“Hag makes one more big move — each time one of the four blades of the windmill swings down, Hag reaches up and rips each of the four blades off.”
HIGHLIGHTS
- A familiar cry
- A windmill leveled
- Darkness vs. flaming sphere
- Darkness in action
Episode 17: The Events at the Windmill, Part Two
WHERE WE LEFT OFF
We resume our story on the road to Phandalin with the wreckage of an evil necromancer’s windmill smoldering in the distance. Little Pocket has just spotted several cloaked, masked humanoid figures near patches of upturned earth about a mile ahead along the path. An owlbear cries out in the wilderness as the setting sun approaches the horizon. Hag calls back…
RECAP
It was an eventful day! After receiving an urgent message from Sister Garaele at dawn, the party hurried after the rabbit who delivered it, eventually arriving at the windmill of an abandoned farm a half day’s travel east of Phandalin. A red wolf leapt out of the second story window of the windmill and led the party back in that direction just as a hobbit, bound hand and foot, fell from the third story window. The hobbit, the mysterious bard Tibboh, freed himself and joined Little Pocket and the wolf in storming the windmill while Enya and Hag disposed of several zombies stumbling around the field below. Little Pocket commanded a flaming sphere and Enya a shimmering spiritual weapon in a fierce battle with a monstrous abberation that gibbered incessantly from its many mouths before going up in flames. The party reunited on the second floor where they fought to interrupt an elven wizard who was in the process of performing an arcane ritual on the unconscious body of their comrade, Sildar. The wizard succeeded in counterspelling what would have been a devastating spell from Tibboh and then cloaked the interior of the windmill in darkness while continually raising more and more zombies from the piles of recently deceased hobbits that littered the floor. Tibboh finally managed to land the first blow on the wizard, eventually forcing him to flee in gaseous form just before Hag went all Bruce Banner on the last zombie standing. As if that wasn’t enough, there was barely a windmill standing by the end of the day. Oh, and don’t drink the water.
MASTERING THE GAME: THE SPELL DARKNESS
There were many dramatic moments, including the period when those inside the windmill were fighting in the dark. I realized after the session, though, that I made a mistake with how the darkness spell interacted with Little Pocket’s flaming sphere spell. While I knew the magical darkness overpowered natural light sources and darkvision, I took for granted that a magical light source would overcome the magical darkness. I should’ve followed the good habit you all have of always reading a spell description aloud the first time it comes up in play. As you can see in the last paragraph of the spell description (PHB: 230), I got it wrong. That’ll happen sometimes, and it’s okay. I bring it up only to point out just how powerful magical darkness is, particularly if this isn’t the last time we cross paths with the necromancer.
DARKNESS IN ACTION
This week’s illustrative example comes again from campaign 2 of Critical Role. You can watch from the beginning of the episode to hear some of the context for the scene, and then you’ll see a battle where the darkness spell comes into play. The characters are fourth level, just like we will be any day now, and the battle also includes several other skills that we are familiar with. It’s much shorter than the combats in previous weeks, and I’ll try to mix up the duration and content of these as much as I can in the future. Here you go: Lost & Found | Critical Role | Campaign 2, Episode 13.
It can be fun to watch it from the very beginning to see some of the silliness the players get up to as well as to hear the events that led to the combat, though you can also skip ahead to the 5 minute mark when the show really starts. The fight is over before the 37 minute mark. Enjoy!
Be heroic,
Be creative,
Have fun together,
Isaac
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