Critical Role Recap: Episode 15

Previously on Critical Role, the Mighty Nein descended into the cellar of the Evening Nip tavern in Zadash to meet with a mysterious criminal known as the Gentleman. There, Molly was greeted as Lucien and a dark secret of his past came to light—he awoke two years ago in a shallow grave with no memories! While his entire identity as Mollymauk Tealeaf had been a fabrication, it was an identity he was pleased with, and he had no interest in learning about Lucien or discovering the truth of his mysterious past.

The Mighty Nein met with the Gentleman and Fjord defeated him in a game of cards, earning both his trust and a sizeable pot of gold. They asked the Gentleman to spirit Horace Thrym away from Zadash… and also struck a deal that would keep them from being hunted by the Crownsguard. Perform a simple task, and he would make the hunt for the High Richter’s killers disappear. The Nein agreed, and the Gentleman laid out the terms: deep below Zadash is a lost research facility. His agents tried to infiltrate it but were scared off by restless will-o’-wisps. The Nein needed to enter the facility, clear it of hostile entities, and bring back any research they could find.

The Nein agreed, and were placed aboard boats on an underground river. There, they sailed down a dank tunnel into the unknown.

Two-Paragraph Synopsis

The Mighty Nein delved into a forgotten research facility beneath the city of Zadash. They intended to slay some will-o’-wisps and recover some lost research notes, but they found a puzzling mystery. How were these specters created? What transpired in this grim facility?

After solving a magical puzzle, the Nein gained access to the facility’s inner sanctum, where they found the journal of Siff Duthar, a dragonborn (?) who raved about the rise of the Betrayer Gods and their sycophantic minions.  

Full Summary

First, Laura Bailey recovered from her sickness last episode (being pregnant is serious business, I hope she’s doing all right), and Ashley Johnson is still here!

The party sailed down the frigid underground river in two boats. The boat that carried Fjord, Jester, Beau, and Molly sailed lazily along in the back, while the lighter boat carrying Caleb, Yasha, and Nott took the lead.

The tunnel grew colder and colder the farther they drifted down the river until the cavern forked into two tunnels, and the river with it. Jester tried to perceive where the cool wind was coming from, and even with a 21 couldn’t tell which tunnel was “correct.” With no guidance, they continued sailing as the fates would take them.

Suddenly, a black mass crashed down upon Nott, who was standing at the prow of her boat! A many-tentacled creature, about the same size as the goblin it had landed on, had dropped from the ceiling! This disgusting creature, a darkmantle, had previously appeared to be a hanging stalactite, but now this squidlike creature was attached to Nott’s face. Dozens of darkmantles began to detach themselves from the cavern ceiling. Roll initiative!

Battle in the Dark

Magical darkness engulfed one of the boats, blinding several of the heroes. Yasha tried to use her Lightbearer ability to cast the light cantrip, but the magic was too powerful for her magic to pierce it.

As the fight went on, and the Mighty Nein managed to turn the tables on the ambushing darkmantles, two formless, shambling creatures emerged from the water. Instead of confronting these creatures, however, Jester and Yasha grabbed their skiffs’ oars and power-rowed away, speeding the vessels far away from the shamblers.

Into the Facility

Free from the darkmantles and the shambling creatures, the Mighty Nein reached the rivers’ end in relative safety. They moored their boats on the riverbank and round the cave-in that had been caused by the Gentleman’s previous agents as they fled from the facility in terror. With some effort, the party excavated the cave-in and found a spiraling staircase leading both up and down.

“Lets go down,” Jester blurted out, staring down the stairwell. “Usually scarier things are down.”

Beau nodded, a sly smile creeping across her face. “I’m always a fan of going down,” she said, making direct eye contact with Yasha. The aasimar met her gaze and gave a knowing nod, then broke into laughter.

It seemed that everyone except Mollymauk had caught this. He simply mused, “More expensive things tend to be up, but I’m happy to start with down.” He paused and looked at his distracted companions.

“That’s just gross,” Nott said. “Super gross.”

“I didn’t even catch that!” Molly exclaimed.

 “Oh geez.” Caleb rolled his eyes at Beau. “You have one setting!”

They descended the staircase and came across a suspicious hallway with another door on the other end. Nott went first to scout ahead, and was peppered with missiles from a pressure plate-activated dart trap. Nott did her best to disarm the traps, but Yasha soon discovered that Nott’s trap-disarming skills left much to be desired. The party suffered through the hallway by running through it as quickly as possible and managed to make it to the doorway.

The Puzzle of the Eight Runes

The party passed through the doorway and entered a tall octagonal chamber with no visible exit. A triangular pedestal with a hole that could fit a rod or lever was in the center of the room. The ceiling was a dome made up of eight triangles, covered in strange runes—and the symbols were repeated on the floor, too!

When Yasha looked up and began to study the symbols on the ceiling, Matt produced a set of papers that represented the symbols on the ceiling and placed them on the table before the players. A puzzle! After a successful Intelligence (Arcana) check, they learned that these eight symbols represented the 8 schools of magic. The party searched the room some more and then decided that it was time to inspect the upper floor to get some more answers. The party backtracked through the trapped corridor. Fortunately, Nott was able to successfully disarm the traps this time (but not without taking some damage along the way).

Upstairs was a grand, baroque-style chamber with a tiled “chessboard” floor. (Most of the table groaned as soon as they saw this obvious puzzle component, but it didn’t actually have any magical effects.) While the room appeared to have once been a gorgeous hall, most of the finery had already been pilfered. Additionally, something had caused the far end of the 80-foot-long chamber to collapse, and the entire room was strangely slanted. A thin relief carving on the floor depicted a person with a single torso but two faces. Neither of the carved person’s faces had eyes—just empty sockets.

