Session 10: The Red God’s Mercy
The Mirkwoods → The Feywild → Everwinter
TONE: Consequence and forgiveness. The Red God is terrifying and
fair. The time-out is genuinely redemptive.
Dagon’s Curse
When the party hesitates — when they pause long enough for doubt to
take root — Dagon’s patience runs out. The curses arrive without
warning, in the middle of the night: painful, debilitating, and deeply
personal.
| Character Type | Curse Suggestion |
|---|---|
| Charm/beauty-focused character | Beauty inverted — those who look at them see something wrong, just at the edge. DC 13 Wis or be unsettled and distracted (-1 to attack rolls) until they look away. |
| Divinely guided character | Their divine messenger goes silent. No visions, no guidance. They feel it like a missing tooth — the absence is louder than the presence ever was. |
| Saving-throw-dependent character | An existing penalty doubles, or a new -2 applies to all saving throws — layering consequence on consequence. |
| Empathically sensitive character | Feels everything too loudly — ambient emotion, crowd panic, nearby suffering. Disadvantage on Concentration checks. |
| Deception-reliant character | Small acts of deception fail. Every lie — in conversation, in combat — backfires in some minor but visible way. |
Through the Fairy Door
Clover — a small fey creature left by the fox fey as a guide —
appears at the Mirkwoods’ edge and leads the party to a fairy door: a
circle of mushrooms around a hollow tree. The Feywild beyond is
dazzlingly beautiful and completely disorienting. The rules work
differently here. North is a feeling, not a direction.
The Feywild smells like rain before it falls and
something sweet underneath that you can’t name. The light comes from
everywhere. Trees grow sideways and upward and in
spirals. A deer walks past with a candle burning on each antler, paying
you no attention. In the distance, past a hill that shimmers as if
deciding whether to be a hill, there is a fortress the color of old
blood and new snow.
The Red God
The Red God’s citadel is built from crimson ice that does not melt.
He is enormous — not in the way of giants, but in the way of something
that was never meant to be seen. He laughs first, which is somehow worse
than if he’d been angry.
‘So,’ he says, looking at each of them in turn. ‘You looked a sea
god in the eye, made a promise you didn’t keep, and then had the
audacity to come asking for my help. I’m almost impressed. Sit down.’ He
gestures to a table set with steaming food. ‘You look
terrible.’
DM NOTE: The Red God is not cruel — he is exacting. He will remove
the curses. His price is not gold or service; his price is honesty. Each
party member must spend a scene in ‘time out’ — sent somewhere
meaningful to them, alone, to reflect. These are brief, personal
vignettes. Ask each player: ‘Where does your character go when they need
to be alone?’ Then put them there. Give each player 3–5 minutes of solo
spotlight. Something important should happen in each vignette — a
vision, a memory, a small decision that clarifies who they are.
-
Reaching the Red God: 400 XP
-
Successfully negotiating (all curses removed): 500 XP
-
Personal vignette played with genuine engagement: 100 XP
each
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