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canyonwalkerAs I noted in my previous blog, Session 5 of my D&D game, The City of the Dead, was the climactic episode. Normally in a Shakespearean structured narrative Act 4 is the climax and Act 5 the moral. Yes, I think about classical narrative structure when writing roleplaying adventures! But the group was a little slower playing through some of the earlier challenges so they were only up to Act IV by Episode 5.
After warding off a nighttime ambush by worgs earlier in Session 5 the group was ready to take the fight to town. They reasoned (correctly) that the worgs were not just random wandering monsters but were connected to the main story. (Maybe they read my blog on making wandering monsters more meaningful. 😅) And they figured "connected to the main story" means connected to the main evil power. I.e., the worgs were servants of a much bigger evil power in the City of the Dead and thus had now reported back that the adventures were still nearby along with how many of them are in the group and what power level they seem to have.
The fun thing about walking into a well planned ambush is that knowing there's going to be an ambush doesn't make it less fun, it actually kind of makes it more fun!
The quintet marched toward the center of town. The two in the front, Astrin and Herran, spotted a charnel scene ahead at a crossroads. A wagon stood in the intersection surrounded by dead human-ish bodies and two slain horses. Astrin's Detect Evil pinged that there was, indeed, evil ahead. Meanwhile, Terence the cleric nailed a good Spot check and saw human-ish shapes moving in the deep shadows in an abandoned building.
"Contact!" Terence yelled. The fight was on.
To be continued....
Update: keep reading as the group gets in over its head. Will they survive?
After warding off a nighttime ambush by worgs earlier in Session 5 the group was ready to take the fight to town. They reasoned (correctly) that the worgs were not just random wandering monsters but were connected to the main story. (Maybe they read my blog on making wandering monsters more meaningful. 😅) And they figured "connected to the main story" means connected to the main evil power. I.e., the worgs were servants of a much bigger evil power in the City of the Dead and thus had now reported back that the adventures were still nearby along with how many of them are in the group and what power level they seem to have.
Walking into an Ambush
None of this deterred the PCs from doing what they were going to do next. It just meant they knew they were walking into an ambush. So this time the entered the City of the Dead as a group, with a tight formation, on full alert (various PCs doing Spot checks and the paladin doing Detect Evil.)The fun thing about walking into a well planned ambush is that knowing there's going to be an ambush doesn't make it less fun, it actually kind of makes it more fun!
The quintet marched toward the center of town. The two in the front, Astrin and Herran, spotted a charnel scene ahead at a crossroads. A wagon stood in the intersection surrounded by dead human-ish bodies and two slain horses. Astrin's Detect Evil pinged that there was, indeed, evil ahead. Meanwhile, Terence the cleric nailed a good Spot check and saw human-ish shapes moving in the deep shadows in an abandoned building.
"Contact!" Terence yelled. The fight was on.
To be continued....
Update: keep reading as the group gets in over its head. Will they survive?
