Moon Melee

Our Land of Azurth 5e campaign continued last Sunday with the party concluding their brief trip to the Moon. The Bright Goddess of the Thrice Thousand had granted their request for one of the "tears of Azulina" (celestial sapphires, some of which were allegedly used by the Wizard to grow the Sapphire City of Azurth), but they would have to get it from the Faceless Collector who the Bright Goddess had just given it to.

The Collector agreed to hand it over, but only if the party bested him, and his servitor in combat. The party agreed and the match began. The servitor proved to be a hulking robot with a sword and machine gun army, though this was not a fight to the death. The Collector had psionic powers and a golden scimitar.

The party one out in the end, likely due to their superior numbers, but Erekose and Waylon took quite a bruising. 

True to his word, the Collector handed over the sapphire. The party was guided out of the goddess' gardens and back to their ship. The return flight was mercifully uneventful.

The gnomic technicians in the service of Viola, the Clockwork Princess of Yanth, put their science to work and blasted the petrified princesses with the sapphire's radiation. The stone around them crumbled and beneath they were their normal selves.

As soon as she was able, Viola said: "I've just determined a way we can defeat the wizard."

Challenge on the Moon

 Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last Sunday with the party trying to get to the Bright Rabbit Goddess of the Moon to ask her for a particular jewel that might be the key to saving Azurth's princesses from the petrification the evil Wizard had put on them. 

After several weird encounters in the fae lunar gardens, the party encountered one of the Rabbit Folk working in a fissure in the Moon's surface on the vast gearworks beneath.  He told them the gears controlled the movement of the gigantic, black tarpaulin that was drawn across the Moon's surface, causing its phases as observed from Earth, so that the lunar folk could have some privacy.

 He tells them that reaching the primary garden and the Goddess requires not thinking about going there. Sort of unfocus your eyes, he says, and the path will become clear. Only two of the party are able to accomplish this, but they can lead the other members on. 

They are greeted by a major domo in a ruff collar and fancy dress who listens to their concerns and puts their names on a list to see the Goddess. Then he ushers them off to one of the few empty tables in the expansive, side garden to wait.

Trying to figure out a way to get in sooner, they strike up a conversation with a young woman who claims to be from Mercury. She offers them a letter of introduction from the Empire of Mercury, which they accept but are too wary to use. 

They decide to ask the major domo if there might be some sort of inducement they could provide to get in sooner. He happily tells them that the Moon is mad for the more advanced gadgetry of Earth. They give him a stopped pocket watch (right twice a day!) that used to belong to the young Roderick Drue, who eventually became the Wizard. Or some version of him did, anyway.

They are whisked in to see the Goddess who is sympathetic to their plight. Unfortunately, she just granted the sapphire to a Faceless Collector from the Outer Worlds. Maybe they can convince him to give it to them?

The Collector, a cool, emotionless humanoid with knowledge of time, says he will give it them if they can defeat him and his servitor in combat...

Gardens of the Moon

After a hiatus, our Land of Azurth 5e game continued with the party arriving at the Moon looking to meet with the Bright Goddess and get one of the crystals, supposedly the tears of Azulina. 

Whatever they were expecting, it probably wasn't what they found. The structures of the Goddess were contained in a large, walled garden of what marble and coral stone with silver-tinged moon flora. Once they got pass the silver-armored rabbit folk guards at the entrance (who let them pass easily), they found the garden almost eerily empty. The encounters they had were not with rabbit folk, but things stranger.

They had been warned the garden was a faerie place, but that hadn't quite prepared them for the ice cream ooze they had to battle or the annoying rust hornets that degraded Erekose's and Dagmar's armor. The close harmony singing of some living hothouse flowers or the philosophizing of a praying mantis-appearing visitor from the astral plane was also strange but less threatening.

The session ended with the party still no closer to the rabbit parties they are looking for.

From Azurth to the Moon

 

After a bit of a hiatus, we weren't to our 5e Land of Azurth game this past Sunday. We left our heroes with the shock of finding the princesses of the four countries, the leaders of the rebellion against the Wizard, turned to stone.

