View source for Session 55 - Antlered Shadows (2026-09-12)

== Session 55 - Antlered Shadows (2026-09-12) ==

== Summary ==
Five of [[Deez Nuts]] — [[Karma]] away, [[Carl]] holding [[Boareskyr Bridge]] — pressed north on [[Varram the White]]'s trail along the [[Winding Water]] toward the [[Serpent Hills]]. The road gave up its secrets one hex at a time: a gulch of '''petrified people and animals''' never touched by a chisel, a dug-up explorer's grave rifled '''only in spaces the size of a mask or a helm''' (the coin left behind), a shed-field of '''18 giant-constrictor snakeskins''' worth good Zhentarim coin, and a gnoll hunting-pack driving wild ponies off a bluff for sport — annihilated in two rounds, ponies saved.

The session's turning point came when [[Baelgrum]] cast '''Scrying''' — his new 5th-level spell, keyed to a purple wyrmspeaker's thread snagged at Varram's own campsite — and saw the truth of the hunt: '''Varram is a prisoner'''. She sits tied to a chair in a windowless cell while a snake-bodied [[Yuan-ti|yuan-ti]] priest tortures her with blade and poison, and she bargains for her life: "Great wealth will be yours if you just free me." The yuan-ti are not her allies. And the trail the party follows kept moving north without her.

That night a flight of six '''[[Peryton|perytons]]''' — antlered, winged, casting man-shaped shadows — dove on the camp. Five died; the last fled to its nest-tor and was finished the next morning by [[Gootcha]]'s familiar '''Beek-a-boo''' (his first kill). The nest held only humanoid bones, a dead [[Harpers|Harper]] field agent's '''silver harp-and-moon pin''' and '''cipher notebook''', 4,200 gold, and three magic items. The carcasses were harvested ([[Harvested Materials]]; dossier: [[Peryton]]).

Back on the trail, the ground itself turned informer: '''scorched rings where creatures of the Nine Hells slept unmasked'''. Varram's clawed "mercenaries" are '''devils''' — and the party is '''less than a day behind them'''. The session ended at the ruins of a town below cave-pocked bluffs, before the 40-foot edifice of an '''ancient mage's tomb''' flanked by broken colossi: a cold cultist-and-devil camp by the well, and '''seven fresh shallow graves'''.

== Detailed Chronology ==

=== The gulch of statues ===
Following Varram's trail north from the Winding Water, the party spotted '''pale figures standing motionless''' in a gulch to the northwest — statues of humans, elves, deer, rabbits, even a goat, most facing northwest. [[Xanphina]] saw at once that '''they were never carved: the tool marks are missing'''. Gootcha's investigation (25) confirmed they were real people and animals, caught by some petrification spell or effect — some badly weathered, decades old; the goat freshest of all. Nobody could name the creature responsible. Baelgrum noted that Greater Restoration only serves the recently petrified — on these weathered ones, "they would probably come back without their skin" — and the idea was retired at once. The party marked the spot and moved on; Baelgrum wants to come back with the full company for whatever "is nabbing passerbys."

=== The mask-hunter's grave ===
Further along, a lone explorer's grave — dug up. The dead man's '''24 gold pieces were untouched''', which ruled out grave-robbers: [[Keyleth]]'s investigation (22, pressed to 24 with [[Tempered Soul]]) found that whoever dug here '''rifled only the spaces big enough to hide something the size of a mask or a helm'''. Someone on this trail is hunting for a mask. Nobody at the fire needed to say which mask they thought it was — and nobody said it loudly.

=== The shed-field ===
Sun-bleached '''snake skins the length of a wagon''' lay across the rocks — a shedding-ground for the region's giant constrictors. [[Shade]]'s investigation (a 32) read the whole story in the patterns: '''at least a dozen individual snakes across three distinct lineages''', all natural constrictors, none of them yuan-ti work — the same breed of snake Karma can wild shape into. Whole shed skins need no harvest check; the party gathered '''18 high-quality skins''', which Shade priced off the Zhentarim's standard trade books as genuinely valuable ([[Harvested Materials]]). Shade also slept inside one like a sleeping bag; it dried, constricted, and trapped her overnight — Xanphina pulled her out in the morning. "It reminded me of the infernal womb."

