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• Adrian Silverstrength (Human Paladin)
• Morsus Firebeard (Hill Dwarf Cleric)
• Sephrenia (High Elf Cleric)
• Ragnaroc (Aasimar Warlock) 
• Don Kannin (Half-Elf Ranger)
• Korra (Air Genasi Rogue)

Connected Adventures: Adventure 14, Adventure 15, Adventure 16, Adventure 17, Adventure 18, Adventure 19, Adventure 20, Adventure 21, Adventure 22, Adventure 23, Adventure 24, Adventure 25, Adventure 26, Adventure 27, Adventure 28 , Adventure 29, Adventure 30, Adventure 31, Adventure 32, Adventure 33, Adventure 34, Adventure 35 and Adventure 36.

• The party continues tracking down the Drow that are hunting the Darklings
• They’d reached a cave where upon getting closer – two large statues of Driders turned out to be gargoyles and attacked the party
• Upon defeating the gargoyles, the party looked into the cavern – knowing they were going in the right direction
• When the party enters the cavern – they can see a small fire up ahead and hear the sound of running water throughout the cavern
• Morsus sends in his bat to explore ahead of them – and it detects Piercers – as it’s final action as a Piercer drops upon the bat, killing it (and upsetting the Piercer since it’s a familiar which simply vanishes upon death, preventing the Piercer from getting any nutritional value out of the Piercer)

• The party moves up to the unattended campfire
• Morsus moves closer to the left cavern – knowing that something here had killed his bat familiar

• Adrian looks around the camp for footprints but the low Perception roll only reveals that there is a lot of foot traffic here – and he can’t tell which ones are new and which ones are old
• Morsus examines the left passage and notices that there’s an abundance of small dead animals that range from bats, mice, rats, and other small cave dwelling animals that dwell in the Shadow Realm
• Having encountered Piercers before – Morsus is confident that there’s Piercers there – but they’re too indistinguishable from the stone to be able to spot which ones are Piercers and which ones are legitimate stalactites.
• Adrian picks up a rock that Morsus cast’s Light on and throws it in the direction where the bat perished; and the rock lands next to the stream; but still nothing happens – until the light shows the Piercer that had originally tried to drop and consume Morsus’ bat – was slowly climbing back up the wall
• Seeing the large, healthy colony of Piercers, the party (except for Ragnaroc – Critical Fail for Ragnaroc) deduces that there may also be a Roper near by – since Ropers are the evolution/mature version of Piercers – and the party vividly recalls their first encounter with a Roper in the Shadow Realm
  • Note: This is actually kind of perfect that on their Nature Roll, Ragnaroc was the only one not to know about Ropers – as he was not present during the Roper encounter and I had his character being “Catatonic” muttering the name “Belaros” which makes sense why he wouldn’t recall anything about Ropers!
• Sephrenia explains to Ragnaroc what had happened to her and Korra the last time they’d encountered a Roper
• Morsus decides he will summon an Unseen Servant which will take 10 minutes to summon; and recommends the party take shots at the (potential) Piercers since they’re difficult to determine from actual stalactites
  • Sephrenia is able to hit some with her longbow
  • However, Ragnaroc rolls a Critical Fail which then hits Morsus for some minor damage but also interrupts his spell casting (he had a chance to hit the only two people in front of him and the roll determined Morsus)
• Adrian and Ragnaroc avoid something – but Don does not – and begins glowing purple
• Then two arrows strike Don for damage as they look around to see where it’s coming from and a Drider makes its presence known

