After five sessions, which feels like both more and less time than I expected, we’ve wrapped up the second arc of my The Leeching Wastes campaign. The first arc involved fleeing from a home that was directly in the path of a horrible monster in hope of finding a new, safer place to call home and the second arc has been all about settling into this new home while dealing with some of the consequences of people’s actions as that integration occurred. In the last session, one of the player characters was brought under the influence of the monster sealed within the heart of the tree that made up the center of The Grove and given the command to free it. The party failed to stop her despite the emotional price they were paying in their attempts, but the unnamed goddess (connected to her by a bargain said goddess made with the player character’s former lover who had sacrificed herself to save the player character) had one last trick up her sleeve that she’d been holding off since it could easily kill that player character. In order to save everyone, the player character risked her life and ultimately survived, but only just barely. The session ended with the remaining members of the party–two NPC allies in tow–settling down to rest while they waited for their tied-up friend to regain consciousness so they could figure out what the hell had just happened. It was a very draining session that lasted less than an hour and a half and quite a place to pick back up from this week as we went through the arc’s denouement and moved forward in time.

This latest session wound up taking the entire time we’d set aside for it and could have run longer if I hadn’t done my best to keep it trimmed down so we could all get some rest that night. We started out with a bit of conversation between the two conscious player characters as they prepared themselves for the morning and provided each other what comfort they could, including one of them complimenting the paladin on the massive burst of fire and radiant energy that the paladin had used to defeat a foe two sessions prior. It was a sweet moment to rest on, but we cut immediately away to the dreaming state of the player character who had been controller as she found herself once again in the realm of this unnamed goddess. After some conversation, a bit of discussion about what had happened and why the goddess had been able to intervene when she otherwise couldn’t, the player character was charged with giving this unnamed goddess a name so that people could pray to her more directly and, as a result, she could intervene more directly and more powerfully. While both the player and player character panicked about being charged with naming a goddess, I pushed the clock forward and everyone got to take some time to catch up and talk about everything that had happened the night before, now that the weird time loop had ended, their ally was no longer under the monster’s influence, and the ritual they’d been sent to complete was finished.

While relaying everything she’d learned to the rest of the party (and having a lot of tearful, tender moments about being forced to act against the party and, once again, somehow surviving something that should have killed her), she referred to the unnamed goddess as “The Nameless Goddess,” an appellation that the rest of the party used as well. Unbeknownst to the players, I’d made a rule that if the party referred to the unnamed goddess the same way half a dozen times, that would become the locally accepted name, so I started counting. By the time the session had ended, the goddess’ name had become The Nameless Goddess since there was only one solid suggestion and that one was never used in-character. Before that, though, the party saw the results of their handiwork, promised to welcome in a bunch of other displaced people from the path of the monster they’d fled, and managed to return home safely.

From there, we started moving time forward a bit more rapidly, advancing through a month as I gave them some information about what the local community was doing over that month in exchange for information about what the party did. The paladin reforged his sword, the monk started studying religion and helping people learn to navigate the changes to the grove, and the rogue started involving herself in local politics as a messenger and spokesperson. As we wrapped up, I challenged the party to each come up with an additional name for The Nameless Goddess (since most gods have many names) and we wrapped up the session with a birthday party for the allied NPC druid who had the time of her life after discovering that one of the people in the party was immune to her destructive touch (which was caused by being brought to life entirely within a person who had The Rot and being changed by its presence rather than destroyed by it like most people–a sort of adaptive mutation that is incompatible with unadapted life, for the most part). It was a pleasant, heart-warming scene to end on after what had been a stressful arc, but I still slipped in a little mention of what was to come.

After all, there’s still a threat on the horizon and while the bounteous grove has all the plant life their community could ever need for food or building, there isn’t much around in the way of metal or rare magical materials. As some of the most successful and high-profile members of the community, they’ve been tasked with collecting some of those resources so their Sylum (the name in the world for a town or city not warded by a massive necromantic barrier to keep the undead from entering or sensing the beings dwelling within it) can continue preparing for the potential invasion of one of the most devious members of the criminal element that two members of the party thought they’d left behind when they’d vanished from their home. It will be months yet before we get to that part of the game, but that just means I have plenty of time to prepare while we wrap up a different campaign that I will be guesting in for its conclusion and then perhaps the next arc of the game we used to swap with back when we played on Fridays. We’ll see how it plays out since things take a while longer to run their course when we’re playing every other week. I’m just glad things ended so well with my little revival arc and that we’re playing again after so long away from the group.