We are FINAAAAALLY back to The Third Mates, everybody!

As much as I loved the HexBuds arc and Lou Wilson’s time on the podcast, I am thrilled to be back with the outcasts of Outerborough.

Check these out:

• NADDPOD Listen Along: Eldermourne Episode 14, The Petty King of Outerborough
• NADDPOD Listen Along: Introduction

…Who have actually officially left Outerborough and headed into the gothic, dark, chilling setting of Innerborough as of this episode — but we’ll get to all that soon enough.

If any readers have a hazy memory of were we last left off with the OG trio, Murph offered a reasonably thorough recap at the top of the episode, and you can always feel free to read through our very own episode recaps by checking out the NADDPOD Listen Along archives here.

With all that housekeeping out of the way, let’s get after it!

Recap

Fia, Henry, and Zirk have spent five days navigating the river that is taking them from Outerborough’s Thornkirk to the Scaletip Valley of Innerborough.

Along the way, Henry used his boneclaws to accidentally give himself bangs, Zirk officially turned Spritle into a homunculi (allowing them to speak!), and Fia learned a few new spells.

During their time on the river Henry also gave Fia some swimming lessons, Zirk tried to help determine what kind of curse Henry is facing through the collection of… fluids… and the whole gang learned that the Petty King Brightleap had been killed and his castle destroyed by the empire.

An heir has not yet been named to rule over Outerbuorough.

The river eventually brings them into the colder, darker, deader landscape of Innerborough’s Scaletip Valley, and The Third Mates find the meeting place that Nebil/Penly had been heading towards, at least according to the information they’d gotten from Madame Whitlocke.

Once ashore, the crew finds the remains of a long-dead campfire and spot a single sprite in the distance, hovering at the peak of a nearby mountain.

A short hike takes them to the place that they saw the sprite, which gives the party a vantage on a two storey manor that has been built into the side of a mountain. Fia casts detect magic and gets a medley of different magic from below the building and a hint of necromancy from the first floor.

Fia peeks inside through a window. She sees the body of a man with a grievous neck wound laying in a dining room, paintings of Trickster groves adorning the walls, and a bandit woman-turned vampire spawn jumping out from underneath the table.

A brief scuffle results in the Third Mates besting the vampire, who tells them that she was turned by someone named Kenley. They remember that “Kenley” had been one of the names that Petty Jack had been after.

On the body of the male bandit the party finds a wanted poster for a Lord Brayden Kenley. There is also a spilt vial of acid that looks familiar to the type of glassware that Zirk’s mother used to use.

Investigating the rest of the manor finds a corridor filled with portraits of people that appear to go back centuries — to even before the rise of the empire 1000 years ago.

A room to the side is adorned by the heads of various horrors as though hunters’ prizes, and there is where Fia finds a portrait of a younger Batilda.

Upstairs, the party enters a master bedroom where a huge portrait depicts a man they recognize as Kenley from the wanted poster, as well as a man with armor and a scarf who had been seen in a painting in the corridor.

The two are clearly romantically involved.

An emerald on the man’s necklace is removable, and once the party takes it from the upstairs painting to the corresponding portrait downstairs it causes the painting to move, revealing a hidden study.

There they find the discarded portraits of Kane and Gideon, as well as a bookcase that appears to be missing a book. Fia puts their Guardians of the Grove book into the slot. This moves the entire bookshelf to reveal yet another hidden passageway cut into the stone and leading downwards.

The party sees a closed door with light shining underneath it and hears the faint sound of a piano being played.

Zirk uses an elixir to make himself some fangs to fit in just incase the person playing the piano is also a vampire.

“Wow, you have little upper tusks,” notes Fia.

“If we were to kiss it would be very confusing,” Zirk replies.

“Zirk!” Fia says, blushing.

Henry gets Shank to rap on the door, and a voice from the other side says “What are you waiting for? Come in.”

Once inside the party finds a cozy cave much decorated much like Fia’s traincar. There are arcane grow lights that allow for various plants to grow underground, and a man plays a grand piano atop a bed of flowers. He looks like an aged version of the taller man in the upstairs portrait, though his skin is the greyish blue of a vampire.

He greets them warmly, evidently having heard of Fia and Zirk from his colleagues Batilda and Arthur Penly.

He introduces himself as Lord Brayden Kenley, stating that he is a Smith of the Guardians of the Grove. He has been with the order for some time, having turned himself into a vampire willingly to ensure that his knowledge of the organization would not die after just one lifetime.

Kenley convinces the party to join him in a fairie promise that will stop them from divulging any of the information he tells them to the Guardians’ enemies. They agree. Here’s what he tells them:

“The great secret of the Guardians is that the Trickster once had a child named Serenesis who left the comfort of the great grove to live among the humans. When Serenesis grew old and died, the Trickster was able to mask her true nature from the Reaper, who then sent her soul back to be reincarnated as if it were any other person.

Now in most cases, a reincarnated person has few, if any, similarities to their past self, but in the case of Serenesis she proved to be a powerful enough magic entity that her magical powers continued to manifest even as she went on to live other lives. Luckily, it wasn’t as pronounced in previous generations, but this most recent one has proven quite noticeable.

