The session was fairly routine. Chimera are extremely stupid (INT 3) so this one remained distracted by its phantasmal rival and the party eventually finished it off. I rolled an encounter for their camp that night, so two ogres attacked and were promptly dispatched. In between, they visited the famous and fabulously overbuilt Stone Bridge spanning the Dessarin River. They met another party of dwarven pilgrims -- again, 7 dwarves, so it's officially a thing now, you need 7 dwarves on your pilgrimage to the bridge. They dropped some background on the ancient dwarven kingdom of Tyar-Besilmer, so it wasn't completely random.
The big problem is scheduling -- we're going to wind up about six weeks without a game, due to various conflicts. I offered to put together something that could be played by email, although I think I'd run it through the game's forum on Roll20 instead. So far there hasn't been a clamor for an asynchronous game, but it will make an interesting change of pace so I'm keeping it for the next session.
This was an interesting design challenge. No combat. I thought about having them meet up with a caravan of barges, so people could go on different barges and not need to be all together, but that was just a thing to do. There needed to be a goal.
So then I thought about them having to solve a problem. They're marching along a river. The river near me has a large marsh/pond. Getting the party across a marsh would be a challenge. But maybe they just decide to go around the marsh; that would be dull. So I came up with a house on the far side of the marsh. They could explore the house and find an alchemy lab, which gives me the opportunity to give them some potions heading into their next major conflict. Having healing potions always makes a party happy.
I had been looking at ideas for puzzles and came across a mirror puzzle -- the reflection doesn't match the room reflected, so you have to add objects until they match and then the mirror becomes a passage. This would create the opportunity for a kind of scavenger hunt. This would let the characters split up and work on different elements, so we wouldn't get stuck waiting for someone. I went through the character sheets to find things that each character could contribute, like the Mending cantrip and the Comprehend Languages spell.
Now I'm pondering whether to tie the abandoned house into the main plot, and have the inhabitants be captives of one of the cults. This could be a way to nudge them in the direction of the water cult. My group likes happy endings; getting to save people is always nice.
