Welcome back to the NADDPOD Listen Along!

With all the logistics out of the way in our previous introduction post, we are finally free to dive right into the very first episode of Not Another D&D Podcast‘s second main campaign, Eldermourne.

See also: 

• NADDPOD Listen Along: Introduction
• NADDPOD Listen Along: Eldermourne Episode 1, The Reaping Season
• NADDPOD Listen Along: Eldermourne Episode 2, Jabs and Hooks
• NADDPOD Listen Along: Eldermourne Episode 3, Broken Heart Banshee
• NADDPOD Listen Along: Eldermourne Episode 4, Ghosts of Thornkirk
• NADDPOD Listen Along: Eldermourne Episode 5, The Baroness
• NADDPOD Listen Along: Eldermourne Episode 6, The Rook’s Gambit
• NADDPOD Listen Along: Eldermourne Episode 7, Trial By Scale
• NADDPOD Listen Along: Eldermourne Episode 8, Until We Meet Again

….But, as with many D&D campaigns, we need to tackle a lore-dump up top before we can truly get into the shenanigans. I’ll tackle the “prologue” in its own, shorter write up here before hopping into the bulk of the episode.

Prologue recap

DM Brian Murphy starts campaign 2 by describing the pantheon, beginning with a god known as “The Creator.”

This god had three children, The Elder, who created Eldermourne and all of its inhabitants, The Reaper, who judges those inhabitants and decides if they are worthy of joining the gods in Reverie, and the Trickster, who brought magic and whimsy to the world in response to the darkness brought by The Reaper.

The creator then left Eldermourne in the hands of those three children. The Trickster and The Reaper were left in a feud for influence over Eldermourne, with the latter wanting it to be free of magic, sending undead horrors at humanity.

Prologue commentary

I’m glad Murph decided to create his own pantheon for this campaign.

While it was nice to see some of D&D’s favourite gods represented in the Bahumia campaign (and with such flavour), I’ve always been of the opinion that the sheer volume of gods that are canon in D&D is a little overwhelming — especially for DMs who may have to juggle the rapt devotions of Paladins, Warlocks, Clerics, etc.

Keeping things simple with three gods (though technically four, but The Creator has apparently washed their hands of Eldermourne) means that Murph can flesh them out a little more than if he had a larger number to contend with.

I also enjoy that the three siblings’ differences impacted how the worldbuilding came to be, and that they represented two different sides of humanity… hell, two different sides of Dungeons and Dragons, even — whimsical, magical, and fun balanced with dark, brooding, and treacherous. It’s a precarious line that DMs and players alike must walk, between cracking jokes while messing with the shop keep and the emotional devastation that can come from the very real dangers of adventuring.

I don’t know if it was intentional on Murph’s part for the world of Eldermourne and its godly struggle to reflect the two main dispositions of D&D groups — light and funny, or serious and dark — but if so, kudos. I always felt that NADDPOD has struck a better balance than most publicly available D&D campaigns in being both hilarious and fun as well as emotionally deep, but that may also be because I, as a DM, tend to err more towards the lighter, sillier side of things in my storytelling.

I suspect that the Elder will have a larger part to play down the line once the PCs reach the god-like later levels, but it is interesting to me that, for the time being, they do not have much influence on the world at large.

I also expect that we’ll eventually be given a glimpse into what chaos the world may fall into if the Trickster is ever left unchecked without the Reaper around. Mean and evil though the Reaper may seem (he’s been literally sending horrors into the world, after all), I believe one of the underlying themes here, as depicted later on with the Reaper’s scale, is all about balance.

Recap:

Fia Boginya, a Cleric/Wizard who lives in a traincar on the outskirts of Thornkirk, is hunting down one of her rogue spellbooks. She has been attempting to teach herself magic with these aminated spellbooks ever since her mentor went missing eight years ago, but hasn’t had much success. Only one book, her companion Bukvar, respects her, and he is objectively a coward.

Fia is searching through the woods just outside of town for a book, which she suspects has been stolen by the local sprites.

While wandering, she finds horsetracks, as well as dead sprites (quite unusual), which may be the work of a very powerful Horror.

Volk, Fia’s book, is found split in half and deaminated. After mending Volk, Fia sees a dark figure sitting atop a horse ringing a bell, which incites a small needblight Horror to attack the witch. Following the fight, the figure has dissapeared, though Fia recalls that the figure she saw when Batilda, her old mentor, left town, also had a bell.

—

Zirk Vervain, an Artificer Alchemist is working at the Thornkirk morgue. Zirk examines the body of a hunter, which appears to have been cut clean in half by the magical blade of a Horror Hunter, AKA a Blade, though cutting people in half is not exactly their MO, “and they’re not really around anymore.”

His boss, Dr. Nebil, has plans to leave town today. He had to hire members of a local gang, The Rooks, to help him leave discreetly, and Nebil wants Zirk to make sure that any guards that are knocked out as a result receive the proper medical attention.

Nebil takes off with two members of the Rooks, with Zirk following behind.

—

Henry Hogfish, an Echo Knight Fighter, is at a tavern called the Copper Dagger. He is startled by the reflection of an old man behind him, though no one is there. Henry then heads over to work the nightshift at the docks, and is accompanied by a scrawny guard named Willy.

Henry sees an unexpected boat approaching. The sailor, who is actually one of the Rooks, knocks willy out while the other takes out Henry.

Zirk sees this from afar, as well as the Rooks dragging the two bodies into the nearby woods. Dr. Nebil takes off in the boat while Zirk heads towards the bodies to ensure they’re alright, as he promised Nebil he would do.

