This week, we continued with my Scarlet Citadel campaign with the first full session. I’m doing these write ups a bit differently to the ones I’ve been posting on here for Empire of the Ghouls, Tyranny of Dragons, and Wrath of the River King. Instead of writing up what happened in a “story hour” format, these posts are going to be my reflections on the game as a DM. Hopefully they’ll prove useful to others running the adventure.
You can read earlier posts here. This post contains spoilers for Scarlet Citadel.
After a night’s rest at The Cage, the characters were keen to get going to the Scarlet Citadel. Two players were late to the session so the other three faced three stealthy wolves on their own in the wild mists – a tough fight. By the time Cauldvyr arrived on the scene to help, Dimitar and Torander were making death saves and Allia was hiding up a tree after killing a wolf with a sneak attack! A short rest followed the battle so everyone could spend their single hit dice.
Arriving at the ruins, they started exploring the perimeter when they heard beautiful singing from a harpy in the keep. Two characters succumbed to the song, but had snapped out of it by the time the harpy herself appeared. Although they defeated the foul creature, another fight had seriously depleted the party’s resources so they took a long rest after scouting around the courtyard.
Thankfully nothing attacked them while they were resting, and Farthrum led the way down the stairs into the underkeep. This was my first time using dynamic lighting which is all set up in the Roll20 version of the adventure and is very cool. I think it might take my players a while to get used to only being able to see what their character can though!
Farthrum carried on down the stairs to Level 1, triggering the crossbow trap, dodging the damage but making some noise. When Torander and Allia went on to have a not-very-quiet conversation in the corridor outside the cells, it alerted Scar. The crimson ogre attacked, but a decent critical hit from Farthrum bloodied him. Both Farthrum and Dimitar went berserk briefly after being splashed with the ogre’s blood, and then the gearforged went down. I was worried at how much damage Scar could do but they defeated the ogre in a couple of rounds and all survived the battle.
Having freed Ichbon and Dugan from their cells, they are now making their way through the Oubliette room looking for the Red Hart. Several characters are down to 5 hp or less, but they have earned enough XP for 2nd level if they can make it safely back to Redtower….
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Main image by David Auden Nash
Richard Green | Game Designer 