=== Gnolls at the bluff ===
A very large flock of carrion birds wheeled over a bluff to the northwest — sized, by Keyleth's survival read (30), for a battlefield's worth of dead. The cause: '''seven gnolls and four hyenas driving a herd of about twenty wild ponies''' up a rise toward the cliff edge, with the birds circling a killing-ground they clearly knew well. Baelgrum's religion check placed gnolls as hyenas evolved under the influence of the Abyss — and the numbers said this was not hunger. '''They were doing it for fun.'''

The party intercepted between hunters and herd, and the fight lasted two rounds:
* Xanphina, raging, threw her '''Javelin of Lightning''' twice down the pack's line — the second bolt dropped a gnoll warrior with two javelin wounds in its chest.
* Keyleth pinned the '''pack lord''' with arrows, Hellfire Pixies, and Hunter's Mark.
* Shade's '''Storm Sphere''' killed three hyenas outright and lightning-bolted a gnoll through the face.
* Baelgrum closed the ring — literally — with '''Wall of Fire''' in its circle shape, and every gnoll and hyena still standing burned.
The ponies, no longer herded, wheeled north into open grassland and were fine. The gnolls carried nothing worth taking. ''(Karma was saluted in absentia: "We're doing this in honor of Karma, who could not be here. She'd want us to do this.")''

=== Varram's camp, and Tiamat's candles ===
The next cold camp sat against an '''isolated shrine to some long-forgotten god'''. A '''purple thread''' snagged on the stone — cloth of the kind '''only the wyrmspeakers are permitted to wear'''. And Baelgrum read the wax on the shrine: a '''five-pointed observance to Tiamat'''. Someone in Varram's company keeps the Dragon Queen's rites even on the run. Baelgrum pocketed the thread.

A settlement's chimney smoke and livestock sounds beckoned from the southeast — three miles off the trail — and, for once, the party let a mystery live and kept to the hunt. Farther on, some of the party caught an '''adult or older blue dragon''' flying low in the far west, ten-plus miles out and heading away. Head down; keep moving.

=== The scrying — Varram in the serpent's coils ===
At the day's end Baelgrum cast '''Scrying''' for the first time — ten minutes over the crystal he'd bought in [[Elturel]], the purple thread in his fist, Tempered Soul spent on the casting and Guidance over his shoulder. The vision came through, and the sensor went unnoticed:

'''Varram, tied to a chair in a prison cell.''' Windowless walls, a bucket, a door with no inside handle that locks from without. Around her, yuan-ti in every stage of [[Yuan-ti#Snake Maxing|snake maxing]] — some passably human with snake-ish features, some human-bodied with snake heads, and over her a figure in '''clerical garb with a full serpent's body and head and two arms''': a priest or priestess of the snake god, working on her with physical torture and poisons, mostly in silence. Varram — bloodied, not doing well — pleading: '''"If you free me — great wealth, great wealth will be yours if you just free me."'''

The party put it together with the flesh-portrait from the week before: the yuan-ti had been hunting the dwarf, and somewhere out here they caught her. '''Varram and the serpent-folk are not allies.''' But her trail — the fast-moving company with the clawed prints — still ran north, so north the party went, agreeing to double back to the passed settlement if the tracks ever turned or vanished.

=== The tor, and the shadow with antlers ===
A '''lone tor''' rose off the trail — sixty feet of natural rock piled high, its top ragged with what looked like nests, five miles out. As the party closed the distance at dusk, '''a winged, antlered shadow crossed the ground''' — and the sky above was empty. Xanphina's nature check (25) named the owner: a '''peryton''' — stag's antlers, eagle's body, a flying predator — and the nests meant more than one.

