In Sly Took's Vault

Our Land of Azurth 5e campaign continued last night with the party revising, then attempting there plan to break into the criminal vault of Sly Took (brother to Mapache Took of the Racoon Thieves Guild) to steal back the ill-gotten gold of former Mayor Gladhand. They decide on a classic "Trojan Horse" plan using the Armoire of Holding they acquired long ago as the horse.

Waylon and Kully play at delivering their presumably magic item stuffed armoire for safekeeping at the vault. The two meet with the vault manager Wotko (a red panda person, oddly) and everything goes smoothly at first. After depositing the armoire in their assigned vault, they get the moment they've been waiting for and attack Wotko and his subordinate to get their keycharms.

What they hadn't prepared for was the invisible stalker that guarded the vault. As soon as they attack Wotko, it attacks them. After a couple of rounds, Dagmar recalls she can abjure elemental spirits, and she turns it.

The party quickly grabs the keys. They take Gladhand's gold from another strongbox (all 600 lbs. of it!) and close up the armoire. Bell magically disguises herself as Wotko, just as a group of guards approach them...

The Vault Job

Our Land of Azurth 5e campaign continued last night with the party meeting with the former mayor, Gladhand in an underground hideout. Gladhand wants their help ousting the new mayor who has apparently becoming something of a despot. Gladhand claims to have a stash of gold he can use to hire mercenaries, but he needs the party to get it for him.

He had entrusted the money to the Sly Took, a member of the Raccoon Folk Thieves Guild and operator of a vault where people can keep valuables they want to stay hidden. The vault is protected by a cadre of elite rat folk mercenaries and apparently some vicious weasels--and has very high security.

The party is unsure whether they should help Gladhand or not. While the current mayor was supported by another adventuring party who the group feels has stolen their thunder, they know Gladhand to be something of a crook, and the vault sounds pretty difficult to get into. Ultimately, the greedier members of the party carry the day, and they at least agree to look into the job.

Waylon uses some underworld contacts to inquire about stashing some money and potentially some magic items in the vault. He uses this visit to case the joint as well as he can. Security is indeed high, with traps, arcane locks, and requirements for 3 magic key charms for each one.

Unsure of how best to approach things, the party contemplates a frontal assault, while acknowledging this seems like a bad idea...

TO BE CONTINUED

What The Clockwork Princess Said

Our 5e Land of Azurth campaign continued last night (now in its fifth year!) with the party trying to get some information from the the tree-like mass of gears and wires that bore the face of the former Princess of Yanth Country, Viola. They couldn't make much from her comments.  Was she merely repeating words from their questions or genuinely answering? They did think they got the phrases: "Not trust", "Queen Desira", and "Find. Now." Those may or may not have been related thoughts.

Suddenly, there was a flash of light in the hallway, and a mysterious stranger in a long coat with a flying-V guitar slung across his back stepped into the room. For some reason, the party immediately assumed this was "Future Kully," though the Kully of this time was supposed to be dead. The stranger seemed flustered by their questions about his identity, noting that he wouldn't have worn a bandana over his face if he wanted it to be known. He told them they needed to return to their own time, and quickly, because "the forces of darkness" were coming. He invoked concerns about effecting the future were he to answer any of their quite reasonable questions. He would say of his own origins: he was from "their future, but also from the distant past." He left the room playing his guitar and disappeared in another flash.

The stranger's words soon proved true, as the castle rocked as if struck. The party decided it was time to escape. A giant, insectoid creature of clicking metal and whirring gears broke through the wall, but after favoring them with a scream like an approaching train, turned and stumbled its way in the direction the party had come from.

They made it down two levels. The crazy gnomes were now fleeing with them. They exited the front door and saw two dragons blacker than the night sky, smoky and insubstantial around their extremities, circling like hawks overhead.

The party featherfall-ed (featherfell?) to the ground below. They saw black-armored riders on weird, loping steeds like hairless dogs with monstrous, human faces. They sprinted out of the clearing into a nearby stand of trees. Two riders peeled off from the many body and trotted over to the wood. Keeping a distance, one shot an arrow high. It transformed into a mass of arrows burning with green flame. The volley fell upon the party, seriously injuring Kairon and Shade. Again, the party ran for the deeper woods.

There, Phosphoro (finally) appeared, expressing regret for having forgotten to bring them back to their own time until now.

