DM'S COMMENTARY ON THE TEMPLE OF ELEMENTAL EVIL, PT 4.

I was a little surprised that the players decided to retreat out of the temple dungeons and back to the farmyard.  But given that Commander Feldrin went to get reinforcements and they had already used up many of their resources, it made sense for them to pull back now rather than try to hide deeper in the dungeon that is already alerted to their presence.

I took this opportunity to give them some back ground information in the form of a vision fed to the halfling monk Coppyr.  Since Coppry is a Ghostwise halfling from the Forgotten Realms setting, I decided that his mental ability and his other-planar origins, gave the Elder Element Eye (Tharizdun) access to him, so throughout the battle I told the halfling's player that he heard this voice speaking to him in his head.  This connection is what allows the halfling to receive the vision mentioned in my campaign diary, and is meant to give clues to the Elder Elemental Eye's true identity, but also to shine the spotlight on the Zuggtmoy/Iuz alliance and the golden skull artifact.  This will be more significant as they learn what the skull represents.

The fight at the farm was set up on the fly since I didn't know that they would be leaving the temple and returning later, so I had to set up a quick map in Roll20, which was no problem since I have tons of maps purchased and acquired from various sources on the internet.  So I threw together the map as they decided on an attack plan and that fight took us to the end of the session.

I was a little disappointed that this session did not progress them through the dungeon, but it was a necessary break.  I also made it clear to the players that they would not level up until the milestone of clearing out the temple dungeon was met.  So their choice was abandoning this mission for another one (which I gave them plenty of adventure options in a previous session), but they decided that they needed to end the threat of this cult.  Hopefully next week we'll get the dungeon completed and they'll level up to 5th before hitting the individual elemental temples and nodes.