They camped a mile short of the tor, and camped badly — the survival rolls collapsed (Keyleth's plus-thirteen landed on a natural 1), and the "sheltered spot" turned out to be open ground. Gootcha, needing only four hours of trance, stood watch.

=== Night of the perytons ===
Gootcha's watch (perception 27) caught '''shadows blotting out the stars, growing fast''' — six perytons, diving. She woke the camp mid-stoop. ("You're welcome for the short rest.")

The fight, from a dead sleep:
* The lead peryton hit '''Xanphina''' on the dive — gored and raked her for 20 in a flyby too quick for anyone to answer with a blade.
* Xanphina answered awake: her '''toppling trident''' put it on the ground on the second throw — 13 more damage from the fall, prone, wings in the dirt. The table rule landed with it: '''anything knocked out of the sky, falls.'''
* '''Gootcha''' killed one clean out of the night air — crossbow bolt plus a 17-point sneak attack.
* '''Baelgrum''' lit the sky with a 3rd-level '''Fireball'''; two perytons "failed miserably" and came out the bottom half flying, half falling.
* '''Keyleth''' rolled a natural 1 — and spent Tempered Soul to force the miss into a hit (a new table ruling born on the spot), then poured arrows, her pixie swarm, and Hunter's Mark into the wounded one, and finished it with her Aspect d6 on the damage: "you force the world around you to obey, and the arrow buries itself even deeper."
* '''Shade''' ended the volley with a 4th-level '''Magic Missile''' — six darts, two each into the three fleeing survivors. All three fell dead out of the sky at once; they had been at 3, 3, and 2 hit points.
* The sixth and last peryton fled north. Xanphina emptied her heavy crossbow after it at 400 feet (miss, even with Tempered Soul), then ran it down the hard way — bonus-action dash from her '''Bracers of the Bound Devil''', a cliff climbed mid-chase, and a final '''Javelin of Lightning''' that left it barely airborne as it escaped to the nest.

Shade's religion check filled in what they were fighting: perytons '''mate, birth live young, and even give birth in the sky''', building nests to catch the falling newborns — and eating the ones that land hurt.

Five carcasses were harvested by lantern-light, about an hour's work — the party's first full harvest under the new rules, one check per character per carcass ([[Peryton#Harvest Record|full record]]; totals on [[Harvested Materials]]) — and then the interrupted long rest was finished properly.

=== The nest — bones, a pin, and a murder crow ===
At dawn, Beek-a-boo flew the tor. In the nest: the last peryton, hunkered down and licking its wounds — and '''bones of the creatures the flight had hunted, every one of them humanoid''', in country the party had watched teem with ordinary game. Baelgrum's religion check (a dirty 20) surfaced the stories: perytons are said to be '''cursed elves or humans, or the byproduct of magical experiments gone wrong''' — which would explain the man-shaped shadows.

Beek-a-boo's sharp eyes (19) found something worse: a '''silver harp-and-moon pin''' — the sign of a '''Harper field agent''' — on remains that were bare bone, dead a year or more. That settled it. "They only hunt humans. As brave adventurers, we may want to clear it." Gootcha channeled '''Chill Touch''' through her familiar's beak — 12 necrotic — and the wounded peryton died in its own nest. Beek-a-boo has his first kill; the table pronounced him '''a murder crow'''.

The nest gave up:
* '''4,200 gold''' — perytons don't care about coin.
* '''Slippers of Spider Climbing''' — pulled off the old bones, still in good condition.
* A '''Harper guild signet ring''' — casts '''Heroism''' a few times a day.
* A '''Potion of Water Breathing'''.
* The dead agent's '''cipher notebook''' — a Harper cipher Gootcha doesn't know. She is sending it, with the pin, back to the Harpers to be decoded.