Back in Rivertown, the party discovered there have been some changes in their time away. A new palisade is around most of the city and there is a greater guard presence. They return to the Dove Inn and find their rooms are still intact, but they have back rent to pay.

When they see the innkeeper slip a note to a young boy, Waylon follows him through the streets. The boy goes to the house of Inkwell, the former bookkeeper to the former mayor. Inkwell returns to the inn looking for the party and asks them to meet him at his house this evening--and be careful of being followed.

That night, Inkwell tells them what has passed in the year they have been absent. Drumpf was elected mayor and used both his wizardly family and alleged aid from the land of Noxia to the North to enforce his rule in Rivertown. Gladhand, the former mayor, is in hiding, but Inkwell says he will offer the party a share in a large treasure if they will help him use the money to hire mercenaries to help drive Drumpf from the city. The party agrees to meet Gladhand.

Art by Jason Sholtis

weird Revisited: The Witches of Ix

This was one of the earliest Land of Azurth posts, appearing in August of 2014...

Art by Ian Miller

It is likely you will never have cause to visit the land of Ix, and in this, you should consider yourself lucky. The only exception might be those who have the misfortune to live in blighted, ghoul-haunted Noxia. To you Noxians an oft cold and mostly gloomy land of forests, bogs, and mountains, infested with goblins and ruled by witches, may not seem so dire. Remember though that you must cross the toxic badlands of the Waste to get there.

Ix has only one town worthy of note, and it cowers in the shadow of Hexenghast, an impossibly large and sprawling castle built beyond the memory of Ixians. Hexenghast is large enough to accommodate the four Great Houses of Ixian Witches and their various servants, mercenaries, guests, and prisoners. In fact, it is so large it houses these individuals and still has a great many halls and rooms that are unoccupied and perhaps unexplored for centuries.

Art by Yoshitaka Amano

A grand coven of the leaders of the Great Houses rules Hexenghast (no mean feat, given all the infighting and intrigue). The management of the rest land is done by lower level witches with mundane human and goblin subordinates. Mostly they are concerned with the collection of Hexenghast's due in taxes and farm goods, but they also suppress any unauthorized practice of magic and promulgate state propaganda.

There is an order of witches known as the Witchfinders. These cloaked figures appear within a day of the birth of any child in Ix. Every newborn is examined, and if the child bear some witches' mark, it's whisked off to Hexenghast and given over to one house or another to raise. When the children come of age, they cross the flickering Ghostlight Bridge that spans the chasm between Hexenghast proper and the sub-castle of the Scholomance. There, they are tutored in the dark arts until they are ready to assume their adult role in Witch society.

It has been the custom for new graduates of the Scholomance to spend some time abroad before settling into Hexenghast, engaging in the sort of infamies that youths who are schooled in the Dark Arts and confident in their own superiority are wont to engage in. This was the context in which Angvaine and Nocturose crossed into Noxia all those years ago.

Art by Yoshitaka Amano

The Princess and the Darkness

Our 5e Land of Azurth campaign continued last night, with the party climbing the stairs to the next level, despite the madness-inducing noise. (Their plan of using Silence proved to be unwieldy.) They all stuffed wax in their ears (except the frogling that has no external ears to put wax in!). Shade was the first up. She found a room full of automata pieces with a whole in the ceiling and bodies of birds beneath it. Beyond that room was an iris-type door.

After retrieving the rest of the party (most of whom made their saves, and the one's that didn't were only minorly impaired), they opened the door. Inside they found a circular shaft with an obelisk, skirted with a platform floating inside. Leading to it was a climbing, arcing path of floating discs, each separated by about 5 feet. Interestingly, the dread noise seemed absent from the shaft--but no other spells worked, either.

Waylon the Frogling was made for leaping, so he was chosen to jump from disk to disk to reach the obelisk and platform. There, he discovered another brass mechanical face. The face explained it was the guardian of the obelisk's treasure, which certainly got Waylon's interesting. It initially was reluctant to reveal the treasure but Kully the Bard connived the head into doing it, though he strongly warned them any attempt to tamper with it would lead to the collapse of the floating obelisk and the release of the "criminal" fire elemental, leading to everyone's death.