A council of important secondary leaders was quickly assembled. In addition to the PCs, it included some familiar names and faces from the party's adventures: Mapache Took, alleged head of the Raccoon-Folk Crime Family, who's brother's vault the party robbed; Black Iris, Pirate Captain from the Motley Isles who they rescued from the Candy Isle; King Gheode of the Earth Fae, who helped them get passage through Subazurth beneath Noxia; and Freedy, frogling ambassador from Under Sea.

Princess Viola's gnome techs have done a lot of analysis and report that have a high degree of suspicion that the Wizard used the power of the Shadow Elves focused through a crystalline power-purifier, likely one of the original heavenly crystals from the Sapphire City was supposedly grown. Some of the council favors sending a group in stealthily to perhaps still this supposed crystal from within the Wizard's palace. Others feel it's the time to strike with the giant robot the party recovered from Sang.

While they were discussing it, a representative from the Mysteriarchs of Zed appears in the room from a glowing orb. He is perhaps the same one they met previously. The representative tells them that a crystal such as they seek exists on the Moon!

As everyone knows the Moon is the home of the Bright Lady and the Thrice Hundred demigods revered by the Rabbit Folk. It's reasonable to think they might be willing to help the heroes of Azurth. But how can the party get to the mood?

Well, they have a ship, the one they took from the Domed City of Yai, and a pilot in the person of Irwin-37. They don't know anything about the Moon or how to get there, but they recall that Jaka Oloap, who they met originally in the Hybercube prison and met again in Sang, had boasted of going there.

After a quick flight to Sang to recruit Jaka, the group takes off for the Moon. They're enjoying the strange vistas of Azurth from far above, when they are approached by shantak-riding women bandits calling themselves the Night Sisters. The party refuses to surrender their vessel and a fight ensues on the hull (the party has to tie themselves to the ship with rope). When Tura, the leader of the Night Sisters, is killed the others break off the attack, but promise revenge.

Dread Knights and Dead Lovers

Our Land of Azurth game continued last night, but I haven't written about the previous session, so this covers both. The party only had one more shard of the mirror to collect. A mirror that would free the soul of Nocturose, but if that was for good or ill they didn't know for sure.

The last shard was on an altar amid standing stones on an island within a stinking bog. A poisonous, stinking bog. If all that wasn't bad enough, it had a guardian, a spirit naga. She wasn't much of a match for the whole party, though, but Shade was poisoned by inhaling too much swamp gas.

With all the shards in hand, they returned to the tower. The door was locked, and when Erekose tried to force it, he was blasted by intense cold. Luckily, he's resistant to the elements so it was a minor inconvenience. Within the crumbling tower, they saw a mirror in need of repair and an empty thrown. The ghostly Nocturose asked them to repair the mirror to free her so that she could be reunited with her love, the Dark Queen Morthalia.

The characters surprisingly quickly given a number of potential warning signs, agreed to give it a try. As they did, Nocturose revealed she had left one thing out: there were Dread Knights who guarded the mirror. The wraiths materialized out of shadow and were all "have at thee!"

The fight was on! It was two against five, but the party beyond Erekose had a hard time hitting them. Waylon went down and Erekose was close, but Dagmar's healing kept them in the fight, and she managed to blind one of the knights. Eventually, the party prevailed.

The party repaired the mirror, and Nocturose's spirit appeared within to thank them before fading away to return to her body. The party tried to make a pitch for her convincing Morthalia to join the fight against the Wizard, but it's unclear she got the message.

When they returned to report their success, they found a crowd including their old friend, Commodore Cog, the steam-powered ship captain. The reunion was spoiled when he revealed the monarchs leading the rebellion--Viola, Desira, and Bellona--had somehow been turned to stone.

This adventure was a modified version of Kobold Press' Shadows of the Dusk Queen.

Two Wraiths and a Spectre

That's how our Land of Azurth 5e game last Sunday ended up, but it started with a dragon.

Or drake, more precisely. The party was looking for the shards of a mirror that if re-assembled might restore Nocturose, the forever-sleeping love of the Dark Queen of Noxia Country. Whether that's a good thing or bad thing, the party doesn't know, but they figure better in their control than someone else's. The shadow drake wanted to keep the piece he had all to himself and wanted to destroy the party for the temerity of coming looking.

