DMDC 09 - The Trail to the Cult of the Reptile God

Time for some module talk - or at least the build towards it. I got the chance to run the classic module Against the Cult of the Reptile God (meaning my friends took the bait I set for them) and it ended up being one of the high points of not just my campaign, but from all of my gaming experiences. So let's talk about it for a while! This is the first in I'm not sure how many episodes talking about this module, but it'll definitely be highlighting what I think you could really get out of running published materials at your table.

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Transcript

 Hey! This is the DM Discourse, a podcast about D&D, focused on the experience at the table from behind the screen. I'm your host Darrell, and today I’m starting a series of episodes based around the classic module, Against the Cult of the Reptile God. We start in familiar Fenskeep, where rumours abound of mysterious circumstances in the sleepy town of Orlane.

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Stories from the troupe? What’s in your head you’re always asking for days when your father was a minstrel? Ah, Romaro, trust me when I say that I’ve never regretted putting down the lute for a carpenter’s saw and hammer. There was enough trouble trying to keep us together. We were friends, but traveling the road long enough can wear you down, if you’re not careful.

And we weren’t. We were young and foolish, hoping to take on the world, thinking ourselves talented enough to play the courts of lords and ladies. Hmph. Had in our heads in the clouds when we should've spent that time practicing. A craft takes time to get good at, no matter what it is you pick. If you’re smart you’ll listen to your mother like I did, and settle down to find something you’re actually good at.

I’ll tell you about our last night together. Kevor, our manager, gave us one last chance to impress the crowd and turn a sizable profit. Doesn’t matter whose castle we played - I don’t think the ruling lord there is even of the same bloodline as the one we played for. Sasef turned up drunk with a half-empty bottle. Ludvath and Zerli were at each other’s throats again. They knew as much as I what blowing this meant but they didn’t care. I never figured out what was going on between them. I wish I asked. I’d like to see them again.

But that night was the last I saw them. Ludvath shattered Zerli’s harp in half, and she dragged her dagger against the skins on all of his drums. They stormed out without another word to us or each other. A quarter of an hour before showtime, Sasef fell asleep in a pool of his own vomit. We weren’t stars my boy, just sputtering lights passing ourselves as something brighter.

That night was the best I ever played though. Someone had to go on, they deserved that much for thinking they’d paid to see something grand. If the gods of song blessed me that night to play from the deepest parts of my soul they have never let me reach those heights again. That night I stepped onto the stage alone, and played the greatest song I ever shall. A song I can not recall.

It was a divine favor that few ever experience. Not worth the years spent traveling with the rest though. It’s best if the Four Fiends pass into stories. I still pluck strings once in a while but a traveller’s life wasn’t for me. Now put your tools away, before supper cools without us.

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I mentioned last episode a few things from previous sessions that will directly lead into this one: Iozef Nevski the town’s weaponsmith, and a Black Pudding. If you aren’t familiar with oozes in D&D, they tend to be capable pains in the ass for your party. I wouldn’t even say they’re all that deadly, either. They’re on the lower end of terrifying creatures to stumble on in dark dungeons, but they aren’t the worst thing you can find. My group had been making jokes for months at this point about running into a gelatinous cube, which is probably the most well known of the monster family.

Gelatinous cubes are infamous for swallowing adventurers whole, and dissolving them within their acidic bodies. The popularity of this feature goes so far that miniatures of gelatinous cubes even detach for you to stick your character mini inside should you be unlucky enough to come across one. Apparently the story goes they’re made by wizards to perform janitorial duties and clean up their dungeons but maybe they’re too good at that job.

That lore bit aside, a black pudding wasn’t something my party expected at all. They didn’t expect to enter a largely empty, dank room, nor a jelly shape to drop from the ceiling to ambush them. High off their success against the undead lamia earlier, they found out quickly that they were starting to get out of their depth and may need to come back later: at least, that was the case as the black pudding started to corrode any metal objects in came into contact with, especially the fighter’s nice shiny, but non magical, armor.

So nobody died, which is always nice, and I think if anything the black pudding hurt their pride more than their performance. The next day they went straight to the local weaponsmith, Iozef Nevski, to see about doing any repairs. Unluckily for them (but you and I know essentially planned), trade has slowed in Fenskeep - especially with valuable metals. Prices had gone up and what they were hoping to get was far more than they had buying power for.

However, in addition to needing some better equipment, the fighter Antonio also needed to get his guitar repaired after wielding  it as a weapon and breaking it while in the dungeon. Iozef, kind to his countrymen, took the party to meet Filero Dundaban, the local carpenter, cabinetmaker, and retired musician himself. He traded Antonio his guitar to fix and also accent with metals to give it better durability in a fight, while lending him his old instrument.

It was during this conversation that the topic of the state of trade came about, and the first inkling of the village that would become the adventuring party’s first namesake: Orlane. If you aren’t familiar with it, Orlane is the iconic hamlet of the 1982 AD&D first edition module, N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God. Penned by one Douglas Niles, and I think his first for TSR the company that owned D&D at the time, it takes a group of mewling adventurers to a once thriving village now beset by paranoia. Folk have gone missing, trade has withered, and strangers are far from welcome.

