(Following: Wave Echo Caves (Finale) as the party seeks a powerful healer for Ujio's wounds)
Falcon: Finding Reidoth
The battle with a psychotic Flameskull in the Wave Echo Caves included horribly burning Our Party's fighter Ujio's face to the point of disfigurement. The ability to mend the scars went far beyond the skills of anyone sympathetic to the part - but for one possible exception: the druid of Thundertree: Reidoth. Knowing druids to be notoriously difficult to find and ranging widely, Willow employed Animal Messengers to find him and arrange a meeting. After weeks with no response, a bird returns with a message not from Reidoth, but from a ranger named Falcon, who suggests you meet him at his hunting lodge deep within Neverwinter Wood.
Falcon was a fine host for the part and suggested, if truly needing to find Reidoth, they check within the mysterious ancient manor a day’s travel through thick forest to the northeast of the lodge. Falcon provides an apprentice scout to show the way, while warning this manor is older than any remember and deeply and dangerously cursed.
His reasoning for seeking Reidoth there is twofold. First, his own scouts (animal and apprentice) have on rare occasions in the past year, spied Reidoth in the manor’s vicinity. Second, the dark mansion has regularly produced the evil plant beings called Blights - products of a Gulthias Tree, which maliciously infects the surrounding wood. The presence of needle blights and twig blights during Reidoth’s stay in Thundertree lead to suspecting he has done some “transplanting,” perhaps to drive out the ruin's trespassers.
Halloween Spookiness
As our game came upon Halloween IRL, we wanted to run a nice spooky adventure - so I adapted this top-rated module (worth the $$$!) from DMs Guild: The Haunt, blending it within the context of the stories around the Anchorites of Talos and the Circle of Thunder.
The Montarthas Manor replaces the Woodland Manse from the Dragon of Icespire Peak module. I had to alter the floor plan so the entry (Rooms 1-2-3) face northwest out of room 4 and the swimming pool area squares off into the well and tree zone on the map of the Woodland Manse. (The tree being an essential part to tie this back to the Reidoth story). The high fences enclosing the courtyard are now choked with thorny twisting branches and vines from the evil tree, which also lends a darkness from the outside that discourages entry (except, perhaps, from someone with an abundance of overconfidence and the ability to polymorph into a chipmunk...)
I added a property to the manor that its terrors scale with the power of the mind of those who enter, so it would be truly deadly for Falcon or Reidoth if caught within, not to mention the temptation their capture would be for its BBEG! Therefore, our more humble party had a better chance of success.
NOTE SPOILERS FOLLOW
Haunted Mansion
The house projects an impenetrable opacity on all sides but the main entry, and the party spent quite a long time and effort working at the doors until working out how to enter. Right away, their paranoia led to careful triggering of the gargoyle guards, who were quickly dispatched.
The party almost instantly discovered the lever to toggle the secret doors, in the room by the portcullis-barred stairs and the doll on the cushioned bench. The party investigates the doors, then leaves Yeet Longshade alone at the control - the party is separated, and alone with the evil doll, Yeet is viciously attacked and bleeding, realizing the danger of his situation - he pulls the lever to get the party back to help. The doll vanishes before they arrive. This wonderfully put everyone on edge! The girl’s giggles would occasionally be heard from time to time after this...
The party would never work out entry to the rooms through those secret doors, but one of its treasures would be collected at the end. Instead, the party explored the basement, only to be trapped within with noxious gas forcing them to solve a puzzle in a deadly escape room involving repairing a flesh golem (a la Frankenstein’s monster) whose brain held the knowledge of how to safely leave the room.
Courtyard Bloodbath
Proceeding to the courtyard, the Gulthias tree loomed large, as if braced possessively against the surrounding tall wrought iron fence enclosing the area. A chipmunk runs to Willow from the shadows, fearful and pleading to be held safely in her pocket. It urges the group to "flee!" - and - does the chipmunk have a little white beard??
But noting a glint within the small swimming pool, Yeet dove in - the good news being he soon placed hand upon hilt of what would be a fine rapier - the bad news being this caused the emergence of a zombie beholder from the murky waters. The party suffered some great injuries in this battle, sufficient to retreat back into the mansion to patch up.
Willow converses with the chipmunk, who she believes is indeed Reidoth in animal form, but offering nothing while appreciative of shelter! The party recalls Reidoth was similarly unhelpful in fighting things in Thundertree - zombies, blights, and in particular the dragon - so this is really no surprise.
Noticing the stairway’s portcullis had somehow been raised, the party began to ascend the stairs when suddenly the sounds of an enormous CRACK! - a terrible wrenching sound, an enormous BOOM! (now well-known to the party as the sound of Tallon the Tall using Thunderwave), and taking attendance, indeed noted the enormous dwarf barbarian was not among their ranks. They head down the stairs, to be greeted by Tallon utterly soaked from head to toe in blood - just absolutely caked in it. But reporting he was fine, with a wide smile on his face.
