The Turnip Wagon Ambush
The Turnip Wagon Ambush
The Turnip Wagon Ambush was an assassination attempt on Deez Nuts, sprung on the road between Baldur's Gate and Elturel in Session 52. It is the first confirmed instance of the Cult of the Dragon purpose-building a team to kill this specific party — and, per the survivor's own testimony, not the first such team sent.
The bait
Two days east of Baldur's Gate, the party rounded a bend and found a horse and wagon stopped in the road, with a heavily armoured dwarf and an unarmed human milling about. The wagon was not broken. The dwarf waved, made friendly noises, and asked them to move along.
The wagon held barrels of turnips and two dead bodies. The assassins had murdered a pair of turnip merchants and taken their wagon to use as bait.
Xanphina called it immediately — "It's a trap" — and then rolled a natural 1 on her Perception. What actually saved the party was Gootcha, who slipped into the trees and hid on a Stealth of 26 before the trap closed. She was the only member of the company the ambushers could not account for.
The squad
| Name | Description | Fate |
|---|---|---|
| Vex | Dwarf frontliner: heavy armour, hammer, high Strength, Goading Attack. A tap of his shield was the squad's signal to spring. Carried the sending stone. | ESCAPED — dragged out by Morrow's Contingency |
| Morrow | Human wizard; played the unarmed, harmless decoy at the wagon. Invisibility, Fireball, and a pre-cast Contingency. | ESCAPED — stabbed himself to trigger the Contingency (Dimension Door), taking Vex with him |
| Keith Sorrowmere | Tiefling caster who cast without visible verbal or somatic components. | DEAD — Baelgrum's 3rd-level guiding bolt, aimed deliberately at his head. Unrevivable. Soul taken. |
| Garrick | Greatsword, Divine Smite, a frighten rider on his strikes. | DEAD — killed by Carl, his first kill ever |
| Sera | Archer with shadow arrows (2d6 plus blindness on a failed Wisdom save); Stealth +7. | DEAD — Shade's magic missiles |
| Rook Blackstring | Tabaxi archer-rogue: invisible, feline agility, high stealth. | DEAD — brought down by Xanphina's trident, then revivified, interrogated, and executed |
How it went wrong for them
The ambush was undone by save DCs. Xanphina's Restraining Ward — its DC raised from 15 to 17 with Tempered Soul — caught Morrow on a roll of exactly 15, pinning his arms and killing the Fireball before it left his hands. Baelgrum upcast Command to 4th level at DC 21 and halted Garrick, Vex and Keith on the same turn. Karma's Cone of Cold, tempered from DC 16 to 17, caught four of them at once — and the extra point turned one save from a success into a failure, so all four took it in full. Gootcha, still hidden, opened the fight by exposing the invisible Rook.
The DM's verdict, delivered through Gootcha's investigation roll: "this is how you would assemble a party to take out a party like ours — it just turns out that they greatly underestimated Deez Nuts, and have paid the price for it."
Shade's investigation confirmed the sponsor: no infernal residue. Keith was a tiefling, but not every tiefling answers to devils. This was Cult of the Dragon work, not the Hells — which specifically laid to rest Keyleth's worry that the squad was connected to the war the party may yet be drafted into.
What Rook gave up
Revivified, tied, and questioned with a polar bear's jaws around her head, Rook Blackstring talked — not out of fear, but because she had nothing to lose. She knew that dying to Gootcha is true death, with no way back.
- Layered information control. "We don't ever actually see or interact with the cult members directly these days… We've got a sending stone that will send us instructions… there's a process of call and response, and things that change based on information, and each of us have a part of it. So if we don't have the whole party, we're not able to create the right response." The captured stone is therefore useless without the whole squad.
- Standing surveillance of Deez Nuts. "There are resources everywhere trying to collect as much information as possible on you. Some, their only job is just to listen."
- They have done this before. "We know we've had other groups like ours that have been sent after you, and they've not been able to resurrect them. So we know it's a problem, and we expect that it's due to her" — meaning Gootcha. The Cult has identified the party's soul-taking as its central operational problem.
- Motive, such as it was. "I was hired a while ago, and I don't generally have loyalty to an employer. The perks and benefits package with the cult is pretty good these days."
- Every member of the squad had made peace with permanent death before they came: "we knew what we signed up for; we know that if we fall, we can die forever when we face you."
Baelgrum's attempt to force their campsite's location with a Command: "Truth" was ruled out — Command cannot be stretched into compelling testimony.
Aftermath & open threads
- Morrow and Vex are alive, at large, and still hold the squad's sending stone and their pieces of the call-and-response key. They have seen the whole party fight.
- The Cult will send another squad. It has already sent several.
- The bodies carried nothing but their working gear — "they traveled light, for a purpose."
- Two Soul Tokens were harvested (Rook and Keith — only previously-resurrected creatures yield one), bringing the party's count to four.