We’ve been playing a Primeval Thule D&D 5E campaign recently. We escaped from slavers, and have been exploring the wilderness whilst attempting to find a home for us and the other escapees that accompany us. In the Stone Barrens, we discovered a number of towers. We are currently exploring one of the largest of them…

In one of the Towers of the Stone Barrens, we found a red, tricorn hat, that looked like it was made of some sort of lizard skin, perhaps that of a red alligator; a name tag proclaimed it the property of Urvail Tradoll. Or possibly the hat was named Urvail Tradoll. We also found a fallen painting of a white city with an impossibly narrow wall surrounding it, with many towers and a great lightning-globe shooting electricity to the top of each tower; sky ships filled the sky. Halla took the cloak, and Leon took the hat.

While Leon and Urall were squabbling over the hat, Bree started exploring more of the tower, and discovered a kitchen with all the latest Atlantean amenities – or at least, they would have been when the tower was abandoned, and they were far more advanced than anything we had these days.

The bedroom contained an evil black tree with green leaves. A large knot-hole shaped like a screaming face produced from its bark; we quickly closed the door and left the cursed chamber.

Upstairs, the top floor contained only one huge room; the ceiling was particularly odd, seeming to be made of earth, while the stone floor had black markings (“spell things” was Urall’s expert opinion). Various arcs and circles and notations in High Atlantean, covered by a thick layer of dust, were inscribed into the floor. The entire room showed signs of an ancient battle: blood, soot, and the like. Scroll racks filled a great arc of the wall, and Urall immediately approached them, looking for any that might have survived the conflict.

A small door on the far side of the chamber behind an overturned table drew the attention of the others as I checked behind us for anyone who might be following. A strange shifting in the dust near Urall resolved into a ghostly form that struck him down. This drew the attention of Halla, who shouted out about glowing eyes, and we charged to defend our comrade.

The creature remained invisible for the fight, and our blows had little effect. Urall was dropped down, more than once, with only Bree’s healing keeping him going. We may have slain it, but we weren’t sure of this; it may have fled.

Urall then found a few scrolls in the racks, and a four-foot-high statue of a female with cupped hands held out. Near and under the table were a scattering of pages.

Bree climbed up a set of small stairs to the exterior of the domed tower, where he found a peryton near a cistern. He quickly retreated.

One of the papers proved to be a map of our immediate area, showing the Kurmaur Wilds. We studied it in some detail before resting.

My rest was disturbed by nightmares of walking trees of demonic aspect. Both Leon and I proved to have had such dreams, and we were much disturbed upon waking.

The next morning, I expressed my desire to leave this cursed place. The others decided they wanted to destroy the tree. It attacked them psychically as they attempted to burn and hack it. Blood spurted from its wounds rather than sap, and suddenly a Unicorn ran down the stairs and trampled me where I waited near the door out.

Eventually it was slain, and the group found an orb embedded in its bark that was used with the statue above to open a secret cache, where they found a note that read as follows:

“I am Urvail Travoll, last of the Sages of Atlantis. I incurred the wrath of a cult of black elves who served an elder god that appeared as a faceless sphinx with black skin. I was pursued by the cult from the Tomb of the Elven General of Agarathon and I fear what they might do.”

The note was accompanied by a holy symbol like a black sphinx, which Bree destroyed, causing a wave of negative energy to badly hurt my companions. I was safely downstairs. Safe unless you count the unicorn, which had disappeared as mysteriously as it had appeared, but I was worried about its reappearance.

We were not attacked as we made our way from the tower, and successfully made our way through the Stone Barrens and then into an unnamed forest.

There we found a very unhappy ogress, Nulla, who was sad that her suitor Thun had spurned her. For some reason, we agreed to track down Thun, and we discovered him in the company of an ettin, Ed. Ed was not impressed with our mission and attacked us. After we slew him and rendered Thun unconscious, we looted Ed’s lair (see below).

Nulla gave us her gratitude for helping Thun see the light, and gave us a golden amulet. We said our goodbyes, and hastily made our exit. Heroically.

And then we finally found the road!

This proved to be too much temptation for one of our companions, who slipped away and attempted to find passage to the slavers to betray our location. We discovered him being hidden in a wagon being driven a stone trader and his guard. They refused to give him up, so we attacked them, slaying the guard and the trader and knocking him unconscious. We then returned to our band, victorious.