=== Devils on the trail ===
Cutting east, the party picked Varram's trail back up, now running '''dead north into the [[Serpent Hills]]''' — "so we're following snake-like people into the Serpent Hills. I'm not optimistic, folks." Then the campsite evidence that reframed the whole pursuit: '''scorched rings in the earth, unmistakably infernal. Creatures of the Nine Hells slept here unmasked.''' Varram's cloaked, claw-footed mercenaries are '''devils''' — and the rings were fresh: '''less than a day ahead'''. ("Infernal, you say? I got something for them.") The sparse vegetation also grew sicklier and more rotten toward the northwest — noted, not followed.

=== The tomb of the ancient mage ===
The trail ended the session at '''cave-pocked bluffs''' rising over the '''ruins of a town''' in a canyon. Set into the cliff face: a '''40-foot edifice flanked by two broken colossi''' — the tomb of some ancient mage. By the town's well, the cultists' and devils' '''bedrolls lay in a cold camp''' inside a ruined tower, with nobody in sight — and off to one side, '''seven fresh shallow graves''', dug after what was most likely a fight between Varram's company and somebody local. It was one o'clock in the afternoon. The party stopped at the threshold; whether to go in waits for next time — hopefully with Karma back.

== Notable Characters ==
* '''PCs present:''' [[Xanphina]] (Amber), [[Keyleth]] (Patty), [[Gootcha]] (Ashley), [[Shade]] (Sarah), [[Baelgrum]] (Richard). '''Absent:''' [[Karma]] (Shanna). [[Carl]] remains posted at [[Boareskyr Bridge]].
* '''Familiars:''' '''Beek-a-boo''' ([[Gootcha]]) — scouted the nest-tor and made his first kill.
* '''Seen from afar:''' [[Varram the White]] — captive, tortured, bargaining for her life · a '''yuan-ti priest''' with a full serpent body over her · an '''adult or older blue dragon''' in the far west, flying away.
* '''Enemies destroyed:''' seven gnolls (a pack lord among them) and four hyenas; six [[Peryton|perytons]].
* '''The dead:''' an unnamed [[Harpers|Harper]] field agent, a year or more gone, in the peryton nest — pin and cipher-book recovered.

== Locations ==
[[Winding Water]] / the trail toward the [[Serpent Hills]] — the whole session, hex by hex. • The petrified gulch, the shed-field, the gnoll bluff, the forgotten shrine, and the nest-tor — waypoints now marked on the company's map. • The ruined town and the '''ancient mage's tomb''' below the cave-pocked bluffs — where the session ended, and next session begins.

== Factions ==
* '''[[Harpers]]''' — a field agent's remains found in the peryton nest; his pin and undeciphered cipher notebook are on their way back to the network via [[Gootcha]]. The recovered guild signet ring (Heroism) is in the party's hands. Gootcha's end-of-session filings: [[Nightingale Dispatch: The Serpent's Prisoner]] (the archive) and [[Nightingale Letter: The Najara Watch]] (to Leosin).
* '''[[Zhentarim]]''' — [[Shade]] valued the snakeskin haul against the Network's standard trade pricing.
* '''[[Cult of the Dragon]]''' — Varram's company keeps Tiamat's rites on the run, and its cloaked mercenaries are '''devils of the Nine Hells'''.

== Quests ==
* '''ADVANCED: [[Find Varram the White]]''' — the reveal of the arc: '''Varram is a prisoner of the yuan-ti''', seen by scrying — tied to a chair in a windowless cell, tortured by a serpent-bodied priest, offering wealth for her freedom. Her company's trail runs north into the Serpent Hills without her; its mercenaries are devils; the party is '''less than a day behind'''; and somebody on this road is digging up graves looking for something mask-sized. The chase stands at the door of an ancient mage's tomb.
* '''NEW LEADS:''' what petrified the people and animals in the gulch (northwest, unexplored)? • who dug up the explorer's grave hunting a mask — and is it Varram's company or the yuan-ti? • the Harper agent's cipher notebook — what was he watching out here? • an adult-or-older blue dragon ranging the far west • the sickly, rotting vegetation worsening to the northwest • seven fresh graves and an unentered tomb.

