In this session, the party continues to prepare for the upcoming battle. They travel to the Grey Crescent Mountains and have a very unexpected encounter.

These Campaign Diary posts are where I discuss the latest session of the campaign I play in!

What’s SBotLL?

That’s the name of the campaign I play in! It’s been running for four years now. There are two parties, one on the surface and one in the Underdark. I play in the surface squad as the elf bard Finnith, and my two friends play the dragonborn rogue Nala and the tiefling ranger Allora. The Underdark group is made of the changeling rogue “Wethryn,” the tiefling monk Baala’rug, and the drow ranger Eliera.

Recap

Last session was a big combat encounter against three mirror selves, people who look like the party members. These mirror selves tested whether the party was worthy to receive power from the Host, a mysterious person/deity who has “chosen” the party (and other party in the Underdark) for some reason. The party proved themselves and received new power. This power is different for each character, with the following common features: they can activate the power once per day, it lasts for a minute, and it has a consequence that lasts for the next 24 hours after that minute elapses.

In this session…

After the fight, Finnith and Nala find each other and discuss what happened. Finnith mentions that he can now use dream to contact Eliera (who he recently discovered is his half-sister) using the new power, but Nala isn’t sure whether now is the best time to do that—they’re preparing for a battle, and the downside of Finnith using the new power is that he can’t use his voice for the next 24 hours. Being a spellcaster, that’s pretty rough.

Meanwhile, Allora attends a meeting of the Awoken Flame community, a group of tieflings that she’s newly leading. She listens to various perspectives of the tieflings on what to do about the upcoming attack from the Coven of Eternal Light. The community has also decided on two other leaders to help Allora (since she communicated that she didn’t want to make unilateral decisions, and other leaders would be helpful since she’s still an adventurer). Entropy, a member of the Awoken Flame who looked up to the former leader, and Verge, a longtime ally of the party and the Moon’s Eye, are going to serve as co-leaders with Allora.

The leaders weigh their options. They decide that the tieflings who want to participate in the battle will be given training and resources to do so. Those who can’t or won’t participate will be able to either support the fighters or stay at the Awoken Flame base. But, they’ll need to find a backup location in case the Awoken Flame base can’t be defended.

To that note, the leaders bring in Finnith and Nala to discuss. It is agreed that Allora, Finnith, and Nala will take a week to travel north to the Grey Crescent Mountains. The party also determines that if Finnith wants to use dream to talk to Eliera, it’s best to go ahead and do that. Then, the party will start their journey once the 24-hour drawback has worn off.

(The dream conversation is covered in the Bonus session; we pulled Eliera’s player into a Discord call that other players could attend optionally. This happened after this session wrapped up.)

The party travels through the forest north towards the Gray Crescent Mountains. On the seventh day, they run into a familiar face—Antonio, Finnith’s friend who is acting as a double agent to spy on the Coven of Eternal Light. He was going to meet up with the party as soon as possible. He uses an item called a blod stone to find them, since it’s attuned to Finnith’s family line. But he wound up here following a reading that (upon meeting up with the party) wasn’t Finnith’s.

The group follows the blod stone’s guidance and winds up in a hidden shrine to Tymora. The priest’s name is Lucan Fëanor, and he’s Finnith’s long-lost uncle. But Lucan seems way more surprised to see Allora—and as Tymora emerges from the shrine, the situation becomes clear: Lucan and Tymora are a couple, and Allora is their child.

The three have an emotional reunion. When Allora was a baby, Beshaba stole her away. This is why Allora grew up mostly alone. They tried to find Allora but never found her until today due to Beshaba’s machinations.

Allora introduces Lucan to Finnith, and in that conversation more of the Fëanor family secrets are discussed. Lucan is surprised that Finnith knows that his grandfather (also called Lucan Fëanor) was a part of the Sidus Council, and Lucan (the uncle one) fills in more details. The Fëanor family was in charge of monitoring the peoples banished to the Underdark. This responsibility would have fallen to Lucan, but he refused to be complicit in the Sidus Council’s actions. He was cut off from the Fëanor family after that. The responsibility then fell to Finnith’s father, Adren. This is why Adren Fëanor was in the Underdark, and that lead to Eliera’s conception. When Lucan Fëanor (the grandfather one) learned of this, he cruelly arranged for Eliera and her mother’s killing (Eliera survived unknown to the Fëanors). The way to the Underdark was sealed as well.

Since then, Lucan Fëanor (the grandfather one) has died, but his participation in the Sidus Council and other hateful acts have continued to cause problems in the Fëanor family. Lucan (the uncle one) isn’t surprised that Finnith didn’t know about any of this for most of his life.

Regardless of the less-than-happy revelations about the family, it’s a pleasant moment for everyone. Tymora’s shrine is a beautiful and peaceful place. The party decides to stay here for a while so Allora can spend time with her parents.

Bonus session

Of course, none of this new information about the Fëanor family made it into the bonus Finnith and Eliera conversation session.

When we were discussing the possibility of this roleplaying moment, I thought it might be disruptive to a normal session. We talked to Eliera’s player about it and decided to do a “bonus session” where she and I would roleplay the conversation on a different day than a normal session. The other players could hop in to spectate if they wanted (all of them did, which was a pleasant surprise!).

In this dream conversation, Eliera tried to attack Finnith in multiple ways. They all failed because it was a dream. Eventually, she stopped, and the two of them got to have a talk.

The two of them learn a lot about what the other parties are up to. They find that they’ve had some similar experiences, though the Underdark party is a lot more morally ambiguous than the surface party.

Of course, the core issue remains. Even if Finnith and Eliera parted on somewhat positive terms, Eliera still wants revenge against the Fëanor family.

The payoff

A lot of this session was payoff from ideas that have built up over the course of the campaign. Allora believed her mother was Beshaba for most of her life, but her father was an unknown. Now we know that the true story is different. Finnith and the rest of the party have picked up some of the threads of the Fëanor family complications, here Lucan showed us much more of the whole tapestry. Previously, the tension was in the “not knowing,” now we know, and now we can act on what we know. That’s exciting!

Thanks for reading! And even if the news cycle/social media trends have started to move on, the fight against police brutality and systemic racism continues. I’ve gathered some resources here for ways to help and learn.