The Hippies, the Beholder, and the Fireball

The Pupils of Susan Join Operation Deadfall

There are places in Faerûn where sensible adventurers should exercise discretion.

There are other places where sensible adventurers should reconsider the entire premise of adventuring.

And then there is Thay.

Naturally, the Pupils of Susan are going there.

As readers of our previous installment may recall, the Pupils recently buried one of their own, provisioned their Bastion, and immediately accepted another dangerous assignment because grief apparently becomes easier when supplemented with operational commitments. Our previous chapter moved the campaign through Delia’s Dagger, including the rather ominously named “Demonic Welcome.” [davidschwarm.com]

Now the campaign moves toward Operation Deadfall.

And first, we have some administrative business.

Previously, on the Pupils of Susan: Cody Gets Famous

Before marching deeper into international necromantic diplomacy, the group took a moment to look backward.

And apparently Cody has been doing something right, because Cody earned renown.

This is an important development.

Renown represents the strange moment in an adventurer’s career when people stop saying, “Who are these people and why are they carrying seventeen weapons into the tavern?” and begin saying, “Oh no. Those are those people.”

For the Pupils of Susan, this seems less like advancement and more like the natural accumulation of witnesses.

Nevertheless: congratulations, Cody.

Your reputation now precedes you.

We apologize to any municipalities where that reputation arrives first.

Suggested Image #1

The Pupils of Susan departing their Bastion for Thay, painted like an absurdly prestigious fantasy campaign poster. The heroes appear heroic and important; the Bastion behind them should suggest that somebody recently acquired property and immediately abandoned it for another suicidal expedition. No text in the image.

Bastion Business

There was also the increasingly important matter of the Bastion.

Our preceding adventure established the Pupils’ headquarters at Kwalish Downs. The previous recap recorded the wonderful lifecycle of adventuring real estate: acquire land, name the property, provision the property, bury a companion, and immediately leave on another dangerous quest. [davidschwarm.com]

What began as another eccentric possession is slowly becoming something more important.

The Pupils of Susan have a home now.

In a campaign increasingly concerned with Red Wizards, captured magical craftspeople, undead monstrosities and the expanding shadow of Thay, that matters. A Bastion isn’t merely another place on the map. From a storytelling perspective, it establishes something the characters can actually lose.

Which is exactly the sort of thing a Dungeon Master enjoys writing down.

Road to Thay

Then came the journey toward the capital of Thay.

This represents a significant escalation for the campaign.

The heroes are no longer merely encountering the effects of Red Wizard schemes somewhere safely removed from their center of power. They are moving toward the source.

Thay makes an exceptionally good location for this phase of the campaign because it reverses the normal adventuring relationship with evil. The Pupils aren’t kicking open a dungeon door, murdering everything with an evil alignment, and searching the room for approximately 47 electrum pieces.

Here, the dangerous wizards have institutions.

They have authority.

They have infrastructure.

They have paperwork.

The horror.

And then the party reached a bridge.

Skeletons on the Bridge

Panic erupted among the crowd.

Skeletons advanced into the civilians.

According to the encounter notes, the attack begins while vendors, customers, and bystanders are on the bridge. The characters must contend not simply with monsters but with a terrified crowd trying to escape, turning the battlefield itself into an obstacle.

The encounter’s opening enemy is straightforward:

Skeletons.

There are times when complicated tactics are appropriate.

There are also times when Ms. Susan knows Fireball.

Ms. Susan Solves Skeletons

Ms. Susan fireballed them.

There are many debates surrounding optimal spell selection in modern Dungeons & Dragons.

This was not one of them.

Skeletons appeared.

Ms. Susan possessed Fireball.

A brief and highly productive dialogue occurred between these two facts.

The skeleton problem was substantially reconsidered.

And for perhaps several glorious seconds, the Pupils of Susan might have believed they had this situation completely under control.

Which is traditionally when the Dungeon Master adds a beholder.

Oh Good. A Death Tyrant.

The second phase of the encounter changes things rather dramatically.

A Death Tyrant erupted from the canal.

For anyone unfamiliar with the taxonomy of situations that have gone catastrophically wrong, a Death Tyrant is what occurs when “beholder” was apparently insufficiently unpleasant and somebody decided undeath would round out the concept nicely.

Suddenly the Pupils weren’t dealing with disposable undead foot soldiers.

They were dealing with the enormous undead eye-monster hovering over the battlefield.

Normal adventurers might panic.

The Pupils of Susan deployed art.

Astrology Spirits vs. Unfathomable Undead Evil

Enter the Astrology Spirits.

Their chosen tactical response to the Death Tyrant was apparently something close to:

What if we attack the undead abomination with hippies and art?

And, wonderfully, the Death Tyrant was amused.

This may be my favorite detail from the entire encounter.

There is something deeply Pupils of Susan about confronting a floating manifestation of undead evil and briefly achieving not terror, not rage, but bemusement.

Somewhere in the Death Tyrant’s ancient and profoundly disturbed consciousness, there was apparently one final surviving instinct:

“What the hell are these people doing?”

Unfortunately for the Death Tyrant, the answer was:

winning.

Locktar and Whisper Close the Account

Because while the Astrology Spirits were providing Thay’s strangest piece of performance art, Locktar and Whisper got to work.

The Death Tyrant fell.

The Pupils of Susan won the bridge fight, and by the group’s standards they won it comfortably.

No protracted rescue by authorities.

No catastrophic retreat.

No desperate bargain with an obviously evil entity offering salvation at suspiciously competitive interest rates.

Just a dead Death Tyrant and a party increasingly capable of handling the kinds of monsters that once would have represented a campaign-ending threat.

That is worth noticing.

The Pupils of Susan are becoming dangerous.