Within a milky, glass sphere and festooned with wires, Waylon found a book called The Wondrous Wizard of Azurth, with a drawing of a smiling, benevolent old man on the cover. The book was dangerous, he was told, because it was an anomaly. Not heresy per se (as Dagmar though), but perhaps heresy against the nature of reality.   The book was somehow related to the Clockwork Princess' madness. It's author is listed as O. March Loam (which brought to mind Mirabilis Lum for the player's), but the guardian suggests this was the actual identity of the author who is a "thought form" of some other being, a being with name such "fragments."

Despite Waylon's desire to look for other treasure, the party is more eager now than ever to seek out the princess. On the next level of the castle, they find her. Her face, frozen in horror or madness, is on a great tree like shape of brass and iron, gears and wires. It's wire and conduit canopy spreads out across the ceiling, and his root-like tendrils radiate out along the floor.

There is a shadow, think as velvet, along the ceiling, that slowly brings itself together like a snake coiling for a strike. The party doesn't notice at first. When the shadow has become a whispy sphere, and triangular eyes open in its void like malevolent stars, they do take notice! It tells them it has waited so long for someone to kill so it can be released from this prison of cold light and return to the embrace of the dark void.

Then it nearly kills half the party with a blast of necrotic damage.

The party flees to heal and regroup. Dagmar's knowledge of the arcane suggests it's a aberration from the Outer Dark, which hates light. The party them remembers they are in possession of energy weapons they do radiant damage. Gearing out with Haste spells, Light, and of course those energy guns, they return the challenge the creature.

Though still a fearsome foe, it is perhaps overconfident from its last victory and they catch it off guard. It doesn't long survive what is practically artillery fire of laser beams form Hasted gunmen.

They now have the Princess to confront.

TO BE CONTINUED.

Our Land of Azurth party in Hero Forge

Tragically, Hero Forge still doesn't have a frog folk race option, so poor Waylon gets left out, but we've it can replicate the other members of the party pretty well:

Erekose, Human Fighter

Shade, Elf Ranger

Bellmorae, Dragonkin Sorcerer

Kairon, Demonlander Sorcerer

Kully, Human Ranger

The Mysterious Levers of Castle Machina

The part climbed the stairway to level two in the scuttling Castle Machina as our 5e campaign continued last night. The strange droning sound unsettled their nerves, but they persevered. They discovered another room full of vast machinery, mate to the room below it, that kept the castle moving. Then, they found a room full of cast of spare gears, mounds of them, and a bank of levers in the floor.  A search of the room awakened metallic, insectoid guardians.

The party backed away, intuiting that the constructs protected the levers.

Next, they discovered a sauna-like room where three salamanders were playing games of change. Once one of them produced a translation device, they were able to converse with the party. They told them they had been hired from the Realm of Fire to help in the construction of parts of the castle, and they had been on their union mandated break for some time. They had never heard of a "Princess" but they knew a mad clockwork being was interfaced with the castle like it was her nervous system. Kully wanted to gamble with them, but they never could arrive at items them salamanders considered valuable.

They tried climbing the stairs to the next level, but the droning sound was more overwhelming. Waylon and Dagmar were struck with paralyzing fear, and Shade flew into a violent rage and had to be subdued. Deciding that braving the maddening noise was too risky, they returned to the room with the levers, intent on possibly bringing the castle to a halt.

They experimented with mage hand, but moving the lever had no effect. They decided to destroy the guardians to experiment more fully. The energy weapons they had stolen from the priests of the Toad Temple were instrumental in accomplishing that, as regular weapons had little effect. In their deaths, the constructs exploded with damaging fireballs.

Battered but now with full access to lever, the party started to experiment in earnest and found...well, not much. Most of the levers seemed to have no visible effect. They long debated pulling the "Portal Reversal" lever, but some feared it would release the imprisoned fire creature that heated the boiler. In the end, they decided it was too risky.

A plan was hatched to use Silence to explore the next level.

TO BE CONTINUED

Madness in Castle Machina

Our 5e Land of Azurth came continued last night, with a new player: the daughter of two or regulars. Her character, Bellmorae the Dragonkin Sorcerer, joins the party after their visit to the benevolent Frog Temple. The party means to find out how this dark future came to be, and thinks that The Clockwork Princess, if she still is in the castle, may be able to give them the answers they need.

Find the castle isn't difficult. He tends me be crab-walking a wobbly orbit around the ruins of Rivertown. Getting in his a little bit more difficult. They fly up to the courtyard and find the palace doors replaced with an industrial metal one with a mechanical face (that looks something like the Princess) at its center. The face's eyes scan each party member who approaches and demands a pass code. When it scans Dagmar, it declares her a "maker" and allows her to reset the pass code. Inside, the party finds the entry area and throne room replaced with the gigantic gears that power the legs.

