*Season 1, Module 3* -- “No Regrets” (3 days after Silmaz’s death)
[Featuring: Kaliban, Cyric, Antinoa, Elron, & Napftor]
The party gains official control of the Brokengulf villa and learns of other family holdings that are now theirs as well. They decide to investigate the nearest one- a building just north of the city marked on a map as STORAGE. En route, Napftor berates the group for its poor teamwork in their recent fights (citing his injury at Kaliban’s hands). He says that the same thing happened to his previous adventuring group before their deaths.
At the storage building, the party is ambushed. The leader of the attackers is a pony-tailed Oriental woman who fires a crossbow bolt into Napftor. The bolt explodes with black energy that coats every party member. After the attackers are driven off, Napftor falls unconscious. Before they can help, the rest of the party also succumbs to blackness, feeling as if they’re being “drawn” toward Napftor before hitting the ground (Antinoa senses psionic energy before falling).
The group immediately finds itself walking calmly out of a forest with a snow-capped mountain range before them. Two other adventurers and a younger-looking Napftor are also present. Only the PC’s notice that anything is out of the ordinary. The Lathanderite “refreshes” his party’s goal of responding to a gnome missive for help against a dragon. Napftor also refers to the PC’s by different names.
Antinoa believes that the party is reliving a memory of Napftor’s. The psionicist guesses that they are trapped within the priest’s “psychic coma” induced by the exploding crossbow bolt. The only ways out are to get to the end of this particular memory stream or to die (as real here as in the living world). The party witnesses a brief attack on the gnome village of Grumpash by a green dragon. The creature is driven off by gnome catapults.
The party is greeted by Patriarch Kaium Grumpash, who refers to them as the “Company of the Sunstar.” Kaium explains why he summoned them:
“I’m afraid that the dragon is only part of the reason we need your help. You see, we are guardians of a power that the dragon somehow found out about and would like to get its claws on. Only a gnome knows how to unleash the power being contained within the ice caves and the dragon is harassing us until we cooperate. We have been able to keep him at bay for three weeks but we’ve also lost a third of the village in our encounters. We’ve recently come up with a plan that should stop the dragon but we need you help to see it through. We plan to set up a cave-in trap within the chamber just outside of where the power is being contained. We wish to set it up, pretend we surrender, and then lead the dragon into the chamber where the trap will be sprung. Unfortunately, the ice caves are inhabited by a race of insect-humanoids called the sha’az. They are normally not combative but the dragon’s presence has them watching anything or anyone that invades their territory. That’s where you come in. We need you to distract the sha’az so that we can have time to set up the trap and lead the dragon into it. We can’t hope to meet the sha’az in combat and at the same time expect to set up the trap without your help. In return for your services, we offer the creation of individual magical weapons or devices. If you don’t help, you will have to face the dragon later with the power it will ultimately obtain here.”
Since the party must fulfill Napftor’s memory stream, they agree without question. One of the “new” party members from Napftor’s memory, a mage named Rashemn, advocates that they steal this unnamed power for themselves: “If a dragon wants it, why shouldn’t we?” The mage is detected by magic to be evil and is forced to amscray. The time soon comes to put Kaium’s plan into action. The party and a handful of gnomes enter the caves, where they are soon met by a contingent of 13 sha’az.
When negotiation appears to be an option, Rashemn appears behind the party and strikes down the lead sha’az with magic missiles, hurling the insect-men into attack. By battle’s end, most of the gnomes lie dead, the traitorous Rashemn has been slain and Napftor has a broken leg. The party retreats back to Grumpash and their wounds are tended. Another Napftor-created party member, the thief Ophira, is bitter at the apparent falling apart of their company. Another brief skirmish with the dragon takes place outside.
At
morning, the party and a fresh group of gnomes enters the caves.
The party
The party plays tag with the sha’az until they mistakenly find themselves in the trap room, sometime later. The trap appears to be set, but the gnomes are dead. From the rooms entrances appear many sha’az, ready to destroy the intruders. A grand melee ensues until the green dragon emerges from the largest corridor. Unknown to the party, one of the “dead” gnomes has been charmed by the beast and it throws a secret lever that begins to slide open one of the ice walls.
Everyone stops fighting to gaze in fear at the creature revealed behind the secret wall—a dracolich (the power that the gnomes were safeguarding)! Its eyes begin to glow with life and the party realizes that the trap must be sprung now, whether they live or die. Within the alcove, a bloodied Napftor regains consciousness. He sees the danger and is the only person who can cut the rope. He hesitates, unable to doom his party, no matter the consequences. At this moment, the dragon attacks, not wanting the party to interfere with the dracolich’s release. Ophira calls to the Lathanderite, telling him that springing the trap is the only option. The party echoes her sentiment.
When there is obviously no alternative, Napftor cuts the rope and everyone within the chamber is crushed by tons of ice. At the instant of their “deaths,” the party awakens from the psionic coma at the exact spots where they had fallen in the storage building north of Waterdeep. A weeping Napftor is joyful that his former friends’ deaths were not his fault, but rather he did do the right thing. He tells the party that he survived within the alcove until the gnomes magically dug him out. His retractable quarterstaff, which he uses to this day, was made from the leg bone of the green dragon.
DM’s Note: This backstory had already been worked out for Napftor (my NPC) and I thought that it would be a really neat idea to have the PC’s live it and not just here about it. The pony-tailed Oriental woman was to be a recurring villain from the new enemy I was creating, but unfortunately, this did not materialize. She was a psionicist and it was probably my personal aversion to psionics in the game that caused her not to be used later. There was also a deliberate change in how Napftor was played after this module. Where he had previously been rather stern, he was now more carefree and turned more toward comedy-relief.
Module Rating: ****
