Session 045: The Wailing Dark
🎙️ Session Recording
📜 Session Overview
The session opened where the last had left off — the Realmstriders gathered atop Loid, beyond the reach of whatever lurked beneath the bridge. The creature had already announced itself in the most terrifying way possible: by doing nothing more than existing in proximity. That was enough. No one needed convincing that a direct approach would end them. The question was not whether to fight, but how to remove the advantage the waterfall gave it.
The plan that emerged was deceptively simple. If the waterfall concealed the creature's domain, the waterfall had to go. Before leaving, Zar'Keth called forth a tiny metallic terradon — a homunculus of gears and purpose — and sent it to observe the crevice where the waterfall disappeared. Quiet eyes in a place none of them wanted to stand. Then the party flew upstream to find where they could bend the river to their will.
As they passed near the lair, Zar'Keth felt it: a cold, deliberate psychic probe pressing against the edge of his thoughts. Not speech. Not a threat exactly. Just awareness. The creature below knew they were moving against it. The warning passed, but the understanding it carried did not — this was no beast acting on instinct. It was ancient, and it was thinking.
The dam they built was not an ordinary dam. The Realmstriders did not build like other hands build. Power channelled. Wills aligned. Lattice patterns shimmered through the earth as stone and mud answered their intent, rising and binding in near-miraculous unison. Broj stood at the centre of it, pouring strength and mana into the work as the river buckled and finally surrendered, its course forced aside into a new path. The waterfall ahead began to die.
Triumph lasted only a moment. The magic kept coming — too much, too fast, beyond any clean stopping point. Aedric Vale saw what was happening and tried to cut the flow before it consumed Broj entirely, but the siphoning was too deep, too entrenched. Broj knocked him away with a punch. The magic released. The wall held. The cost had been paid.
While some of the party flew back toward the exposed lair, Agelaius Phoeniceus and Zar'Keth walked the now-bare riverbed, picking through mud and revealed stone. The closer they drew to the abyss, the worse the ground became — black, slick, wrong. Agelaius, being entirely himself, tasted it. His dragon Ruroko confirmed what the ichor was: cursed. The knowledge arrived with the price already paid. He carried the warning back to the others, and the party catalogued it alongside everything else they now knew about this place.
Then came the news that reordered everything. Zar'Keth's homunculus was dead. Whatever it had seen upon the creature had been enough to end it. And with that death came the correction: the creature was not hiding at the bottom of the dark crevasse as everyone had assumed. Its lair was set into the wall behind the waterfall itself — the roaring curtain of water had been its door all along. Now the door stood open.
They gathered at the entrance and went in.
The lair was wet and heavy and wrong. It was also a hoard — scattered remnants of stolen goods, broken trophies, the proof of a creature that had not merely fed on flesh but collected, kept, and displayed. This thing had made a throne of the place. For a moment, at the edge of the black water, the party hesitated. The waters of the cavern concealed whatever waited beneath, and entering was giving it exactly the battlefield it wanted. But Nymis had asked them. Her domain was poisoned. The abomination had to die.
They spoke. The cavern woke.
Tentacles erupted from the water with ancient, brutal speed, coiling around limbs and dragging Realmstriders beneath the black surface before they could respond. The fight became chaos — splashing, shouted warnings, frantic healing magic, spells burning through the murk, bodies pulled under and hauled back. The creature struck from the depths, cursing and battering and crushing as the party burned through every resource they had. There were no clean moments, no controlled engagements. Just survival and fury until the scales tipped.
Zar'Keth found the opening. With the abomination wounded, thrashing, rising from the water in a final surge of rage, he drove the battle to its end. The killing blow landed.
The creature's death was not quiet.
A deafening psychic wail tore through the cavern — a death cry that struck bone and mind before sound could even carry it. Nearly every member of the party was left reeling, the silence that followed it somehow louder than anything that had come before. The body sank back into the black water. The lair was still. The hold it had held over the place dissolved, slowly, like a spell unwinding from stone.
