With the first hints of a greater incumbent entity, we move forward; asking what the players seek next in Waterdeep before they return home.
They've been in Waterdeep just over of a week.
The story is starting to seem a bit disjointed with all the doings of late. A lot of strange and arcanic things have been conveyed along with new characters and grand scale opportunities.
I've spent time setting up notes on defenses and how the pockets of time will fuck with the playership, but the question I can't answer is how the players will ultimately approach Daed's tower.
Dorums plateau is a wretched place now, littered with undying devilry trawling a scorched earth of pools spilling toxic melted snow, heat treated iralite radiating volcanic from within the mountainside; these volcanic flows erupt occasionally, spurting hot fluids up and outwards. Floating over all this miasma of apocalypse, is the other end of Dorums plateau, upon and around which, floats the remains of Daeds tower. Embedded in that microcosm of remains, is a giant bridge of glowing green stone littered with corpses, and emplacements, stretching from a yawning portal to Acereraks personal hell space.
The playership has all sorts of arcanic abilities for transport, but given the make up of the terrain, it's a safe bet that any attempt to teleport into the area will have nasty effects.
Nobody has yet tried to eye the tower with Scuds unit. This is important because it works differently from the Churchs eye apparatus.
If you recall, the Great Eye Apparatus in the Church of Sun & Scroll controls literally a giant arcane eye in arcane space, zoomed in on Torril. The manifest precendent of this is ridiculous, but we're ignoring that because reasons.
Let's take a moment to talk about some rules. These are copy/pasted from reddit.
When you are making ranged attacks and an enemy is adjacent to you, the attacks are made with Disadvantage no matter who you are targeting.
To go with ranged attacks: cover. If there is something directly in the way between you and your target, even if it is your friend, the target gets a +2 to AC AND dex saves. Sometimes archers have sharpshooter and it doesn't apply, but for especially warlocks and other spellcasters I've seen it largely forgotten.
Darkvision. It doesn't let you see in the dark. Darkness just becomes dim light for you up to 60 feet. You still need light to see properly.
Dim light is disadvantage on sight-based perception, and advantage/disadvantage when it comes to passives is +5/-5.
There is no holding actions in 5E. There's only the Ready action.
Also, readied actions occur right after their trigger; they don't interrupt the trigger.
By default, every combatant in an encounter knows the location of every other combatant. That includes invisible creatures. Invisible creatures, however, are able to take the Hide action in plain sight (they don't need to find total cover or heavy obscurement) and can then hide their location from their opponents. That's really the extent to which invisibility explicitly interacts with Stealth rolls.
Bonus Action casting time spells (PHB p.203):
A spell cast with a bonus action is especially swift. You must use a bonus action on your turn to cast the spell, provided that you haven't already taken a bonus action this turn. You can't cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action.
Grappling can replace any attack.
Back to your regularly scheduled post.
So Scuds teleportation magicks can't get the players there, they'll probably have to fly and that's probably going to be dangerous because reasons.
The Halloween session is coming up
I have no idea what to do for it; there are so many possibilities for the players to explore and truth be they may not go after the 'final objective' or 'endgame'. They may just go back and do some epic 'accounting;' or in other words, take care of their business in Royals Peak. Whatever business that might be, which again, I may have trouble tracking.
The biggest challenge I have is deciding which of the plethora of NPCs to focus on. I mean, let's look at this from a birds eye view.
We have at the outset, Leostrad of the Vogon family who is solely interested in the Cloud Spires kingdom and its success. A week on from the disastrous outcomes left in the wake of the playerships work, he'll be looking for answers.
Several of the major house heads should have several issues and meetings have been happening all over as messengers are running as fast as they can to carry the conversations of many a lord and lady.
Contracts have been lost due to the crashed airships caused by Daeds works, and several of the houses have suffered loss; they're seeking answers on whether or not the threat will be dealt with.
The Llewellyns are mostly unaffected. Dirk's been hearing things from friends around town. Mactillian continues his work with Scudivarious Deralta. Eilonwy is getting a summons from the ministry since she's in town, there are some folks with some questions and chances are I'll be getting blue skin (Eddard Reville back in there.
The Keterrog house has Berholdt carrying the banner capably enough; they've kept the city protected with other houses efforts. The Good Doctor has been busily attending to the 'return of Lucretia' given her absence can no longer be overlooked at council meetings. While Berholdt is a house husband, he is not the house head, and nor is Ivor.
There have been some skirmishes with the FrostFire, aimless for their lack of Daeds support, they look for resources through out the CloudSpires once again.
The militia, Fighters Guild and house forces where applicable, have kept these skirmishes a distant nuisance with minimal wounded or casualties.
The Council of Wyrms has concerns for the Cloud Spires well being, or the planets well being at large. Unbeknownst to the playership, there are representatives of the wyrms in Waterdeep for a summit.
The Nine Paws have been working to put together the latest batch of Thunders orders for the Xanathar, while Thunder herself is working to figure the Zhentarims influence in Waterdeep.
More to come..