However, upon approaching the bushes, the two Rooks confront him.

Zirk explains that he plans to heal up the guard and dockworker, but the larger of the Rooks (Fergus) wants to take Zirk out because he saw them committing a crime. Zirk gives his name as Zonk and fails a Deception check, leading to a brief fight between Fergus, Syb, and Zirk. Zirk gets knocked out.

Fia follows the rider’s tracks through the woods, leading her towards town. She loses the trail, but spots three hogtied bodies on the ground. A note is left on one of the bodies (Zirk’s), which states: “We know where you work, Doctor Boy. You owe me – Syb”.

Fia heals Zirk, and the two wake up Henry and Willy.

Willy wants to report the Rooks, but the rest of the party warn him not to. He mentions that there is a scout tower nearby that would have seen the boat, meaning that Henry and Willy need to report the situation or else they might get into trouble.

Henry says that they should report that they got their ass kicked, but that “they don’t know nothin’.”

The whole gang heads towards the scout tower. Once there, they find the dead body of a city watch guard, having been stabbed through with their own sword. Willy runs away, while the rest of the team investigates.

Fia notices that the sprites in a nearby lamp have also died. “This is the work of a horror. I know that to be sure.”

Following footprints heading into the scout tower, they find another body with a cauterized wound similar to the hunter Zirk had examined earlier.

Atop the tower, the party finds dead ravens and a dead birdkeeper. They look like they were trying to hide from something. A note near the body reads: “Nebil, do not get on the boat. We have been compromised.”

An explosion goes off in the water below, and a figure with a scythe cuts through sailors. Dr. Nebil throws something from his pack into the river before being cut in half by the figure, who is seen by the party to have the rotting face of a man, and a bandage over both eyes. He rings a bell again, which brings the dead birds and birdkeeper to life to fight Zirk, Fia, and Henry.

Even with two more zombies and a shadow joining the fray, the party manages to win the fight.

The gang heads down to the river, where the barge is still burning. The mysterious figure, as well as Nebil’s body, pack, and trunk, is gone. Fia and Henry spot a dying sprite who is floating on a book, which reads “Guardians of the Grove.”

“This looks to be very similar to the book that your mentor had, that the blade witch had. It would appear that Dr. Nebil was either some type of blade himself or was involved in their order in some way and was destroyed in much the same way that the witch disappeared.”

Commentary

Given that Murph started us off with the “meeting in a tavern” trope in campaign one, I was happy to see (well, hear) that he changed things up for Eldermourne.

Starting the characters on their own at the top of a campaign can be risky for DMs, especially if you’ve got a sizable party, but the way the three new characters found their lives entwining made both emotional and narrative sense.

Plus it helps for Murph that he’s working with fellow creatives who understand that, to best tell the story the Pod is trying to tell, they should probably go along with the expected path set out by the DM. Nothing ruins the start of a campaign or oneshot quite like a party member going rogue and knowingly deciding not to bite on the initial hook.

Now that we’ve got our setting and our three new characters, its hard not to compare them Bahumia’s Moonshine, Hardwon, and Beverly. While trios both old and new are likeable and interesting, the new crew seems quite a bit more mature than their predecessors.

There might be a social naivety to Fia, a timidity to Zirk, and hesitation from Henry, but all three seem more, well, adult than their Bahumian counterparts, and I think that plays a bit into the previously mentioned theory of D&D party dichotomy, ie. fun, light, and whimsical in contrast to dark, morbid, and serious.

That’s not to say that the new trio is in any way more serious as D&D characters than the previous  (“Zirk, you’ve got two birds left.” “Luckily I’ve got one stone.”) but the settings, character backgrounds, and overall vibe of Eldermourne definitely feels darker than what we saw in Bahumia.

Murph may have subverted D&D tropes by staging the first campaign in the aftermath of the clichéd adventures of the OG heroes, but the Band of Boobs still hit many of those classic checkpoints, even in the OG heroes’ wake: Taking care of a threat in a small village, becoming embedded in the political turmoil of a larger city, travelling through the Nine Hells, etc.

It makes sense, as these are classic D&D settings and situations for a reason, and NADDPOD no doubt wanted to showcase the best of what the TTRPG has to offer for those who may be new to the game.

But what excites me about this new campaign is that, even just based off the first episode, it seems that Murph is more willing than before to dive a little deeper right off the jump.

Think about it; we’ve already got the dealings of an underground gang, a mysteriously powerful hooded figure, missing (or dead) mentors, both figurative and literal shadows, and much more questions left unanswered by the end of just the first episode.

In contrast, the end of the first Bahumia episode had just two threads hanging: Where are the Green Teens, and what happened to the Legendary Heroes?

We all know that this group is capable of telling hilarious, emotional, and deep stories from their previous campaigns, but I am more excited than ever to see what Murph can pull now that he’s back at the helm and, more importantly, now that he has the first campaign under his belt.

Roses:

• Jake managing to bring so much character to a Human Fighter (again), dispelling the notion that its the most boring race/class combo you can play in 5e.
• CORONER-CON!
• Bukvar, you adorable coward, you.
• Fia thinking they might just be able to Mend Dr. Nebil like she did her cut-in-half book earlier in the ep.
• Non. Binary. Representation.

Thorns: 

• Honestly, none.

 

• Okay, fine. I’ll say it. I do miss Paw-paw 🙁

That’s it for this ep! Read other NADDPOD Listen Alongs here and share your takes, predictions, roses, and thorns in the comments below.

Introduction | Episode 2: Jabs and Hooks