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After rescuing a handful of goblins from their captivity with the Shrillbeast clan, the Doubley-Doos have agreed to help reunite them with the tribe from which they’d been separated — the Meriadar-worshiping Rockmore tribe. They traveled south toward Opal Town, the last place the goblins saw their tribe. Upon arriving, however, things seemed off. They began seeing things and hearing voices. They tracked many of these occurrences to an apple orchard toward the edge of town owned by a former soldier named Talbot Clare.

That night, while sleeping, they all had the same dream: they were standing on a small scrap of land, drifting through space, staring out across a chaotic, crowded cosmos. Giant islands floated unmoored from any other land. Planets and galaxies floated lazily in the distance, seemingly untethered from everything else. While they floated, they could hear distant voices chanting: “Tybel gb gurl Avtug Frecrag.” Then, they were awakened by hissing that seemed to be coming from behind them.

They met with Clairebell, the maid who first alerted them to trouble, who had been working with Talbot to investigate these strange goings on. They decided to split up and ask about the town leadership since they all suspiciously wrote Talbot and Clairebell’s concerns off. Shelby and Talbot went to interview to the guards about Uther, Dormin and Shump went to talk with the mayor, and Clairebell went to gather information about Drake.

Shelby and Talbot’s initial investigations revealed that Uther would often disappear at odd times and be found wandering about in Talbot’s orchard. While speaking with the mayor, Dormin noticed that her bookshelves contained texts on transmutational magic as well as a ceremonial dagger. After finishing their investigations, they met back at the Ristin’s Inn to share their findings…but after an hour of waiting for Clairebell to arrive, they decided to look for her at Drake’s house.

They found a cellar door in the back of Drake’s property that had been left unlocked. Dormin snuck down to investigate the interior, finding, to his horror, a bathtub filled with snakes. Spotting what looked like a human arm among the snakes, and fearing that this is what became of Clairebell, Dormin reached inside the tub. Instead of Clairebell, a naked Drake emerged from the snakes, his pupils slitted and his tongue split. He screamed in draconic, drawing snake-people from the woods to attack.

After dealing with the snake-people and Drake, they searched the cellar and the house, finding a velvet bag filled with polished stone tiles with inscribed with Common letters and purple ceremonial robes embroidered with a snake symbol, the hems lined with Draconic characters which made out a few words: “serpent,” “sleep,” “night,” and “eat.”

As the plot thickened, Shelby and Shump decided to take the mayor to dinner as a distraction while Dormin snuck into the mayor’s house to gather more information and Talbot took up watch across the street. While scanning the bookshelf, Dormin initially found books about transmutation magic, local history, and trading goods. However, some of these books had false covers, and he found that some of the books were actually about necromancy, conjuration, planar beings, and dream interpretation. Examining the ceremonial dagger further, he found it was a wavy-bladed dagger with a handle shaped like a snake, the blade protruding from the snake’s open mouth. She also had the same purple ceremonial robes, but with an additional sash denoting some sort of rank.

In her office, among further notes on these strange magics, Dormin also found a dream journal, the most recent entry of which was the same dream Dormin had — of standing on an island floating through space. He also found a note: Tybel gb gur Avtug Frecrag / Ivpgbel gb Xynnf.

While Dormin investigated, Talbot saw Benhum heading toward his apple orchard. Once Dormin was finished, Talbot followed Benhum’s trail back to his place. The tracks went into the orchard. The Doubley-Doos soon rejoined him, and they began to discuss their next actions. Clairebell is still missing, and the leadership in town appear to be part of a strange conspiracy involving a snake cult and Talbot’s apple orchard.

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This was really fun session. I had asked Jaz’s dad if he were interested in joining us for a game — he’s a really avid tabletop gamer, and is always writing and homebrewing D&D stuff. I thought he might enjoy sitting in just for funzies, especially because his kid was in the game and they’ve played tons together when Jaz was growing up.

I worked with him to more fully develop the character of Talbot, turning him into an Arcane archer and fleshing out that former soldier idea. He really liked the character and after he got finished building him, he was stoked to play. (Arcane Archers are pretty great, by the way. What a fun build.)

I’m a horror guy, and I love creepy and weird stuff. I knew I wanted to play around with Stephanie and Brandon’s sense of safety since Opal Town would be something they were relatively comfortable with since it was their starting place. Tweaking their relationships with folks was a lot of fun, although Drake being a problem wasn’t something that Brandon cared about too much since he was only his friend in game as pre-game backstory.

I kinda forgot just how much Stephanie is bothered by snake stuff, so I tried to downplay it when it could asked her to cover her ears at a few points so I could describe something to everyone else — nothing plot related, just stuff like the bathtub because it was too much for her.

This ended up being a bit more than I’d intended, but it’s been a ton of fun and I can’t wait to see where it goes.

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