DMDC 10 - The Village of the Cult of the Reptile God

Now we're in the meat of it, the gross filthy chunk of the module! Things get interesting as soon as the players make their way into the village of Orlane, quickly going downhill for them - in ways I wasn't even expecting. Also, it seems I have a real problem pronouncing the word "troglodyte."

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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 we’re continuing a series of episodes based around the classic module, Against the Cult of the Reptile God. The party has just arrived in Orlane, where every direction they go will certainly lead to peril.

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It’s been near a month since Dorian and I have taken up residence in the village of Orlane. Our base of operations is close to the Golden Grain Inn, where we suspect the Obfuscator agent Desleigh, to be operating out of. Our initial suspicions proved false: it does not appear that the Prism Wizard’s lackeys are responsible for the problems here.

Unfortunately that means it could be something worse, at least speaking in terms of immediate threat. Nobody has discovered our cause for being here yet but I only suspect it is a matter of time. Of the villagers, I can only think of a handful I’m certain aren’t part of the secret cult in town. That list doesn’t include the priestess, her clergy, or most of the villagers. It does, however, include the strange hermit residing in the grove on the western side of town. He’s unfriendly and isn’t keen on seeing us about other matters. Seems to have other things on his mind, whatever they may be.

Dorian is more worried about the Obfuscator’s presence. It’s been decades since the Prism Wizard last sent his agents this far south into the swamplands, and Desleigh seems to go in and out of the inn as he pleases. Dorian suspects the Obfuscator is also not under the spell or charm affecting the townsfolk. In that case we’ll need to keep a closer eye on him, to figure out his true purpose. If the information we have collected is true, he’s been in town about half a year now, leaving on occasion for other business then returning afterwards.

We’ll want to catch him on his way out of town next time it happens. Can’t risk whatever he’s gathering to get out again, especially if it has to do with the state of Orlane. With any luck we can track him down and figure out where the Obfuscators are operating out of in this area as well. But hell, with countless miles of untrackable and unmappable marsh it’ll be hard to get into it once we do know.

I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be staying here. The strange rumors have led to a number of surrounding farmers leaving, and traders have started to avoid this place like the plague. If this keeps up it won’t be long until the neighboring Fenskeep loses a critical trade partner, one of the few outlets it has to export goods to places outside the Drifting Isles. That may work to our advantage, allow us to retake Fenskeep back from the bandit rulers and put a proper Tower Marshal in charge of it once more.

Plans for the future though. For now, Dorian and I will continue to trade shifts watching the inn in hopes that this Obfuscator slips up. Long live the line of Braddock, may the Dawn Guard see it returned to the sun throne of Ro’Elnar.

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There’s a lot to like about using modules for your campaign, especially some of the older ones from previous editions. For one it offers a glimpse into the game from a different perspective than you yourself may be approaching it from. I know that’s certainly true for me. I come from a video game background, so when I first cracked the spines of my fourth edition books that’s what I drew from - fairly linear narrative with captivating setpieces, in an attempt to enthrall and captivate my friends.

Of course like much anything you do the first time, it’s never going to go off without a hitch. I’m sure I could go on for a while about my first D&D campaign - hell I’ve even still got the notes around on a hard drive somewhere. I wrote entire paragraphs to read to my friends while they simply waited for the next thing to happen. I’ve looked at them before, and I assure you they aren’t great. If anything it spawned from having too much time between classes and procrastinating assignments than genuine originality.

And originality is a funny thing when it comes to D&D anyway because so much of it happens in a shared cosmology, that preconceived notion about what the game is and what will occur at the table. There’s a mythology ingrained into the very DNA of the hobby that allows us to work off of fundamental, core ideas and, ultimately, expand from. Not everything you play at the table has to be new to be exciting, and not everything exciting is new. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with innovation, particularly when it comes to the game, but there’s a certain comfort in the culture presented in the writings of the forebears of this hobby that we’re all so passionate about.

That was my biggest takeaway from running N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God. There are many different ways to play, different ways to run, and for a long time I had those first habits ingrained in my style. The games I ran in college were a lot like each other, and it wasn’t until this most recent campaign I started branching out and experimenting with things that stuck with me. So in the spirit of trying to shake things up, I ran my first AD&D module for the game’s latest edition.

