The Second D&D Tarak Campaign - Into The Twilight Grove

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 pushed rapidly through the lower level of the Sunken Citadel, efficiently avoiding the worst perils and killing anything that stood in their way.

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

Image created by AI in NightCafe Studio

Finding themselves in a long passageway with two doors near the end, our heroes advanced rapidly and chose to take the second of the doors.

It opened onto a chamber which was half collapsed, with the southern wall missing and open to the Twilight Grove.

It was lit by clumps of luminescent fungus which revealed the huge underground space of the Twilight Grove beyond. They could see a twisted mass of briars and sickly, twisted shrubs and small trees growing among and over ruined towers and walls from the Sunken Citadel.

Within the chamber were piles of roots and twigs, specimens to be used by Belak, the Mad Druid. Four goblins were sorting through them for him. The book tells us that they were intended to be hostile to intruders. They didn't have the chance to demonstrate this, as the intruders... err, heroes.... turned out to be far more hostile, attacking them on sight.

The poor goblins were almost immediately in deep trouble, out-classed by the ferocity and experience of the characters. They realised this, and called out "Aid us, Protector of the Twilight Grove !"

The cry for help didn't bring Belak, and didn't save their brief lives, but it did attract the attention of the nearest denizens of the Twilight Grove. Four twig blights rushed in and attacked the party.

While they weren't as strong as the party, the twig blights had the advantage of surprise and took the adventurers in the flank while they were still finishing off the goblins. That meant that the bard and sorcerer found themselves in hand-to-hand combat. That was something they weren't expecting or particularly good at !

It took a couple of rounds of combat before Erioch and Griff finished putting the goblins down and were able to rescue their comrades. Luckily Fartacus the bard and Garnet the sorcerer had managed to avoid taking any serious hits, and the twig blights rapidly succumbed to the front-line fighters.

After clearing the sample chamber, the party moved on into the Twilight Grove. It was a tangled mess of shrubs, briars and spiky undergrowth, and progress was slow. In the distance at the far end of the Grove, they spotted the blackened top of the Gulthias Tree.

If they'd bothered to stop and capture anything alive during pretty much any part of the adventure after leaving the kobold section, they'd have known this was the key objective in the whole place. But they hadn't, they'd ruthlessly butchered their way through everything they'd met. Even so, they recognised that it was something important they should head towards.

On their way towards the Gulthias Tree, the characters were repeatedly ambushed by twig blights, which rapidly turned into a proper fight. There were six blights in total, which gave them the advantage in terms of action economy (a kind of crude measure, looking at which side has the most actions available to them in a combat round). But the adventurers were able to deal with them in a running battle that took a little while but didn't leave the party particularly damaged.

Suspecting that the next encounter would be a big one, the party hid in a particularly dense patch of undergrowth concealing a ruined tower base and took a short rest to replenish their hit points and some spells.

Next time... showdown at the Gulthias Tree....

Previous posts in this series;
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-introduction
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-lets-meet-our-characters-
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-arrival-at-oakhurst
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-to-the-sunless-citadel
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-into-the-citadel
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-kobolds-are-people-too-
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-a-deal-with-kobolds
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-no-creatures-land
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-a-beast-a-fountain-and-more-rats
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-first-encounter-with-the-cunning-goblins
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-pits-and-dragons
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-the-goblin-chiefs-potted-plant
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-down-the-hole
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-the-fungus-garden-and-a-laboratory
https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@alonicus/the-second-dandd-tarak-campaign-the-bugbear-gardener++++++++