Not “adventurers are inherently dangerous because they carry swords into restaurants” dangerous.

Thay should probably start paying attention dangerous.

Suggested Image #2

The bridge battle at its most ridiculous: an undead beholder hovering above a Thayan bridge, fire illuminating skeletal enemies below while surreal, colorful astrological spirits swirl around the creature like mystical counterculture performance art. Locktar and Whisper close in for the decisive attacks. No text.

Character Updates

Ms. Susan

Ms. Susan continues to maintain the party’s traditional approach to conflict resolution: identify the largest concentration of enemies and determine whether Fireball would improve the situation.

On the bridge, it did.

The campaign’s namesake therefore adds “mass skeleton remediation” to an increasingly eclectic résumé.

Whisper

Whisper continues to be one of the campaign’s living connections to the Red Wizard storyline. Our previous campaign record identifies Whisper as a Gloom Stalker whose settlers and family were killed by Alyis. [davidschwarm.com]

This time, Whisper helped destroy the Death Tyrant.

That’s not simply another kill.

The enemies are becoming larger, stranger and significantly more dangerous, and Whisper continues moving deeper toward the power structures connected to the campaign’s past tragedies.

Locktar

Locktar joined Whisper in finishing the Death Tyrant.

Whatever amusement the creature experienced from the Astrology Spirits proved brief.

Locktar helped make it permanent.

Cody

Renown achieved.

Cody begins this chapter not merely as another adventurer but as one whose exploits are becoming recognized within the campaign.

Statistically useful?

Potentially.

Narratively useful?

Absolutely.

For a Dungeon Master, renown is the beautiful point where previous adventures start walking into the room before the characters do.

The Astrology Spirits

Official tactical classification:

Weaponized vibes.

Effectiveness:

Against Death Tyrants, surprisingly entertaining.

I cannot promise the Adventurers Guild will formally recognize this combat doctrine, but history will.

The Note

And then, after the battle, came something potentially more consequential than the monster.

A note.

There is a Dungeon Master principle that players eventually learn:

A dragon is dangerous.

A lich is dangerous.

An envelope is plot.

The bridge encounter therefore wasn’t simply another random outbreak of undead violence. Something larger was moving around the Pupils.

And the note pointed toward the next stage.

Welcome to Operation Deadfall

The Pupils of Susan have now joined Deadfall.

That changes the tenor of the campaign.

The party has crossed another invisible threshold. Their adventures have been leading progressively closer to the machinery surrounding the Red Wizards, and Red Wizards’ Gambit itself is explicitly framed within Wizards of the Coast’s Season of Magic and D&D Encounters program. [dndbeyond.com]

Meanwhile, D&D Beyond currently has official product listings associated with Arcana Unleashed. [marketplac…beyond.com]

For the Pupils, though, there are no sourcebooks.

There is only Thay.

There are enemies who have begun experimenting with strange undead horrors.

There is a mysterious note.

There is Operation Deadfall.

And somewhere ahead lies the uncomfortable question that has followed this party for increasingly long stretches of the campaign:

What exactly are the Red Wizards building toward?

Suggested Image #3

A cinematic Thayan cliffhanger: the party standing before the looming magical cityscape of Thay at dusk, a mysterious opened note in the foreground and distant red-robed silhouettes watching from towers. Ominous red magical light cuts through smoke above the city. The composition should feel much more serious than the party deserves. No text.

Next Time

The undead assault on the bridge is over.

The skeletons are ash.

The Death Tyrant is dead.

The Astrology Spirits have presumably returned to whatever astral farmers’ market summoned them.

And the Pupils of Susan are now part of Operation Deadfall.

That should be reassuring.

It is called Deadfall, after all.

Nothing ominous about that.

Welcome to Thay.

Try not to make eye contact with anything.

Especially if the eye is floating.

DM Preparation & Running the Adventure

Characters

Brett –Locktar – Neutral Good – Human – Fighter – not sure – Pegasus riding club wielding brawler
Brian – Poem – Human – Cleric – Criminal – Oghma – Mule named Quixote
Bryan – Malefort – Neutral Evil – Human – Warlock – Vestige – member of the Bejewelled Conclave – nobleman – foppish
Cody – Syr Kel-Thuzad – Lawful Neutral – Paladin – Acolyte – Worships Bane (may have changed to Cyric) – grain curse.
Conner – Brick – Chaotic Neutral – Goblin – Rogue – Fey lost
David – Ms Susan – Neutral – Human – Rouge / Sorcerer / Fighter – Custom Sage – Grand daughter of Death
Henry – Calder – Lawful Good – Aasimar – Paladin – Nobel – raised in a Thay warrior house – horse is named Lantern
Ivan – Whisper – Chaotic Good – Drow (Disguise Self as High Elf) – Ranger – Gloom Stalker – Settlers & Family killed by Alyis

RIP

Brett –Elias Runebow – Neutral Good – Human – Fighter – Arcane Archer – Archivist – Hunted artefacts for Thay – worked for Alyis
Cody – Maldur – Lawful Good – Cleric of Kelemvor – collect the Crown of Thorns from Szass Tam
Cody – Maldurson –

NPC

Ezzik – crafter of powerful magic items (dagger), captured by Red Wizards
Ivorge – crafter of powerful magic items (ring), captured by Red Wizards
Jayleen – fruit vendor
Kalah Qaree – Red Wizard – serve a zulkir of Thay named Xelnene Thrul – saved party
Osmik – crafter of powerful magic items (boots), captured by Red Wizards
Szass Tam – code name Hydra
Uelek – crafter of powerful magic items (combining), captured by Red Wizards
Wynston Wrynn – Spy master of Xelnene – Tailor – code name sparrow
Xelnene Thrul – Red Wizard – zulkir of evocation – code name crane
Zorri – Leader of community Immultar