#Princes of the Apocalypse

[janedoe297-art]

[supereffectiveartblog]

Lilith - Tiefling Bard

This is probably my 11th or 12th iteration of this character's design. The skin tone and hair style has been settled for a while, but the specifics of her standard outfit has been the bane of my existence for most of a year.

This newest Lilith puts together all my fave design aspects. Very risque but also fancy.

Here's some of the other notable Lilith designs that led to this one:

[pepperlia]

Cinematic illustration from our Princes of the Apocalypse D&D campaign 🤍💙🤍💙

I'm the DM, they befriended Shoalar Quanderil and I can't be more happy because now I'm in love with him and he betrayed the Crushing Wave Cult for them. I changed his alignment before the encounter, I don't like when every enemy NpC is irremediably "evil" aligned, in my version he's more chaotic neutral! At first Shoalar planned to use them, but during the battle against Jollyver he took their side and they became allies. In the manual itself he's described as a funny and bit of unpleasant bold guy, not the most devoted Crushing Wave cultist, so in my interpretation he just want to make his job (he loves it to the bones) and saw the cult as an oppressing presence in *HIS* river. He's curious about other genasi folk, so he got a soft spot for Enkélador. He likes to tease him since they have the same "dad's jokes" sense of humor. I gave him a hurdy gurdy even if he's not a bard, just for flavor! Because yes. Why not 😂

[gingerbreadcai]

Also, I never uploaded theeese - they're from almost a year ago now.

Sometimes you're just a sheltered orphan from an arcane tower and also your childhood best friend who you haven't seen in a couple of years turns out to be a cult leader?? Absolutely tragic. My DM broke my heart into little pieces and I thanked her. :')

This campaign is currently on hiatus but who knows, maybe Maeve will help save the Dessarin Valley someday.

[soupghostart]

I’d like everyone to meet the Gusts of (Hot) Wind!

This is the dungeons and dragons campaign I’ve been a part of for the past 5 years. My good boy Flick, short for Flicker (the fire guy), has been living in my head all this time, and I’ll always treasure the memories I’ve made with my friends playing as this group that is so special to me.

From left to right: Amba (the DM and my lovely wife), Althea, Fortune (the owl cat familiar), Anahita, Flick, Luch, Talik, and Killian.

I’m going to miss them, but it’s on to the next adventure!

[chaoticallynerdy]

Also get to play them this weekend. Billie is a 10th level gunslinger/rogue (arcane trickster). She’s a vibe. They rock!!

[mercutiodidntdie]

Two party members from the POTA campaign I'm in, our gunslinging warlock Lokir and our barbarian dwarf, Flint =))

[supereffectivemoonblast]

Princes of the Apocalypse

Chapter 1: What is wrong with you people?

This campaign takes place in The Forgotten Realms, canon to the same world as our Tomb of Annihilation campaign (link), but it is yet to be seen if any of those characters cameo.

We began in the small town of Red Larch, north of Waterdeep. A group of delegates from various groups went missing in the wilderness around the town, so many groups sent adventurers to Red Larch to investigate.

The Zhentarim, a shady mercenary company sent in Ele Bell, a Human Ranger, and Dain Throl, a Human Monk. The two meet up in Red Larch's only tavern, the "Helm at Highsun", trying to be discreet. They attract the attention of Ferthen Soriel, a Dragonborn Artficer sent by The Harpers, a secret organisation of spies and lorekeepers. While Ferthen asks the two on what they think of the meaning of love, they are addressed by a barmaid who recognises Ferthen as a fellow Harper. This was Lilith Maddox, a Tiefling Bard who grew up in the area.

Meet the party

As the group discuss what they're doing in this town, they are watched from the shadows by Cereg Granthorsson, a Human Rogue, who had worked with the Emerald Enclave for most of his life. As they left the tavern to ask a Harper contact about more details, Cereg tailed them from a distance.

As they introduce themselves to the owner of the general goods store, a Harper, Cereg finally introduces himself, as Mr E, berating the other adventurers for being so careless about what they've let others overhear. The Harper contact, Vallavoe, says their best lead is a merchant in the nearby town of Womford, who sold items that one of the missing Delegates should have had with them.

They start their journey that afternoon and it begins very smoothly. On the second night, they join the camp of a group of paladins called the Knights of Samular. At their first meeting, Cereg caught Lilith trying to steal from the Knights when Ferthen was asking them about the meaning of love. Cereg reminded her how they were trying to stay under the radar. Lilith promises she wouldn't get them in trouble, and later takes some of the Knight's coin when most of the camp was asleep. And the group's parted none the wiser.

