Hi all,
I previously posted some warts-and-all email summaries of the ‘Curse of Strahd’ campaign I ran in 2017, and the ‘Tomb of Annihilation’ campaign from 2018. CoS was the first campaign I sent summaries to players by email after each game (I was a bit lazy prior to that). Here’s another campaign – 2020’s ‘Out of the Abyss’. Each session was approximately 4 hours long. Some of the summaries may be amusing, but don’t forget these are unedited emails, so please forgive their somewhat chaotic nature and poor sentence structure/grammar. If you’re a D&D fan you may enjoy them. And maybe even if you aren’t.
Game on!
Steve 🙂
Side Note: These sessions were the first time we ever played online as a group – all previous sessions were face-to-face. But, you know, Covid had just hit. I used Discord for audio and screen-shared maps and tokens in Photoshop, which I moved around manually on screen (tedious lol). I moved to Roll20 not long after we finished the Whorlestone Tunnels section of the adventure…
Session 8 – Whirling and Wending Their Way through the Winding Tunnels of Whorlestone
After a long rest in which Belinda’s Bard successfully shook off Grackle Lung, the party continued into the caves, dispatching two Carrion Crawlers and claiming a magical shield for Matt’s Cleric.
In the next cavern they met up with a bunch of dancing Myconids who offered them “the Lady’s Gift”, which the party declined. The head Myconid also told the PCs about the special mushrooms that grew in these caves that helped the user grow (Bigwig) or shrink in size (Pygmywort). One of Stool’s friends, Rumpadump, joined the party, advising he could guide them to Neverlight Grove, Stool’s home.
The next cavern was full of fungi trees and hard to move through, so the party backtracked to the original intersection, found some footprints leading north to clumps of fungi next to a narrow crack in the wall. The footprints led beyond, so the party consumed pygmyworts and newly tiny Rhyse’s Ratfolk Rogue scouted ahead. Eventually the party made its way through the fungi forest, finding the pygmywort ran out after an hour.
They discovered a cave with a strange mesa, where whispers of conversations from the city above filtered down. Matt’s Cleric picked up Droki’s crazed murmuring and discovered he was in the caverns north of them.
Shrinking down to go through another crack in the wall, the party found a corridor with big double doors, which Peter’s Rogue and Rhyse’s Rogue opened. Inside, a fungi garden tended by three Duergar. Sneaking north, the party found an alchemist’s lab, confronted the Duergar alchemist and Belinda’s Bard put him to sleep. They dispatched the three Duergar who responded to the alchemist’s calls. Looting the room, they found several magical potions, acid vials and alchemist’s fire flasks, as well as various kits, including a poisoners’ kit for Rhyse’s Rogue.
Waking the alchemist, the party discovered the Duergar were Grey Ghosts (the ones the Keepers of the Flame wanted to know about), that Droki delivered strange bits of black metal to them and that the Grey Ghosts were repairing a strange black obelisk in another section of the caves using the material. Belinda’s Bard was set on fire and beaten up by the alchemist, so Peter’s Rogue finished him off.
The party leveled up – 4th level!
Session 9 – The endless trails of the Whorlestone Tunnels
In the alchemist’s cave and fungi garden, Rhyse’s Rogue recovered some Assassin’s Blood ingested poison from some plants, then Jeremy’s Monk sprayed him with fertilizer leaving him a retching mess. The party found a tunnel that led to the Darklake Docks, then went back into the Whorlestone Tunnels to continue the search for Droki.
Trekking through the darkness, they came upon a swirling pool next to two paths. Taking the lower trail, Rhyse’s Rogue threw in a rock and disturbed the Water Weird there. Peter’s Rogue daintily tested the water before entering it to attack, for the first time Belinda’s Bard was tongue-tied while viciously mocking the beast (or as DM Steve said: “mockering”), and Josh’s Warlock/Wizard (who slept through last week) got to use his Eldritch Blast again.
Onto a cavern with locked up cave bears, a spiraling path used for some sort of ritual, and several Derro. The party once again efficiently disposed of the crazy little guys, but the cave bears went crazy and one broke out. Jeremy’s monk (or perhaps we should say Jeremy) was very upset that the bear he was feeding its derro master to (who had warped its brain with magic) should be enraged and try to attack him – go figure. The bears were all killed off and the party spent a long rest eating the first fresh meat they’d had since the lizards from the Duergar Wagon Train about a week ago. Mushroom lunches and dinners each day only go so far.
Further along, a cavern reeking of death and filled with faezress mist, where the PCs subdued a lone Derro, interrogated him and then threw him into the misty cavern below, where murky things were moving about below the haze. “Hands! Handsy, handsy, oof!” cried Handsy the Derro.
Through the tunnels to a fungus-covered set of double doors, with a rusted lock that was apparently barred from the other side. No attempt to open it as everyone was in a rush to go somewhere else.
Onwards the intrepid adventurers travelled, determined to explore every nook and cranny. Into a dire den of Giant Spiders, where the king spider had two heads. Jeremy’s monk attempted to kill himself but survived, and Rhyse’s Rogue almost died attempting to harvest the spiders’ poison. His last roll was a 20, and he got one dose of giant spider venom! Yeehah!
A long rest and the party would be ready for the next gruelling session…
Next Week: More bumping and grinding in the Whorlestone Tunnels…
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