Our first D&D session of 2024 took up the campaign when the last session left off: exploring the mysterious tower in the ruined city on the borders of Ket. Two factions were interested in the contents of the ruins: the refugees from the Plains of the Paynims, and a goblin force known as the Red Caps. The basic plan for the adventure came from the Troll Lord Games adventure The Ebon Staff. We played this on Friday, January 5, 2023.

The tower they were exploring was tall. Very tall. And looked something like a tree, with extensions coming from its upper levels. They’d spent last session discovering that the upper part of the tower was full of dangerous bats. (Stunning screech in a cone? Eek!) And honestly, there wasn’t that much towards the top. As the players considered their last session, they came to that realisation – and realised they’d never explored the ground floor of the tower. (They’d climbed the exterior before entering through one of the balconies).

“Are there front doors?” one of the players asked. Well yes, there were – and I’d even described them last session. But as that was in 2023, a whole year ago(!), I happily described the demonic beast adorning the doors – which also had a great statue inside the tower. Cautiously, they slipped inside the massive doors, and in the stinking interior, they espied a set of stairs leading downwards between the feet of the statue.

Yes, they’d spent all this time exploring the upper part of the tower, and the true adventure lay beneath it! (One cannot fault them, though. Give me a huge tower and I wouldn’t be expecting the adventure to delve under it!)

Beneath the Tower

A claustrophobic spiral staircase, barely big enough for one hobbit to squeeze through, led down. And carrying a ten-foot pole? Impossible! (No-one had a ten-foot pole. Funnily enough, someone soon expressed the wish to have one).

It led to yet another claustrophobic chamber – big in dimension, but with the ceiling only seven-feet above the floor, and with many pillars throughout. The pillars were carved with various demonic beings and scriptures, but none of the party investigated in detail. Instead, their attention was drawn by a smaller chamber to the south. This chamber had a shelf with small statues of the demonic god above and copper bowls, and a floor which was a mosaic of snakes.

Strangely enough, no-one wanted to step on the floor, instead Breen used a mage hand spell to retrieve one of the copper bowls, the interior of was caked in dried blood.

Now they really didn’t want to step on the floor. As a result, they didn’t trigger the trap, instead going to investigate some of the other corridors leading from the room.

Abandoned Ruins, but Not Empty

Evidence quickly mounted that these chambers had been living quarters in the distant past, with the group finding bedchambers, a kitchen, a bathroom, and other such rooms. And also, the grisly remains of more recent inhabitation – decapitated bodies of humans (those refugees from the Plains of the Paynims), and dead goblin bodies as well.

A few items of interest were of more ancient manufacture: small stone vials with an inscription to Xan-Yae in the ancient Baklunish language inscribed on them. The party took them, not quite understanding what they were.

The bathroom proved a little more challenging, with sealed ceramic jars. Obviously, they held a great treasure! No luck, I’m afraid – only yellow mold. Breen, who was definitely taking the lead during the exploration, took a deep lungful of it and started coughing and taking damage. Sir Tristan looked at his spell list, and noted lesser restoration did nothing to help with poison. The rest of the party quickly reminded him that as a paladin, he could use his lay on hands ability to heal poison. Poor Sir Tristan! His player has built a complicated Warlock/Paladin build, but he’s not playing enough to remember all the subtleties of the character! (The cry after each combat is that he’s forgotten to cast Hex yet again!) There’s something to be said for simple characters.

At this point, I made a wandering monster check, and the 1 on a d6 indicated an encounter. The dungeon has no wandering monster tables, but I assumed a patrol of Red Cap goblins from above would find the party. I hadn’t done a lot of preparation for what they’d look like, but given they were skilled fighters, I used the stat blocks of actual red caps for them. Four goblins at CR4. It should be a pretty easy fight for this tenth level party, but the ability the goblins had to attack three times meant that there was some damage handed out – especially after the lead goblin shoved Zincelli back, who had moved to block the doorway, and the goblins had access to the room, knocking Faylin unconscious in the process! Once revived, Faylin stayed prone, but used a wand of lightning bolts on the goblins. The party won, but it had cost them a few resources. (2 rounds, 14 minutes)

Following the fight, a short rest was needed! Breen took the opportunity to cast identity and learnt that the vials were Blessed Bottles of Xan-Yae: Any liquid kept in this vial for at least 24 hours, gains the property of healing 2d8+3 hit points when consumed from the bottle, or of restoring any reduction to maximum hit points. I took inspiration from the adventure’s description of what they did and put a 5E spin on it.

A Trove of Intellectual Treasure

The kitchen had a couple of magical coals in it that were of great interest to Zincelli the Artificer – they were basically never-ending firestarters. They’d always burn and never been consumed. More excellent exploration fodder from the adventure design – even if this level had no monsters in it at all except for a trap that summoned snakes. (Yes, that one the players had avoided).

The players joked that they’d expected a fire elemental to attack when they opened the stove. I admitted I had considered it, to give them a little more action, but I felt the exploration was running nicely and so didn’t.

The next chamber had been used as a bedroom by the refugees, but once again it had been stormed by the redcaps. The bodies of the refugees still lay there, decapitated, although a few goblin bodies did show they didn’t go without a fight. Zincelli and Breen spotted a ring set with a ruby that had fallen into the wood pile and retrieved it.

They found a set of stairs down, but there was one chamber left – one that branched off the opening chamber. There they found a great scroll room and, amazingly given its age, the scrolls had survived! Most were written in ancient tongues, but there was the chance that some might be magical. So, Breen started casting detect magic as a ritual. I rolled the wandering monster die, and once again it indicated an encounter! I was nice though – the monsters arrived just after Breen had identified two magical scrolls.

Magical Goblins

This time, I sent four regular (redcap) goblins against the party plus an additional spellcaster – using the Conjurer statblock from Monsters of the Multiverse. The designers have pushed that stat block. It could summon an elemental (I chose earth) as a bonus action, as a regular action attack three times dealing 3d10+3 each time. And it could cast two fireballs. So, on its first round it cast fireball on the party followed by summoning the earth elemental in their midst. Ow!

Yeah, this was a challenging combat. Four rounds or 30 minutes later they were victorious, but a short rest was definitely required – plus some healing magic.

The goblins and elemental kept Sir Tristan and Zincelli busy, while Breen chased the goblin conjurer around the battlefield. Brenshard was happy to hide in the scroll room and snipe from the shadows, while Faylinn provided a steady stream of magic that was just a little less impressive than her player wanted. Sometime, the dice rolls are against you!

With this battle over, the party took some time to heal and identity the items they’d found. The ring was a ring of earth elemental command, the two scrolls contained spells – one to unlock the vault below, the other a new spell named Gift of Alacrity – a second level spell of my design that allowed the caster to remove the stunned, incapacitated or paralysed conditions from characters as a bonus action. We’ll see if anyone takes it!

But after their rest, they were ready to take on the lower level. But unfortunately, we’d reached 10 pm and were out of time. We’ll meet again in two weeks and see what occurs.

Each character received 5000 XP for the session, mostly for exploration.