He and his two pet shadows brought some tense moments, but in the end, they couldn't withstand the party's onslaught. Waylon the Frogling went for a swim in the dark pool and recovered the shard and some treasure from the bottom.

The party continued down the road and came to a windowless tower grown over with vines. The tower didn't appear in the rhyme they had heard the previous adventure which laid out the locations of the shards, so they moved on for now.

Next, they came to a clearing with a large, twisted tree. From its otherwise bare limbs were hung skeletons. They do see the glint of the mirror shard about 40 feet up in the tree, as well. With no other means to get it, Waylon and Shade climb up. As soon as they've carefully pulled the shard free, a specter descends upon them, and two wraiths fly toward them from the skeletons on the branches. 

Fighting these noncorporeal undead while maintaining their hold on the tree is no easy task. The other party members don't have a lot of options to help them. Until a couple of rounds in, Erekose remembers his trusty energy rifle. Between his supporting fire and the fight being put up by Shade and Waylon, the undead are vanquished before they can any of our heroes to their number. But it's pretty close. Closer than the dragon had been.

Now only one mirror shard to go...

The Darkling Princess

Our Land of Azurth 5e campaign continued last night with the party summoned to a counsel of the three rulers: Viola of Yanth, Desira of Virid, and Bellona of Sang. The PCs were informed of recent intelligence that suggested have her long deathless sleep, Nocturose, lover of the Witch Queen of Noxia might be awakening. None of them were sure who this event should it come to pass might tip the balance of the war as the Gloom Elf servants of the Witch Queen have been allies of the Wizard, but they want the party to get involved and find out.

Zabra, ever true to her alignment and her upbringing, makes inquires what might be in it for them. Alas, the rulers just appealed to the party's sense of right. Most of them have long ago resigned themselves to pocketing loot on the side, so they convince Zabra to go along.

They are transported across northern Yanth Country and the border at the Vale of Thorns into gloomy Noxia where the sun is eclipsed by Umbra, the Shadow Moon, by air elementals in the service of Desira. They are deposited at the entrance to the dark forest where the chapel where Nocturose lies in state is located. The elementals wish them luck and say they'll wait.

The dark canopy of the forest is full of stirges and the shadows are unusually thick. The trail is blocked by twisted treant who tells them that Nocturose's fitful spirit seeks a mirror that was shattered. With it reassembled she can fully awaken. He reveals to them in verse the locations of the mirror pieces. The party takes on the task of finding the mirror shards, though they still aren't sure of their purpose or their side here.

They manage to talky to gothy nymphs into giving up the shard that they have. Then they trade a +1 battle axe and a low level potion of healing to a winged morlock-thing for the shard he and his tribe have. Next, they descended into a dark pit and found a cace. Before they could locate a shard there, a voice challenges them from the darkness and a shadowy dragon moves into view!

This relates to the characters and concepts mentioned in the Dictionary of Azurth.

The Xmas Dagmar turned Krampus

Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last night, a much-delayed continuance as we started a holiday-themed adventure before the holidays. It's fitting, though, that we got to finish it on Twelfth Night.

Sent to aid a village suffering from child-disappearances far to the north, the party suffered accompaniment by rhyming, snowman narrator as they ascended a treacherous mountain to find a secret workshop where kobolds were using the children as slave labor.

Defeating the kobolds, the children pointed them to where the evil mastermind laired. After puzzling over a trap made with colored lights, they confronted the villain--the Krampus!

He was a formidable opponent, and the opening exchanges suggested it would be a hard-fought battle. Until Dagmar the Cleric strove forward to attempt to turn the fiend. 

And turn him she did, despite his magic resistance. That bought them time and the fighters took advantage of it. When Erekose delivered the final blow, the Krampus exploded with a "pop" and a shower of confetti and glitter.

The children were returned home and the party was honored with a feast: roast beast and all the trimmings.

This adventure was adapted from How The Lich Stole Christmas.

Weird Revisited: Mondegreen's Mixed-Up Magics

In the Land of Azurth, the wizard Mondegreen is infamous among magical practitioners, not because he was powerful (though he was) nor for his output of arcane scrolls (though it was prodigious) but because of his habit of misprinting magical sigils and formulae. He seems to have suffered some sort of malady in this regard, perhaps a curse.

