Campaign: Astrodia
DM: Tommy
Players: Jim, Roy, Kat, Emily, Yemko, Kenyaita (Yemko and Emily arrived partway through; DM ran Drolta and Leif until they joined)
Date: July 29, 2026 (Session 9)
Where We Left Off
The Fallen were split inside the “haunted” tower of the witch Morgana at the edge of Freedale. Drolta, Úlfr, Red, and Leif had climbed to the third-floor balcony before the rope snapped, stranding Asha and Aren at the front door. Something undead waited beneath the foundations.
This session was the tower, floor by floor — and it gave up more than the party expected.
Third Floor — The Book That Was Recently Opened
The upper rooms were a bedroom and a dining room/kitchenette — unmade beds, dresser drawers, a chest at the foot of the bed, and a writing table with a book on it.
Úlfr’s perception found nothing. Red rolled a natural 20 on investigation and found the session’s first real chill: the book was Morgana’s journal, and while everything else in the room had gone untouched for decades, this book had been opened recently. The spine cracked like it had been read days ago, not a generation ago.
“Everything in here ain’t been touched for years. This book’s been opened pretty recent. Someone’s here.”
Red read the journal — the full text is preserved in Sessions/Session 9.md. Its weight landed later; at the time the party filed it as “very, very ominous” and kept moving. The chest at the foot of the bed held only clothes and capes. Down at the front door, Asha cast Detect Magic and confirmed the door itself was mundane — but something magical waited on the other side.
First Floor — Something Metal in the Dark
Bama scouted down the stairwell for Red and came back fast:
“Big metal guy. Big metal guy.”
Then the whirring started, and a heavy step, and another. Red — having wild shaped into a tiger and taken a Bardic Inspiration from Úlfr — stealthed back up the stairs before the thing rounded the corner. The party had found the tower’s guardian, and wanted no part of it yet.
Second try on the rope went better: Asha climbed up cleanly, and Aren — after two failed attempts and some commentary about gym class — was hauled up by Úlfr in a one-man tug of war. The party was whole again.
With Detect Magic still running, Asha found what everyone had walked past: one cloak in the bedroom chest radiating evocation magic. She checked whether it matched the robed figure from her dreams. It didn’t — unrelated. She took it anyway.
Fourth Floor — Components, Scrolls, and a Barrel of Ash
A hallway with two alcoves holding statues, a library/study south and a storage room north.
- Storage room: Úlfr smashed a box open and spilled out feathers, pennies, dust, and string. Asha recognized it instantly — spell components, an entire witch’s stock. The DM ruled the party can now source any material component up to 500 gp of value from this room. A quiet, enormously practical score.
- Library: shelves of magical studies, and tucked between them, three spell scrolls — Leomund’s Tiny Hut, Sleet Storm, and Erupting Earth. All 3rd level; Asha can’t cast them until level 5, so she’s holding them to transcribe later.
- The statues radiated strong evocation. Úlfr emptied a barrel and rolled it down the hall — a click, then cones of fire from both statues, and the barrel was a pile of ash.
Bama flew over hugging the ceiling without triggering it, which told the party the trap was floor-based. So Drolta walked across the ceiling — dhampir spider climb — and opened the far door.
The Workroom — and the Letter
Beyond the fire trap: symbols drawn on the floor, a hanging orrery of celestial bodies and orbits, a work table covered in notes, and potions.
Drolta found the potions (unidentified) but couldn’t make sense of the floor glyphs. Bama ferried the papers back out over the trap in his talons, trip after trip, until Asha had the whole pile — and rolled a 22.
What surfaced was Morgana’s letter to Verelda — and specifically the carbon copy, the pressed underleaf, meaning the original had actually been sent. The table read it aloud in full (preserved in Sessions/Session 9.md). The key lines:
- The guardian downstairs is the third she and Verelda built together, and the Academy’s Biblioplex watchmen descend from the same work.
- “The guardian answers only to its charm.”
- “If I am gone longer than a season, do not send anyone after me — send them after whatever I find instead.”