"Cult of Water" enemies (John-Paul Balmet)

Day 3 begins uneventfully, but toward the afternoon, they are ambushed by a group of bandits weilding shells and fish bones as armour and weapons. They spoke in a strange language they did not understand, and one of them was a caster weilding ice magic. The combat began unfavourably for our party, but after Ele and Ferthen started felling the grunts, magic from Lilith and arrows from Cereg started pushing the fight up the hill toward the Mage. Dain cornered the caster, and once the rest of the party caught up, we knocked out the caster, but not lethally. We have some questions for them.

[threeroadsmeet]

Out-Of-Context quotes from a session of Princes of the apocalypse

"It Mitigates the flopping"

"Stab the rat or shoot it?"

"Are you mid-Lick?" "there are a lot of ways to check for life, You're the one that went to licking."

"I've updated to soup apparently."

"booby traps are springy" "They can make a small problem large if you know what I mean."

[reddragoncrush]

a comic i made back when i got invited to a princes of the apocalypse game, from the hook my dm gave me! it's old and it shows but i'm still fairly proud of this composition-wise.

[mageofthelufaines]

Alakin Zephrear, the Prophet of Water.

Just a drawing of my former Princes of the Apocalypse character, Alakin, who became the BBEG after getting corrupted by Drown. Now he can be all broody and dramatic about it at least.

[supereffectiveartblog]

Year of D&D 2023

This year, it was difficult for free time to line up for me and my friends. In last years "Year of D&D" post, i started by complaining about how infrequent our play was that year, but this year, we played even less. Mostly because of scheduling issues, but also because its difficult to plan as a DM. The scheduling issue has become more difficult partially because all of our current campaigns have more regular player characters. In 2020, we played with 1 DM and 4 players, but now most of our campaigns have at least 5 characters, one had 6, but one dropped out, and I DM'd a campaign that briefly had 8 player characters. Finding free time that lines up for 8 people is very very difficult. But as I'll discuss later on, we might've come up with a solution to this.

Here's the stats for this year:

In 2023, our group played 4 different adventures, a combined 12 sessions.

I made 13 session arts (1 extra one being the Meet the Party art for Princes). This was compared to 22 sessions and 21 session arts the previous year.

I was a player character in 2 campaigns, and the DM in one campaign and one Oneshot.

Pokémon Oster was the only returning campaign from last year, with sessons 1-5 happening in 2022, and sessions 6-9 this year.

Princes of the Apocalypse is our new core D&D module campaign, continuing from our DM of Tomb of Annihilation and Ravnica. We played 3 sessions this year.

Call of the Netherdeep was my first try at a module campaign, taking place in the world of Critical Role. We have 5 core players that will play every time, plus 3 "guest" players that play as the rival party, and I only intend to join us when they're needed or free.

Frozen Memories was our Halloween One-Shot for the year, and like Call of the Netherdeep, was pre-written. In my opinion, following someone else's work made it flow better than last year's Halloween One-Shot.

Darryl Fisher returns from last year as my player character in Pokemon Oster, our Pokemon Tabletop United campaign. Since last year, there's been no siginificant change in his playstyle. He fights alongside his Pokemon when facing some Wild Pokemon and ruffians, but respects league rules against regular trainers. Darryl is a mono Water type trainer, and his team consists of Piplup, Buizel, Carvanha, Magikarp, Wooper, and Tympole. He embodies everything a water type trainer would be, he is a swimmer, a fisherman, and even a diver, interested in buried treasure. I play him as a blokey bloke, and a bit of a bogan, but he has a good heart, and steps up to the plate when needed.

The Pokémon Oster campaign has no sign of stopping, so we will see more of Darryl next year.

Lilith Maddox is my player character in Princes of the Apocalypse. Lilith is my second attempt at a morally grey character (after Nevaeh), but one who i hope to play on a redemption arc on. Lilith is an Eloquence Bard, meaning I can expect most social interactions to go my way, and although i havent had much of a chance to play her, I want to use that as part of her personality and arc. Her father was an incubus, and this means that Lilith's aura naturally puts people at ease, and more likely to agree with her. Because Lilith usually gets her way, this means she has developed a bratty complex, with the secret fear that actually maybe nobody likes her for real. I want to play her to help get over my own imposter syndrome.