And right out of the gate you get that sense that this module was from a different culture of the game. You’ve got NPC stats shoved into shorthand, explicit locations of their treasure for your kleptomania players, and dense text throughout the entirety of the module. Also, probably one too many dungeon rooms but that’s just my personal preference. You can draw the historical lineage of the game back to things like this, and I’m sure this one module doesn’t speak for the entirety of those released at the time, but there is a certain flavor to it that I don’t think  you find in any of the more recent product releases under the official WotC banner. But perhaps from other third party creators, creating in the same vein as the old days.

The module itself is well-formatted, separated by different locations and events the players could possibly get into. Unlike more narrative modules, Against the Cult of the Reptile God seems more content to present areas for players to investigate as they try to solve the mystery of what exactly is going on in the village of Orlane. That mystery of locked doors and frightened faces, strange rumors and abandoned homesteads, was at the center of my player’s reasoning being here. Of course they had, out of character, accepted it as a quest to level up to go back to the main dungeon they were exploring, but were to be rewarded in character as well, in more ways than they expected.

I presented the players with an empty map of the place, just so they could know the landscape. It had the buildings, but no numbering or descriptions, so they would have to go out of their way to interact with villagers to figure out what was going on around here. It started simple enough, docking the boat along the river, left to the care of Xichtanil and Brog, along with the melwa child. The module assumes your characters approach from the road to the west so they could have an interaction with the locals and give a depiction of what is transpiring, but for my swampland campaign they were instead met by abandoned, decrepit and foul smelling homes. The players decided to make their way into town past the empty buildings, but should they have investigated them it would have given them an idea earlier on about what was plaguing Orlane.

But they didn’t, and that set them up for a more dramatic scene anyhow. Instead they met an overly friendly vesryn couple: Galen and Julen Weaver. Galen and Julen Weaver were newlyweds in town, having just moved here, not yet themselves affected by the dangers lurking in town. They were happy themselves to have folk to talk to and share a glass of wine with. The players really took a shine to them - not sure why? I gave them some thick southern accents, the best I could, but it ended up just forming a normal conversation as the players got the basic layout of the town. Cht’hoo even commissioned a kind of harness for the child, so they could carry it around when they needed to. It may also have had to do with them being the first vesryn NPCs of the campaign.

The Weavers gave the party two bits of important information though: the location of the inns in town, the Golden Grain Inn and the Inn of the Slumbering Serpent. Either would’ve been where I wanted the players to go, so that’s the information I gave them. Sure they could’ve gone off to the temple of Merikka, which is the actual location in the game that I decided to just incorporate as a kind of saint in my pantheons, or investigated the other dozen locations here with oddly descriptive paragraphs of text for such places as “small, neatly kept cottage” or “rundown farmhouse”, and that’s something that’s immediately nice to be running with modules or other supplements for locations. Should your players go down the path you lay before them, great: you’re all set because you know what the adventure is and where it's going to go. If, maybe, your friends are inclined to get up to a bit of mischief or have their own prerogatives, also great: that paragraph of the “shabby farmhouse and barn” will come in handy real quick.

The locations here aren’t just for show though, as they might be in other sources you could pull from. There’s a core element in this first part of the module while the players explore the village of Orlane aptly titled “cult members”, printed in bold and an exclamation point so you never miss it. The villain of the module, Explicita Defilus, a spirit naga, has put a number of villagers under her spell, willing to do her bidding - this includes capturing the player characters.

But for my group at that moment in time, they decided to go ahead and take a look at the Golden Grain Inn. It was about noon so they were looking for some food as it was, so simply strolled across the main street in town across from the Weavers house to the Inn. The Golden Grain Inn is actually one of the key points in the game, going so far to get its own section of the module as well as a map, and it’s not just because it’s a comfy place for your players to rest at. Odds are good that, if they aren’t snooping around elsewhere, this will be the first place they get any idea of what’s going on here.

It started out simple enough. As the ragtag group of a bat person, a tiefling person, an owl person, a dwarf person, and a human person, walked into a room, all eyes of the hypnotized locals turned on them - then quickly back to their cups. The bartender and proprietor, Bertram Beswill, had the chief cook, Root, quickly put together a few drugged drinks to give to the party when they inevitably asked for some. They were budding heroes just going through town, what was the worst that could happen to them.

