Out of the Abyss: Sessions 10-11

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 🙂

Session 10 – The Spectator & the Obelisk

The party awoke refreshed after a long rest in the dire den and decided to explore the areas left to them. Heading north, they found a vast and brightly lit cavern with a black metal obelisk and a dragon egg on a fire.

A Derro Savant, a bunch of Derros and a Spectator provided a good match for the party, with the Spectator’s eye powers paralyzing and frightening party members left, right and centre. Jeremy’s Goblin Monk bore the brunt of many attacks as he raced to the top of the mesa and was knocked unconscious twice. Josh’s Wizard had a long and determined fight with a wall and was so determined he (eventually) managed to climb it. It was down to Matt’s Cleric to finally kill the Spectator and the Derro Savant after the rest of the party softened them up (including a big crit hit by Peter’s Rogue on the Spectator).

Investigating the Obelisk, Josh’s Wizard decided to activate it with his magic and teleported Belinda’s Bard, Jeremy’s Monk and himself outside of Gracklstugh (luckily, they were in walking distance as they were pretty banged up from the battle). Meanwhile the others saw them disappear with only a wisp of smoke and assumed the worst. “So, let’s loot the dead,” said Matt’s Cleric in mourning. Rhyse’s Rogue, obviously grief-stricken over the loss of his party, desperately searched for the poisoned crossbow bolt he used (and missed with). “It’s the only Drow poison I’ve got!” he declared. At least he found it!

The teleported party members finally arrived at the gates of Garacklstugh and encountered a corrupt Gate Captain, who they immediately dobbed in to Stone Guard Leader Erde Blackskull (who was interested in incidents of corruption in the city). She asked them to find the Gate Captain’s contact on the Darklake Docks.

The three remaining party members rested, grabbed the dragon egg and made their way back to the city via the secret tunnel they discovered earlier, hired a cart and were all set to take the egg to the Keepers of the Flame when they ran into the missing party members. One quick reunion later and they all decided to long rest in their hotel under the Blades Bazaar.

Next Week: To find a Droki and the fate of the egg…

Session 11 – The Droki(n) Egg

After an interminably long discussion about what to do with the dragon egg, Belinda’s Bard and Peter’s Rogue went to see Themberchaud the Red Dragon and the Keepers of the Flame to find out who would offer the best deal. Themberchaud promised some potions (and not to burn them alive – he was quite persuasive in this regard) if they brought the egg to him. The Keepers were more interested in the location of the Obelisk in the Whorlestone Tunnels.

Meanwhile, Jeremy’s Monk and Rhyse’s Rogue were approached by some Drow in the bazaar, who questioned them about who they were (seems not all Drow run together, though; definitely a bit of rivalry going on there between Drow families) and then took off once the boys called for the Stone Guards.

The egg was delivered to Themberchaud, who promptly smoked it (not in a good way) and gave the party three potions and some garnets for their trouble.

While intercepting the corrupt gate captain’s contact at the Darklake Docks, two invisible assassins appeared and stabbed him to death while the party watched. So sad. The party followed the invisible dudes’ tracks down to the Whorlestone Tunnels, to an area they hadn’t been to before.

Discovering a cursed and demonic ritual taking place, the party did a lot of sneaking and, eventually, a lot of bloodletting (watch out for the green slime in that pit, Peter). Peter’s dog-loving Rogue tried killing a Death Dog, and eventually karma gave him a lightning bolt up the ass for being cruel to animals. Jeremy’s Monk knocked out Droki and Rhyse’s Rogue killed a big Ettin (split from crotch to neck – gross). Belinda’s Bard healed lots of people and discovered shatter was a really cool spell.   

The party worked out the ritual was to curse the stone giants – to drive them crazy by growing second heads (because, why not) – and by taking the second stone head from a statue used in the ritual back to Hgraam, the Stone Giant Speaker, they could stop the curse. They also found lots of treasure and potentially magic books for Josh’s Wizard and Matt’s Cleric to read.

Next Week: Book reading! Delivering Droki! The open road! (Well, as open as it gets in the Underdark…)     

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