In­tro­duc­tion

Run­ning the cam­paign 2

Story over­view 2

Ad­ven­ture struc­ture 2

Char­ac­ter levels 2

This cam­paign takes place in the re­gion of De­nau in the areas sur­round­ing the City of De­naura.

Cold to the Bones

Chapter 1

Ice and snow chills the bones of those who suf­fer a life in De­nau. This chapter gives you in­form­a­tion you need to pre­pare for the ad­ven­tur­ers’ jour­ney into the re­gion. This chapter out­lines the his­tory and goals of Ely­dir the Van­quished so that you’re pre­pared for what awaits the char­ac­ters.

Ely­dir, the Van­quished 2

Ely­dir is an an­cient high-elf wiz­ard. Her hair is grey and face wrinkled; poin­ted ears poke out un­der a circlet with a ruby gem­stone set, and her robes are a deep dark red with in­tric­ate sym­bols laced in a golden thread.

The circlet is dec­or­ated in the im­age of the sun on a ho­ri­zon with a down­ward sword pier­cing the ho­ri­zon. The ruby is the sun, spikes of gold show the sun rays, and an iron cru­ci­form is the sword.

Ini­tially, she will be en­countered in the Lonely Tower, but will be en­countered else­where if she is freed.

Ely­dir’s his­tory 2

Ely­dir, born Une, was born into no­bil­ity in the elven com­munity Ay­meluma, the daugh­ter of the elvish Lord Ik­anyr Glyn­lamin. She stud­ied nat­ural ma­gic dur­ing the early years of her life.

Prom­ised to the prince Prince Lainot of Re­hani to end a en­dur­ing war between Ay­meluma and De­naura, the young Une was taken from Ay­meluma and raised to be the lady con­sort of Lainot. Lainot was an ab­us­ive hus­band and, after suc­ceed­ing his father, a feeble vi­ol­ent leader. Through the en­dur­ing ab­use, Ely­dir be­came for­lorn and dis­trust­ful of hu­mans.

To dis­tract her­self from her hus­band’s ab­use, Ely­dir found solace in the study of ma­gic, es­pe­cially en­chant­ments. Dur­ing her study she met Faurin, a kind and gen­er­ous man. His care lead to de­vo­tion and love and in­tim­acy. To­gether, Ely­dir and Faurin dreamed of na­ive grand plans to rule for the bet­ter­ment of the realm. Ely­dir, already in a place of power, took these plans more ser­i­ously than Faurin. Over the next few years, she star­ted put­ting plans into place. Her study also took a darker turn, delving into powers for the con­trol of minds and un­sa­voury creatures. It was then, over 500 years ago, Ely­dir used these skills to kill Lainot, over­throw gov­ern­ment of the De­naura and take con­trol of its people. Yet, for Ely­dir, des­pite the power she had amassed, her greed was un­ful­filled and her de­sire for power con­tin­ued to grow.

It was only by Faur­in’s wish that Ely­dir was cap­tured and im­prisoned in a power­fully war­ded tower. Ely­dir’s last act, be­fore she was im­prisoned, was to curse on those of De­nau in re­venge. She un­leashed her power to rip a portal to the ice plane, bring­ing a raw and bit­ter life to those who fought against her.

Un­able to leave her prison, she spent years ded­ic­at­ing her­self to means of in­flu­en­cing the out­side. To one day again be free and to take back her right to rule.

Goals 2

Ely­dir has the fol­low­ing goals in the cam­paign.

Es­cape the Tower 2

Trapped in the solace of her prison tower, Ely­dir has be­come mas­ter of il­lu­sion and divin­a­tion. To es­cape, she needs the Dawns­word Am­u­let. Us­ing her powers the elf-wiz­ard has watched from afar. She has ma­nip­u­lated his­tory through ap­par­i­tions and dreams, caus­ing tur­moil and trouble, and at­trac­ted fol­low­ers.

The wards pro­tect­ing the am­u­let have frus­trated Ely­dir’s plan to use her fol­low­ers to re­cover it. She has dis­covered that the am­u­let can only be found by those who do not aim to free Ely­dir. This fail­ure has lead to her plan to de­ceive ad­ven­tur­ers into re­turn­ing this am­u­let to her and has been do­ing so by bring­ing mis­for­tune to Ay­meluma.

Once she has es­caped the tower, she will for­get about the ad­ven­tur­ers as they have fin­ished their use, to fo­cus on her other goals. At least, that is, un­til they next in­ter­fere with her plans.