• And then the second drider makes its presence known – which makes sense – one cast the faerie fire; the other launched the arrow attacks!
• The two shots (one of them a Natural 20!) are enough to knock Don down
• Due to being struck by one of Ragnaroc’s spells – Morsus is paying attention and leaps to his feet to take action! (Natural 20 on Initiative!)
• Morsus casts Healing Word on Don – raising him back up into a positive health number, allowing him to slowly stand on his turn
• And uses his second action (from the Natural 20 – House Rule) – to Ready a Toll of the Dead as soon as one of the Driders takes damage
• Korra fires an arrow at the top Drider – and misses
• Unfortunately, the others also miss the Drider’s so the Toll of the Dead spell is never triggered for Morsus
• Back at the top of Initiative, Morsus casts Faerie Fire on the Driders; however, one saves with a 19 and the other Natural 20!
• Adrian swings at one – and hits – however, his second attack misses – Critical Fail – throwing his sword into the rocks! (We all know how that went just not too long ago!)
• The Drider responds in kind by inflicting considerable damage on Adrian
• Adrian casts Shield of Faith then uses Disengage so that he can get near his sword to pick up next round
• The first Drider moves forward to attack Adrian – misses the first time, the Critical Fail on it’s second attack – striking itself for damage, in its fury to take down Adrian
• The second Drider sees Don standing – fires two shots since he still has Faerie Fire on him and takes Don down again
• Sephrenia does Preserve Life Channel Divinity – pouring 25 health of pure energy into Don’s still body – bringing him up enough to be breathing again
• The Drider that had been shooting at Don now realizes that Sephrenia keeps healing and turns her attention onto Sephrenia – firing two shots – one misses, but the second finds its mark (At least Don gets to survive longer than a round this initiative, right?) which bloodies Sephrenia!
• Ragnaroc fires Eldritch Blast at the one that is bloodied (attacking Adrian) and delivers a killing blow
• He fires his next Eldritch Blast at the second one
• Morsus fires off a Toll the Dead at that one – and does significant damage
• Don – finally standing – immediately quaffs a healing potion getting a significant amount of health back
• Don then drops his Hunter’s Mark on the remaining Drider – and then whispers the command to the bow to mark the Drider as his enemy (which will increase the damage applied if hit!)
• His first shot misses; but the second hits – and it’s enough to shake the Drider’s concentration so that Faerie Fire is no longer lighting up Don
• Korra fires at the Drider with her crossbow and misses
• Adrian runs – picks up his sword and rushes back to the Drider landing a Critical Hit followed by a Smite – leaving the Drider wobbling (1 HP left!)
• Adrian makes his second attack… and misses. Sigh.
• Ragnaroc fires off an Eldritch Blast, killing the Drider
• Sephrenia casts Prayer of Healing restoring health to everyone
• Morsus decides to Ritual Cast the Unseen Servant spell and this time it’s not interrupted
• The party spends some time shooting and dealing with the Piercers, before deciding to go the other way

• Morsus manages to pick up on a faint, wet, blood trail that – as he looks – seems to continue on the other side of the river
• He checks the depth of the river – which is flowing fairly strongly – and estimates it to be about a foot deep
• Morsus says that they can probably jump across
• Korra does so easily (Natural 20!) and everyone else makes it across – except Sephrenia and Ragnaroc who both slip and fall backwards as they land on the other side, falling back into the river
• Both of them find themselves attacked by Quipper fish and quickly get out of the water after taking some damage

• The party gets to the other side and picks up the blood trail – Ragnaroc moves ahead and peers into the cavern stealthfully and spots three Drow around a campfire and three tents participating in what appears to be a ritual of some kind

• The party is able to do a sneak attack round
• Morsus drops Faerie Fire on two of them; but one of them hears the spell just in time to step out of the way
• Sephrenia fires her bow and hits one of the ones illuminated by Faerie Fire and follow up by summoning her Spiritual Weapon
• Ragnaroc throws out an Eldritch Blast that strikes one as well
• Adrian fires a crossbow, focusing fire on the same one and hits it with enough damage to take it exactly to 0, rendering it unconscious
• Korra fires her crossbow – and despite the Faerie Fire – she misses!
• The first Drow cultist now realizing their under attack – shouts to the others – then slits his own wrists and bleeds it into a pot in front of him and chants something – and something in the tent begins to stir!
• Morsus moves up to try and get a better look at the tent – and can see white eyes – and flesh as dark as night inside the tent from where he is
• He casts Toll the Dead on the remaining one who had Faerie Fire on it, and manages to kill him
• Sephrenia also moves up – fires her arrow – and hits one of the Drow cultists; her Spiritual Hammer, however, misses
• Ragnaroc hits him twice with Eldritch Blast, leaving him barely standing (yet again, left at 1 HP)
• Adrian fires his crossbow and manages to hit – hitting him for 4 points – killing him
• However, before the Drow Cultist dies, he shouts, “Kaz’larah” – which in Elven, which Sephrenia understands, translates to “Silk of Death.”
• And just then – an all too familiar figure emerges from the tent…