A Mondegreen scroll will not contain the traditional version of the spell it appears to catalog at cursory examination. The subtle errors will either effect some aspect of the spell 50% of the time, giving:

1 Advantage to the spell save
2 An increased duration
3 Increased damage (if applicable)
4 Decreased damage (if applicable)
5 A decreased duration
6 Disadvantage to the spell save

The other 50% of the time, it will not work as it should, but rather produce a magical effect from a roll on the Wild Magic Table.

The original version of this post appeared in 2018.

To Catch A Titan

Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last night with the party having successfully completed their quest to collect all the pieces of the magical armor known as the Quicksilver Panoply from the mind of Gob. They returned to the regular world, only to hear from Princess Viola that the giant automaton they were acquiring the armor to safely control had been stolen by a traitorous gnome artificer, Zobus Bok and a group of mercenaries. 

Bok apparently plans to sell the giant automaton to the Wizard.  Princess Viola wants to party to chase down the automaton and regain control using the armor. She tells them there's a way to get inside the giant from either foot.

After a rest, the party pursues the automation using a device the princess gave them. When it stops to survey a ravine, the party attaches chains to its feet to try to trip it, but that doesn't work. They gain access through the right foot portal, though a gnome guard escapes to raise the alarm.

Traveling up the leg on an internal portal system, they make it to the first floor in the body, where they find a conference room--and an ambush by two tough bravos of the Nighthawk mercenary group. The party's superior numbers carry the day and after looting the bodies, they prepare to proceed upward.

Minotaurs, Mazes, and the Eyes of Gob

 

Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last Sunday with the party exploring further into the Level 4 of the brain of Gob. They find the passage into one of Gob's eyes where they find a bunch of Phantfasm-serving goblins sleeping. In the other, a theriocephalic Phantfasm is instructing bored goblins on evil.

In Gob's equivalent the pineal region, they find a throne with an armored boot upon it. Another piece of the armored suit they were seeking! The quest was nearing completion.

Soon after they came upon a labyrinth stalked by a minotaur, or as it turned out, minotaurs. They killed one and looted his ring of Hill Giant Strength. Then they made their slow way through the labyrinth by following a wall constantly with their left hands. When they got to the exit, the other minotaur they had covered it with a large stone. They killed this one too and stole his magic items as well.  It required the additional strength of a blessing to help them roll aside the rock.

Then they came to a dungeon or torture chamber with skeletal former victims in cages dangling from chains.

A Cold Reception on Level 4

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last weekend with the party still searching the lower levels of the mind of Gob looking for pieces of a magical suit of armor. Having explored the 3rd level, they had moved on to level 4, but avoided a room that appeared to be the site of a battle shrouded in some magical mist.  Their avoidance had been rewarded by the lucky discovery of an armor piece in a kobold gut-wagon.

Now, though there was nothing to do but brave the battle. They chose to skirt the edges of the room, having several near-misses with combatants--and some not misses, as a stray lightning bolt injured two of them. A group of the avian Fantsies, clearing the fallen, informed them that this was the site of an eternal battle between good and evil. They kept creeping around, and Waylon "recoveed" a Ring of Flight from the body of a slain ogre that almost literally fell into their path.

After skirting the room they encountered a giant with a whip and a captive woman wearing one of the gauntlets. Classic story: the giant claimed the woman was a monster and had to be imprisoned, while the woman protested her innocence and begged for release. The party didn't for a minute completely buy the woman's story, but they also questioned her imprisonment and treatment. And, at the end of the day, they needed that gauntlet chained up with her! They negotiated with the giant to let them get the gauntlet, but when they tried, the imprisoned demon in a woman's form escaped. Still, mission accomplished!

Next, they encountered a statue of one of the evil Phantfasms with the bird-like wings of a Fantsie instead of arms. They remembered the statue whose wings he been removed on an upper level. They went to retrieve them, the statue breathed cold at them and nearly killed poor Waylon.

Amid the Kobold Parts

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last night with the party searching the room they fought the spider god in, then wedging shut the exits so they could take a much needed rest.