Rule De­nau 2

Pun­ish the Ay­melumans 2

Find the Shards of the Ful­crum 2

Role-play­ing Ely­dir 2

Ely­dir be­lieves she has the right to rule and she has the will to dom­in­ate. She be­lieves that she will cre­ate a bet­ter, fairer world. One without ab­use ruled through might and power. If the char­ac­ters ask why she should rule, she tells them it is be­cause she was taken from her safe world into their treach­er­ous one and no oth­ers in their world have the will to fix it.

There are very few things Ely­dir would­n’t do to achieve dom­in­a­tion but she will avoid hurt­ing the in­no­cent, es­pe­cially chil­dren. In spite of this, it tales very little for the in­no­cent to be judged as guilty and she is mer­ci­less to those who are guilty - as all Ay­melumans are.

Be­fore her im­pris­on­ment, Ely­dir was im­puls­ive and fiery. Over the four cen­tur­ies in the Lonely Tower, she has be­come calm and cal­cu­lat­ing but she seeks an un­feel­ing and cold ven­geance. She cares little for the free­dom and live­li­hoods of those that she would rule. While she has be­come de­tached in most ways, she fears be­ing con­trolled, as she was by Lainot, or be­trayed, as she was by Faurin.

Ely­dir is pa­tient. Her plans take years to un­fold, she and she is un­likely to be de­terred by fail­ure. Through her schem­ing, she will ex­ploit oth­ers but will dis­card them when they are no longer use­ful. Us­ing her powers of divin­a­tion and per­sua­sion, she will in­vest­ig­ate those who op­pose her ends and use their fail­ings to her ad­vant­ages.

Para­noia forces Ely­dir to rule from afar. She in­flu­ences her own forces and other fac­tions through care­fully se­lec­ted few in­ter­me­di­ar­ies pre­fer­ring de­cep­tion and an­onym­ity. Even with her in­ter­me­di­ar­ies, Ely­dir is cau­tious and will use her powers of pro­jec­tion to con­ceal her true loc­a­tion.

Ely­dir’s in­ter­fer­ence 2

Ely­dir will meet the ad­ven­tur­ers early in the cam­paign out of ne­ces­sity. Un­less they are a clear threat, she will for­get about them. However, it’s un­likely to take long be­fore she re­cog­nises their threat if they op­pose her. When she is free, she will aim to be un­known to the world. She will avoid dir­ect con­front­a­tion but the char­ac­ters will face those who fol­low her or those who are ma­nip­u­lated by her.

Us­ing her powers of divin­a­tion, Ely­dir will spy on the char­ac­ters and their al­lies. In this way, she finds the ad­ven­tur­ers use­ful and will want to keep them alive un­less they be­come too much of a threat. She will ac­cept stra­tegic losses and al­low the char­ac­ters to have short term suc­cess to gain the up­per hand. Lim­ited re­sources and grand goals stand in the way of Ely­dir fo­cus­ing dir­ectly on the ad­ven­tur­ers but she will use her re­sources to weaken.

Ely­dir re­lies on oth­ers and her ma­gic items for her im­mense power. Alone and sep­ar­ated, she is still a force to be reckoned with - us­ing ma­nip­u­la­tion and en­chant­ment to con­trol oth­ers.

Ad­ven­ture hook 2

The char­ac­ters start their ad­ven­ture await­ing a meet­ing with Lady Alymir Glyn­lamin. The party will start in the elven vil­lage of Ay­meluma.

You have been in­vited to meet Lady Alymir Glyn­lamin who is con­cerned about re­cent wolf at­tacks in her vil­lage of Ay­meluma. You have each trav­elled there. It’s one hour be­fore the meet­ing is planned.

Start the wolf at­tack event.

The Re­gion of De­nau

Chapter 2

De­nau was once a land once pro­tec­ted by the harshest of weather and the people thrived on fer­tile vol­canic lands be­fore Ely­dir’s curse.

People 2

Icebring­er’s Ic­tus 2

Tower road 2

To see how quickly the ad­ven­tur­ers get through the city to the, the char­ac­ters can take a DC 20 Sur­vival (Wis­dom) check. On a:

• suc­cess, the jour­ney takes 24 hours, with 1 night’s rest. The first day gets them to the road. The second day gets them to the city in the af­ter­noon.
• fail­ure, the jour­ney takes 48 hours, with 2 nights’ rest. The first day is spent be­ing lost in the wil­der­ness. The second day gets them to the road. The third day gets them to the city in the af­ter­noon.

