group were able to destroy the altar and discover a great stairway leading down below – they had, indeed, seen it from the other side as they explored the Fane of the Eye. It was time to resume their investigation of that mysterious area!

DM Notes

It’s been over two months since my last report on our play of Princes – plans to catch up got well and truly blown with the announcement of the DMs Guild, but I’ve just been tremendously busy otherwise – not least with running sessions of this campaign and The Rise of Tiamat. And my home Greyhawk game…

So here’s a massive report on the “final” stages of the Earth Temple and Water Temple explorations. Session numbers are now purely approximate. As you might expect, I’ve left out a lot of details that I’ve forgotten in the ensuing period. However, the bulk of the important events are recorded. There are two events in particular I’m quite pleased about.

The first is in the negotiations with Yarsha. It’s nice to have cultists betraying other cultists (and then living to tell the tale!) The Earth Temple has proved challenging to the party from the start, and these sessions continued that theme. Will Yarsha really turn the cult to gentler pursuits? It does seem unlikely, but it isn’t the first time that the players have been persuaded to go elsewhere by Earth cultists. Did they really kill the Earth Prophet? Well, no – it was just Yarsha’s immediate superior. The true Earth Prophet was quite amused by Yarsha’s ingenuity and later gave her command of the Earth Temple while he dealt with matters down below. At some point, I’ll revisit what Yarsha’s been doing in the meantime.

The second was the return to Rivergard Keep. The first time, the party had very little knowledge of what was going on. Their laughable intimidation of the keep’s lord in the early days was done from a position of ignorance, but they’ve discovered a lot more clues since then. The true story of what happened to the delegation is something that can be uncovered, and now my group knows a lot of it – if not the location of the last captured delegates. (It’s still in their minds; they ask me from time to time if the latest batch of rescued prisoners include one of the delegation. Unfortunately, the answer is always “no”. But not forever!) With that knowledge, they were able to assault the keep and end its threat to the river traffic in the area.

Princes of the Apocalypse allows a great many paths through it, but it’s very challenging for the DM, especially in the beginning, to understand how it all fits together. If you’re just starting to run the adventure, don’t panic! The best advice I can give you is to allow the players to very quickly discover some clues that point them unambiguously to one or more of the Haunted Keeps. At that point, they’ve got a starting point for their investigations and the rest of the adventure will develop from there. The individual cults are likely to try and befriend the players at first, and send them on missions against the other cults… this duplicity can be their downfall, of course, as the players begin to realise they haven’t been told everything!

Incidentally, my records indicate I’ve run 35 sessions of Princes of the Apocalypse so far. In those sessions, they’ve discovered the Earth Prophet and slain him, and are only now beginning their investigation of the Fire Temple after cleaning out most of the Fane. I hope to describe these events in the near future. The sessions are part of our local D&D Adventurers League play and typically run for 90-120 minutes each – so we’ve been going for about 60 hours or so.