What Do I Know?

Now we’re starting to get into the weird stuff. In this chapter, “Rifts in Reality,” the aberration quotient ramps up considerably, as do the weird descriptions of the environs.  We’re getting ready to head into Illithid territory, so buckle up. Also, we’re getting ready to head into spoiler territory.

Yes, you should have already seen this on one of the other posts up to this point, but if you’re the kind of person that likes to read the first few paragraphs of multiple blog posts, we’re getting into spoiler territory, so as a duly-designated representative of the What Do I Know, I ask you to cease any and all blog-reading activity and return forthwith to your place of origin, or to the next convenient parallel dimension, if you are likely to be playing in this campaign, or want to be surprised.

Art

I’m going to say this again when we get into the adventure content, but this chapter is leaning hard into the body horror and gooey mutations part of the book, so I feel I should give you that warning up front.

For adversaries, we have images of the mutated townsfolk you run into when you return to Phandalin, and a psychic grell (like a regular grell, but with more green brain energy). There is also a mutated cloaker, some enthusiastic slaadi, a mind flayer and his nothic friends experimenting on a corpse, and an elder brain that’s seen better days.

For locations, we get to see the mind flayer statue with the ever flowing mucus brain, and the gates to the illithid realm of Illithinoch. We also get to see an important item, the journal of the dwarf cleric of Dumathoin, Thorgan Ironquill. We don’t see a lot of new NPCs in this section, but one, a mind flayer lich that is likely to remain neutral to “kind of” friendly depending on what the PCs do, gets his own illustration.

For maps, we get more Mike Schley offerings. These include a grell den in the Underdark and the caverns of illithinoch. We also get three pocket regions of the Far Realms in map form, including the Feeder Trenches, Spawn Hollow, and the Labyrinth of Eyes.

While just about everything illustrated for this chapter is unsettling, the mutated cloaker is terrifying. The Slaadi illustration isn’t bad, but since most of the chapter is going for “this shit isn’t right,” the Slaad depicted lean more towards “giant frog monsters are intimidating” and less toward “that’s a creature that should not be, which also has frog-like features,” and I’ve seen Slaad illustrations go both directions in the past. I’m a little surprised we didn’t get any illustrations of the gnawbles, because I can picture a handful of hair and teeth in ways both silly and extremely disturbing.

This last observation is rough, because it’s probably not easy to convey a lot of strangeness in a map that is also meant to be usable, but I know I’ve seen some disturbing maps in Shadow of the Demon Lord, so I’m willing to make this point. The map of Spawn Hollow is the kind of creepy, warped location I would picture in the Far Realm, but the Feeder Trenches and the Labyrinth of Eyes both feel a little tame for a region whose physical laws are radically different from our own.

Running This Chapter

After venturing to the three different locations in the last chapter and hopefully coming home with the three fragments of the Netherese obelisk, the PCs are expected to check back into Phandalin, meaning that that map, just like the map from two chapters previous, isn’t meant to let them go directly to Illithinoch, and you should probably make sure that’s clear when the PCs receive it.

In Phandalin, the PCs find out that three of the locals that they have likely interacted with in the past have begun to mutate into beings similar to the mutated cultists they ran into in the last chapter. The people in town urge the PCs to subdue them without causing permanent harm, and to be fair, the PCs are probably jerks if they decide to just mow down some of the friendly NPCs they’ve met in previous chapters. It’s interesting to me that way back in the starting chapter, there were explicit instructions (that don’t align with the game rules) on how to subdue the goblins, but in this section, it’s just assumed everyone knows the rules for this.

Another NPC begins to turn, but has just enough wherewithal to both drop some clues before asking to be restrained. If the PCs don’t pick up on this clue, they have their dwarven scholar friend to point them in the right direction, and if they still don’t get the hint, they have their new deep gnome friend that can show up and literally point them in the direction they need to go.

The first Underdark location they stumble upon on the way to Illithinoch is a grell’s nest, which has some side chambers that contain some other nasty creatures. The grell are holding some of the townsfolk that went missing, having killed the goblins that were accompanying them. Not only can they pick up the journal of the dwarf cleric mentioned in the previous chapters to gain some more context on what may be happening, but the encounter with the mutated cloaker allows for some roleplaying with his absorbed psyche.

Illithinoch

The mind flayer city has some traits you would expect from such an enclave, and also some deviations, since it has been taken over by religious fanatics. There are some details I love that were added to this section, such as noting that mind flayers have their own written language similar to braille that is meant to be read by running one’s tentacles over the writing. Another aspect that I appreciate is that the symbols of Ilvaash that the PCs encounter actually shift and change as they look at them. I also like that the Illithid architecture is described as being both precise but rounded, producing an unsettling manufactured organic look.

