Caverns of Thracia Session 7

(1/11/26) A slightly awkward session for our first one back in the new year, but we got to see more Wandering Encounters than ever before.

Contains spoilers for Caverns of Thracia and related modules.

We picked up right where we left off, with the PCs taking a breather in the cult’s Treasure Vault. Still missing some HP, they decided heft up the Athena statue and head for the exit. As the statue slowed them down considerably, I checked for encounters several times, and hit on the last rope bridge before the exit - a Primeval Slime, black and covering the whole first square of the bridge. The wizard cast Choking Cloud and dissolved this ponderous creature before it could really threaten the party. However, he had the Planar Blink mercurial on that spell, so I ruled he blinked to the same planet where he’d been killing thousands every time he cast Force Manipulation.

The people there knew who he was (since his face appeared in the sky every time he cast Force Manipulation), and time passed slower there, so they had plenty of time to air their grievances. A superstitious people, they threatened to sic their all-powerful gods on him. The wizard managed to hold them off by promising to never cast Force Manipulation again, at least long enough to blink back to our world. If he breaks his promise, I plan to use the Intrigue at the Court of Chaos module to play through this conflict.

The party made it out of the dungeon and immediately encountered the Allosauruses on the hunt, but with a positive reaction roll, they moved away to find some easier prey. Heading north to the road, the party next encountered the Previous Adventuring Party, who gave the PCs some good information about the dungeon entrance at Area A, and helped them make sense of the map they recovered last session. They traveled together back to Hamlet and did not encounter anything else.

The players decided to rest up for 2 weeks to recover ability score damage. They donated the statue of Athena to the burgeoning Shrine of Sabazios being run by the former cultist they converted in an earlier session, which is sure to help the cleric at some point. Since Hamlet was in a good place, I ruled they didn’t have to pay for this rest, and a traveling merchant allowed them to turn their gems into gold (although I don’t really know why they wanted to do this).

This long of a rest period gives me free reign to re-stock the ruins and the dungeon, which is excellent. We will re-roll the presence of foes at Area A next time they return. The tribals at Area B will have re-established their ambush. The room they sealed with the Ward Portal scroll will bear marks of excavation, and although its inhabitants are all dead or lost, the cult will have reconstituted its forces elsewhere on Level 1.

Finally, the rest period gave the giant ants time to reconstitute their own brood, and at the end of the rest period, they attacked Hamlet from below! The party managed to save all the villagers, but decided they had to squash the local bug problem once and for all, so they delved into the long tunnel and made for the colony. I had prepped for this by printing out The Giant Ant Nest by Clay Thomas McGrew, so we got right into it. They cleared the first room and made it to roughly the midpoint of the lair (right under the anthill), and I got tired so we called it a day.