Gen­eral en­vir­on­ment: Moor–wil­der­ness → Road in the moors → Road through hilly–forest → Road through hilly–forest broken up by pas­tures (moun­tains and city in dis­tance)

The De­nau Moun­tain path 2

Steep moun­tain path that winds up the wooded foot­hills of the moun­tains. As the path climbs the moun­tain, it will climb along the top of an icy rav­ine, with cliffs down to the right. This path climbs for about 10 miles. Along the top of this rav­ine, it’s ex­tremely cold (p110 DMG).

About 7 miles up the moun­tain, there will be strong winds (p110 DMG) and is ob­scured by heavy snow (p110 DMG, heavy pre­cip­it­a­tion). Play­ers will think they hear a howl­ing on the wind. Around here, a DC 16 per­cep­tion check will show that there are an­imal tracks around. A suc­cess­ful DC 18 Wis­dom (Sur­vival) check will identify these as three wolves and two winter wolves which have trav­elled up the moun­tain.

After an­other mile, the play­ers will be set upon by two winter wolves (p340 MM) and three wolves (p341 MM). In the area there will be chunks of slip­pery ice (p110 DMG), tall cliffs and rocks to hide be­hind.

After an­other half mile, the rav­ine even­tu­ally dis­ap­pears and the char­ac­ters are now in a path between two moun­tains, still climb­ing.

At the top of path fol­low­ing up the rav­ine, the path splits: to the north, fur­ther up the moun­tain; and to the east, down the moun­tain. A mostly covered sign­post shows that the [[moun­tain mon­as­tery]] is up the moun­tain, and Ay­meluma is down the moun­tain.

Com­ing back down the moun­tain on east side, the play­ers will fol­low a river that joins from the east of the moun­tain.

Ma­jor events

Chapter 3

Events in De­nau after 2

While the play­ers are in Mount Ce­les­tia, Ely­dir is still mov­ing against them in their home plane. Con­sult the fol­low­ing list for the hap­pen­ings on the numbered day:

1. -
2. -
3. Orcs move to take Car­nelu
4. -
5. Car­nelu, a vil­lage east of the De­nau moun­tains, is taken by the Orcs
6. A band of rouges break into the City of De­naura and kid­nap the elvish chil­dren
7. Ely­dir finds the Wiz­ard who knows of the loc­a­tion of Nar
8. -
9. Ely­dir sends an Or­cish army to put De­naura un­der siege
10. -
11. -
12. De­naura is un­der siege by the Or­cish army
13. -
14. Lady Per­tana is as­sas­sin­ated
15. De­naura is taken and is ruled un­der mar­shal law
16. Ely­dir makes De­naura her cap­ital

Ad­di­tion­ally, on the second day, the play­ers will re­ceive a taunt­ing mes­sage on the send­ing stone: “You are fools to leave at such a time!”

Ran­dom en­coun­ters 2

Use the ran­dom moun­tain en­coun­ters for every quarter day of travel (apart from the first day). Use 1d6 to de­term­ine whether the char­ac­ters find a loc­a­tion, land­mark, or fea­ture.

Dur­ing night, use the long rest events table.

Ru­mours 2

1. At­tacks from un­sa­voury creatures in the area have de­creased and there have been fewer sight­ings
2. Neigh­bour­ing lord in Limecall has re­cently passed away
3. Cave in at the old tomb
4. Beast people have been sighted in the woods to the north west of De­naura

It’s been a week since you have freed the City of De­naura from Qa’­lir’s con­trol. Since then, you’ve been paid a 250gp each to help se­cure the city from the creatures re­main­ing here and the castle. You’ve made good pro­gress and are to meet with Lady Per­tana, who is still rul­ing the city in the place of King Mor­cant. Dur­ing this time you’ve seen a lot of things: con­structs made by Qa’­lir fight any­thing around them; sta­tioned wights murder in­no­cents; and lots of flee­ing cult­ists

Right now, you’re in Lady Per­tana’s study dis­cuss­ing the pro­gress in pro­tect­ing the city. Per­tana is sit­ting at her desk. There are pa­pers piled and an empty glass of wine. Her eyes are blood­shot and

“We’ve been able to bring in some more of our guards from the sur­round­ing areas,” Per­tana says. "We’ve seen an abate­ment in the re­ports of ban­dit and gob­lin at­tack which is a great re­lief.