I hadn’t run Against the Cult of the Reptile God before this, but I had heard Matt Colville (who has a great YouTube channel you should check out if you’re interested in running D&D) and a number of other sources sing its praises. After going through it with my group, I think they’re well deserved. I won’t give anything the party does away but I will give you insight to what the module is about. Essentially, a spirit naga has set up shop nearby and mesmerized the local populace to do her bidding, hence the cult and its namesake. A lot of neat things to work with, especially if you turn its aspects into recurring elements of your campaign, which is exactly what I ended up doing.

But I get ahead of myself - long before the party discovers the naga’s nefarious work, they’re just trying to see about getting their boat fixed. Even though Baron Tervin Blackshield would rather have them speed through the dungeon below, they know it could be more beneficial for them as well as the town to investigate whatever is happening at the town of Orlane, just a few days travel north upriver from Fenskeep. So with their new navigator Brog in tow and Xichtanil rescued from the elf tribe, they set forth on what was basically a side quest.

I wanted to see if they’d take the bait. You could lay out the quest path in front of your players and lead them along it if you wish, but in my attempt to just drop it in to be hinted at rather than the next point on the critical path, my players felt rewarded for getting to express their agency. I think it’s a useful way to prepare: you don’t need to have every corner of your world discovered and plotted out to a mirror sheen. If anything, I think it’s a lot more fun to go under prepared for whatever direction your players want to go, and once they pick one - go from there.

I’ve had a few places planted for them to swing by at this point in the campaign, left up to them for the choosing. Fenskeep itself is not without its share of adventures as well. The Basilisk Mercenary Company setup in town, who they had become familiar with for doing the Garharl Silvercrown quest, would have regular jobs for working members. The local thieves guild, run by the shady merchant Yunar Barask, would’ve probably led them down a different path entirely. They also knew that Pedwar, who was a local, was but a week’s travel from his hometown if they wanted to take a break from the usual grind entirely.

I didn’t have any of these completely planned out - hell I didn’t have any ideas about one of them entirely. I simply flipped open the first couple pages of the N1 module, thought it was neat, and figured out a way to weave it into the story for the players to investigate - which they did. Of course you could argue I knew my friends well enough that I knew they’d bite, but I think that’s one of the more useful skills you should develop as a DM anyway. You want to introduce content that’ll entertain you, of course, you’re the one taking the hours whiling away in your mental fortress to handcraft a universe. It’s also important to remember that you want to entice your friends to care about it as much as you do. It’s your world and you can craft an adventure. Your friends help make it into a story you’ll remember for years to follow.

The trip upriver wasn’t without its own share of troubles. I don’t think you need to have something happen on the road every time because it’ll make your random encounters predictably expected, but if you spend a week traveling on the road at some point something notable will happen. For the party, this time, they ran into a hag.

It didn’t look like a hag at first though. They mistook it for an injured melwa woman, cradling an infant in its arms. The party made out the cries of the baby melwa, specifically Cht’hoo’s motherly instincts compelling her to fly overhead and scan the swamp trees, and they discovered a crashed boat. Most of the melwa aboard it were all deceased, with lacerations and other injuries, but this woman and baby seemed safe, for the most part.

The signal I gave to the players that something may be amiss was how eager this melwa wanted to return to her “home” and how much the child seemed to whine. For a long while they seemed to think it was ok, that the baby was just upset and crying, but ever the courteous adventurers they didn’t question too much. What bothered them though, was when they arrived at the woman's home: a solitary shack on a small island, way off the road. There were no banners or indicators that any other melwa lived here, let alone melwa at all. It didn’t bear any hallmarks that it would be her actual home.

So they followed, silently, letting the hag think she had succeeded in tricking the party to leave her with a fresh meal to devour. Once they got close enough to see through her windows the intent became clear. They burst in, first with words then swords. The hag gave them a right thrashing, but they knew they couldn’t just let her eat a baby. After a few rounds of rough combat, the hag realized that she had underestimated her foes and tried to escape out to the swamp. Despite turning invisible, the Sq’Gee was able to use his echolocation to determine the space she was in, and Antonio succeeded in cutting her down. So now, in the middle of nowhere they had a baby to take care of. You can be fucking sure they kept that kid like it was one of the crew now, just as much as you expect it come around to bite them in the ass.

After a couple more nights of travel the players arrived at the docks in Orlane - with no one to greet them. They arrived on the southern end where most of the houses were desolate if still standing, abandoned if not. There was a heavy foreboding about the town, and with that mood set they took their first steps Against the Cult of the Reptile God.

The module ended up being one of the high points of my campaign so I’m really excited to talk about it, and it should be going on for a few more episodes. If you’ve run it or played or even just have some other thoughts to share, I’d love to hear back from you guys! Feel free to email me at dmdiscoursepodcast@gmail.com or reach out to me on Twitter @DMDCPodcast. Appreciate y’all out there, thanks for listening. As always take care, and have a great week.