The Second D&D Tarak Campaign - Showdown at the Gulthias Tree

Welcome to the ongoing saga of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign I ran a little while back, using The Sunken Citadel module from the Tales From The Yawning Portal source book.

In the last post, the party broke through to the Twilight Grove, and underground area of sickly woodland and tangled undergrowth at the very lowest level of the Sunken Citadel. It's also where the "Big Bad" lurks, but they didn't know that yet !

I hope you enjoy my D&D campaign write-ups, and the commentary I add to them. Questions, comments and feedback are welcome !

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After spending a little while (a short rest, even...) recuperating their strength in the ruined base of a tower, the party moved as stealthily as they could towards the large tree they had seen looming above everything else in the grove.

The roof was about forty feet high, and they soon found themselves standing outside a walled enclosure. The walls were around twenty feet high at the top, but were so broken down that there were several places where gaining access was as simple as pushing through the shrubs and saplings growing there.

Within the courtyard was a huge, blackened, twisted tree. It was clearly infected by some terrible form of evil. Three figures stood in front of it. Two humans, one in armour and the other in robes, who were definitely not healthy looking; these were NPC's who had been turned into tree thralls. If the party had ever bothered to talk to anyone who mattered (which they hadn't), they'd have realised that they were missing people who they were supposed to rescue. The third was Belak, the druid behind all this mischief.

As the party entered the area, Belak called out to them "Hold a moment, you know not what you do !"

So if you've been following the adventures of this party, I'll give you one guess what they did next.

They stopped to talk to him.

Naaah, who am I kidding ? They attacked on sight !

What did you expect ?

Charging forward, the party's fighters were blocked by the two tree thralls before they could get to Belak, and fierce melee ensued.

Fartacus, the party's bard, didn't bother encouraging his comrades; instead, he hurled insults at Belak. For anyone who plays D&D, this was a bardic ability called Vicious Mockery, which can harm enemies and give them disadvantage on their rolls.

Garnet the aasimar sorcerer started off by throwing eldritch blasts at Belak.

In the second round of combat, the warrior types were still caught up fighting the tree thralls. Life got very complicated for the two supporting characters, as a trio of the saplings came to life revealing themselves as twig blights, at the same time as Belak's animal companion, a frog, jumped out of the tree and attacked.

But this was a case where the party's combat experience worked in their favour. Consistently battling everything they'd met gave them the ability to rapidly assess a situation and find the best tactical solution.

One of the players (I don't recall who) called out that the tree was the heart of the evil in this place, and that they needed to target it with everything they had.

At some risk to themselves, each of the characters in turn disengaged from the opponents they were facing and tried to do as much damage to the tree as they could. Being a static target, it didn't have a great armour class, but it had a good number of hit points and resistances to most forms of special damage.

It didn't help. One thing this party was very good at was dishing out spectacular amounts of damage in a very short time. Ignoring the desperate attempts of Belak, the thralls and twig blights to take them down before it was too late, the heroes laid into the tree with great violence. It was capped with Erioch (the battle priest) emptying a flask of alchemist's fire onto it.

The tree was vulnerable to fire damage (i.e. taking double damage from fire-based attacks), and this final attack was enough to destroy it.

With the tree gone and no longer controlling them, the thralls and twig blights turned on Belak, slaying him almost immediately. Then they turned their attention back to the party. But by this time, with the tree and Belak down and Belak's frog hopping off now it's master was gone, the action economy had tilted towards the party.

The book goes into lots of detail about how, once the tree was gone, the two thralls would gradually regain their personalities but couldn't be saved without magic. What a waste of print ! They lasted about three more rounds before being mercilessly exterminated.

It was clear to the party that this was the final encounter in the Sunless Citadel. To be fair to them, they did a very efficient job of overcoming what was designed to be a very tough fight. They came out of it was everyone quite badly damaged, but no-one had been knocked out or died.

After a quick bit of looting of the bodies, they started heading out of the Citadel.

Next time: An unusual offer, and return to Oakhurst.....

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oblivioncubed 2 days ago

Sunless Citadel is such a cool dungeon and quest. I'm so glad they converted the OG dungeon into one for 5e and added it to an anthology book. I liked the setting so much that Oakhurst is part of my world as well. We haven't gone there yet, but it's an option!

0.03 VYB

1 vote

alonicus 2 days ago

It's a great dungeon, and full of possibilities. I must admit I didn't like the way the book was organised, it made it a lot harder to run than it should have been. The too-small map for the top level that was just part of a page rather than a pull-out (or at least full-page map) was insanely hard to work with.

Oakhurst is now one of several settings pulled from elsewhere that have become part of the world. It's already taken on a life of it's own and become unrecognisable compared to it's origins.... the next few posts in the series will explain what happened there ! 😀

0.12 VYB

I'm excited to see the changes! (And borrow ideas lol)

0.00 VYB

zakludick 2 days ago

The meatheads do it again...

lmao ! Yes, but this time it actually worked in their favour. Sometimes instant violence really is the right response 😁

0.15 VYB

This party would make a great band of Black Templar Space Marines.

Instant violence all the time!