Another month and another good squad session! This time, we had a some of everything—some roleplaying, a bit of combat, and a lot of exploration.

What’s SBotLL Again?

SBotLL is the campaign I play in! There are two parties in this campaign, one good and one evil. I play in the good-aligned party, or “the good squad.” The characters are Allora, the TN tiefling ranger, Finnith, the CG elf bard (my character), and Nala, the CG dragonborn rogue. We’re level 10 at the moment.

Recap

The party ran into some complications during their mission in Alame’a, the elven capital city. After acquiring the documents they were sent to retrieve, they ran into the recurring NPC Antonio, a member of the Coven of Eternal Light*. Finnith spoke to/argued with Antonio for a while, eventually maybe convincing him to leave the Coven?

After that, the party decided to return to the Moon’s Eye** base with the documents instead of pressing onwards. They reported back to Mehmen about the status of the mission and handed over the box of secret documents.

During this session…

The party took some time to relax after the journey. With Finnith’s access to the dream spell, Nala contacted her father, who is in captivity in the dragonborn lands, and made sure he was doing alright (and caught him up with some of our… adventures). After that, Finnith used the rune he was given to telepathically speak with Neroth, an elven leader in the Underdark who wants to restore people to the surface. Finnith updates Neroth on what’s going on surface-side per their agreement.

The next morning, the party agrees to return to Alame’a and finish the mission. They need to get information about the security of the Orosta building, an important government center that’s been given over to the Coven of Eternal Light.

The party has an uneventful journey back over to the capital. We’re able to sneak into the city the same way we did last time. The Orosta building is huge, like two buildings stuck together huge, and that’s not even mentioning the three towers that are also attached to it.

After some strategizing, the party bypasses the guard patrols and sneaks in through a back entrance. We decide that, ideally, we could produce a map of the area and that would be sufficient. So, the DM calls for someone to make a Wisdom (Perception) check, someone to make a Dexterity (Stealth) check, and someone to make an Intelligence (Investigation) check. As a ranger, Allora is really good at keeping track of terrain, and she has the Observant feat, so she handles the Perception checks. Nala has the best Stealth, so she takes that, and Finnith is the one who’s going to be poking his head around trying to figure out what all this space is used for, so he takes the final check. This allows us to learn about the area and map out the floor we’re on, so we repeat that as we go along.

We find the library and archives, so Finnith takes a few minutes to check it out, but we don’t have the time to do an in-depth investigation. Stealing records would of course be noticed, so we just move on. We discover where many of the Coven members are staying, as well as places where important meetings might be held, stuff like that.

Actually, we made it pretty far before any guards really noticed us, and using silence helped the combat not wake everyone in the building up. Since most of the session was exploring the building, trying not to get caught, the quick combat helped relieve some of the tension. After we figured out where to hide the bodies, we ended the session there.

What’s next?

Well, we still have plenty of building to map out and explore! I think we have at least one more floor in the main building before moving on to the towers. Will we be able to cover the whole building without getting caught? I don’t know, but I’m really curious to see what will happen next.

*Coven of Eternal Light: A group of sun elves who want to fight the darkness. Problem is, they believe the “darkness” are tieflings, who are just trying to mind their own business. The Coven is a sinister organization that takes advantage of elven society’s fears, turning them against a group of innocent people.

**The Moon’s Eye: A secretive organization who opposes the Sidus Council and the Coven of Eternal Light. The party has helped them before, and a few of their allies are members and leaders in the organization.