Introduction

I previously posted some warts-and-all email summaries of the ‘Curse of Strahd’ DnD 5e 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, the ‘Phandelver’s Pact’ campaign I ran from 2020-21, the ‘Shadows over Saltmarsh’ campaign from 2021-22, and my current Pathfinder 2e campaign, ‘Vaults of Otari‘. 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 can use them for this column. Now, I post summaries to Roll20 after each session.

Here are the session summaries from my first Dragonbane campaign which I started running in 2024 after buying the Dragonbane Starter Set. It’s adventures from that set, plus some homebrewed content. We recently finished the campaign, after 38 sessions!

I apologize in advance for the writing in these summaries – they’re a bit raw, and not fancy at all (I don’t have time for fancy writing when typing them up late at night after each game lol). Some will be more detailed than others.

Steve 🙂

Spoiler Alert: This summary contains spoilers for the adventure Somber Vale, available on DrivethruRPG at https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/519044/draakenslund-adventures-3-somber-vale

Session 22 – Death on Three Legs

Archmaster Aodhan collapsed on the shore from exhaustion. The others checked on him to make sure he was breathing, then waded off to find where the sounds of crunching and tearing were coming from. Around the corner, Zog the ogre mentalist, spotted a crocodile-like creature munching on a hideous pile of corpses, stacked against the cavern wall on a small sand spit. Krisanna the bold halfling, still seated on the ogre’s shoulders, immediately threw a dagger at it. The creature roared as the dagger hit its butt. It spun around, slid into the water and swam rapidly towards the party. Bastonn the wolfkin hunter rushed forward with Kalgrim the artisan dwarf, but it was Zog and Kris who finished the Lizardine off.

On the spit, behind a column of rock, Kris located four large rectangular metal boxes, each humming softly and cold to the touch. There was a spike hole on the front of each, and the plucky halfling realized the hole was the same size as the spikes on the tentacle balls. Zog recovered a bot ball from the water and Kris plugged in its spike. The door opened, and inside were three frozen bodies. She checked the three other ‘freezers’ and found more frozen bodies.

Meanwhile, Kalgrim investigated the horrific charnel pile. Each body appeared to be a naked villager, many with body parts torn off and eaten (probably by the lizardine), but each with a broken skull and their brain removed.

Two more tentacle bots appeared, this time dragging Aodhan’s unconscious form. The party rushed forth to save their comrade and the bots dropped him into the water. Kris climbed down the towering Zog’s side and tried to pull Aodhan out, but in her exhausted condition she bit off more than she could chew, toppling into the water. Kalgrim, Zog and Kris were electrocuted, but Zog managed to slam one of the bots and Bastonn took out the other with his spear.

Back to the sand spit, Kris elected to revive a villager called Harris. She pulled him out onto the sand, where he immediately started to warm up. Within 10 minutes he was awake, but the site of the nearby charnel pile containing dead friends and neighbors freaked him out. Kris calmed him while Kalgrim lit a fire. After introductions the party asked Harris to thaw out the other villagers while they explored further north.

Around the corner, they came face to face with another guard turret. Bastonn rushed forward through the waist-high water, plunging his spear into one of the turret’s crystals. Kalgrim burst another. Zog rushed in after failing to activate his stone skin, breaking another. Kris leapt off Zog’s shoulder onto a half-submerged stalagmite and threw a dagger to destroy another crystal. Eventually the turret was silenced.

Zog crept forward around the corner, and spotted a large metal craft of some kind. Dents along its smooth surface indicated it had been damaged, and the broken and collapsed rock wall behind it implied the caves here had been flooded from the river. The party gathered at the bottom of a metal gangplank that led up to an iris-shaped door. Kalgrim investigated and realized he needed a tentacle bot spike to open it. Bastonn recovered a bot from back at refrigerator island and Kris used it to access the ship.

The airlock only allowed one door to open at a time. Kris stepped into bowels of the mysterious metal craft while the others waited outside. She was confronted by two small but monstrous octopus creatures, each sitting on a metal seat with three tentacle spikes for legs (much like the bots they had faced). She received telepathic visions of what happened to make the ship crash into the river after encountering a meteor shower in space. She saw the strange creatures sending out tentacle bots to recover villagers as a food source while they repaired the downed ship. She saw them cracking skulls and eating brains.

The brave halfling was flung against a wall, where one of the creatures cracked open her skull, exposing her brain. As the two monsters stood over Kris, her dagger flashed and she managed to wound one. Meanwhile, Bastonn found out how the airlock worked and rushed in, spearing one of the alien fiends. Kalgrim entered, but was knocked unconscious with a savage tentacle slash. Zog squeezed in with some difficulty, but joined in the fun.

Kris was struck while she was down. Her life passed before her eyes. She had been a good thief, and she had grown to love her comrades, those who had accepted her foibles and allowed her to grow as a person. The light faded from her eyes.

Bastonn and Zog finished off the aliens. Kalgrim was revived. They mourned the fallen halfling.

The ship started to make strange noises and lights started to flash. Fearing the worst, Zog and Kalgrim grabbed the tripod tentacles and used the spikes in the relevant console holes. The countdown stopped. Somber Vale was saved, but the party had lost one of their most valuable members.

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