Isn’t it sad when the party members turn on one another? Not when they’re a bunch of backstabbing drow!
You may remember last week, when some svirfneblin basically wiped out the party (two of them escaped with their lives, barely). Well, this week, through the magic of “That’s the way the plot works,” the party was able to move past the chamber where the svirfneblin had been and advanced to a new place, where a drow priestess and her hobgoblin associates were trying to figure out the secrets of a mysterious obsidian wall.
My party of five drow (worst teen drama ever) was not interested in talking to this mysterious priestess… roll initiative!
 Drow Outpost Map – Gridded |
 Drow Outpost Map – No grid |
The battle itself was pretty easy for the party (especially compared to last week’s slaughter). The monsters weren’t rolling especially well, and none of their powers were all that scary. The PCs also felt free to drop daily powers and action points like there was no tomorrow (which, in-game, there basically wasn’t).
The highlight of the night came when the drow mage, who had been created to replace the dead drow hexblade, walked up toward the bad guys and cast Sleep on all of them… but intentionally including three PCs that he completely could have left out of the Sleep spell area without missing any bad guys. It was a total backstabbing drow move, and it was awesome. Only one of the PCs ended up actually falling asleep, but boy, was it in-character!
As the tide of battle turned firmly in the party’s favor, they started fighting over who would get to loot the enemy priestess’s body. There was still one hobgoblin fighting, but three of the PCs ignored him to spend their turns searching the dead priestess. The poor hobgoblin felt so disrespected in these short remaining moments of life.
Once the battle was over, the priestess in the party listened at the obsidian wall and heard two voices, one of which was repeating a well-known prayer to Lolth. The other voice was made out by the paladin to be nonsense syllables often used by drow wizards. They called the mage over to the wall, but he didn’t want to come.
So, the priestess attacked the mage without warning, then used her action point and followed up with a big daily power. This left the mage unconscious, and none of the rest of the party wanted to do anything about it, so the priestess followed up with a coup de grace.
Bam. Dead mage.
They looted the mage’s corpse and eventually worked their way through the obsidian wall, where they found an altar with a magic spear. They decided to use the mage’s body as a blood sacrifice and performed a ritual to claim the chamber’s power for Lolth.
Of course, after this session they all get an extended rest, so the dead mage can come back with no penalty (I awarded him full XP, since he died after the fight was over). My players have really embraced the evil, backstabbing ways of the drow, and they seem to be having fun with it, so good for them!
-Michael the OnlineDM
P.S. If you like these maps, I have a whole bunch more available to download for free in my Map Library.