Lilith has also been the artistic bane of my existence this year. Perfecting the look of a character that is both snooty and reserved, with an outfit that speaks Bard and Succubus, but not in an inappropriate way, has been almost impossible for me. What I've presented here is what I hope is my final take on Lilith, but who knows when I'll next come upon a design idea I want to incorporate into my most incomplete D&D character.

This year I also took to DMing more. In previous years, I was DMing a campaign I wrote myself called Rise of the Lich Queen, and it wasn't fantastic. So this year, I've put the Lich Queen on hiatus to make an attempt at a following a prewritten campaign, Call of the Netherdeep. The campaign pre-bakes a rival party into the story, and instead of just using the pre-written rivals, i thought it would be interesting for real people to play them. Since the rivals aren't there every session, their players wouldn't need to be every session either. The necessity of having all character present at the start of the campaign did make scheduling difficult, and we only organised 4 sessions. It is on me to schedule as the DM for this campaign, so hopefully, we will find the time for more of this campaign this year.

Our first year of D&D featured a Halloween Oneshot, and we missed out on that 2021. So i've strived to take the reins and make it a yearly tradition again. Last year I wrote my own OneShot, and it had an interesting gimmick, but was poorly written. This year, like my core campaign, I followed a prewritten adventure, Frozen Memories. Having lore and set pieces already written for me allowed me to flesh out specific moments and better write character moments.

What I think was the better take away from this OneShot however was what DIDNT happen. I ran a couple session zeros to help with character creation and to set the stage for the setting, and at one point, all 8 of my closest friends had drafted up a character idea. But when the year started to run out, I decided I needed a cut off, and one weekend, just ran the adventure for who was available. I think I want to use this format going forward; running shorter adventures and changing out the players depending on who is free. I don't know if it will always be OneShots, but I think flexibility for scheduling will make sessions more frequent.

So if I only played as two characters this year, how was I going to fill in the space on my Year of D&D poster for this year? Well this year I played a videogame called Baldur's Gate 3. And BG3 is basically D&D 5e as a videogame. Since first playing the game, I have beaten the game with 3 different characters, and I based each of them on past and present D&D characters. I have a couple more characters in mind that I will play into next year, but there's not a lot to the game that I haven't experienced in my first three playthroughs.

I did write ups for all these characters in a previous post so if you wanna read up on those, Here is the one for Hawthorne and Lilith, and Here is the one for Nevaeh. I really enjoyed Baldur's Gate 3 and it is 100% my game of the year. It scratched an itch brought upon by a lack of D&D, and I appreciate it for that.

As I mentioned above, I'm hoping for TTRPGs next year I can better take advantage of one-off and short adventures that do not require the entire table to be present. Hoping the pattern of less tabletops each subsequent years does not continue. Here's wishing for more D&D with friends next year. If you want to see specifics on individual sessions, I have a very complex system of links on my Pinned Post.

[pepperlia]

Portrait/Token + Character Sheet commission I made for one of my players from the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign I'm currently running!

Enkélador Duskwhisper

Air genasi | Way of the four Elements Monk Enkélador is an Air Genasi found and raised at the Yellow Rose Monastery, he grew spending time between martial art training, meditation, and study of history and geography of the Faerûn. As others companions from the Monastery he got the mission to investigate some unnatural climatic changes along the Sword Coast, specifically in the Dessarin Valley. Monks can't stick together for this mission, instead, arrived at Red Larch he met an interesting trio from Waterdeep!

[gingerbreadcai]

The timelines between the two campaigns don't match up but what if!!

[xmoriartea]

we’ve been running a homebrew desert game that combines dragon heist and princes of the apocalypse and we’re at the joining point of the two and hoooo boy my warlock made some choices last nightttt

what do you do when two nobles start sacrificing people to save their children from the bad infernal deal they made?

well, if you’re Ives, you spend a week figuring out this fucking contract (with only several hours of eyes on the contract itself), find the loophole that says the children will only be taken if the contract holder desires the children, and then proceed to negotiate before several guard factions, your friends, and most allied noble WITH said creature about taking the parents in their place, showing absolutely ZERO remorse because in the end, they killed SEVENTY-FIVE people like three days ago and have been riding easy in a luxury prison cell since

and when the creature demands a third soul to compensate for this switch, you offer the fire elemental creature bound to the physical contract in a move that confuses everyone present

now next week we get to see what happens when these 3(?) beings are engulfed and consumed by pure elemental fire and hopefully take care of them quickly since every party member is tapped of primary abilities atm and we have no idea how useful these guards with us actually are

dungeons and dragons is fucking wild guys

[vaporwavemonk-art]

Moment of solitude 💜💛