Once that was done, they explored beyond a secret door they had found. They gave goodberries to a troop of white apes to avoid conflict and then a suit of extra leather armor to a small party of rebel goblins. They took a seemingly magical crystal from the hands of an ensorcelled dwarf who appeared to have had his memories stolen by it, but unfortunately that led to his death despite the party's best intentions.

Having explored this level of the mind of Gob, they took the stairs down the the next level. In in the stairwell, they could hear the clamor of battle. They explored in a direction other than toward those sounds at first and came upon a pair of villainous Phanfasms gnawing on the choice bits of a wheelbarrow full of dismembered kobold corpses.

These guys the party fought and their numbers quickly won the day. Within the corpse wagon, they found a glittering gauntlet, one of the pieces of armor they sought!

The Spider God in the Other Hemisphere

Our Land of Azurth 5e campaign continued last weekend with the party exploring the left hemisphere of a level of the mind of Gob. Strange encounters were once again the theme of their explorations.

They ran into some snooty mermen who they nevertheless were able to convince to trade one of the pieces of the armor suit the party is seeking for an ever-full jug of waters. Then, they rescued one of the bird-like guardians of the level and a particular sagacious giant slug from torture by a group of sadistic Phanfasms.

Lastly, they came up a run with a hanging, diabolic looking, giant spider statue with a gleaming rod of some sort clutched in its fangs. They debated what to do, but before consensus was reached Waylon, the frogling thief just snatched it. The spider instantly started moving and attack. And it was fearsome.

Without the healing of Dagmar the Cleric, it's likely the whole party would have died, and in fact, Erekose was briefly hovering on deaths door. In the end though, their numbers wore the spider down. For their troubles, they won (ironically) a Rod of Resurrection.

Roaming the Mind of Gob

After a hiatus we returned to the Land of Azurth last Tuesday and picked up where we left off in an adaptation of the Role-Aids adventure Swordthrust. The party was roaming the labyrinth inside the mind (or at least brain) of the giant, crystalline gnome, Gob. They were trying to collect all the pieces of a magical suit of armor.

This time, they avoided some fights with some Rat folk cultists, a dining troll, and a kobold Necromancer:

This, and their previous expressions of solidarity with some goblin revolutionaries made their job of exploring the dungeon easier because it allowed them to backtrack through controlled territory. This was particularly useful then they wanted to move from one "hemisphere" of Gob's brain to the other. 

They didn't negotiate their way around everything, though. They had to kill an irate cockatrice and 3 disagreeable harpies:

Like these guys but more birdy

No armor pieces discovered this session, so the quest continues!

Talking with Gob

Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last night. The party was still dealing with the bifurcated black and white adepts from last session. They tried to make sense of each adept's claim that the other was the villain, but ultimately, they just decided to try and seize the magic sabaton and be done with it.

A fight broke out as one kept blasting them with glowing orbs, while the other triplicated himself and attacked. The party triumphed, but only after depleting poor Dagmar's healing magic keeping them from going down. They wore forced to take a long rest in the barricaded room and wind up having to bluff a Phanfasm and his goblin troops once and them stay quite when some other (unseen) wandering monsters came sniffing around.

The next room contained the crystalline Gob, himself--or more precisely, Gob's self-image. He was at work on some sort of geometric equations and fretting over the elementary particles responsible for good and evil. The party got to ask him some questions about the origins of the world, discovering that Azurth was a sort of "terrarium" and outside it's "event horizon" was the rest of the universe. Whatever any of that meant!

After that, they had to backtrack to the domain of the Snooty Elves to go another direction. They found a room with a red crytal altar that held another piece of armor, a greave, floating in the middle of the room. When Waylon tried to grab it, he was frozen in some sort of stasis field. The party tried dispelling it (didn't work), then moving things with mage hand (didn't work in the duration of the spell), but finally Erekose was able to drag Waylon out. They then used mage hand to put a noose around the greave and they took turns slooowly dragging it out of the field.

The Weird Mind of Gob

Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued, with the party avoiding fighting the snooty elves at the dinner party they crashed last adventure. The elves let them pass into "The Room Revolving," but only if they promised not to steal anything. The party did. Reluctantly.

The revolving room left Waylon and Shade dizzy and motion sick, but when they stopped, they found a centaur with a Brian Blessed-type, expansive personality and a need to brawl to regain full "reality"--whatever than might mean for a figment of a crystalline, giant gnome's imagination. For their troubles, Wayon is gifted with a lucky silver horseshoe.

