Description
The Pupils of Susan have entered Thay, which is generally the point in an adventuring career when the phrase “reasonable life choices” stops applying.
Their newest assignment begins with Operation Deadfall, a mission connected to the expanding Red Wizards’ Gambit campaign. The party receives code names, accepts its first objective, and immediately establishes what passes for covert tradecraft among the Pupils of Susan: intimidation, skeleton-based homicide, rooftop sniping, and one extremely emphatic knockout.
First on the itinerary is the Landlord. His guards are persuaded that their employment prospects have suddenly deteriorated, while the Landlord himself encounters a tactical combination involving a bag of skeletons, a sniper positioned across the street, and the aforementioned application of blunt force.
Having demonstrated all the subtlety expected of elite operatives, the party moves on to the Racketeer, where the general philosophy of Operation Deadfall appears to remain reassuringly consistent.
The Pupils of Susan are finally operating inside Thay. They have code names. They have targets. They have absolutely not become more restrained.
And Operation Deadfall is only getting started.
Summary
The Pupils of Susan have been heading toward Thay for some time, and this session finally puts boots on extremely hostile ground. Their arrival follows a campaign already entangled with the Red Wizards, captured magical artisans, floating earth motes, and the machinations surrounding Delia D’Caryn. Previous campaign records establish that the party has already rescued Ezzik, encountered the Red Wizard spy Kalah Qaree, and survived the events of “Delia’s Dagger.”
Now the campaign changes gears. The Pupils join Operation Deadfall, receive code names, and accept their first mission inside Thay. These are important developments because the published Red Wizards’ Gambit is officially a Season of Magic play series for the D&D Encounters program, but Operation Deadfall and the events described here come specifically from the campaign’s DM notes.
Their first target is the Landlord.
What follows can generously be described as clandestine operations.
The Pupils intimidate the Landlord’s guards and neutralize the target through a spectacularly excessive combination of resources: a bag of skeletons, a sniper positioned across the street, and a brutal knockout. Apparently someone had reviewed the traditional concepts of espionage and concluded they suffered from an insufficient number of skeletons.
With the Landlord permanently removed from the organizational chart, Operation Deadfall advances to its next target: the Racketeer. The method remains broadly consistent. Rather than allowing their newly acquired code names to create an outbreak of subtlety, the Pupils again resort to lethal force.
The most consequential change this session is therefore not simply two eliminated targets. The Pupils have crossed a threshold. Earlier adventures had them opposing Thayan operations from the outside, rescuing people such as Ezzik and investigating figures associated with the Red Wizards. Now they are operatives inside Thay itself, carrying out targeted missions under Operation Deadfall.
They came to Thay with code names.
They immediately filled a bag with skeletons.
History will decide whether these facts are related.
And with the Landlord and Racketeer dealt with, Operation Deadfall continues.
Character Updates
The DM notes do not identify which individual player characters performed the intimidation, sniping, skeleton deployment, or knockout. To preserve the campaign record accurately, no individual character update is assigned where the notes do not establish one.
The Pupils of Susan
Collectively, the party joined Operation Deadfall, received operational code names, and completed their first missions in Thay by eliminating the Landlord and moving against the Racketeer.
DM Notes
This session functions primarily as a campaign transition into Thay and Operation Deadfall. The DM notes establish those events as table canon, but the publicly accessible Red Wizards’ Gambit material I could verify does not identify Operation Deadfall, the Landlord, or the Racketeer in the adventure’s visible contents. The official campaign page instead lists adventures including “Stolen Spirits,” “The Height of Danger,” “The Depth of Despair,” “The Weight of Responsibility,” and “Delia’s Dagger.” I have therefore treated the Deadfall material as campaign-specific rather than attributing it to the published adventure.
Continuity-wise, the shift works particularly well. Earlier Pupils sessions established the struggle against the Red Wizards through imprisoned artificers and the rescue of Ezzik, while the later “Delia’s Dagger” material brought the party into more direct contact with Thayan agents and Kalah Qaree. This session escalates that conflict by putting the party on the ground in Thay.
The defining table innovation is unquestionably the bag-of-skeletons assassination tactic. The notes do not provide enough mechanical information to determine exactly how it functioned under the 2024 rules, so I have deliberately preserved it as an event rather than reverse-engineering a rules explanation.
Rules Questions
How many skeletons can you get into a bag of holding?
Does feat invocation allow the extra dice on all damaged by Spirit guardian?
Can I familiar be a spell focus and still use a wand?
Leave a Reply