SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

It’s now a tad less than a week until session 7 is upon me. So how have I been spending my time since the last planning post been spent on getting ready?

In reality very little has been done for the next session. So far. This week will be a flurry of activity.

I started this morning by creating a new category ‘session planning’ for this post, and then trawling through my previous posts and adding it to all the session planning posts. I also at the same time added the ‘post mortem’ category to the relevant session write ups. It may seem a little thing, but it’s going to allow me to get to my notes a lot easier.

In a way my creative process has been kicking in whilst I have been doing ‘nothing’. As I wait for inspiration, I expose myself to new ideas. Sometimes watching or reading some of the campaign inspirations I’ve talked about previously.

During this period of contemplation I have made one or two decisions.

The first is that the sahuagin will attack the party whilst they are transporting the tribute. It fits nicely in with the story so far. The Sahuagin have already tried to steal part of it whilst the party were escorting the contribution from the town of Queens Cove. It makes sense they would make another attempt to get their hands on it.

The sahuagin this time will consist of ‘regular’ sahuagin, sahuagin baron and possibly a sahuagin priestess. Apart from the Sahuagin having their manta ship they will also be accompanied by sharks.

As an encounter this will most likely be border line hard/deadly, leaning towards deadly. The important thing is this will need to be sign posted to the party somehow.

Using the following table from the Lazy DM workbook I can get away with a priestess and baron plus a handful of regular sahuagin.

My gut feeling is for a party of 5 regular sahuagin boarding the parties boat. With a couple of sharks in the water between the boat and the manta. Then on the manta itself the baron and priestess plus 3 regular bodies. This will not be a big manta.

In my head this scene plays out a bit like the trench scene from the Aquaman movie. Where Aquaman and Mera fight the trench. I like the idea of having my encounter at night as well.

The other decision I’ve made is to use the connectors for the boat tiles to pre-make the boats before the session. This will speed things up a little, and allow me to make the manta from left over tiles. Which hopefully gives it that salvaged feel.

The final encounter of the session will be a social one. How that pans out depends on the outcome of the sahuagin encounter. When the party get to the island, the brigands will be waiting to take the tribute.