== Loot & Resources ==
* '''4,200 gp''' from the peryton nest; '''24 gp''' from the disturbed grave.
* '''Slippers of Spider Climbing''' · '''Harper guild signet ring''' (casts Heroism a few times per day) · '''Potion of Water Breathing''' (all logged by Baelgrum).
* '''18 giant-constrictor shed snakeskins''' — trade-grade ([[Harvested Materials]]).
* '''Peryton components''' from five carcasses — see the [[Peryton#Harvest Record|Peryton harvest record]].
* Baelgrum's '''scrying crystal''' (1,000 gp, acquired in Elturel) entered play with the Scrying spell.

== Quotes ==
* "Great wealth, great wealth will be yours if you just free me." — [[Varram the White]], under the knife
* "The statues in this gulch were never carved. The tool marks are missing." — the gulch's warning
* "They would probably come back without their skin." — the DM, retiring the Greater Restoration plan
* "It's always got to be snakes." — [[Baelgrum]]
* "They're huggers." — [[Shade]], on constrictors / "It reminded me of the infernal womb." — Shade, freed from the snakeskin she slept in
* "I was pony hungry, not hyena hungry." — Shade
* "We're doing this in honor of Karma, who could not be here. She'd want us to do this." — [[Gootcha]], before the gnoll fight
* "You're welcome for the short rest." — Gootcha, waking the camp mid-peryton-dive
* "If I've learned anything from video games, it's always search the nest." — Baelgrum
* "He's officially a murder crow!" — Gootcha, on Beek-a-boo's first kill
* "So we're following snake-like people into the Serpent Hills. I'm not optimistic, folks." — Gootcha
* "Infernal, you say? I got something for them." — Shade and Baelgrum, reading the scorched rings

== Session End ==
The company stands in a dead town at one in the afternoon, before the sealed front of an ancient mage's tomb: broken colossi above, a cold devils' camp at the well, seven fresh graves in the earth, and Varram — somewhere — trading promises of gold against a torturer's patience. Less than a day separates the hunters from the hunted. '''Next session: whether to go in.'''

== Attribution & Uncertainties ==
* Five players present; Shanna (Karma) absent. Zoom labels: "Amber Vaske" (Xanphina), "Sarah Rees" (Shade), "Baelgrum" (Richard), "Wes Vaske" (DM) — and a shared "Kootchey" login covering both Ashley (Gootcha) and Patty (Keyleth), who joined together; their lines are attributed by context.
* ''Table note: second outing of the hex-crawl VTT — now 3-mile hexes (~1 hour each) near points of interest, with night-tint, per-character clue sharing, and the "unresolved clue" question-mark view. Rolls were split between the hex app and D&D Beyond.''
* The recording renders the wyrmspeaker as "Varum/Varim/Varm/Barham" and the creatures as "Perryton/Paratin/Perroten/parroten"; standardized to Varram and peryton. The familiar's name is rendered "Peekaboo/Bikaboo/BeagleBoo" in the recording; the confirmed spelling is '''Beek-a-boo'''. Speakers used "he" and "she" for Varram in the scrying scene; her established canon (a woman) stands.
* Baelgrum's scrying focus (a crystal worth 1,000 gp) and his collection of the purple thread were added retroactively at the table with DM approval; both are recorded as if done in the moment.
* New table rulings this session: a '''Tempered Soul spend can overcome a natural 1''' on an attack roll (Keyleth, vs. the perytons); Tempered Soul '''on damage''' reaffirmed as legal to finish a kill. Tempered Soul spends are logged on [[Tempered Soul/Usage Log]].
* Harvest component assignments were drafted in post-session processing from the recorded rolls; corrections welcome — see [[Peryton]].

[[Category:Sessions]] [[Category:Rise of Tiamat]]