While we were not able to finish the adventure due to my roommates both having gotten about three hours of sleep last night, tonight our regular DM for our Sunday game was out so I put together a one-shot.
Giving my players four "genre" options for D&D adventures, between "Cosmic Horror," "Airship Shenanigans," "Western," and "Post-Apocalytpic," I got votes for the former two, and so decided to combine the them.
The party finds themselves aboard The Futurist, a new luxury airship that they're taking down to a city where they are hoping to be hired for an "Excavation Company" to plunder ancient ruins for advanced technology.
However, little do they know, their would-be employer has actually been manipulated by Ilithid, who seek to send a supernatural beacon to a particular point in the sky where a rift into the Far Realm can be opened.
The party hobnobs (and plots to rob) some of the well-to-do passengers until, at dinner, the captain is found dead. Despite showing no signs of injury, his death is mysterious.
Indeed, what they will eventually discover (or kind of have already) is that the captain's actually been dead for a while, and that the "body" they discovered was actually the projection of a horrible aberration called an Oblex (found in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes) that had been severed.
We didn't get to finish the game (players needed to roll up new characters, which ate into the time) but they actually stumbled into the final boss as their first fight, and I'll say this: an Adult Oblex (CR 5) is pretty tough on a group of five level 3 characters, at least when the players are rolling pretty garbage attacks.
Still, with the exception of one pulled punch (using Hold Person on just one target, as opposed to several, which the Oblex can,) the thing finally went down after the rogue landed a critical hit.
The party really only just discovered the aberrant nature of the threat aboard, but while they might think the problem is solved, there remain a few issues: namely, several Oblex spawn that have started eating other passengers and crew members, as well as Goliath being puppeted by an Intellect Devourer. I'll probably give them a short rest, though, after the grueling fight they just went through.
But even with all the monsters dealt with, they have to deal with the fact that the ship is still heading toward the rift, and wouldn't you know, but that Goliath man has gone up and sabotaged the navigational controls on the bridge!
I love genre-bending in D&D. My previous one-shot was a wild west showdown against a crew of outlaws led by a barbed devil. This time, we've had an Agatha Christie murder mystery that very quickly transformed into an H. P. Lovecraft story.
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