The party’s read: the guardian may not attack on sight, there’s a password, and — as Úlfr’s player proposed at the table — that password might be “Yssa,” the name Morgana circles in her journal. It never got tested; events overtook it.
The Roof — Nine Agents
The top of the tower is open to the sky, and holds two things.
A teleportation circle. Asha identified it and copied down the runes — the tower is now a place the party can teleport back to.
Nine statues of winged figures, each with a basin and a lit flame before it. Nine statues, nine Agents. (The disputed tenth, The Moon, is notably not among them.)
Aren burned her inspiration on a religion check and picked out the ones the party has met:
| Statue | How they knew it |
|---|---|
| Earth, Agent of Mysteries | Seen at Lathen |
| Saturn, Agent of Judgment | The temple here in Freedale |
| Venus, Agent of Creation | Depicted with her three orbs |
| Pluto, Agent of Death | Deduced at the table |
The other five are Agents the party hasn’t encountered.
The flames are the puzzle. Some burn as ordinary fire; others burn a dark blue. Asha’s arcana read confirmed the flames are magical and tied to their specific Agent, and that five blue share something the four unlit/ordinary do not — but not what. Saturn, the Agent whose temple stands in this very town, sits front and center with a flame that isn’t blue.
Aren stopped mid-dungeon to pray at Pluto’s statue. The party is watching to see whether the flames change as the campaign moves.
Second Floor — The Orbs and the Font
A circular corridor ringing a central chamber, with floating orbs drifting counter-clockwise at walking pace. Asha put on the evocation cloak and stepped in, pacing herself with the orbs to stay equidistant.
She reached the inner door: strong divination magic behind it, and the orbs themselves radiating strong evocation. Forcing the stuck door open took just long enough for an oncoming orb to sense her — lightning bolt, 7 damage — but the cloak proved itself: resistance to lightning damage, halving the hit. Worth every step.
Inside was the font from Morgana’s journal — a scrying pool. Morgana built it so that anyone proficient in Arcana can use it once per day, for free.
What Asha Saw
Asha scried her missing mother — the mother who vanished leaving only the note “I told you the truth would cost you.” Between how well she knows her and carrying her mother’s notebook, the save was at -9. It failed.
Her mother is in the White Forest — tied to a tree, in a clearing near the forest’s edge. Beside her, also bound, is a woman dressed all in white with long blonde hair.
Both alive. Both captive. Hundreds of miles away, well past anything visible from the tower roof.
Asha came back through the orbs and told the party. The answer was immediate: “We’re definitely going to save your mom, Asha.”
The Basement — Ghouls, a Ghast, and a Body
The party stealthed past the guardian on the ground floor (it rolled abysmally on perception) and reached the basement door — where Asha alone noticed what everyone else missed while congratulating themselves: the door was barred from the outside. Planks nailed across it. Someone had wanted something to stay in.
Aren sensed necromancy through it. They pulled the planks anyway, and Aren opened it — “I will not regret killing whatever’s in there.”
Fight one — two ghouls. One came out already bloodied, wounded by something the party never found. It went fast: Red as a tiger knocked one prone, Úlfr raged and swung recklessly, and the warlocks closed it out — Drolta’s Eldritch Blast dropped the bloodied one, Leif’s crit finished the other.
Fight two — a ghoul and a ghast. Rougher:
- Aren opened with Sacred Flame and summoned a Spiritual Weapon, eventually taking the ghast’s leg off at the knee.
- Úlfr hit the ghast for 17 with a reckless attack plus a fire burn, bloodying it in one blow — then got clawed and paralyzed by its toxin. He shook it off a turn later, only to eat another 13 (his rage having ended while incapacitated).
- Drolta’s Eldritch Blast killed the ghoul; Leif chipped 12 more off the ghast.
- Astra, Asha’s hawk, landed the killing blow for 1 damage.
Aren’s amulet went quiet. “We have cleansed this place, as is our holy duty.”
Beyond lay the forge — recognizable from the letter as the place Morgana built her guardians — and past that, one last door.