The merchant, Guril, had an official order from Lord Farlin Schuntz, the titular head of Kargost, to deliver stone.

The Characters and their Players

• Halla the Barbarian (human, level 2) played by Peggy
• Urall the Sorcerer (elf, level 2) played by Paul
• Goran the Slayer (human fighter, level 2) played by Merric
• Bree the Cleric (halfling, level 2) played by Greg
• Leon the Rogue (human, level 2) played by Josh

The Treasure

• Dust of Disappearance
• Driftglobe
• Scrolls of alarm, comprehend language, illusory script, unseen servant, arcane lock, enlarge/reduce.
• Golden amulet worth 50 gold pieces.
• 3 gold pieces
• 4 horses

In Ed’s Lair:

• 20 copper pieces
• Several carvings of females with exaggerated anatomies worth a prison sentence of 10 years in any civilised centre.
• A small pyramid of human skulls, without the identifying marks we need for their bounties.

Rod “Sacrosanct” Waibel’s Depths of Felk Mor is an ambitious product. 236 pages of adventure takes a lot of devotion to create. The adventure describes the caverns around Felk Mor, a subterranean settlement inhabited by several clans of humanoids. Nearby is the temple of Remahotep, an ancient god of evil. About half of the page count is the adventure text, the rest of the book contains maps, hand-outs and artwork.

The adventurers begin in the surface lands above, where they learn of giant insects attacking nearby travellers. Investigating this leads them into a series of caves and tunnels that eventually lead them to Felk Mor, where they learn of the Cult of Remahotep’s activities. From there, they must explore the old temple in order to rescue the kidnapped son of a noble and stop the ancient god from manifesting in the world.

My appreciation of the adventure is severely hampered by its writing style, which is often clumsy, and the lack of a good overview of the adventure’s structure. It’s not helped by the initial encounters being in a nest of giant ants, with almost 54 encounter areas describing the nest – of a total 259 encounters in the entire adventure. The nest isn’t without merit. There’s a nice horror subtheme that gradually becomes apparent through the use of the Mrav, creatures created by Remahotep that combine humanoid and insect features, but overall the first section feels underwhelming.

Thankfully, the sections dealing with Felk Mor itself are a lot better. The various tribes of humanoids are well-described, allowing DMs to understand their motivation and to use them to drive adventures as the players ally with one tribe or another.

The temple has numerous areas of interest that can entertain players. Unfortunately, the cultists and Remahotep have no personalities or goals to speak of, save to bring back Remahotep – and nothing they do in the adventure seems to advance that at all. There’s certainly nothing the players can do to stop it. In one chamber, they have an encounter where they must face the avatar of the god and his High Priest. The chamber must be accessed through a teleporter for which the players need a password, so it’s possible the players will feel that they’ve earned it, but I don’t feel that the adventure properly builds up a sense of the impending threat beforehand; this must be added by the DM.

The adventure has a copious amount of excellent black & white artwork, and the maps are mostly clear (although I’m not sure where the water areas are in the tunnels that are meant to be partially flooded). As noted, the editing has a number of significant issues. The actual layout of the encounters is excellent, clearly displaying important features for the DM, but grammatical and phrasing problems with the text cause comprehension problems.

Depths of Felk Mor attempts to present a super-dungeon in an Old School style. I believe it needed more development to allow it to work better. It has many memorable encounters, but it feels less than the sum of its parts. I appreciate the effort that went into creating the adventure, and the clans of Felk Mor provide some good opportunities, so a good DM will be able to build on what is here; the usefulness of this adventure will depend greatly on your ability and desire to tinker with it.

Seeking revenge for the destruction of Westbridge, the adventurers returned to the Sacred Stone Monastery and made their way through the mines beneath into the Earth Temple. They were hampered by several attacks by Earth Cultists and gargoyles as they crossed the Great Bridge. The broken doors to the Temple were well-defended, with a porticullus preventing them from progressing further while with cultists used missiles and spells against them in the entrance chamber. Krovis used his great strength to lift the porticullis, allowing Thumbelina to slip underneath. The barbarian dwarf (giant!) slew many cultists before reinforcements flooded the chamber and forced her to retreat. However, she’d caused great losses to the cult. The adventurers returned to the surface to recuperate. That night, the cultists sent assassins against them, but the party were watchful and were able to detect them before they attacked – the assassins didn’t live long enough to really disturb the party’s rest!