Down one hall is a furnace and engine room. Automata shovel coal into a magically warded boiler, where eyes like a void in the white-hot flame watch them. A voice from the fire claims to a prince that was drawn into this cold world and trapped here, asks or demands they free him. The party does not.

Elsewhere they find the elevator shaft empty and blocked 3 floors up. In the turret around the stairwell, 3 scruffy,  gray gnome-like creatures behave like lunatics in an asylum. The party initially plans to avoid them, but with no other exits is forced to engage them in conversation. The think the creatures are perhaps the debased descendants of the gnomes that worked for the Princess in years past.

The madness of the gnomes prohibits meaningful dialogue. Waylon attempts to charm the one they appears to be their leader. The spell fails, and the enraged creature attacks. The party makes short work of the six of them, though they all managed to deliver nonsensical last words as they die. They have nothing of value in their possession.

The party climbs the spiral stair, slowly becoming aware of a curious and unsettling background hum or droning...

Consulting the Sages

Our Land of Azurth 5e campaign continued last night with the party still in the future, spending the night in the apparent safety of the Frog Temple (whose messiah, they believe is Waylon the Thief from some point in the future). They are awakened by the white glow of a point floating air that spreads into a line vibrating with the words of Phosphoro. The wizard asks if they have acquired the book. Before they can answer, something disrupts his transmission.

That something turns out to be a ball energy that resolves into a humanoid form. In a booming monotone, it demands that they turn over the Book of Doors, explaining that the Mysteriarchs of Zed will brook no one unworthy gaining entrance to their hidden city. It also declares that it is not fool by the trickery inherent in this "anomaly," though who this comment is aimed at is not clear. The group assumes it to be Roderick Drue, but the confused young man protests his innocence.

The party surmises they do want to to fight this creature, much less the Mysteriarchs, so they bargain: They will give up the book, minus the page they must give Phosphoro. The creature summons a "factor" of the city empowered to make such negotiations.

After some talk, the factor agrees to their terms. Additionally, he warns them their presence here might summon a "Time Keeper." He has the "golem of pure magic" examine the book, then remove the page Phosphoro will need. Then the agents of Zed leave taking the rest of the book with them.  When they are gone, Phosphoro renews contact. The party explains the situation, and Phosphoro prepares to return them home. Due to the nature of temporal magic, he states they will have to drift out of this time slowly. It make take hours or days.

With nothing to do but wait, the party tries to find out more about what calamity befell their homeland. They seek out the Standing Stone Sages. The sages don't know much that can help them, but do reveal that The Clockwork Princess and Queen Desira, the Enchantress of Virid, were allies in their rebellion against the Wizard.

No sooner are they done talking to the Sages than they encounter a strange ooze shot through with electrical impulses that seems to follow them. The attack it at a distance, finding it resistant to most things, but vulnerable to cold. Relying primarily on such attacks, they destroy it before it can ever get an attack in.

Azurth Mailbag: Death & Mayhem

This may well become a recurring feature here, assuming I get other Land of Azurth-related questions. Jason Sholtis of Pennsylvania asks: "How do you deal with D&D style violence and mayhem in Azurth and how does it support or thwart the tone?"

D&D is often characterized as "killing things and taking their stuff" and old school play at least tends to to pride itself on "high lethality." Neither of these things seem Azurthian at first blush, given the stated inspirations, so I understand why Jason might question how it all fits together.

First off, my Land of Azurth campaign is run in 5e, which is a bit more forgiving and less lethal (for the players) than older editions. This suits our campaign just fine.

Secondly, Azurth is a D&D world with those sorts of inspirations. It doesn't have an Ozian lack of death, for one thing. Azurth isn't a grim or dark world in any sense, but it's a bit like the Land of Ooo from Adventure Time! in that it is not as saccharine as it might appear on the surface. (And unlike the Land of Ooo, it doesn't have to hold the violence to levels acceptable to Broadcast Standards and Practices.)

I think there's fun in juxtaposing the children's book sort of elements with mayhem, but without doing a "dark" take in the traditional sense. So yes, the D&Dish mayhem thwarts the kiddie nature of some seting elements, but the setting keeps the action of the campaign form devolving into just another D&D world. They work well together.