Exhausted, cursed, bruised, and deafened, the Realmstriders stood in the aftermath. Around them, the hoard waited — the spoils of the thing they had killed, the remnants of every creature and traveller unlucky enough to have drawn its notice. The domain of Nymis had been freed from one more ancient shadow.
They began to loot.
⚔️ Key Moments
The Metallic Terradon Scout
Before departing upstream, Zar'Keth produced a tiny metallic terradon homunculus and sent it to watch the entrance to the creature's suspected hiding place. It was a small, careful act — using what he had to extend the party's awareness into a space none of them wanted to occupy. The homunculus would not survive what it eventually witnessed, but while it lived it gave the party something invaluable: the knowledge that they could watch without being present.
The Psychic Touch
As the party flew past the creature's lair, Zar'Keth felt the probe — a deliberate, cold press of awareness against the edge of his mind. Not language, exactly. Not a threat in any conventional sense. Just the creature making clear that it knew they were there and understood what they were doing. The moment passed quickly, but it changed the shape of the session: from that point on, the party was not approaching an oblivious beast. They were moving against something that had already noticed them and was choosing to wait.
Building the Dam
The wall they built was something beyond ordinary construction. As the Realmstriders worked in unison, lattice patterns appeared in the earth, rocks and mud shifting as though the ground itself was participating in the act. The river pushed back and then gave way, its current rerouted, the waterfall ahead thinning to nothing. It was a genuinely miraculous piece of work — and it succeeded. The cost came immediately after, in Broj's uncontrolled surge of power and the punch that stopped it.
Broj Overwhelmed — and Aedric Punched
The dam was complete, the work was done — and the magic kept coming. Power siphoned through Broj at a rate that stopped being a gift and became a flood. Aedric Vale saw it and moved to intervene, trying to cut the current before it tore something loose. He couldn't. The magic was too deep in by then. Broj knocked him clear with a punch that ended the situation through sheer, blunt force. The wall held. Both of them survived. The exchange will linger.
The Cursed Ichor
Walking the exposed riverbed back toward the lair, Agelaius Phoeniceus and Zar'Keth found the mud turning black as they neared the abyss. Agelaius — because he is Agelaius — tasted it. His dragon Ruroko confirmed the obvious: cursed. The knowledge arrived already paid for. He brought the warning back to the rest of the party, and the ichor was added to the list of things this creature had left behind it in the world.
The Lair Was Never Below
When Zar'Keth's homunculus was found dead, the correction arrived with it. The creature had not been hiding at the bottom of the dark crevasse. Its lair was set into the wall behind the waterfall itself — the one everyone had been standing in front of the entire time. The roaring water had simply concealed the entrance. Now the water was gone. The door was there. And the party understood, for the first time, where they were actually going.
The Death Wail
When Zar'Keth landed the killing blow, the creature did not die quietly. A psychic death cry tore through the cavern — not merely loud but deep, reaching into bone and thought before fading into a ringing silence. Nearly every member of the party was left deafened. It was the last act of an ancient horror: even dying, it took something from them. The silence that followed was the loudest thing in the room.
⚔️ Combat Encounters
The Aboleth — Lair of the Waterfall
Enemy: The Abomination — an ancient aboleth concealed within the cavern walls behind the waterfall, its lair filled with stolen trophies and the remains of its hoard.
Outcome: Victory. Zar'Keth delivered the killing blow as the creature rose from the water in a final surge of rage. The abomination's body sank back into the murk and did not resurface.
Notable Moments:
- Speaking aloud inside the cavern triggered the attack — tentacles burst from the water the moment voices stirred the air.
- Multiple party members were seized and dragged beneath the black water by the creature's tentacles.
- The party burned through the majority of their remaining spell slots and abilities before the creature fell.