The cult had made ready to defend their stronghold during the night, but a dimension door from Zed allowed the warlock to slip into the side tunnels where he surprised and slew several of the lesser cultists. As he made his way back towards the main group, he ran into a priestess of the cult who was interested in negotiating with the warlock: her name was Yarsha. She explained that she was unhappy with the cult’s actions and she was willing to betray her leader and help the adventurers. Zed accepted her aid, and Yarsha proved her worth by calling off the few remaining cultists (the battle had been raging in their absence), and gave the adventurers directions to find the Earth Prophet. The group chose to rest before dealing with him.

So it was the adventurers were guided by Yarsha to the quarters of the Prophet of Elemental Earth. They found him animating stone golems from the remnants of great statues carved by the dwarves of Tyar-Besil. He was not going to go down easily, with his golems attacking the party as he threw spell after spell at the group. Most of the party were kept busy by the golems, with Thumbelina taking the bulk of their attacks, her rage protecting her somewhat from their blows. Krovis and Ivan fought the prophet toe-to-toe, and eventually were able to overthrow him, with even his last desperate attempt to become invisible and flee proving unsuccessful.

Yarsha was very pleased, and promised to turn the Earth Cult to gentler pursuits and away from the destructive path they had been taking. The group, satisfied that Westbridge had been avenged, left the temple and returned to Red Larch for some much needed rest.

However, it the rest of the cultists were still threatening the area, and more and more elemental manifestations were wreaking havoc in the Sumber Hills. Trade was down, and the folk of Red Larch were getting very concerned. So, the adventurers mounted another expedition – this time to investigate Rivergard Keep.

This was not their first time visiting the river fortress. Then, they had been rebuffed by the soldiers who lived there, when the group had completely failed to prosecute any sort of useful negotiation. This time, they weren’t working from vague rumours; they’d discovered from interrogating prisoners of the cult that the pirates of the keep had been involved in the ambush of the trade delegation. However, how does one assault a fortified keep?

Well, in the case of these adventurers, by scaling the walls, killing everything that moves, and not giving the folk of the keep enough time to react. A few fireball spells may have been involved as well.

The leader of the keep, Jollivar Grimjaw, proved no coward and died in the battle, along with all of his men. It was a long battle, but the adventurers were skilled enough to not have to retreat and come back; something which definitely would not have been the case if they’d attempted this as novice adventurers. They gained a few nice valuables in the process, which they’d convert into coin – and likely healing potions!

Investigating the area revealed a river flowing from underground, with boats neatly pulled up on its banks. The adventurers found this intriguing, and used the boats to traverse the river into the depths of the earth, where they discovered the entrance to the Water Temple. It was well-defended, but the party were stealthy enough to pull up at the dock and attack from the shoreline – although some of them were soon pushed into the river where water creatures attacked them. Unfortunately for the guards, they were outmatched and no reinforcements were nearby, a flaw in their planned defences. And so the adventurers were victorious, and they pressed onwards into the Temple. A prison cell was long-abandoned, and they were able, once more, to surprise another guard post, slaying all within in seconds.

They crossed a bridge over one of the canals that flowed through this area of the Temple, and came across a number of aquatic trolls who proved to burn just as well as regular trolls. The adventurers were witnessed by a group of lizardfolk, the Blackmaws tribe, who sent a representative to negotiate with the adventurers; it seemed the lizardfolk were being oppressed by the human cultists and needed help in getting rid of them. Ivan was quite taken by the idea of helping the scaly ones (and Jandar let the lizardfolk know that the Zhentarim were always happy to help!)

The cultists who were busy doing whatever water cultists do in nearby chambers were thus quite surprised when the adventurers, armed with the knowledge of the cultists’ locations, attacked in force. Few were even able to attack before being slain; those that succeeded, were soon defeated.

Unfortunately for the alliance between the lizardfolk and the adventurers, the heroes stumbled across a sea hag and her ogre bodyguards and slew them all. This proved to be the “mother” of the lizardfolk tribe, which led to a few amusing moments of realisation by the adventurers and the lizardfolk as to what had transpired. And then to a short, bloody combat, that did not go well for the lizardfolk! So much for their short-lived reign over the water cult!