"I’m very grate­ful for the work that you’ve been put­ting in over the past week. Without your help, I’m doubt­ful that the city will have sur­vived.

“Since the at­tack, we’ve been able to gather from our pris­on­ers that Qa’­lir was plan­ning something call-”

A pier­cing screech in­ter­rupts Per­tana, “for what you have done - Mer­i­ele, El­mon, and Aseir - you will know only pain.”

You each hear a whis­per of a dis­cord­ant melody and are wracked with a ter­rible pain. The room spins and your vis­ion blurs.

At this point, ask the char­ac­ters to make a Wis­dom Sav­ing Throw (DC 19). On a failed save, the char­ac­ters take 5d6 psychic dam­age. On a suc­cess­ful save, the char­ac­ters take half.

The melody sub­sides. After re­ori­ent­at­ing yourselves, you real­ise that the sound seemed to come from Mer­i­ele.

Per­tana is stand­ing and look­ing shocked and con­cerned but looks un­harmed. She is point­ing at Mer­i­ele and says “What was that! It came from you!”

The Let­ter 2

Meet at the Watch­er’s Tav­ern in Jairnt, North of De­naura, on the night of the next new moon. There’s a mat­ter to dis­cuss that af­fects many people’s lives. I can provide you with a sig­ni­fic­ant re­ward if you agree to help. Please be dis­crete.

Bring El­mon and Mer­i­ele.

You’ve heard news and ru­mours or a re­cent de­pos­ition of King Mor­cant, the old leader of the City of De­naura.

The pe­ti­tioner 2

After a few minutes in the tav­ern, a tall hooded fig­ure wear­ing a worn trav­el­ler’s cloak ap­proaches from one of the corners. The fig­ure takes a chair from a neigh­bour­ing table, and places it at yours, im­me­di­ately sit­ting. The fig­ure, in a grace­ful voice, says, “Good even­ing, Prince Aseir, El­mon, and Mer­i­ele. I’m glad to see that you’ve answered my re­quest to dis­cuss a mat­ter with you.”

From the voice, you can tell that this per­son is un­mis­tak­ably a wo­man

The wo­man’s pe­ti­tion to the char­ac­ter’s:

The city’s pre­vi­ous leader, King Mor­cant, has been sup­planted by Lord Tel­netar. Tel­netar was once the leader of one of the three great noble houses in De­naura. The two re­main­ing ma­jor noble houses in De­naura have stayed quiet and kept to their own busi­ness.

It’s odd, be­cause Tel­netar, when he was a noble was good-hearted and so­ci­able. Now, he rarely leaves the castle and gives tyr­an­nical and harsh or­ders to quash any op­pos­i­tion to his rule. The people of the city are liv­ing and act­ing out of fear.

My re­quest of you, ad­ven­tur­ers, is that you find out what Tel­netar is do­ing and put a stop to it. You must stick to­gether and be dis­crete or I think it is likely that you will be doomed to fail.

The pe­ti­tioner is Ju­via, the daugh­ter of King Mor­cant, well versed in the polit­ics of the city, poised to be the next Lord of the city. She fled with her father dur­ing Tel­net­ar’s vi­ol­ent coup, after they saw the power in their as­sail­ants.

She is a 5th-level School of Evoc­a­tion Wiz­ard. Her in­tel­li­gence score is 17, in­tel­li­gence mod­i­fier +3, spell save DC 14, spell at­tack mod­i­fier +6.

The sort of in­form­a­tion this per­son knows:

• the loc­a­tions of the nobles’ man­sions.
• in­form­a­tion about the cur­rent nobles and which ones are most likely to help the char­ac­ters.
• the dir­ec­tion to the city.
• re­luct­ant: her own iden­tity, she fears that, if the char­ac­ters find out who she is, her fam­ily may be per­se­cuted. She will ex­plain to the char­ac­ters that she’s wor­ried about the know­ledge caus­ing harm to oth­ers if pressed for an an­swer.
• re­luct­ant: the loc­a­tion of her father, King Mor­cant, and the rest of his fam­ily.
• re­luct­ant: how she knows the char­ac­ters, she met them when they vis­ited the city and was awed by Prince Aseir’s stor­ies.

