Introduction

I previously posted some warts-and-all email summaries of the ‘Curse of Strahd’ campaign I ran in 2017-18, the ‘Tomb of Annihilation’ campaign I ran in 2018-19, the ‘Out of the Abyss’, a campaign I ran in 2020 and the ‘Phandelver’s Pact’ campaign I ran from 2020-2021. CoS was the first campaign I sent summaries to players by email after each game (I was a bit lazy prior to that), which is why I could use them for this column.

Here’s another campaign (some might say my last 5e campaign, if you don’t count all the playtest campaigns I ran and continue to run lol) that started out with a slightly skewed version of ‘Ghosts of Saltmarsh’, then merged with a doctored ‘Descent into Avernus’ and was prematurely cut short when WoTC stunned the community by deciding to be dicks about the OGL (remember that?), prompting me to run Pathfinder 2e campaigns instead.

‘Shadows Over Saltmarsh’ was set in Greyhawk, my childhood campaign world (created by the eminent Mr. Gygax, himself). Each session was approximately 4-5 hours (sometimes more) long. Most of the summaries appear here as they first appeared. If you’re a D&D fan you may enjoy them. And maybe even if you aren’t.

These are the final two session summaries for the DnD 5e ‘Shadows over Saltmarsh’ campaign. Meanwhile, we’re having lots of fun playing Pathfinder 2e!

Steve 🙂

Session 40 – The Book & the Bedeviled

The party decided to try to find Alyona’s book as it was the source of not just the portal ritual but also the superpowers they received when they first entered Hell. Exiting the chapel, they made their way across Elturel. Felix sneaked ahead, and after spotting a troop of Bearded Devils decided to follow them. They headed into the cemetery and the chapel, perhaps to recover Alyona from below. While Felix hid amongst the gravestones, he was spotted by an Infernal Knight, but disguised self as a zombie and then used his invisibility band to escape.

The rest of the party hid in the ruins of a building at an intersection across town, but noticed that several devils and two dragons had noticed them but were keeping their distance. When Felix re-joined them, they realized the red and black dragon following appeared to be herding them towards the east. Making their way to a deserted blacksmith’s shop, the party considered their options and then fled to the city centre, where Alyona used Locate Object twice to locate both the book and the Salty Marshers’ bag of holding. Luckily, both were in the same place – at the portal where the party first entered Hell.

Realizing they would have to take out the dragons at some point, the party fought and killed them. Reaching the east island of the city via “Fr’an’kk’s flying ferry”, the party hid in a building and short rested while Felix scouted up to the third story and witnessed the gathering of several devil factions in the square – each was headed by a pit fiend espousing the values of their ruling archdemon. There seemed to be a fair bit of tension brewing. Felix noted Nohea, Fa’aoa’s brother and another human – more than likely Marcus Lynden – standing near the small portal. Marcus had the book open and was studying it.

Felix sneaked through the ruins and attempted to deceive the devils into fighting each other to no avail, so he exited quickly. Back at the hiding place, the party decided on a course of action: Ser Keraston would ride F’ran’kk the nightmare, with Fa’aoa, into the centre of the throng; the barbarian would grab the book and get it back to Alyona so she could activate their superpowers.

The plan seemed to work, Felix shooting the book from Marcus’s hands, Fa’aoa scooping it up and the nightmare whisking them back to a nearby temple where Alyona waited. Marcus Lynden transformed into a massive devil hybrid and attacked, forcing his way past Ser Keraston and attacking Alyona to retrieve the book. Each time he knocked the book from Ayona’s hands she had to pick it up to reactivate the team’s superpowers. Eventually Ser Keraston, Fa’aoa and Felix killed Marcus, but his body exploded and Alyona was knocked unconscious. As Nohea entered the fray and hundreds of bearded, barbed and spined devils charged ahead, Ser Keraston managed to channel divinity to turn the fiends away.

Meanwhile, Marcus’s body parts slid across the floor towards each other and his blood started to coalesce, reforming his body. Felix attempted to search for the devil’s heart in an effort to stop the body reforming…

Session 41 – The End of All

Felix located one half of Marcus Lynden’s heart, Alyona the other. As the great fiend that was Marcus’s avatar consolidated and rebuilt itself, Felix stabbed the heart pieces and destroyed them. The heart exploded, covering both of them in ichor, which immediately coagulated and flowed towards Felix and Alyona’s mouths. “I will have the book and the pearl in your chest,” said Marcus Lynden’s disembodied voice. Alyona cast Spiritual Guardians which stopped the blood, eventually killing it. Marcus Lynden was no more – the threat of the Hellish army invading Saltmarsh and Greyhawk, diminished.

Meanwhile, Ser Keraston dispatched many of the Spined devils attacking him and flew through a hole in the ceiling, telling the others he had to get to the globe over Elturel. Fa’aoa fought his brother Nohea in an epic battle, finally dispatching him and at the same time realizing he was now king of his homeland again. He recovered the lost bag of holding from Nohea’s body, and the remnants of the party fled across the rubble out of the old temple building. They realized they needed to get back through the portal if Keraston was going to destroy the black globe above the city – Keraston’s previous vision seemed to indicate that would free Elturel.

The asimar flew up over the city, being blasted by lightning discharges from the globe. Spined devils and a Black Dragon charged after him. Keraston located three nodules on the globe’s equator, and instinctively knew he had to destroy them to break the globe holding Elturel in Hell. As he broke the nodules, he faced off Black Dragon acid breath and spined devil attacks.

On the ground, Fa’aoa grabbed Alyona and using his ring of jumping, leapt for the portal in the middle of the battlefield. As Keraston broke the final nodule the black globe above Elturel was split asunder – the chains holding the city fell to the fiery plain below, and the city started to fade from sight, returning to its own plane of existence. Keraston immediately dived for the portal below him. Felix ran across the battlefield and leapt for the portal, just making it with the aasimar as Elturel disappeared completely. The party traveled back through the swirling tunnel of light, appearing back in the underground temple in the sigil ring, the portal fading behind them. They had been away in Hell for 52 hours, or 26 days in Greyhawk time.

Returning to their ship, they short rested and then headed off to the council to confront Gellan Primewater, who had conspired with devils in their plot to invade Saltmarsh and the world. In the council, Keraston cast Zone of Truth, but Gellan Primewater admitted his complicity without it, summoning a Pit Fiend to fight the party! After a savage battle, the devil was defeated. The party pursued Primewater into the street, with Alyona commanding Primewater to approach her. Fa’aoa ran up and grabbed the nobleman, but Felix fired an arrow into the magnate’s heart, killing him.

The Council thanked the party for their help killing the pit fiend and uncovering Primewater’s conspiracy. Retiring to the Wicker Goat, Keraston composed a ballad with help from Fa’aoa about their adventures in Hell. Unfortunately, the crowd wasn’t too impressed. Felix used minor illusion in place of Keraston’s chair. The aasimar saw through it, but pretended to fall over anyway.

As the four shared drinks and reminisced about their adventures, the sun set on Saltmarsh. Perhaps we will see the Salty Marshers again. Perhaps they’ll have another opportunity to make their mark on the world…

The End

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