• Sephrenia can immediately tell that this isn’t “Doomsilk” – but rather an animated corpse of Doomsilk – undead in nature – the cultists had raised him using Necromancy!
• Don immediately fires two shots with his energy bow, striking him twice with radiant damage (which seems to do a little extra to this disheveled Doomsilk)
• Doomsilk – through the gaping hole in his throat – manages to unleash Witch Bolt which connects to Sephrenia and deals some damage to her – but keeps her connected through the spell to apply damage as long as she remains within 30′ of Doomsilk
• Morsus attempts to Toll The Dead on this undead Doomsilk, but it appears to have no effect (Necrotic Immunity)
• Sephrenia steps further back to break the Witch Bolt connection and unleashes Guiding Bolt which strikes for massive damage
• Thankfully the Guiding Bolt because it hit allows the next attack to be at Advantage, which works out for Ragnaroc – because he’d rolled a Natural 1 (Critical Fail!) that got turned into a 12 which at least misses everyone, including Undead Doomsilk
• However, Ragnaroc’s second Eldritch Blasts still manages to Critical Fail (Natural 1!) striking Sephrenia for 5 damage!
• Adrian draws his two handed sword – casts Protection from Good and Evil on himself and moves up 30′ closer to Undead Doomsilk
• On Undead Doomsilk’s turn – Adrian fails to make a Constitution Savings Throw and becomes poisoned (Disadvantage on all attacks) due to the musky odor that Undead Doomsilk is emitted
• Undead Doomsilk then extends long black talons from his fingers and attempts to rake Adrian in the face, but Adrian’s spell protects him (Disadvantaging Undead Doomsilk)
• Undead Doomsilk then tries to bite Adrian, but the spell protects him again (preventing a Natural 20 from hitting him!)
• Morsus sees Adrian engaged with Undead Doomsilk and stops moving forward – and actually takes some steps backwards – but then realizes that he has no attack cantrips he can uses and proceeds to move forward, giving Don the help action
• Sephrenica tries Sacred Flame, but Undead Doomsilk is able to dodge it
• However, he is not able to dodge the Spiritual Hammer Sephrenia slams against the side of his undead head
• With advantage being given to him by Morsus, Don fires a Sharpshooter shot – and deals more than enough damage to put Undead Doomsilk down
• However, upon his death (yet again) – his body explodes, inflicting 13 damage – only ones in range are Adrian who takes half due to a successful Dexterity Save, however Morsus takes the full brunt of the explosion
• Undead Doomsilk’s body is incinerated, assuring that he will not be coming back … anytime… soon…?
• The party searches the tents and bodies (and exploded remains of Undead Doomsilk) and find some gold and minor things

Fun Note: I had no intention of bring back Doomsilk as an undead character – however, the last session everyone pointed out “no body means he’s not dead” – and I thought, “That’s true – and it also robs the players of that satisfaction of knowing for sure he’s dead – and since I had no future plans for him – an idea brewed in my head, that since these Drow are clearly practicing dark necromancy from tomes they got from the adventurers they’d enslaved – as mentioned by Doomsilk previously – that it would be a good opportunity to not only show they’re clearly involved in Necromancy – but also give the players an opportunity to definitively see Doomsilk destroyed. So no matter what cavern they would have gone in – Doomsilk’s undead body would have been risen for the party to destroy.