Do you have a question? Leave it in the comments or email me.

Land of Azurth Inspirations

This is not an "Appendix N" or list of general inspirations, but rather the likely origins for specific elements in the setting and my Land of Azurth campaign. Likely, because inspirations can be difficult to trace things, and often not completely evident. This is what I remember.

Books:
Frank L. Baum. The Marvelous Land of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz
James Branch Cabell. Figures of Earth.
M. John Harrison. In Viriconium, also known as The Floating Gods.
Gregory Maguire. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.
Jack Snow. Who's Who in Oz.
Catherynne M. Valente. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making; The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There.

Comics:
Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld (1983). Mishkin, Cohn & Colon. DC Comics.
Over the Garden Wall: Tome of the Unknown. McHale and Campbell. Boom! Studios.

Animation:
Adventure Time!
Howl's Moving Castle.
Over the Garden Wall.
Popeye "Goonland."

Rabbits and Eggs in the Land of Azurth

As I first reported in 2017, there is, in the Land of Azurth, a magical treasure peculiar to the Hara or Rabbit Folk and celebrated in their legends. A number (though no one knows the exact number) of eggs in variegated pastels are forever being lost and rediscovered; they are objects of quests for great heroes and the caralyst for small folk to elevated their station. They are associated with both just rulers and holy madmen.

The eggs are said to have been crafted on the Moon by the rabbit goddess the Bright Lady as gifts to favored mortals or saints on the occasion of the birth of spring. The shell of each egg is held to not be mere eggshell but ceramic made from moonstuff. The eggs have moved down through history, sought, horded, and fought over for their beauty and their magic power--each egg has a unique arcane property. One might have the power to heal, while another the ability to command others to do the bearers bidding. Still another might allow one to see the future.

The Rabbit Folk sometimes make their own mundane eggs for vernal celebrations in honor of the goddess, while unscrupulous relic-dealers occasional try to pass off fakes as the real artifacts. The abundance of imitations has only increased the difficulty of finding the real thing.

It is said that Lapin XXII, King of the Warrens of the Hara, has several of the eggs in his possession, stored in a ceremonial basket.

The Azurth Dictionary

It's been a while since I've shared the Dictionary of Azurth, your abbreviated (but free) guide to assort people, places, and things in the Land of Azurth.

Get it here.

Weird Revisited: Rumored Mysteriarchs of Hidden Zed

I'm back after a hiatus caused by moving and a lack of internet access. Here's a classic Land of Azurth post from 2015, that soon may have relevance for my current campaign... 

As their name should suggest, little is known of those great magi, the Mysteriarchs of Zed, and this is presumably the way they prefer it. Even great wizards are powerless before rumor and tale-telling, however, and so the names of some alleged members of that shadowy assemblage are widely whispered in the Land of Azurth:

art by Francisco Segura

The Great Enigma may or may not have ascended to a higher plane to compare his knowledge with that of more potent beings than humanity, or perhaps he lingers awhile yet to train worthy apprentices. He has placed himself under a peculiar geas wherein in a challenge he will only cast any spell his opponent hasn't thought of yet, but none that they have.

Art by Algosky

Agar the Green holds unorthodox theories about slime and its place among the primordial elements. He makes a study of various slimes, oozes and jellies, and spends much of his time in a semi-viscid form to aid his research. Some of his colleagues suggest he has even sought the lubricous embrace of Jellia, the Gelatine Princess of the Ooze Folk, but such matters are scarcely the topic of polite conversation.

art by Moebius

Generys the White is said to have lived half her life in the realm of dreams, and this has made her cold and cruel in her affairs in the mundane world. She knows secrets that are only shared in dreams and the making of potions that aid either forgetfulness or memory. Any gift of a jewel or precious stone from her is to be avoided at all costs, but must be refused politely.

Days of Azurth Future Past

art by Jason Sholtis

Deposited in the future by the whim of the wizard, Phosporo, the party in our 5e Land of Azurth game, found Rivertown in ruins and Castle Machina again mobile and stalking the land. What's more the Toad Temple--the Frog Temple in this time-- could be seen in the distance and was painted a brownish orange and had a decidedly friendly cast about it.

