Monday, March 18, 2024. In this session. we finished Chapter 7 of The Shattered Obelisk, completing the last two rifts and gaining access to the Far Realm. Which was a place the party definitely wanted to spend the least amount of time in as possible.

But, if they wanted to stop the mind flayers plan, they’d have to reach it first. Two rifts needed exploring first.

The Shattered Obelisk has a lot of these small areas. I am, for the most part, fond of small highly focussed quests. It all depends on the implementation. The area we ran last session, the Labyrinth of Eyes, had been good.

Into Spawn Hollow

The next area, that of a pocket of the Far Realm crossed with Limbo containing Slaad, called Spawn Hollow, wasn’t so good. And a large part of that came down to some atrocious editing.

The floor of this funnel-shaped chamber is covered with warts. A whirlpool at the room’s lowest point swirls around a crusted ridge of warty flesh. A bipedal, gray-scaled, reptilian creature looms over the pool.

That’s the boxed text. Here’s the room text:

Twelve slaad tadpoles cavort in the pit, climbing in and out of the whirlpool. A single red slaad carefully watches over them, giving them a whack when they nip at each other.

The gray slaad is in another room. Something changed in development, and no-one caught the discrepancy. It’s a fairly simple set of four rooms – although there is a glyph of warding the party stumbled into. The gray slaad did ambush them, but a lone slaad against the party wasn’t going to survive long, and it didn’t. Nor did the red slaad, despite the tadpoles trying to nip the toes off the heroes.

One gnawbie retrieved later (cries of “It’s so cute!” from the paladin), a short rest to recover (and allow the paladin to play with the gnawbie), and they were off to the last of the three Far Realm rifts – the one inhabited by grell.

The Feeding Grounds

This area doesn’t have the obvious errors of Spawn Hollow, but again isn’t that noteworthy. Grell feeding from trenches providing grell food and a few dead nothics make up the bulk of the action. In other words, very short combats – although the party had the opportunity to learn a little more about the mind flayers from a dying nothic. They didn’t listen to it, but the information wasn’t that interesting in any case.

The third gnawbie retrieved – gnawbies are a mass of claws, teeth and hair that forms around runes in the rifts – and the party were able to use their power to open the main gate to the Far Realm – they were off to the Briny Maze and Chapter 8!

The Briny Maze

The first half of Chapter 8 takes place in a dungeon that looks like a giant human brain and has various effects in different sections sort of based on what that part of the brain is used for. It sounds cooler than it plays.

The biggest problem facing this section is how linear it is. Just looking at the map, you don’t realise it, but as the exploration continued and the players needed to open doors to get to the next section, it dawned on them how linear it was.

As in, the players actually said during one of the sessions how disappointing it felt.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t a few good encounters to be found. But the overall dungeon layout looks good but plays uninspired.

One factor of the exploration here is that upon each long rest, the characters need to succeed at a DC 15 Wisdom check or have the effects of the Far Realm gnaw at their mind and cause them to gain a level of exhaustion. As we were using the original (2014) exhaustion rules, this could quickly become crippling. (I am not fond of the original rules). I omitted this effect, which likely made the adventure a tad easier.

Meanwhile, Back in Phandalin…

It’s worth noting that this is the section of the adventure where all the real horror starts in Phandalin. My group never realised, as they never returned to the town. I don’t think they’d be alone. It’s such a pain to go home, and it is against the flow of the story.

Entering the Briny Maze

It began well enough. The party entered a flesh-like corridor and had the choice of going left or right. Unbeknownst to them at the time, they’d have to go both directions eventually, but they chose to go left.

That way curved to the right, back on itself, but also led them to some duergar corpses, partially gnawed up. And gnawed on their heads. In an adventuring featuring mind flayers, the party did not see this as especially unusual, and continued on.

This led them to another switchback, but this one had monsters – two psionic ashenwights (CR 7) and two phase spiders (CR 3) – which emerged out of the webs in the corner to assault the party. This was not a tough battle for the party (3 rounds, 14 minutes), and so they moved forward to an area where a spectator was studying a book.

Friends in Strange Places

Syzoth and the spectator were kindred souls. For those unaware of spectators, they’re a small floating eye with eye stalks, but much friendlier than beholders and often used to guard treasures. This spectator had been summoned by a wizard to help him decipher a book, but the two had not succeeded before the wizard died. However, the spectator remained, continuing to try to decipher the book and, quite possibly, not realising that its original summoner was no longer amongst the living.

While I’m often critical of the overall structure of the adventure, there are gems like this encounter, which offer a lot of role-playing potential. I am especially drawn to the odd and bizarre, and this allowed me to role-play in that manner, something that clicked with Syzoth’s player. And so, he stayed for a few hours, helping the spectator.

The rest of the party, used to Syzoth’s obsessions, kept guard and made bets.

Their time of rest was disrupted by the monster that wandered this part of the dungeon – an encephalon cluster (CR 10) and four gemmules (CR 3)– of a sort they’d previously fought in the dwarven crypts. Vel’rari summoned a celestial, and they got into the fight, which actually proved tougher than most, taking 30 minutes to resolve.

Strangers in Friendly Places

With Syzoth feeling inspired due to his study of the book, the party moved on, and discovered a secret door that led to an enclave of flumphs! Once again, a fun role-playing encounter occurred. The flumphs were good at describing the dungeon they’d already explored, and were enthusiastic, but their main contribution was providing a safe space to rest if needed.

A short rest ensued – and the end of the session as well!