Gameplay

The adventurers had landed on a ship when they fell out of a portal. Captain Catapult interrogated them about where they came from and what they wanted to do. The team is able to convince him that they are from another world and need help getting back. Captain Catapult knows a powerful priest who has happened to have given him a letter to summon his friends (meta: the characters from the Dungeon in a Box campaign). The captain says she doesn’t know what they look like, only their reputation so he gives them the letter and sails them to the town of Bloom.

They arrive to find the town in lock down. No one is allowed in or out, but with the letter from the priestess, Leeza, they are able to get into the town. From there they make their way to Leeza’s manor. The door is forced open and no one comes when they knock. They enter with trepidation.

When they reach the study, they are attacked by 4 infernal zombies. They fight the zombies and investigate. They realize that 2 of the zombies were recently deceased and have a brooch from the order that Leeza belongs to. More investigations in the manor lead them to footprints and knowledge that a journal is missing.

The town guard arrives because of the sounds of fighting. Things look suspicious, so they take the team to see the mayor. Ariana is able to convince the mayor they are there to help Leeza and are investigating. The mayor needs their help and allows them to go free, but maintains that they are not to leave the town until the murders are solved.

They go to the graveyard and find sigils on tombstones and graves that were dug from within - the zombies were resurrected and dug their way out.

From there they go to temple and convince the priest (a bullywug) to give them any information that might help. He tells them about a failed exorcism 30 years ago that led to the man’s death. Leeze was a neophyte at the time that she performed the exorcism and beats herself up for messing up and, therefore, being the cause of the death. The bullywug also confirms that the symbol they found at the grave site is the symbol of the fiend that was being exorcised.

The group decides to visit the archives. On the way there they see a suspicious character and chase them. It turns out to be a banshee that they fight.

They go to the archivist and Jackal is worried maybe the archivist isn’t who he says he is so he has Appaluna cast detect magic - there is no magic transforming the archivist. The archivist finds and hands them a newspaper article about the exorcism. They learn that the man who died had a child.

They visit the orphanage where the child was raised and Appaluna concludes that he is trying to get revenge for his father’s death and might also be possessed by the same demon.

They go back to the graveyard and investigate headstones and find a masonic crypt (the deceased father was a mason). Ariana investigates and finds out the door has recently been opened and that there was blood that has been cleaned off the crypt.

Jackal decides to break down the crypt door. This attracts some zombies and spectors so they fight those while Jackal continues to try and break the door. They find the child inside (now grown) and Leeza about to be sacrificed. In a series of lucky moves they kill him in one round. The ghosts of father and son are reunited and the fiend’s ritual is not completed.

The group asks Leeza to make a portal so they can get back to where they need to go. She spends a few days studying them to figure out where to send them to. She opens a portal and they end up just outside a city in the Labyrinth.

GM Thoughts

This is basically our one year anniversary from when we first started playing Tales of the Valiant and started this campaign. We started roughly on Halloween last year and what was just a originally just a test run at this new 5e variant, using the Tales of the Valiant Alpha rules I’d bought for $10, has grown into this grand campaign - my first ever homebrew campaign (although I have made use of a few written modules here and there - including that first night and tonight). It’s been a very fun adventure and it’s been so interesting to see the players evolve their characters as we’ve gone along. If the rest of the campaign goes according to the pacing I have planned, we’re about 4 more sessions away from the conclusion. I wanted to make sure we finished up the main storylines before this campaign wore out its welcome.

Once we’re done my current plan is to run through the dndadventure club adventures the kids got for Christmas last year as a bit of a palate cleanser. The tone is generally lighter and it’ll be nice to sit back and run some easy, pre-written adventures. From there we’ll probably go back and forth between the D&D campaign setting Humblewood: Beyond the Canopy (the long-awaited sequel) and the Pokemon-like D&D setting that Stella backed on Kickstarter last year.

Also, somewhere in there, I’d like to play the Pathfinder 2e beginner box that I got from a Humble Bundle. The Cosmere (with its Pathfinder-influenced action economy) has made me curious about playing in their ruleset for a bit just to see what I can pick up and compare and contrast. I also picked up the Draw Steel! Starter adventure and ruleset for $10 (seems to be the going rate for starter rules, eh?) and we’ll see what the table thinks of that.

When we get back to Tales of the Valiant in a few months, I have some official Kobold Press campaigns I’d like to run before asking the kids if they want to return to these characters. I have to think about what I’d like to pit them against as they take the characters from this homebrew campaign and start working towards Tier 2 and Tier 3 play. It will also give the kids some time to think about what their characters haven been doing in the interim. The fun thing about the future Tales of the Valiant adventures and campaigns we play is that we’re no longer just creating characters based on the Alpha rules. Not only do I have the Player’s Guide, I also have the character options from a few supplement PDFs, The Labyrinth Worldbook, and (by the time we’re ready to play again) the Player’s Guide 2 will have been released. (With The Northlands campaign overlay probably shortly after that)

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