#halkifell

the set up for the combat is that the PCs were in an ifrit/fire genasi town on the side of a volcano. shadow puppetry is a big thing here and so, while the PCs were watching a shadow puppet play, a mischievous scamp part-time PC started fucking with the magic of the volcano, just to see what would happen. what happened was Bad and the shadow puppets enlarged, sprang to life and began fighting. oops.

i based them loosely (extremely loosely) on the shadow lurkers/stranglers and shadow puppeteer from d&d 4e. but for reasons, i made them more bard-like instead of undead, and gave them more shadow flavor abilities instead of stealth stuff. i called the grunts "shadow warriors." they each got two melee attacks that did psychic damage, and on every hit, the target had to make a charisma saving throw or else be attacked an additional time by their own shadow. any time you can make a player roll to attack themself, you should. it's fun.

the "shadow puppeteer" was bigger, had more hp, and did two melee attacks with psychic damage, and an additional third attack wherein strings shot out of their hands into a target's shadow, triggering a wisdom saving throw. on a fail, the target was dominated by the puppeteer and had to attack their allies on their turn (described as their shadow moving and the PC having no choice but to follow). anytime you can get your players to roll and attack their friends, you should, it's fun.

yes omg thank you, there's nothing i'd rather do than talk about the genie communities of my dnd game.

the party began this arc in halkifell, the hometown of an npc friend named mahety. halkifell is home to ifrit and their fire genasi kids, located on the top of a volcano (which is also a portal to the elemental plane of fire). at birth, mahety was chosen by the volcano to be the next leader of her people. she was actually out in the world before now as part of her self-discovery journey before stepping up to the leadership position officially. the time to do that is now, for many reasons, which means she has to stay in halkifell, on the other side of the continent from where the party (including her PC gf) have their home base.

so mahety's dad, an ifriti named temza, suggested the party go to the other genie communities to collect spell components in order to create a teleportation circle in halkifell. this makes it so (eventually) mahety and the party can visit each other at their leisure. temza was vague about where they needed to go and what exactly the spell components were, because that was all part of the journey (which would be important to the spell later). they were told to get:

A binding from the dao, an iron link; Salt from the marid, in liquid sync; A yielding from the djinn, a burden's drink.

and they were given general directions and landmarks to follow. the marid could be found submerged in the ocean to the north, at a distance of "a sunrise as the dolphin swims." the djinn could be found to the southeast in the desert, after "following the eye of the storm for one moonrise." the dao were located in the mountain range to the southwest, at "the top of the peak that looks like a bird."

i'm gonna put the rest under a readmore because uhhh. believe it or not, this got even longer lmao.