But it wasn’t just the villagers-slash-cult members they had to worry about. Going back many sessions ago, to the Crossriver Inn where the dwarf monk Pedwar ran into three members of the Obfuscators, nefarious agents of guile and trickery in service to the Prism Wizard, there was one in particular with sly eyes and shifty hands named Desleigh - and he was also present in the tavern. The players hadn’t run into the Obfuscators since that incident, and even weren’t really aware of who exactly the Prism Wizard was. Sure, they were the ruler of the kingdom to the north bordering the swamp, but the party didn’t know them from Mordenkainen. As far as they were concerned they were below the radar for Obfuscators.

Such was the case too - Desleigh didn’t even recognize the party members, although Pedwar certainly did. He whispered to Sq’Gee about the agent’s presence, and together made their way quietly up the staircase to the rooms in hopes of tracking down this Obfuscator. Sure, they didn’t know much about their organization, but if their past experience was enough to speak on it could lead them to more answers than they had now.

He went down without much of a fight too: Pedwar pulled the classic on him, having him come close to the door before bashing it straight into Desligh, sending him hurtling to the ground. A few swift punches and smart tactics by the players and they had the agent right where they wanted. Of course he didn’t give any answers out of the kindness of his heart, something Sq’gee expected and responded with in force. By heating up his emblem of his god Oolumnd, a giant eye, he burnt a scar into Desleigh’s face until he gave them the answers they were looking for: the villagers were charmed by the naga Explicita Defilus (at least some of them, so he said), but that’s the extent of his knowledge. He’s here collecting information and funds, but after this incident you bet he won’t be here for long.

Right on cue the situation downstairs changed into bloodbath - at least it would’ve, if Pedwar and Sq’gee didn’t immediately show up as it all started. A tavern brawl is a classic to fall back on - a tavern brawl against a bunch of bloodthirsty villagers? It could’ve gone much worse than it did. They were outnumbered, and not even sure how to tell which villagers were charmed and which were true believers, if any. The trio who had stayed downstairs had even had drinks too, poisoning them, making them much less effective for this fight. In a moment of doubt and fear, Antonio shouted to Sq’gee to cut down the cook Root, who was attacking him with his cutting knife - only for Sq’Gee to deliver a crushing blow to Root’s ribs, lethally killing him, as the light began to fade from his eyes, and he simply asked the cleric, “why?” Sq’gee knew what he had done: he had killed an innocent, blood on his hands. 

He hadn’t a moment to regret his actions, however, for as the villagers fell a veritable horde of troglodytes emerged from the basement of the inn. It was in this moment that Desligh descended from the rooftops, his info and gold in hand, and left the village - for good. If the players tried to stop him, they would’ve let whatever these creatures were unleashed on the town, something our heroes could not abide. Tricky thing about troglodytes though is that they have an overwhelming stench. If you start your turn adjacent to them, you have to make a save against being poisoned that doesn’t wear off until the creature’s next turn. In a cramped tavern this was a less than ideal situation.

However, they overcame it. This wasn’t going to be the hardest challenge they faced but it came at them unexpectedly. I think even if the players knew that there were cultists in town, they wouldn’t have expected the entire tavern to turn on them, and for other monsters to come up from the basement. That’s a good surprise you can keep in your pocket for any encounter I think, whatever the situation is. If your players don’t expect it to go sideways so early, let them know that’s always a possibility.

The most unexpected surprise was for me, however. After the troglodytes had been dealt with, Sq’gee returned to the body of the cook, Root. It was too late for anything to be done for him. He, a priest of the All-Seeing God, had taken the life of an innocent because in weakness he thought he knew better. He could not see the truth. So as his code led him to, he walked outside of the tavern, and surrendered himself to the constable, Grover Ruskadal, who had just arrived. Sq’gee admitted his crime openly, and the vile intent of the constable was written upon his face. The rest of the party knew wiser than to get into another fight against a number of armed and healthy guards, so they retreated out the back of the tavern, which led along the river, and ran into two individuals who wished to aid them in town: Dorian and Llywillan, twin elves bearing the insignia of the Dawn Guard. WIth nowhere else to turn, they followed these surprise allies to, hopefully, safety, where they could plan on what to do next.

And that’s where we’ll leave it! The party’s in a bit of a sticky situation, but that’s normal for an adventurer’s life. I won’t give anything away about how the rest of the adventure goes, so be sure to come back next week to hear the exciting tale of how they rescue their friend and start to track the source of the town’s woes. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions or comments or concerns or what not, feel free to email me at dmdiscoursepodcast@gmail.com or reach out to me on Twitter @DMDCPodcast. As always take care, and have a great week.