Next, they encountered a room with a town of tiny people in colorful costumes--who started shooting siege weapons at the party when they crossed their land. Next was a webbed filled chasm....and where there are webs, of course, there are giant spiders. These were adept at shooting webs and entangling the party, but eventually they were felled thanks to distance weapon work.

Next room sucked them in and threw them against the opposite wall with some strange force. After that insult, it was empty.

They came a room in darkness save for a revolving, sparkling orb. Two monk-like figures, bifurcated black and white, each declared the other a villain. Within the room was a silver sabaton--one of the armor pieces the party was seeking!

The Battle with the Loom

I'm a session behind with my reports on our 5e Land of Azurth campaign. We played last Sunday and on October 29th, and the second was a continuation of the first, the events separated only by a short rest. The party was seeking the artificial being, Loom, responsible for this place, the even madder copy of the failing mind of Mad Mirabilis Lum. They had managed to defeat every challenge Loom had thrown at him, but they still hadn't found the Warrior Princess of Sang they were trying to rescue.

They took on two robots with flamethrowers, then an enraged Ettin. After that, they progressed down into the excavation. Clearly Loom was having his forces dig out some ancient structure which none of them recognized. Looking for some evidence of what it might be, they came into a cave. They didn't have much time to look around, because there was a battle cry and the mind-controlled Princess Bellona came running at them with sword and pistol. They get lucky, evading her blows and their numbers allow them party to finally subdue her. They notice a shimmering cloud that leaves her and flies away into the dark extent of the cave.

The party followed it and came to the end of the excavation. There was the shimmering image of Loom. he sent forth more of those clouds to attack them (nanite swarms, though they didn't know what they were). Still, they persevered and the substance of Loom was so degraded, what was left of him had to flee. That worried them, but it was a problem for another day.

The returned with Bellona to the workshop of the Clockwork Princess who told them about a metal giant she planned to resurrect to attack the Wizard in the Sapphire City!

Into the Arena

 Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last Sunday with the party still trying to find the power core within the crashed spacecraft. It turns out there weren't any more major threats after the undead spacemen--just a will o' wisp and some poltergeist, so it's mostly down to doing a thorough search. The party finds the core, but they are (quite reasonably) afraid of some sort of malign energy or radiation off it, so they choose to handle it with mage hands. They carry it back to the Church of Clockwork without (apparent) incident. 

Viola thanks them for their help, but now she has another mission for them. She needs them to Bellona, the Battle Princess of Sang, out of the arena of Junk City. She's fallen under the control of the Loom--the mad and bad duplicate of the mind of Mirabilis Lum. She leaves it to the party to determine how they do it, but she assures them it's necessary.

The next day, the party disguises themselves and heads over to the arena to check things out. Waylon disguises himself as a theatrical gladiatorial combat promoter from Yanth Country and Erekose pretends to be a fighter. They talked to the trollish emcee of the arena, but things go badly when Dagmar gets insulted and snaps back at the caustic creature. 

They do get to check out the games, though, and they see the fierce, silver-masked, woman warrior, who they are sure is Bellona.

Dead Spacemen and the Clockwork Princess

Last week, I forgot the session report on our last Land of Azurth 5e game, so here it is. The party was still in the labyrinthine, ramshackle of Junk City. The former Mayor of Rivertown, Gladhand, though ailing from a mysterious attack was able to lead them to where Viola, the Clockwork Princess of Yanth Country (who has been absent for quite some time) was hiding out. Turns out it's in a shabby temple to Clockwork--but that's really just a front for her operation to build--well, some sort of weapon, she didn't elaborate to fight the Wizard and his shadowy allies.

The party is a bit nervous about this as last time they saw her (in the future) she was crazy and on a rampage. They ask a lot of questions to probe for signs. She seems her same old self though, and she has a mission for them. She needs them to still a power source from a crashed spaceship to power her weapon.

The party agrees, but later maybe they wish they hadn't as the remnant of the ship's crew are undead. At least one of them a fairly powerful undead with the power to drain life. It's a close call for Erekose, but the group wears the creature down. 

They still haven't found the power core, though.