The char­ac­ters can iden­ti­fier her if they suc­ceed on a DC 16 In­vest­ig­a­tion check, if they have pre­vi­ously met King Mor­cant in his castle for a ban­quet. If the char­ac­ters verbally identify her in a way that’s heard, they will be as­saul­ted on the way to De­naura by five ban­dits who de­mand more in­form­a­tion from the char­ac­ters.

She will give them 100gp each for the troubles so far.

Ely­dir and the Olin­arEly­dir 2

Since her es­cape us­ing her am­u­let, Ely­dir’s has been plan­ning to re­lease great evil on the world as re­venge for her pro­longed im­pris­on­ment. The char­ac­ters will re­mem­ber the sym­bol on her am­u­let as a rising sun be­hind a dag­ger point­ing down (this was not re­vealed to the play­ers in Un­bound but the char­ac­ters will re­cog­nise it).

Ely­dir works in total secrecy, con­ceal­ing her loc­a­tion with ma­gic. She com­mands two loyal spellcasters Qa’­lir and Qa’­por, known to her as the Olin­arEly­dir. Qa’­lir and Qa’­por are twins. They are know to com­mon folk as “The Van­quished Fist”.

Olin­arEly­dir 2

The Olin­arEly­dir have been tasked with bring­ing De­nau un­der her con­trol. Ely­dir com­mu­nic­ates with the Olin­arEly­dir us­ing send­ing stones, each carved with Ely­dir’s sym­bol and their own.

The City of De­naura 2

The prosper­ity of De­naura has now passed. The in­flu­ence of Qa’­lir has spread cor­rup­tion in al­most all parts of the city.

The De­pos­ition of King Mor­cant 2

Qa’­lir ar­rived in De­naura and quickly garnered re­spect as a rich mer­chant with the nobles. She quickly be­came close to Tel­netar, even­tu­ally cast­ing a spell to force Tel­netar to do her bid­ding and threat­en­ing Tel­net­ar’s fam­ily.

Qa’­lir spent the next few weeks build­ing a new guard force for Tel­netar. Buy­ing some of them, threat­en­ing some of them, and re­pla­cing some by ap­pren­tice spell casters. She per­son­ally re­placed the old guard cap­tain

King Mor­cant had reg­u­lar meet­ings with Tel­netar, and Qa’­lir used this to stage the coup. Tel­netar, at­tend­ing this meet­ing bring­ing his guards along, cit­ing a re­cent at­tempt against his life, and was al­lowed to keep the guards with him.

When the Tel­netar and the guards ar­rived for the meet­ing in the castle’s par­lour, they im­me­di­ately fought King Mor­cant’s guards, at­tempt­ing to kill the Lord. Qa’­lir and the re­placed guards used dark ma­gic dur­ing the fight. Tel­netar, real­ising a flaw in the ma­gic that was bind­ing him to Qa’­lir’s ma­gic, told King Mor­cant to flee dur­ing the fight. King Mor­cant, real­ising the threat, fled with his fam­ily.

The Kid­nap­ping of Tel­net­ar’s Fam­ily 2

After Tel­net­ar’s dis­obedi­ence to Qa’­lir, Qa’­lir ordered Tel­net­ar’s fam­ily to be kid­napped to en­sure Tel­net­ar’s good be­ha­viour.

Qa’­lir in De­naura 2

Qa’­lir’s ser­vants are wights.

Qa’­lir has spies throughout all parts of the city, from beg­gars to ser­vants in the re­main­ing noble’s houses. It only takes hours for dis­plays of re­bel­lion to reach the ears of Qa’­lir. These spies have been bribed or threatened by Qa’­lir’s ser­vants.

Guards 2

One of Qa’­lir’s first dir­ector or­ders through Tel­netar as a pup­pet was to re­place the head of the guard with one of her wight ser­vants, Kexor. One of Kex­or’s first or­ders was to kid­nap Tel­net­ar’s fam­ily.

In gen­eral, the guards now live in fear of Lord Tel­netar and Kexor where be­fore they were happy to serve. Severe dis­obedi­ence usu­ally leads to cor­poral or cap­ital pun­ish­ment. The guards are rarely used by the city gov­ern­ment to pre­vent crime but in­stead are used to pre­vent the up­ris­ing of the people.

Guards are rarely pun­ished for vil­lainy and some (roughly 3/​10) are rev­el­ling in it.

