This session was attended by Avery, Trajan, Will, and Jamie. It was held over Google Hangouts using Roll20’s app.

Phylactery Searching

The party spent the rest of the day after the fight with the Bane healing up and removing any supernatural injuries. Feeling that the Bane could revive at any moment, the party hurried to find exactly where the phylactery was. The pit fiend told them it was inside the Lich Shade itself. Guessing that the Bane would revive next to the phylactery, Amalius journeyed within his mind with a divination to figure out where this would be. The spell told him, “The Bane shall appear where the light first strikes in the desert.” The party guessed that this meant the top of the Lich Shade.

Hektor was unfortunately called away on Alliance business. Tagenadi returned from his soul-searching adventure elsewhere. An encounter ensued between Tagenadi and Eathirilu. The druid decided to tolerate the undead party member for the moment in order to forestall the greater good. Additionally, the equipment of the Bane was left with the Björn for safekeeping.

Teleporting to the Lich Shade, Torin cast a find the path to the top of the Lich Shade. The spell directed him straight up the side of the pillar. From previous experiments the party knew that flying and teleporting didn’t work so great around the gigantic obelisk. They surmised that a way up must exist within the Lich Shade itself down one of the passageways they did not explore previously.

Using the same teleport trick, the party got past the room of zombie giants. Ahead was a four-way intersection as before. They had fully explored the straightway and minorly the left side. They decided to go to the right instead. The hallway went down a few dozen feet and ended at a featureless stone door. After Aldarian checked it out for traps, Tagenadi pushed the door open.

The party heard the rattling of bones on the floor of the now-revealed, large, rectangular room. Thousands of bones littered the floor and as Tagenadi opened the door the bones began to move of their own accord. The shuffled together into four large shapes within the room. The shapes grew larger and larger until four huge skeletal dogs stood in front of the party!

The dogs attacked, moving on Tagenadi. The rest of the party blasted from the back while Tagenadi kept the beasts at bay. The strategy proved quite successful. The dogs only broke through Tagenadi’s expert defense once. One of them landed two claw attacks on the death knight. Tearing through his skeletal structure, the dog almost undid Tagenadi. Fortunately, Torin had prepared a few harm spells and their undead friend pulled through. Eathirilu finished off the last of the dogs.

The room held nothing but another door. Beyond that was a hallway with another stone door. The party took up battle positions around that door. Tagenadi kicked it in. Inside was a rectangular room twice the size of the previous one. No one could see the other end of the room, but at the edge of their vision they saw a gigantic arm beast. The creature was composed solely of thin red arms extending from a darkened center. The arms each ended in claws with a yellow eye set in the center. The eyes blinked upon seeing Tagenadi before the creature rolled forward to attack.

Once again, Tagenadi stood fast to defend the party. The creature attempted to grab Tagenadi, but Amalius teleported him out of the armbeast’s grasp. Torin then cast freedom of movement on Tagenadi to prevent future problems. Frustrated with Tagenadi’s kusari-gama defense, the creature grasped the weapon and broke it in two. Eathirilu summoned three tyrannosaurs into the room. More blast spells came out at the armbeast. It continued to attack Tagenadi, the dinosaurs, and even the wall so that it could surge forward and reach other members of the party. The dinosaurs took big chunks out of the armbeast, but it grabbed them and held them close. With the same action it broke apart the wall revealing Tagenadi. It prepared to roll over the party, but at the last second a final damage spell struck it down.

Searching the room the party found a treasure pile at the back. None of the doors was big enough for the creature, that Amalius called an odopi. The back door led to another hallway ending at a stone door.

Tagenadi summoned his nightmare and decided to scout around with the aid of its etherealness powers. He found he could walk easily through the walls and doors while ethereal. He went back to the room he’d peeked in before with a giant staring at a fire. As he peeked his head in the giant looked up at him. Tagenadi entered the room and the giant continued to stare at him as if expecting something. Tagenadi now noticed a magnificent scimitar that the giant held. Tagenadi left, puzzled by the encounter. He told the rest of the group and they began to talk about where they should head next in the Lich Shade.

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I’m Isaac

Welcome to the GoCorral website! I’m Isaac Shaker and this is a place for me to write about D&D and occasionally other topics. I host a podcast called Setting the Stage that interviews different DMs about their campaigns. I’m currently focused on completing the Cimmeria campaign setting and turning it into a book.

Setting the Stage Podcast

83 – Call of Cthulhu's Garden (Hem and The Sprouting) Setting the Stage, Campaigns for D&D and Other RPGs

Hem tells us about their actual play campaign, The Sprouting. Within the world of The Sprouting, Earth's history diverged during the 1800s when an eldritch horror was summoned into our reality. The horror lay in wait for centuries, building up a secret army of plant monsters. In 2020, the plant monsters struck, ruining infrastructure and attacking population centers across the world. One hundred years have passed and our heroes learn that the next stage of the plant apocalypse has begun…We also discussed some of the difficulties and pleasures of actual play podcasts and how the RPG community varies internationally (Hem is in Iceland).If you want to try listening to The Sprouting its available on all major podcast platforms. You can learn more on The Sprouting's website.For other shows produced by Hem check out Blighthouse Studio's website.Hem mentioned The Lucky Die actual play show of theirs several times which used D&D 5e.And the broader network of Fable and Folly has their website too.Check out the Setting the Stage website!Want to be on the show? Fill out this survey.Join our Discord!Support Setting the Stageon Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  2. 82 – Tarot Ghosts (George and Fears & Fortunes)
  3. 81 – Biopunk 2287 RPG (Seiya and Synesthesia Synthetica)
  4. 80 – Dynamic RPG Countries (Travis and Tetara)
  5. 79 – Dragon Age Degenerates (Zoe from Degenerates with Dice)