March 04, 2026
D&D Session Report
March 04, 2026
D&D Session Report
Up a creek.
Up a creek.
A couple weeks ago, I finally got my friends back together for our first session of the new year, only most of the way through February. Scheduling continues to be the bane of all campaigns, haha. We started off the session with the usual couple hours of snacks and catching up, which I always appreciate. I find it just plain ol' nice to settle into the game with good food and chat first.
Once we all got underway, the party decided that the best course of action was to follow up on their lead on the leader of the Harengon brigands. They quickly headed north from the Slanty Tower towards the Brigands' Tollway in search of Agdon Longscarf. Along the way, they needed to cross a particularly wide but shallow stream. Red decided that it was the perfect time for a quick dip, and dove right in, only to experience some murky visions of a frog-person wearing an ill-fitting flower crown. Snuffy dove in after him and had a very similar vision! Interestingly, when Bramblewine swam across, he got a vision of a red-capped woman butchering some meat in some non-descript shack somewhere, so they determined that the visions might be somewhat random. Hemlock wrote this all off as "more needless fairy whimsy" and just found some stepping stones to cross the river on.
Eventually, they made it to the Tollway, a network of rickety piers and walkways over the swampy mud of Hither. After testing their footing and continuing on, they were beset by a troupe of bagpipe-playing Harengons lead by none other than Agdon Longscarf himself! After some short banter, battle was joined, with Agdon set on robbing the party blind. It turned out that the troupe was much more than the party could handle, and after a few short rounds with some oddly good rolls from the rabbitfolk, the party was mostly knocked out. Red escaped, hid under the piers, and watched the Harengons rob the rest of the unconscious party. Then, the rabbit-folk took the unconscious party members onto their skiff and tied them up to take them somewhere! Red decided to stow away on the skiff to hopefully free the party once an opportunity presented itself. It's a good thing the sourcebook specified the harengon ambush was non-lethal, or that would surely have been a pretty rough TPK! As it was though, they simply got their items stolen and taken to be imprisoned at Granny Nightshade's abode in the Bullywug village of Downfall.
Eventually, the party (minus Red) woke up in cages suspended from a strange house in an unknown location. Alongside them, there was another prisoner they didn't immediately recognize. It was a satyr that had apparently been caught by the same rabbit-folk while he was bathing in a nearby pond. The satyr turned out to have a pretty cavalier attitude about the whole ordeal, mostly feeling like it was "just one of those things", and "kinda exciting, actually". Once the Harengons' skiff turned to leave the party to their fate, Red bailed out of their skiff and sunk into the muddy water below to wait for the coast to clear. Once it was clear, he scaled the building and managed to free his party and the satyr. Then, after surveying their surroundings and peering through the dirty windows near where they were held, they saw a red-capped woman doing some butchery inside (Just like the vision!) and decided it would be safer to simply jump to the water below and swim to shore.
Having made it to the shore, the Satyr thanked them for freeing him and granted the party a magical boon before heading out to parts unknown to find some clothes and go about his business. The party decided to explore the town they found themselves in, and quickly found themselves caught in a bullywug plot to overthrow the current bullywug king of Downfall! The very first building with lights on they tried to explore was locked with a bullywug guard behind the door asking for a password. After a bit of back and forth, Bramblewine convinced the guard that they could be trusted, and came upon a gathering of bullywugs discussing a coup against the current kind. Sensince discretion was of the essence, Bramblewine played along with their conversation and learned their whole plan to depose the current king was to simply walk up to the king holding a dagger, "trip", and have the dagger fall into the king's face. Good plan! They also learned the location of the court, as well as the scarecrow guide to Thither that they had heard about earlier.
Quickly excusing themselves, they set off in search of the scarecrow. Along the way, they ran into a few more bullywugs that didn't really pay them much mind, and made it to a stepping stone crossing over a small stream. Red decided to just dive into the muck again, and found that one of the stones was a stone giant's head! (The rest of the giant was still attached, but he was taking a nap there). The rest of the party made sure to just walk around the stone giant to avoid waking him up. Then, they came across a hot air balloon workshop that had caught fire! After some quick combat and firefighting that knocked out Hemlock again, they put the shop to rights and got some fancy brooches from the bullywug running the shop to indicate their noble deeds.
Soon after, they found the scarecrow sitting on a bridge to the king's court. There, it was telling stories to a collection of bullywug heads on pikes that were all much more animated than you'd expect. As it turns out, all of the bullywug heads were former kings of the Soggy Court, and that the average reign of a king seemed to be somewhere on the order of 2-5 weeks. Bullywug politics are cutthroat! The scarecrow told the party that they'd be able to guide them to the realm of Thither if they could locate their old head that had been stolen by Agdon Longscarf and his band of brigands. A new quest! The party agreed and crossed the bridge into the Soggy Court. There, the current king had his guards bar the way, inquiring about their intentions. That's where we decided to call it for the night for the session, at a nice suitable cliffhanger!
While running it, most of this session felt to me like it was wrapped up in combat. After writing this after-action report though, we actually got quite a lot of progress in to the relatively short session we ran! I'm going to run the next session in about a week, so we'll probably spend a bit more time playing instead of catching up. Also, one of the players from my previous campaign that didn't have time to join this one will be joining, so I'll need to find some suitable plot reason to get them into the party, but that shouldn't be a problem. It'll be nice to have the full party back together! I'm glad I finally got this session run after the pretty long hiatus since last year, and I'm hoping to keep a bit more regular going forward.