Now, even amongst the Guardians this is something of a secret. There is always one Smith and one Blade who know about Serenesis and seek to protect her and keep her secret. For the past several I have been the Smith, and in this lifetime Batilda was the Blade. When we heard rumblings of a young woman with a raw magic power in a small village in Innerborough, we knew we likely had our next Serenesis. The townspeople had turned against her and Batilda set out to save her from execution on the Reaper’s scales. But when she got there somebody else had already done it.”

Fia speaks to confirm her suspicions: “Irena is the child.”

Kenley nods, and continues.

“Batilda took a liking to you and took you under her wing. The lucky side effect of your bravery is that the bladewitch who interrupted a Reaper ceremony fueled the gossip mill far greater than a girl with raw magic power, so Serenesis was once again safe to live in obscurity. However, the problem repeated itself within a couple of years and the girl’s raw magic once again was discovered, but this time she was able to defend herself. After half-destroying another village in a rain of arcane missiles, this time she did draw the attention of the Reaper’s followers and the Reaper himself, who managed to deduce that there was something special about this untrained girl with so much magical power.

The good and bad news is that Serenesis has gone on the run and has been able to mask her location somehow from both us and the enemy. When this happened the Blades and the Smiths gathered at our temple to discuss our next move, and it was there that we were attacked by a Reaper sorceress.

I was one of the few survivors, along with Arthur Penly, and of the Blades that were killed in the temple many of them were convinced to switch sides and join the Reaper once they had to face him. Those Blades would later return as the prophets and now serve this very same sorceress who seeks to find Serenesis and remove her soul from the cycle.”

Bukvar is ecstatic to learn that he was made by a god, and Kenley notes that he’d though Batilda to be dead, but the sprites have always told him that she still lives.

He recently managed to pinpoint her location back at the Guardians’ temple, but figures that she must be trapped somewhere at the bottom where it was flooded in the attack.

He can’t enter water, being a vampire, so he asks if the Third Mates would be willing to try to rescue her.

They agree, and Kenley paints them a map of where they will find the temple.

Fia also brings up the fact that Henry can recall some parts of his past lives, prompting Kenley to magically investigate Henry.

His eyes glow green for a moment, then back to their usual violet.

“You, my friend,” he says to Henry. “have broken a fairie promise.”

“God damn it,” says Henry, but also probably Jake.

And that’s were Murph ended the session.

Commentary

With a thick ‘sode comes a beefy recap, but I am definitely not complaining.

I should start off my mentioning how great it is to have Caldwell back on the cast. Lou was an amazing addition for the HexBuds arc, but it was hard not to feel the absence of Caldwell seeing just how well the core players mesh with each other.

Which you’d expect after playing well over 100 D&D sessions together, of course.

I like how Murph handled downtime at the top of this session, too, almost making the five days on the river pass like a montage sequence rather than stopping at each riverside port town to play out encounters. Shopping in D&D can make for a fun session (if that’s the kind of thing your players are into) but it doesn’t lend too well to a fast-paced actual play show like NADDPOD.

Fastforwarding to the hidden manor built into the side of a mountain —  did anyone else get serious Series of Unfortunate Events vibes? Especially with the dark and dismal atmosphere, the generations-spanning secret organization, the hidden room inside a hidden room… As someone who inhaled those books back in the day, I couldn’t help but draw some parallels between the Guardians and the VFD, but maybe that’s just me.

Either way, the lore surrounding the Guardians of the Grove was piled on thick this episode, along with information about their MO. Many of the mysteries we were presented off the jump in this campaign (where was Nebil heading? What happened to Batilda? Is Irena alright?) were answered here, but many more were raised: What happens if the Reaper rips Irena’s soul from the cycle? How will the Third Mates save Batilda? What fairie deal did Henry break?

I also loved the idea that the head of a long-spanning organization could willingly become a vampire to keep said organization running properly… but I do think that something terrible might happen to Kenley sooner rather than later to truly reinforce the theme of these new heroes — these new guardians — taking the torch from the previous generation.

We saw a similar theme in Bahumia, but I think that “stepping up in place of your mentors to finish what they started” is really being hammered home here with Nebil dying off the jump and Fia donning Batilda’s blade.

For that same reason I unfortunately can’t see Batilda being of muuuuch help to the party even if she is alive and saved, because an unwritten rule of D&D is that you can’t really give your party a DMPC that’s stronger than they are.

Though maybe Batilda will have lost some of her abilities (or mental wellbeing) after being trapped in the basement of a flooded temple for years, so who knows.

Another interesting revelation from this episode was the idea that some of the Blades were not actually forced to turn to the Reaper’s side, but instead actually made the choice to. This contradicts some prior information that had been given to the HexBuds (but I can’t remember from where/who), which said that, if these former blades actually had full control of themselves, they’d want the HexBuds to destroy the monsters they’ve become.

Maybe this contradiction is intentional, and if it is then maybe it’s a hint that even the Guardians of the Grove aren’t exactly operating on the “good” or moral side of this battle between two godly siblings, either.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Roses:

• Zirk becoming a dad to Spritle when Caldwell also became a papa
• Kenley not knowing who the hell Henry is
• The whole vials full of… tears bit
• Fia’s “inside kid” energy when it comes to swimming
• The spooky setting of Innerborough

Thorns:

• Can’t think of any!

Buds:

• If the Guardians’ manor had such cool hidden rooms, I can only imagine what the temple looks like

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

Episode 14, The Petty King of Outerborough