The session begins with the party successfully navigating a dungeon and stepping through a blinding white portal located inside a small shack. As they pass through, the characters experience the terrifying sensation of falling through empty space before crashing into a musty cavern filled with mold and yellow-green bioluminescent rock.

Several party members—including Mickle, Grundel, and Vladimir—become violently ill from the disorientation of the transition and begin retching.

While the party attempts to recover, they are ambushed in a chamber filled with a gaseous cloud of spores released by a hidden enemy.

  • Invisible Foe: The party initially struggles to locate an invisible enemy that taunts them with mocking laughter.
  • Cursed: Nebish is touched by an unseen hand, leaving the left side of his body numb. The attack permanently reduces his charisma and inflicts a curse that imposes disadvantage on attacks against the creature responsible.
  • Tactics: Khalid uses Faerie Fire and a wand of Web in an attempt to reveal the surroundings, though no targets are initially caught.
  • The Reveal: Eventually three identical figures emerge directly from the stone walls—later identified as Nepalese Hags.
  • Execution: After a chaotic exchange involving a blunderbuss loaded with pennies, Grundel kills the primary hag with a massive cleaving strike from his big-ass wrench, shattering her spine and nearly decapitating her.
  • Loot: The party harvests three three-inch claws from the corpse. Additional loot includes a copper ring, a handcrafted necklace made of bright green feathers, eight gold pieces, and various alchemical components.

The party continues into a vast echoing cavern separated by water that they must cross.

  • Manifestation of Fears: Each character is confronted by an illusion representing their greatest fear.
  • Nebish: A screeching rock radiating dust and spores.
  • Grundel: A baby version of himself.
  • Khalid: An emaciated version of himself stripped of jewelry and status.
  • Mickle: A deep black void leading into oblivion.
  • Barnaby: The corpse of Miranda.
  • Bludarious: An undead soldier he once ordered to die.
  • Vladimir: Himself stripped of all divine power.
  • Bruenor: A demonic possession

A second hag attacks the party from beneath the water.

  • Transformation: During the fight, the hag transforms Captain Barnaby into an infant, leaving him crying helplessly on the shore.
  • Fishing for Hags: Attempting to locate the creature, Mickle uses a Genasi finger as bait on a fishing line. The hag takes the bait and pulls the entire fishing pole into the water.
  • Death of the Second Hag: Bludarious eventually kills the creature with a precise gunshot that pierces her heart.
  • Loot: The party recovers a Potion of Fox's Cunning, a Potion of Cure Light Wounds, eighty-two gold pieces, and a black sapphire ring valued at roughly eight hundred gold. A glint beneath the water also reveals a hunting rifle, which the party retrieves.

The party enters a final chamber where a Night Hag resides within a massive crystalline structure.

  • Ethereal Gateway: The room functions as a hub connecting the Material Plane and the Ethereal Plane. When the crystal is damaged, objects and individuals—including Grundel and even a keg of gunpowder—randomly flicker in and out of the Ethereal Plane.
  • Night Hag Tactics: The hag casts Sleep and incapacitates Khalid. Bruenor later revives him using Lesser Restoration.
  • Restraint and Victory: Khalid uses his wand to cast Web, pinning the hag to a wall twenty feet below the party's ledge. Bludarious delivers the killing blow with a gunshot that momentarily vanishes into the Ethereal Plane before snapping back into existence and tearing through the hag's body.

The party emerges victorious but exhausted after the deadly encounter. As a lingering comedic consequence of the hag's magic, the infant-transformed Captain Barnaby must now refer to Vladimir as “Mama.”

  • campaigns/apocalyptica_arcanum_-_first_modern_campaign/campaign_one_recaps/session_ten.txt
  • Last modified: 2 weeks ago
  • by drefizzle