The Body
A woman’s body, decomposed for roughly two decades — and, per Red, with flesh freshly eaten within the last hours or days. The ghouls had been feeding on her. That’s what the door was barred against.
Her face was covered by a mask over the eyes and brow. Red hooked a claw under it and pulled it away: hollowed-out eye sockets — and the eyes had been gouged out before she died, not eaten after.
Aren’s medicine check found the rest: the remnants of a magical battle written across the corpse — spells hurled at her, injuring her over time. She died fighting. Aren spoke last rites over her so she might rest.
The party is confident this is Morgana — matching Freedale’s grim rumor that the vines carried her body home.
The Charm
Asha’s Detect Magic caught a faint emanation from a pocket. Inside: an amulet. Arcana confirmed it — this is the guardian’s “charm.”
Not a password at all. A command amulet.
Walking Out the Front Door
Asha walked up to the guardian with the amulet held out in front of her. It scanned her, flashed green, and stood down.
Then the history check landed — and the tower’s biggest revelation with it:
This construct is an older model of the same guardians standing watch at the Biblioplex — and those guardians are posted all over the Academy, not just at the library doors.
Identify (cast free, using the components found upstairs instead of a 100 gp pearl) named it: a Shield Guardian command amulet. It binds only this guardian — but Asha’s study of it produced the inference that matters: the Academy almost certainly keeps a control room holding every corresponding amulet for its own guardians.
For a party whose allies are planning to move against the Academy from within, that is a map to the building’s nervous system. The party also floated a darker possibility: are the Academy’s guardians the muscle that will come to seize the Golden Chalice?
Tidying Up
With the guardian friendly, the party finished the tower properly:
- Úlfr found tiny glyphs etched into the necks of the fire statues and scratched one off with a dagger, disarming the trap for good.
- In the workroom, the chalk on the floor radiates transmutation, and the floor symbols are abjuration — protection. Leif worked out that it’s an infusion circle: something placed at the center gets imbued with abjuration magic. Morgana was warding something, or herself, against something.
- The first-floor side rooms were a bathroom, a closet, a pantry, and a sitting room. Nothing.
- The foyer held a pile of dusty, long-undelivered mail — including one letter bearing the seal of the Academy.
Verelda’s Reply
The Academy letter is Verelda’s answer to the letter Morgana sent — read aloud at the table, preserved in Sessions/Session 9.md. It reframes Verelda from a name in a journal into a person:
- She argued with Morgana about going, and asked her to “actually mean it this time” about safe distances — threatening to send someone after her on a very fast horse, “and you know I have the connections at Quandrix to make that inconvenient for you.”
- She reports the third guardian holding steady, having asked one of her students “quite politely, to state their business” before letting them pass — which she chose to read as the correction working “rather than evidence it has developed opinions.”
- She told the story to Dean Lassette over dinner, who laughed until she had to leave the table.
- She closes: “Go carefully. Go loudly, if you can manage it, so that whatever it is knows you were never planning on being quiet about any of it. Write back the moment you’re able. I mean that.”
Morgana never wrote back. The letter sat in the foyer, undelivered, for twenty years.
The Night, and the Morning
The party slept in the tower — free lodging, beds upstairs, and Aren re-barred the basement door on the way out, on the grounds that nobody knows how the ghouls got in.
Dream rolls: Drolta, Red, and Aren rested well. Leif, Asha, and Úlfr failed — and Leif and Úlfr each took a level of exhaustion (Asha’s roll landed just above the line). Úlfr’s dream is his own for now; he’s told the party he’ll share it later. (Asha likewise came away with something she hasn’t said out loud.)
In the morning, Asha spotted a library in Freedale, right by the stables — noted, unexplored.
Then the horse debate finally resolved itself in the most Astrodia way possible. Four horses at 75 gp would have been 300 gold — the party’s entire purse. Instead, they used the Sending Stones to send Myrna the tower’s teleportation runes and a request for a lift. Myrna’s Satyr roll succeeded.
