In which I kill a guy the party already saved and get accused of being a huge jerk. It was effective though; with 9 people in the party, many of whom are fantasy buffs, it can get tricky to surprise them.
https://gloriana.obsidianportal.com/adventure-log/the-battle-of-dunlan-keep
Going into the adventure they all knew something was wrong with Jurian, but there were a lot of possibilities. Was he enchanted? Was he insane? Last time they talked to him, was he himself? He seemed like he was himself. Nobody suspected I’d done the complete impersonation, nor that I’d pulled a YouAreTooLate with Cedric’s life. DMs feed on jaw drops and “OooooOOOOOOOoohhhh…” moments, and I got one of those here.
Then the moment kind of died when the big scary mastermind rolled two fives on an enchantment save with advantage and fell victim to Hideous Laughter. Tried to salvage it with her enchanted raven swarms which managed to make them worry for a moment, but I’m finding it really tough to challenge PCs with single-creature encounters these days.
Due to RL scheduling issues, we’re only likely to play twice all summer. But my RPG fix is not out of luck, because we’ve ended the Refuge campaign (or at least shelved it) and we’re swapping to one of my all time favorite campaigns I’ve ever run. Stay tuned.