- The creature's death wail deafened nearly every member of the party — all but one escaped its psychic reach.
- The curse from the black ichor was already in effect for those who had been in contact with it before the fight began.
✨ Character Moments
Zar'Keth — The Mind That Reached Back
The psychic probe as the party flew past the lair was personal in a way the others couldn't fully feel — it was Zar'Keth's mind the creature touched, and the connection was disturbing enough to register. He held it, processed it, and carried the warning forward without losing composure. Later, when the battle reached its end, it was Zar'Keth who found the opening and landed the killing blow — a fitting close for the character who had felt the creature's awareness most directly.
Agelaius Phoeniceus (Egg) — Curiosity and Consequence
The riverbed offered a warning clearly enough: the mud turned black and wrong as they approached the abyss. Agelaius licked it anyway. That is, in essence, what makes him Egg — the refusal to let the obvious outcome stand in the way of direct investigation. Ruroko confirmed the curse that was already in place, and Agelaius carried both the knowledge and the cost back to the party without complaint. He also warned everyone else, which is arguably the more important part of the story.
Broj — Power Without a Ceiling
The dam worked because Broj stood at the heart of it and refused to let it fail. The problem was that magic doesn't always stop when the work is done. The surge that followed was not his fault — but the punch that stopped it was entirely his decision. That instinct, the one that says "end this now, by whatever means," is both what makes Broj invaluable and what makes him unpredictable. The wall is still standing. Aedric is fine. The moment is not gone.
Aedric Vale — The Interrupted Intervention
Aedric saw the overflow happening and moved without hesitation to stop it. That instinct — to step into the path of something dangerous on behalf of someone else — says something clear about who he is. He couldn't stop it. The magic was too established and Broj too far into it. The punch that removed him from the situation was the only outcome available. He came away intact. The moment where he tried is the one worth noting.
The Full Party — Realmstriders Building Together
The dam was not Broj's achievement alone. Every member of the party channelled into that work, their abilities and intent weaving together in a way that caused the earth to respond. The lattice patterns in the ground, the rocks shifting in unison, the sense of something almost miraculous happening — that was the party working as something more than a collection of capable individuals. It was one of the cleanest expressions of what Realmstriders are actually supposed to be, and it succeeded in full before the costs arrived.
🖼️ Session Images
📝 DM Notes
The dam-building sequence landed as a genuinely collaborative moment — having every player channel into the same action paid off in a way that felt earned rather than constructed. The lattice imagery gave the scene texture beyond a simple ability check. Broj's power overflow was a natural consequence of the mechanics and created the punch moment organically; that kind of unplanned friction between characters is usually more memorable than anything scripted.
Egg licking the cursed ichor was predictable in the best way — the setup was there, the decision was entirely in character, and the consequence was proportionate. Ruroko's warning arriving after the fact is a good recurring beat for that pair.
The reveal that the lair was in the wall rather than beneath the crevasse recontextualised the last two sessions in a satisfying way — the players had been solving around the wrong assumption without realising it, and the correction felt like genuine discovery rather than misdirection. The homunculus death delivered it cleanly.
The combat itself was the session's most taxing encounter by resource cost. Having the trigger be spoken voice was a strong environmental detail — it punished the hesitation and the debate at the entrance in a way that felt fair. The death wail landing on almost the full party is a consequence to track going forward; deafness has mechanical and roleplay implications that will surface in the next session. The loot is the open thread — what the hoard contains will shape what the party takes into the next chapter of the Theros arc.
🎭 Looking Ahead
The abomination is dead and the domain of Nymis has been freed from the shadow it cast. What remains is the hoard — the spoils of something that hoarded for decades, and whatever it collected carries its own weight and history. The party enters the next session cursed, deafened, and exhausted, but victorious. The request of the Theros god has been answered. What she offers in return, and what the path forward through her domain now looks like, remains to be seen. The Realmstriders have cleared the way. Now they have to walk it.