It was all very strange, but the party had a job to do. They went searching for the ruins of the Dove Inn to find their Armoire of Holding and the Book of Doors contained therein to get Phosphoro off their back. On their way there, they encountered a sleeping young man in strange clothes. He wasn't sure if Azurth was real, or even if he was real. There seemed to be some gaps in his memory. He knew he was a member of something called "the Golden Dawn" and that his name was "Roderick Drue." He remembered an old man had sent him here--or maybe it was the opium he had smoked. He recalled a place he had been, called the World Exposition.

The party didn't know what to make of any of this, but they allowed him to accompany them. They arrived at the ruin of the Dove Inn to find their armoire likely buried in rubble. (The presence of something was confirmed by detect magic.) Before they could begin searching, there were gibbering voices and something protoplasmic rose from the debris and coalesced into a spheroid in front of them.

Its eldritch gibbering paralyzed the group for some time. Its many mouths bit them, and its eyes blasted them with baleful magic. In the end, they drove it back with Dissonant Whispers and wore it down, until it collapsed into goo. Exhausted, but only mildly harmed (except Erekose who took the brunt of its assault), they began digging into the rubble.

More voices. These belonging to a group of little people who claimed to be from another world. They had taken up residence in the very spacious interior of the armoire. They agreed to turn over the book in exchange for getting to keep everything else. They also related that war had destroyed Rivertown. They suggested the party could find shelter with the benevolent religionists of the Frog Temple.

The party was nervous about doing so, but ultimately did. The rustic beast folk welcomed them warmly. Their frogling leader revealed that they venerate a frogling of the past--Waylon! They also revealed that the war had ultimately been a civil war between the Wizard of Azurth and the Clockwork Princess. They reported the forests were now the domain of a fierce elf called the Dread Queen of House Perilous. The party is sure that this is their own Shade.

Intrigued and troubled by all this, the part stays the night in the temple to consider what to do next!

The Fall of the Toad Temple

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last night, with the party still exploring the Toad Temple, looking to stop the depredations of the cultists--and searching wardrobes.

There were a number of smallish sacks of money in wardrobes.

Mostly avoiding conflict because a (pre-planned) uprising of the townsfolk was creating a diversion, the pary sneaked through the levels of the temple. Ultimately, they find the Power Plant and subdue a Apprentice Powerman. With the proper persuasion, he reveals that the "shifting" of the temple is controlled by the Main Computer. He also lets it slip that they are originally from the future, and they do not want to return there.

Luckily, the Computer Room is just across the hall. Unluckily, the Computermen have herd the ruckus and barricaded themselves in.  As soon as the party breaks through, the Computer Supervisor and his apprentice open fire with ray guns. Finally remembering they have already picked up ray guns themselves, the party returns fire. The apprentice goes down instantly.

The Supervisor, believing they have go to destroy the computer, fights to the last, but eventually falls.

The party uses the high priest's ring and a keyboard to speak to the computer. Strangely, both the keyboard and the screen are in Azurthite Common.

They command the computer to take the temple back where it came, but program a delay, so they can escape. Random encounter rolls are in their favor, and they make it out of the Temple just in time to see it ripple and disappear.

The tyranny of the toads is at an end. The party is reuinited, but has little time to celebrate their victory. Phosphoro appears and reminds them of their promise. He activates his staff and whisks them away to the future--where Rivertown lies in ruins!

Highs and Lows of the Toad Temple

Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last night, with the part just having escaped the bowels of the Toad Temple oppressing the land of Under Sea, to a loading dock on a canal surrounded by swamp. A swim across the canal provokes the attack of a giant leech, which is warned off by arrow fire. A trek across the swamp leads to a nocturnal encounter with a giant frog and a giant alligator that nearly bit Erekose the fighter in twain. (The random encounter rolls were not on their side.)

As they near civilization they borrow a boat and make it back to the frogling village. Avoiding the Toad cultist patrols who are eager to find the daring rogues who defiled their worship and killed their high priest, the party returns to their barn hideout for a rest.

The next morning, they decide to return to the temple and see if they can destroy it in some way. Kairon and Erekose favor fire. (Erekose had already shown a pyromaniac streak after his unilateral and pragmatic but cold-blooded decision to kill two captives with Burning Hands the night before.) Other party members just want to induce the cult to leave by any means necessary.

They ask the ambassador to get the townsfolk to stage a riot at the temple doors. The party hopes this will divert the cult forces so they can sneak back in. Kully the bard goes to help rally the townspeople.