It so happened that at the end of the zombie beholder batte, Tallon’s Rage continued to linger, spurred on by his magical axe Hew, who has a particular taste and vendetta against plants, especially wood, and extra-especially wood that can move. This was the Gulthias Tree and its blight-spawn in spades! Tallon had taken on the tree himself, and scoring the record-setting critical hit of the campaign so far, his first chop at the tree nearly cut through the entire trunk in one shot, followed by enough to cleave in twain on his second attack. Vine blights swarmed him, only to be blasted away with the Thunderwave. The tree is hemorrhaging blood-sap like a Monty Python skit, as the weight of its upper trunk and branches crash down, filling the courtyard, and blights falling left and right to a combination of Rage and Hew’s auto-max damage to plants. Satisfied with his carnage, and his rage coming to an end, the blood-soaked Tallon calmly walked into the house, to be greeted by horrified companions.
Second Story
The group heads upstairs now, facing the hallway of ectoplasmic veins and sensing the whole building itself (like Monster House) may be alive - or undead - or something. At the end of the hallway, the evil doll sings her lullaby, sending half the party into fear - and later even paralysis, while those shaking the effects meet her half way down the hall in their own battle against the vicious midget. Just as the party manages to surround it, the doll vanishes with a ghastly giggle.
Picking an adjacent room to once more patch up injuries, the party is given no pause to catch their breath, two phase spiders, surprise them and deal vicious bites before the party - in no mood for mercy, pour on their responsive attacks, destroying their bodies which vanish back into the Ethereal plane from whence they came.
A kitchen is found, with a tempting chest at the far end, triggering the attack of a poltergeist, which sends pots, pans, and knives into a dangerous whirl of damage, forcing most of the party to flee into the hallway. Stubbornly insistent on putting this room to rest, Belcoria, Mon-Kei and Willow persist in seeking the source of the fury. Finally working out the shelving impacting the strength of the whirl, the cabinets are destroyed and the room quiets.
Other rooms provide apparitions playing out vignettes of the ancient tragedies that still (literally) haunt the manor. The doors at the end of the hallway prove particularly confounding, even separating the party. Tallon and Belcoria find their way into the General’s suite, spooked by the apparitions and calling the party together. There is one last beat-down of the evil doll, lying on a bench after being part of an apparition showing the evil woman who bewitched the General, giving it to his young daughter, only for it to stab her to death.
Monster House
And in the final room of the house - the BBEG is discovered... with the General - or perhaps some more recent victim - pinned on the ceiling by black veins and green ghostly tendrils connecting it to a figure at a desk. His heart glows an eerie green. The room is piled with long-dead bodies. Of course some of the bodies become undead, as the party engages the Night Hag Gertrude. There is some confusion on which is the enemy - the thing on the ceiling or the thing on the ground to which it is connected. So some early attacks are wasted, giving the hag time to prepare. Despite this, several significant attacks - most prominently from Mon-Kei, who had one turn with not one but two particularly well-rolled critical hits - the battle ends relatively quickly, the cursed emerald falling to the floor, the man’s body disappearing into ash with the sound of a whispered “thank you” and an eerie quiet.
There is not much time to investigate the room, as cracks begin to appear in the walls, the floor shakes, stones fall from the crumbling ceiling - the house in its entirety is collapsing! Running best as they can, the party makes the stairs, taking damage from falling debris. Impaired on DEX saving throws by her heavy chain mail armor, Belcoria suffers injury to 0 HP and blocking others in the narrow, curving passage of the stairway. Willow places a Cure Wounds on the paladin, and the retreat continues, devastation surrounding on all sides. The party splits at the bottom of the stairs - half out the door, half into the courtyard - whoops - blocked in the crush of the tree’s branches, these turn and join the others.
The entire building now implodes on itself, lifting a grey mushroom cloud up up up into the forest canopy as a mushroom cloud, just as the light of dawn illuminates the dust in spears of light through the shadowy forest.
Two ice cold eyes glow from across the gloom, then vanish into the woods with the giggle of that horrible doll...
As the dust settled on what proved to be a glorious day - warm and bright in stark contrast to the foreboding prior evening, one curious anomaly hovered above the wreckage, a metal bar floating in space, propping up a now-cracked door and crumbled doorway. Ever-curious and eager for loot, Mon-Kei dashed to the item, exploring it for some enchantment or mechanism. Finding a button at one end of the rod, it drops into the monk’s hands as he presses the device.
(Continues in: The Druid, a Dragon, and a Unicorn)
(Related: Saint Greycastle Hospital) (Conclusion: Put Evil to Bed)