While exploring the city, the PCs will run into the mind flayers that have joined the cultists, as well as the other mind flayers that have turned into weird tentacled versions of nothics. There are more of the mutated humanoid cultists as well. In addition to the mind flayers, nothics, and mutated cultists, the PCs may also start to find mind crystals, magic items that can essentially be used as metamagic modifiers to spells. These crystals could be important if they want to make friends with the alhoon, the illithid lich that lives in the city. He’s not down with the fanatic’s activities, and really just wants to work on transcribing his notes. The PCs may also run into the city’s elder brain, which is in bad shape, since it’s no longer coordinating the actions of the settlement, and is just being used by the fanatic mind flayers now, without being the hub of the community.

There is a portal to the Far Realm where the three main mind flayer cultists have gone. This portal isn’t working, but there are portals to other parts of the Far Realm, and inside each, there is a rune inscribed to draw power from that location to force open the location to the realm of Ilvaash, the entity they worship. They also have the last remaining townsfolk hostages with them. The three other locations include one populated by grell, one that is the lair of a former-beholder mutated by the illithids to make him compliant, and one that is the realm of slaadi. If the PCs retrieve the hairy mounds of teeth that form from each of the runes in the other locations, and feed them to the portal to the place “beyond the lightless star,” they can follow the mind flayer fanatics to Ilvaash’s realm, save the townsfolk, and potentially stop all the damn mutating going on.

Thoughts

Some of the aberration based material in the previous chapters doesn’t feel especially disturbing, especially the goblins which always seem to have just a bit of mischievous chaos in the descriptions of their actions. That changes a lot in this chapter. This is starting to delve into full on cosmic horror, to the point that I actually wish this adventure had reprinted the stress rules from Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft for this section. It feels really appropriate.

It’s pretty clear that someone is meant to put together the idea that the four townsfolk that mutated did so because they were all near the fragments of the obelisks for extended periods of time, so I wish there was a section discussing what the PCs should do with the fragments they retrieved, other than keeping them away from the mind flayers. It doesn’t seem likely that the people of Phandalin will just want them sitting in the corner of the inn until the PCs get back. This might have been a good time to either call on the PCs potential faction allies to keep the items safe, or maybe even reintroduce the Rockseeker brothers, with some container used to deal with potentially dangerous magic items that their retrieved from the Wave Echo Cave, to tie this all a little more closely together with the first chapters. Speaking of tying things together, I kind of wish the nothic from the earlier section of the adventure had been reworked into one of these tentacled nothics made from the mind flayers in Illithinoch.

As a long term Realms nerd, I’m a little sad that Thorgan Ironquill’s Journal isn’t a round book with metal pages, with runes stamped in circular patterns. I always liked that idea of what a dwarven book looked like, even though I’m not sure how practical that is for carrying with you to take notes.

Using the gnawbles to charge the gateway to Ilvaash’s realm is really compelling to me, but I’m not sure how obvious it’s going to be to the PCs. The closed portal has gnawble remains, and the PCs may recognize the creatures from the Far Realm locations if they explore those portals, but I don’t know how obvious it is to attack a mound of hair and teeth to a rune to charge it, even if you found one hanging off a rune in the first place. I would definitely make sure the PCs could find a more obvious clue to this, either via the writing in the portal room or from talking with Oshundo, if they play nice with him.

Reading this section, I really like how the phrase “we three go beyond a lightless star,” because it somehow simultaneously sounds very cosmic horror, and also reminds me of those Stargate episodes where they had to figure out how to add an additional chevron to the gate solution to indicate traveling to another galaxy. If I run this, I’m likely going to try to find a way to indicate that somehow the three open Far Realm locations are “closer” to Toril, which is why it’s easier to maintain those portals.

I don’t like that the more obvious solution to navigating the Labyrinth of Eyes might be to leave someone in a different location when they shift the openings. There may be a way to move the eye to work around this, but that takes some prodding from the DM and willingness from the players to use the workaround. It’s strange that in the dwarven tomb they provided an extra NPC to pull the handle, but they don’t use that solution here (unless the PCs decided to bring someone along, which isn’t the default).

I also wanted to extend some kudos to some of the weirdest cosmic horror stuff that I appreciated in this chapter. Having a slaadi enclave that can reproduce without infecting humanoids, because they live in a flesh cavern is brilliant and so disturbing. Using mounds of hair and teeth as living batteries charred up by Far Realm locations is another amazing move, and also appreciated because it’s disturbing and weird without falling back on tentacles. I also love the idea that the Fedder Trenches are the grell equivalent of a gourmet restaurant, with the leader of the enclave finding new ways to make more interesting food (and dissolving nothics so the secrets they collect can flavor the food is just so . . . messy and cool).