I took a slice - the first twelve rooms - of Bearded Devils awesome Apocalypse Archive to by Friday Night open table as the Apocalypse Annex. It was a little bit of a tone shift vs the usual Brancalonia fare but I think it worked well. I ran some rooms 'as is' but then clipped some of the 'bottled horrors' to make it a harbinger of the main threat rather than the final boss.
Party was Zell - Tabaxi warlock, Francis Loxodon bard, Drog hobgoblin sorcerer, Alex human cleric - system was 5e using Gritty Realism (strictly also Brancalonia rules but none of them became relevant). Write up below is from the post-session report our DMs do after every session on our forum. I have added in DM commentary to give the 'how I ran it' perspective and tag what came from where in the Apocalypse Archive.
Session Report: The Apocalypse Annex
With funds and food running short, Rougher approaches our heroes with a scrap page "recovered" from others of the group at the Golden Cockerel, a page from the Great Red Book marked with dwarven sites from the time of the elven invasion. He points out that all the other sites on the page have detailed catalogs of the contents but this one does not - it must be still sealed and therefore full of treasure! The site lies in the Ditch of Serpents, up near Appollonia - familiar terrain, Rougher assures them that no doubt the job will be easy
[DM Commentary: This is my standard one-shot launch "the stew and the wine are getting more watered down. Today is a grim morning where you had a lot of both last night but wake up today hydrated and hungry. The running gag is Rougher is usually right about there being treasure, dead wrong about the level of hazard]
Sceptical but hungry our heroes hitch a barge ride up the river, noting someone tailing them as they leave and boarding another barge behind them. Laying a false trail that they disembarked at the end of the day at the Rugged Hearth, the riverside inn, they travel on a little more and disembark at the nearest point on the river to the place they seek.
[DM Commentary: We had a four-man party this time - Zell - Tabaxi warlock of some undead patron, Francis Loxodon bard (both PCs with 6+ sessions at my open table), Drog hobgoblin sorcerer (experienced player with new L1 character), Alex human cleric (new guy with L5 cleric of the some twilight domain deity).]
Hiking through the forest to the edge of the Ditch of Serpents as night falls, they spy campfires and move towards them. Finding some common folk from Appollonia in religious festival costumes camped for the night they join their camp.
Asked if they shared their dreams about the New Sun, our heroes lie that they do, put together the Appollonians tale with the festival cooked up by others from the Golden Cockerel a month previously and in the morning tell them they have had further revelatory dreams and lead them to the mapped site.
[** DM Commentary: At this point the players (and PC's) were waiting for Roughers other shoe to drop and probed these cultists pretty hard. They spotted that some of the costumes had bits and pieces from their colleagues, backtracked the timeline and made some decent Religion rolls to twig that while this did look like the thing their comrades had set in motion, nothing any of them were aware of explained how that false festival could have evolved into dreams so quickly.]
After some searching and more digging the find a stubby archaeolith tower, force the door and descend into the pitch blackness. Natural darkvision and gifts from patrons and deities furnish all the party ability to see in the dark but still it is disquieting as they descend.
[** DM Commentary: Actually cracking into the content here although as per standard with 5e, seeing in the dark was trivially easy to solve. The door was Room 1 - Trapdoor Entrance.]
A spiral stair opens to a great ramp, both stained with ancient blood, watched over by a bastion. At the base of the ramp they find another door into darkness so complete even their gifted sight fails. Alek ventures in and plunges from the tilting blocks of the bridge into the frigid pool of liquid darkness beneath. Hauled back out by his comrades, Zell draws on his tabaxi gifts and boons granted by all his comrades and sprints across.
[** DM Commentary: The stair was Room 2 - Staircase, the ramp was made up new and the 'spinning block bridge' was room 5 'darkness bath' with a trapped bridge over it to create a 'darklock' in front of this dwarven bastion. Though they sensibly chose to have someone scout ahead with a rope attached, once the cleric went into the pool (and found it frigid and damaging) they chose to futz about poking at things and taking more damage until their comrades pulled them out.]
Locking the bridge on the far side lets the rest cross and they find a barrack room and a sizzling mutated goblin corpse. Poking at it a bit Zell consults his patron and is told this thing is anathema.