Above them, a set of chains hung from the ceiling, attached to a sort of red clay urn or vase. Unnerved by the state of this chamber, the party cautiously began to investigate. Beau searched the rubble of the room’s collapsed end, and noticed something metallic glinting in Yasha’s torchlight. Caleb used the last gasp of his (near-constantly active) detect magic spell, and the metallic object in the rubble was revealed to project an aura of abjuration magic.

Meanwhile, Nott searched an alcove in the room and found another red clay urn. Without warning, an orb of light emerged from one of the urns, and Nott used her readied action to shoot it… and scored a critical hit! Her crossbow bolt tore through the will-o’-wisp, killing it instantly! Three more will-o’-wisps emerged from the other urns, surrounding the party. Roll initiative!

The Mighty Nein had a hard time hitting them. This should come to no surprise to viewers at home; will-o’-wisps have an impressive AC 19! Fed up with fighting the elusive wisps and realizing that they kept kept returning to the clay urns they had emerged from, Molly smashed the urn closest to him—causing the wisp to wink out of existence! The rest of the Mighty Nein quickly followed suit, sending the wisps off to an inglorious second demise.

Yasha examined the urns, combing through the ashes that spilled out of their shattered remains. She discovered that the bottoms of the urns were actually metal bowls, each bearing the same carvings: exact replicas of the runes on the ceiling of the room below! The party gathered up the three bowls and stowed them away, along with the rod that glowed with abjuration magic from the rubble.

Before going back downstairs, Fjord investigated the eerie relief carving once more. He placed a gold coin into each of the carving’s hollow eye sockets. He placed the fourth coin into the final eye socket and heard a click behind him as the floor fell out from beneath him! He fell into blackness, but Nott saved him with a clutch feather fall spell. He gently drifted downward into an unknown chamber strangled by darkness and choked with the scent of decay. His feet crunched against the floor as he landed, and he found himself in a mass grave, filled with charred corpses and long, uniform robes.

A quick examination of the pit of death turned up some spare jewelry and a potion of necrotic resistance. The party threw down a rope and got Fjord out of there. This pit was no place to linger, and they returned to the lower level of the facility.

The party placed the abjuration-enchanted rod into the socket on the triangular pedestal, and Jester placed one of the runic bowls on the floor. She cast toll the dead on the bowl to infuse it with necromantic energy, but the energy she created guttered and swirled into an orb that flew through the air to the rod! Something seemed to happen in reaction to her spell… but it wasn’t anything good. A mechanism in the walls groaned to life and part of the ceiling opened. A clear, gooey cube dropped out of the ceiling and landed in the center of the room—a gelatinous cube! Roll initiative!

The battle with the cube was grueling, but not particularly tense. Yasha landed the finishing blow on the cube. Fjord gave Jester, who had fallen unconscious in the battle, a healing potion. He then reached down to pick a fallen Jester up from the ground.

“Thank you Oskar…” Jester groaned, woozy.

“Fjord,” the half-orc reminded her. “It’s Fjord.”

“Oh, yes… it’s Fjord.”

The party deliberated over their next move—they obviously didn’t want to make another mistake and drop another cube right on top of them. Mollymauk held the bowls to an open flame to examine them, and found that one symbol on each bowl began to glow in the flame—One Ring-style! It revealed the three correct runes, and thus the three correct schools of magic to use: transmutation, illusion, and enchantment.

The party’s fighters assumed a fighting stance while the casters took their position in the glyphic circle on the floor and placed the metal bowls at their feet. Each cast a spell of the required schools simultaneously. The energy struck the rod. The walls once again groaned as gears turned and rattled… and a secret door opened before the heroes. They had solved the puzzle!

The Inner Sanctum

The Mighty Nein braced themselves and delved deeper into the abandoned facility. At the other end of the secret passage they could see a chamber divided into three small sections and a main central chamber. In its center was an inert arcane circle. If it ever had any power, it had long since been erased. After a brief examination, Fjord determined that the circle was a deactivated teleportation circle.

The room also contained cages in its side chambers, and each cage contained another ash-filled clay urn.

Meanwhile, Jester and Nott investigated bookshelf on the far end of the room and found atop it a magical sword, nearly 6 feet long with a golden hilt inscribed with runes. Caleb also found a discarded book by a burnt-out brazier. He couldn’t read its script, but cast comprehend languages to understand the draconic text. He explained what he was reading to the party—they were scribbled notes, the journal of a being named Siff Duthar.

The notes spoke of an upcoming war involving foolish pawns who follow their gods to annihilation. The armies of Ghor Dranas—the ancient city of the evil gods, now located within modern-day Xhorhas—marched onward. The notes spoke of the weakness of flesh and the need to endure beyond the paltry life shell they are given—even binding spirits to ice or ash. It speak of an obsession of avoiding the hunger of the creature that crawls beneath the world.

The entire journal descended into paranoia and madness. Furthermore, it spoke of the Betrayer Gods and Ghor Dranas, all relics of ancient history. How long ago was this journal written?

As the Mighty Nein planned their next move, another wave of will-o’-wisps appear from the urns—and the teleportation circle flared to life with dark light. A shadowy creature emerged from the circle, a ghastly image of flesh stretched against a skull, deep within its shaded cloak. A wraith, perhaps?

The wraith snarled a spectral threat, and surely initiative will be rolled… next week, on Critical Role.

Critical Role will return on April 26th, 2018. What was the purpose of this abandoned facility? Who was Siff Duthar, and was his book a prophecy or a history? Who is the wraith emerging from the teleportation circle? And most importantly… is it Thursday yet?

Photos in this article are courtesy of Geek & Sundry and Sam Riegal.

James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He loves watching Critical Role and wants everyone he knows to get into it, too. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his very own Frumpkins, Mei and Marzipan. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.