Another stone bridge led to the heart of the Water Temple; the glyph on it was discovered by the adventurers so it did not trigger, and the group successfully reached main Temple of Elemental Water. A hezrou demon and more lizardfolk guarded it. Thumbelina was greatly amused by the demon, and smashed it again and again whilst Diablo and Gimble stood back throwing eldritch blasts and firing arrows into it. Two priests came to aid the demon, but a fireball spell soon put paid to those ambitions. With the demon slain, the group were able to destroy the altar and discover a great stairway leading down below – they had, indeed, seen it from the other side as they explored the Fane of the Eye. It was time to resume their investigation of that mysterious area!

DM Notes

It’s been over two months since my last report on our play of Princes – plans to catch up got well and truly blown with the announcement of the DMs Guild, but I’ve just been tremendously busy otherwise – not least with running sessions of this campaign and The Rise of Tiamat. And my home Greyhawk game…

So here’s a massive report on the “final” stages of the Earth Temple and Water Temple explorations. Session numbers are now purely approximate. As you might expect, I’ve left out a lot of details that I’ve forgotten in the ensuing period. However, the bulk of the important events are recorded. There are two events in particular I’m quite pleased about.

The first is in the negotiations with Yarsha. It’s nice to have cultists betraying other cultists (and then living to tell the tale!) The Earth Temple has proved challenging to the party from the start, and these sessions continued that theme. Will Yarsha really turn the cult to gentler pursuits? It does seem unlikely, but it isn’t the first time that the players have been persuaded to go elsewhere by Earth cultists. Did they really kill the Earth Prophet? Well, no – it was just Yarsha’s immediate superior. The true Earth Prophet was quite amused by Yarsha’s ingenuity and later gave her command of the Earth Temple while he dealt with matters down below. At some point, I’ll revisit what Yarsha’s been doing in the meantime.

The second was the return to Rivergard Keep. The first time, the party had very little knowledge of what was going on. Their laughable intimidation of the keep’s lord in the early days was done from a position of ignorance, but they’ve discovered a lot more clues since then. The true story of what happened to the delegation is something that can be uncovered, and now my group knows a lot of it – if not the location of the last captured delegates. (It’s still in their minds; they ask me from time to time if the latest batch of rescued prisoners include one of the delegation. Unfortunately, the answer is always “no”. But not forever!) With that knowledge, they were able to assault the keep and end its threat to the river traffic in the area.

Princes of the Apocalypse allows a great many paths through it, but it’s very challenging for the DM, especially in the beginning, to understand how it all fits together. If you’re just starting to run the adventure, don’t panic! The best advice I can give you is to allow the players to very quickly discover some clues that point them unambiguously to one or more of the Haunted Keeps. At that point, they’ve got a starting point for their investigations and the rest of the adventure will develop from there. The individual cults are likely to try and befriend the players at first, and send them on missions against the other cults… this duplicity can be their downfall, of course, as the players begin to realise they haven’t been told everything!

Incidentally, my records indicate I’ve run 35 sessions of Princes of the Apocalypse so far. In those sessions, they’ve discovered the Earth Prophet and slain him, and are only now beginning their investigation of the Fire Temple after cleaning out most of the Fane. I hope to describe these events in the near future. The sessions are part of our local D&D Adventurers League play and typically run for 90-120 minutes each – so we’ve been going for about 60 hours or so.

For some reason, DMs love putting traps in their adventures. I’m unsure exactly what that reason is. It probably differs from person to person. Some DMs like challenging their players; forcing them to think rather than just hack’n’slash their way through monsters. Some just want to give something for the thief of the party to do. (Remember, the Thief wasn’t included in the original D&D game!) And some just like seeing their players’ characters die in the most gruesome ways possible. Traps. Something for every DM!

A recent release from “Jester” David Gibson of 5-Minute Workday, Traps, offers a selection of 22 new traps with which to kill – I mean entertain – your players. The traps aren’t original – as I’ve seen most in previous editions – but that’s not important. What’s important is that they’re now presented in the 5^th edition style, so that they’re easily included in your campaign. Traps takes an extremely professional approach to the descriptions and mechanics of the traps. The results are fantastic: it’s an excellent selection and the traps are extremely well described. The traps are entertaining to use and provide some real perils for the players.

You’ve got the classic crushing wall traps. Corridors that contain poison gas (in a manner that makes sense!) Necromantic skulls. Gravity reversal rooms. The collection covers both mundane and magical traps, and they’re all interesting.

Although there are a couple of phrasing errors in the text, for the most part it is very well edited. Th