[** DM Commentary: I made the bridge lockable so they just needed to solve it once and I wanted to get everything done in one session. The barracks was a reskinned Room 4 andthey poked the Illumined vessel a bit and got their first failed saves vs. Radiation - enough to clue them in that this bad light is bad. The way the flaming eyes followed them while the body was apparently dead had them pretty sure that 'the light' was bad - their theory was it was a puppeteering influence from some entity elsewhere.]
Covering it with a blanket and trapping it beneath a chest, the party proceeds upstairs to the spiral library. There they find a shelves packed with scrolls that they figure must be valuable and start stuffing them into their bags. Distracted, they are ambushed by two more mutated goblins, these blazing with sickly light. Tipping a shelf and then casting back their physical forms before banishing them entirely, the party wins some quiet to further explore.
[** DM Commentary: The voidskin scrolls were an object of fascination - and they were paying no attention even when I said there were light sources elsewhere so the other illumined vessels got the drop on them. This was a straight port of Room 6 - Voidskin Scroll Archive. The light cast by the illumined was a nice, scary effect and there was some proper panicking while they figured out who of the cleric, warlock, sorcerer and bard was supposed to be in front. In the end the warlock flexed 'Among the Dead' at a choke point where, grace of some failed saves, the illumined vessels got stalled long enough for the cleric to turn them.]
At the top of the library, the top of the bastion they had seen from without, they find a dwarven planning station and glean snippets of the Membrane Wars and the infectious light of a strange sun that spreads to herald its coming. The also find notes that this place is a containment unit and sigh as they realise the have to check whatever it contains is still there.
[** DM Commentary: we flexed the gritty realism rules and let a pair of second level spells get burned off for a casting of Tongues by the cleric so they could decrypt all the books in Aklo, Sidereal script and Dwarven. I figured with no time pressure and some spare spell energy in the tank this was not unreasonable.]
Making their way back down they find that the Illumined vessel they had trapped under a chest is awake and trying to free itself. They fail to snipe it from ambush and then have to sneak up on it from behind light-blocking blankets before dousing it with liquid darkness from the bridge room.
[** DM Commentary: were I meaner I might just allow blankets blocking the light to only provide advantage against saves but I liked the ingenuity and wanted to keep things moving along. Plus I figured they would have to expose themselves to get things done later.]
Fetching buckets of liquid darkness from the bridge room they proceed past many disturbed warning signs and find a pair of mutated goblins gnawing on the biomechanical roots of a great dome within which liquid darkness sloshes. The damage from the gnawing causes brief gaps in the darkness and when those capture the light of the goblins, the chamber blazes with the sickly light. Our heroes shelter beneath a blanket tetsudo and chase the goblins with mage-handed buckets of darkness as Zell stays out, braves the light and acts as spotter.
[DM Commentary: This room was a combo of Room 12 - Ember of the Final Star and Room 8. Captured Beacon - the apparatus was from Room 12 but the thing inside containment was only an infectous beacon. There was a brief discussion about whether invisibility makes you immune to the light, since you cast no shadow, therefore you are not blocking/absorbing any of the light. In the interests of keeping things rolling, I went with yes. This got them an attack from ambush on one of the goblins.]
Finally a mildly irradiated Zell guides the others to dousing the last goblin with liquid darkness and they set to work Mending and Healing the contraption before retreating and shoring up the damaged barriers.
[DM Commentary: I played this as there being periodic full room 'flashes' from the beacon as the sloshing of the partially damaged darkness cascade let the goblins gaze light it up. A couple of failed saves in and Zell was up to second level of radiation with infravision and sparkly eyes. He was thrilled and happy to keep this, then sad when he fell into the darkness bath on the way out and lost it.]
Back at the surface, with flasks of darkness and pockets full of scrolls, they exhort the New Sun cultists that they have been successful, that their work today will cause the New Sun to rise tomorrow but they must never speak of this place. Highly persuasive, the cultists are raised to a pitch of fanatical devotion and vow to take the secret to their graves.
[DM Commentary: this was an interesting one where they actually played their hand really well with the cultists leaving them convinced that something had genuinely happened but that they must never speak of this place. To be seen exactly how this weird little Pelorite heresy will evolve.]
Session report ends
All told this ran well - people said they liked it, we got all this done in 4.5 hours. Probably not as grim an experience as the author might have originally intended but they were properly spooked by the light of the Last Star and were absolutely convinced they had to make sure this thing never escaped so I consider that a success.
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