The plan seems to work in that the loading dock and the lower levels seem virtually abandoned. After a search of the upper dungeon, they find stairs to a tower, where they overhear a ground of guards discussing a squabble over succession with the ranks of the cult luminaries. They get the drop on them and kill them all. Still, they can't kill every cultist in the place (probably), and they still haven't figured out a way to make them leave.

Playing with Heroforge

Heroforge, a custom 3D printed miniature design site is pretty cool. My wife and I were playing with it over the holidays, and while there are some frustrating lacks, it already has an impressive array of design elements. Here are a couple of the characters in my Land of Azurth campaign:

Kully the Bard:

And Kairon the Demonlander (i.e. Tiefling) Sorcerer:

 Its inclusion of Western/Victorian elements not only helped Azurth designs, but also my old Wampus Country character, Horvendile Early:

And there's sci-fi stuff. Here are the three characters from the cover of Strange Stars:

Moon Goons (for 5e and Old School Simulacra)

Moon Goons get their name from their heads or masks, large, round, and faintly luminous like the Moon, and their vile behavior. The Moon Goons avoid the real moon, only striking when it is new. Their spindly, bone-white limbs are animated with odd gestures and faintly aglow despite the lack of moonlight. They are forever mumbling and conversing, but their lips never move and their speech is unintelligible.

They arrive in balloons--or what look like balloons--but their gondolas are slung from metal spheres with the appearance of lead. The spheres are hollow, and no one knows from where they derive their buoyancy nor what propels them forward. Perhaps the Moon Goons know, but they don't say. Each gondola carries 2-3 moon goons. They arrive in groups of 2-4 balloons.

They prey on small, isolated villages or farms. The items that interest them are often not particularly valuable at all--at least not in the strict monetary sense. Sentimental value seems the be the primary quality evident in the things they steal.

Moon goons try to put the humans they rob to sleep with the silvery metallic rods they carry. The slumber the rods produce is plagued by weird nightmares. Humans that prove resistant to their rods or harm one of the moon goons raiders, may find themselves on sharp end of their scalpel-like knives.

Old School Stats:

#Enc: 1-3 x 4  AC: 3 HD: 4 Attacks: 1 (sleep on failed saving throw, or 1d6).

5e stats:

MOON GOON
medium aberration, neutral evil
AC 15 (natural armor)
Hit Points: 22 (4d8+4)
Speed: 30 ft.
STR 11(+0) DEX 13(+1) CON 12(+1) INT 13(+1) WIS 12(+1) CHA10(+0)
Skills: Stealth +6
Senses Darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 11.
Languages Understands any language but don't speak any of them

Magic Resistance. A Moon Goon has an advantage against spells and other magical effect.

Actions:
Rod. Ranged Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, one target in a 30 foot range. Hit: On a failed DC 12 Constitution save, the target falls to sleep.
Scalpel-like Knife. Melee Weapon Attack. +4 to hit, 5 ft. reach, one target, Hit: 1d8.

The Toad Temple Slaughter Continues

Our Land of Azurth 5e campaign continued last night, with the party and their compatriot, Calico Jack the Cat Man, locked in the Toad Temple and in command of the room, after killing a whole lot of cultists, but with an alarm sounded and voice announcing the presence of intruders. Their attempts to find an escape route or at least a place to hide, are stymied by the appearance of a a very angry radiant gun-armed warrior and her displacer beast pet.

The party tries to run at first and leaves their figurine of wondrous power, the ruby bear, fighting the displacer beast. The bear, unfortunately, is killed, and the warrior waits in ambush in a storeroom. She's tough, but she isn't tough enough to take the full onslaught of the party, particularly after her already-wounded pet is dispatched. At this point, though, the party is low on healing, and have exhausted most of their spells. In the assets column, however, they have gained two energy weapons and three temple access rings.

Waylon the Frogling discovers a secret door, just as they hear more voices in the nave outside. The part descends into the levels beneath the temple. Most rooms here are vacant--the owners appear to be out looking for the party, giving our heroes time to loot the cultists' rooms. They avoid a few soldiers on cleanup duty in the mess hall, but then run into a couple of monks and their acolytes in a study hall.

Threats with energy guns don't dissuade these fanatics, but they sure help put them down quickly. With their teacher's dead, the acolytes surrender--though they are just as fanatical and don't seem trustworthy. Still, when they let slip the existence of a route to a loading dock outside the temple, the party forces them to reveal its location.

TO BE CONTINUED...