Light of Xaryxis - Chapter 1 & 2

The Light of Xaryxis is a sprawling, exciting, adventure in the Spelljammer setting. An adventure for levels 5-8, the adventure is told in a series of short episodes requiring about 2-3 hours to play each. Each episode ends on a dramatic cliffhanger for the next episode to follow.

What follows is an account of my groups experience with the first two episodes, and my thoughts on certain parts of the adventure:

Chapter 1: Astral Rain

The party is supposed to begin this adventure in a coastal city. I choose Neverwinter since our party consists of three characters from the world of Ravnica who have traveled the branches of Yggdrasil to arrive in the Forgotten Realms (a long story which perhaps I will recount another time). The other three characters are brand new to the campaign, though their players are not. Notably, one of the character is a giff from the Astral Adventurers Guide. Neverwinter works just fine for this start.

Right away we encountered one of the major criticisms leveled at this adventure, namely the adventures assumption that the player characters have no knowledge of spelljamming or Wildspace. How can this assumption be valid if your party contains races who have a strong connection to Wildspace?

The solution was simple and worked fairly well, and has setup some interesting scenes that should come about naturally once they reach the Rock of Bral. The new characters, including the giff, are crewmates on the Moondancer. This solves a problem I had with the introduction of Elaina Sartell. When the crystal vines erupt from the ground and destroy everything, she just happens to be standing next to the PC's and is like "oh, hi random, and seemingly unimportant characters of no consequence, come with me if you want to live." It just seems clunky and heavy handed to me.

Instead, I used a setup similar to the intro as written, our original party is in the tavern, but the twist is that the other three characters from the Moondancer are actually on their way to the same dockside tavern for some much needed shore leave when the scenario kicks off. The astral blights begin attacking the populace as written and the heroic adventurers and sailors alike jump into the fray to save some innocents. At the conclusion of the encounter the sailors have the perspective that this bad and it's time to get off world. They recommend the other three accompany them as a means of thanking them for helping out in the fight. 

Still a bit forced I admit, but it feels like more of a plausible situation. From there the PC's, all six now in the same group, make their way to the docks. Elaina steps out of the crowd to speak with her crew, inquire about the newcomers and direct them to get her back on her ship. Good roleplaying and a successful intimidation check later, they push past Traevus and his thugs, come to terms so he pays for passage aboard the Moondancer, load the refugees on board, and set sail for the stars.

All in all, it was a tidy first chapter. It took us perhaps an hour and a half to run through the whole thing. Partly because they didn't want to study the vines. The description of the vines and the encounter with the blights was enough for them to know to leave.

Chapter 2: Attack of the Star Moth

We took a short break between chapters, but rolled directly into Chapter 2 in the same four-hour game session. Now aboard the Moondancer, the party was sailing off of Toril heading for the Rock of Bral, a Wildspace port only half of them were familiar with. I provided the player characters who were crew members with some quick facts about spelljamming and Wildspace. This crew/not crew party split, made for some good roleplaying, and the presentation of some of the expository information was coming from players, to other players, instead of from an NPC. Not only did it permit one character to teach another, but in real time one player was teaching another, as none of them had any spelljammer experience prior to the session.

Flapjack filled in any of the more specific details that any of the PC's had, and he rose quickly in the player's esteem. I think it's mainly the hat.

As the Moondancer was leaving Toril, an enemy star moth was spotted pursuing them. On the captains orders the Moondancer swung around and prepared to engage. My player base is very into Star Trek, and I admittedly and more into Star Wars, but everyone was ready for some ship to ship combat in space.

Now I know there have been a lot of complaints about the ship combat system in the latest iteration of Spelljammer, especially when compared to the rules from the 2E box set, and the vehicle rules present in Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus for the infernal war machines. There are several products up on the DM's guild that seek to fix this, but our honest opinion of it wasn't that bad. With six PC's, booth ballistae were able to utilized each round and it was pretty exciting for the Moondancer to get peppered by few rounds of mangonel shot before being able to return fire. Due to the larger amounts of damage the siege weapons can generate, each hit above the damage threshold definitely had the PC's sit up and take notice.

I will admit since the preface for this battle is basically a straight, head on engagement, the rules as written worked pretty well. In larger battles that are supposed to take place later in the adventure (Chapter 10, I'm looking at you) I don't think it will be as fulfilling. It's really geared for a Final Fantasy style of turn based combat instead of the X-wing miniatures game.

At any rate, the ships drew close enough for the three Elven warriors on board the Star Moth to cross over to the Moondancer and the PC's abandoned their siege weapons to engage. One of the new characters, half-orc fighter Zuul, was determined to be the ships XO. As such, and due to the player's prompting, I allowed Zuul to use the Lead from the front action I discussed here. The extra hit points came in handy due to the pot shots taken by the star moth's Hadozee crew.

After two elves were slain, the third attempted to retreat and was cut down before being allowed to return to the Star moth. As the star moth spun away, the Moondancer accelerated away. The general consensus by the players was it was an exciting and unexpected encounter. As the Moondancer slowed again, they were all horrified to see the hulking form of an illithid nautiloid lurch from behind an asteroid.

In summary, we had a blast with the first two chapters. I definitely had to tweak some of the introduction, but now that the adventure is off the ground (pun intended) I can't wait to see how they handle all of the exciting episodes to come. Follow along won't you!

The RPG Study