Archibald stepped through the circle onto the roof of a dead witch’s tower, entirely unruffled: “Hello, adventurers. My master, Myrna, informed me that you needed teleportation somewhere.” He borrowed Drolta’s plume as the associated object for the Nephthys temple, cast Teleportation Circle, and — after a percentile roll that came a hair from scattering them — put the party dead on target.
“Should you need me again, just ask Myrna.”
A two-day walk became a morning. Úlfr and Leif are still carrying their exhaustion.
Loot & Resources
| Item / Resource | Notes |
|---|---|
| Guardian Command Amulet | Identified — Shield Guardian amulet. Commands the tower guardian; +5 AC protection reaction, spell storing, telepathic recall. Worn by Asha |
| Cloak of evocation (unnamed) | Grants resistance to lightning damage; found in the third-floor chest. Worn by Asha. Not yet formally identified |
| 3 spell scrolls | Leomund’s Tiny Hut, Sleet Storm, Erupting Earth — all 3rd level. Asha holds them to transcribe (castable herself at level 5) |
| Spell components (up to 500 gp value) | The fourth-floor storage room. The party can now source any material component up to that value — already paid for itself on Identify |
| Potions (unidentified) | Taken from the workroom by Drolta |
| Teleportation circle runes | Copied from the tower roof — the party can teleport back here |
| Scrying pool access | Once per day, free, for anyone proficient in Arcana |
| Morgana’s journal, letter copy, and Verelda’s reply | Carried out; full text in Sessions/Session 9.md |
| Level of exhaustion → Úlfr and Leif | Failed dream rolls |
Open Threads
- Asha’s mother is alive and captive in the White Forest (the session’s headline) — bound to a tree in a clearing beside a bound woman in white with long blonde hair. This turns the party’s destination from an investigation into a rescue.
- The nine Agent statues and their flames — five burn blue, four don’t, and nobody knows what separates them. Saturn’s is not blue. Worth re-checking as the campaign progresses.
- The Academy’s guardian network — the Biblioplex watchmen and guardians posted across campus descend from Morgana and Verelda’s work, and there is likely a control room holding all their amulets. Directly actionable for any S.A.T.O. move against the Academy. Are they also the Arcane Reclamation Initiative’s enforcers?
- Verelda is a real, findable person — an Academy scholar at the Biblioplex with Quandrix connections, who holds a copy of Morgana’s research and, as far as anyone knows, still doesn’t know Morgana is dead. She also names a Dean Lassette.
- Who gouged out Morgana’s eyes? They were taken before she died, and her body shows a prolonged magical battle. Something in that forest fights with spells and takes eyes.
- The abjuration infusion circle — Morgana was infusing objects with protective magic in her final months. Against what? And could the party use the circle?
- Yssa and the coven — Morgana’s childhood friend who stayed in the forest. Still unaccounted for. (Is the bound woman in white connected? Unestablished.)
- The password was never tested — the amulet made it unnecessary, but “the guardian answers only to its charm” had the party convinced the word was “Yssa.” Untested, and possibly still relevant elsewhere.
- Who bloodied the ghoul, and how did the ghouls get in? Something wounded one before the party arrived, in a basement barred from the outside.
- Freedale’s library — spotted on the way out, never entered.
- The repossession clock — one more day elapsed; roughly 16 days before the Arcane Reclamation Initiative can seize the Golden Chalice.
- S.A.T.O. tasks — Tobin (Sinful Spoils) and Simone (star-tablet donor) still rolling daily; Myrna succeeded at arranging the teleport and is free for a new assignment.
(Carrying forward: Drolta’s vampire dream and what waits at Nephthys, The Whispering One reaching for Howl, Aren’s spider phobia, the escaped bandit boss, the Sinful Spoils, and the true nature of Archibald.)
Next Session
The Fallen arrive at the Nephthys temple — Drolta’s home, the place vampires sacked and where someone she loved may still be walking with red eyes and fangs. They arrive in the morning, a day ahead of schedule, with a scrying pool on call, a controllable war construct back in Freedale, and a rescue in the White Forest waiting past it all.
Drolta’s homecoming — “a little rough.”
Next session: Wednesday, August 26, 2026, and every other Wednesday thereafter.