A rare few very good natured guards (roughly 1/​10) will be will­ing to help the char­ac­ters, es­pe­cially if they see something that makes them real­ise the cor­rup­tion. These guards will usu­ally do it privately fear­ing the other guards. Most will be caught at some point.

The re­main­ing guards will fol­low most com­mands from their su­per­i­ors out of fear.

Ci­vil­ians 2

Crime is now rife in the city, though very little of it is or­gan­ised. Qa’­lir has killed or threatened most of the gangs within the city.

Between har­ass­ment from guards and the rising crime in the city, most of the ci­vil­ians are down­trod­den. A lot of ci­vil­ians be­lieve that Tel­netar was just wait­ing to seize the op­por­tun­ity to take the city.

Ay­meluma

Chapter 4

Nestled within a val­ley, the famed hot springs of Ay­meluman give life a chance to flour­ish, or at least to give res­pite from the harsh moun­tain­ous lands of De­nau. In the an­cient elvish vil­lage of Ay­meluma, people live simple lives. Good soils and warm air gift the elves with pros­per­ous farm­ing and many Ay­melumans sing to Chauntea for this bless­ing.

Over the re­cent months, life has­n’t been as easy as this for the Ay­melumans. There have been wolf at­tacks from the Forest of Beasts to the North East and the springs have been run­ning cold. Lady Alymir Glyn­lamin, like her an­cest­ors be­fore her, leads Ay­meluma, but the vil­lage does­n’t have the power to de­fend it­self. She hopes her call for help to neigh­bour­ing vil­lages and other lands will bring safety back to her vil­lage.

Only the Coun­cil of Eld­ers know the ter­rible secret of Ely­dir’s her­it­age, that she was one of them and they will take this secret to the grave. The old­est of the elves swore to never let this hap­pen again. When each elf reaches the age of 13, they make a vow never to use ma­gic. Born after the reign of Ely­dir, Glyn­lamin is un­aware of her re­la­tion to the vil­lage.

Ay­meluman lore 2

In ad­di­tion to the in­form­a­tion known to all Deni­ans, Ay­melumans know the fol­low­ing lore:

• The vil­la­gers are ashamed of their nat­ural ma­gical powers. When they reach the age of 13, each of them makes a vow never to use them.
• At­tacks are usu­ally rare from the Forest of Beasts but re­cently there’s been wolf at­tacks. It’s dan­ger­ous to go hunt­ing in the Forest of Beasts, es­pe­cially at night, and it is dif­fi­cult to track things in there. The vil­la­gers will avoid do­ing so.
• Lady Glyn­lamin has been miss­ing dur­ing the wolf at­tacks and, after the at­tacks she ap­pears to be ill.
• The springs are run­ning cold. The vil­lage’s pray­ers to Chauntea have failed.
• Some Ay­melumans be­lieve that the vil­lage has been cursed.
• Re­la­tions with the fol­low­ers of Sil­vanus, at Sil­vat, are good - the Sil­vatans oc­ca­sion­ally trade with them and there’s been no his­tory of con­flict. They live to north west of Ay­meluma a path.

Areas of the vil­lage 2

Vil­lage square 2

When the char­ac­ters first enter the vil­lage square, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion:

Marble build­ings sur­round the vil­lage square. Two grand build­ings, one to the east and the west stand taller than the oth­ers.

In the centre of the vil­lage square is a statue of wo­man sew­ing seeds. In front of it, five elves sing in beau­ti­ful har­mony, of­fer­ing fresh fruit and dried to the statue.

Through the square, you can hear the river Ayme rush un­der a small marble bridge, adding to the har­mony of the elves.

Mar­ket 2

The mar­ket runs on every sev­enth day of each tenday. Avail­able at the mar­ket are: a baker, fresh goods, dried goods, a fletcher, a clothier, a black­smith, and a car­penter. The fresh goods are lim­ited due to the springs run­ning cold. The craftspeople will have a small num­ber of com­mon goods and will ac­cept com­mis­sions for twice the price.

Glyn­lamin res­id­ence 2

When the char­ac­ters first ar­rive at the build­ing, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion:

This build­ing, to the east of the square, is clean pol­ished marble which looks more grown than built. The walls gently curve and there’s barely a crack between the stones. A small garden has over­grown.

1. En­trance hall 2

The grand en­trance hall’s stairs are fash­ioned after oak trees. The stairs to climb up op­pos­ite to the en­trance, to the east, and split off back to a bal­cony above. Be­fore the stairs split, a grand tapestry show­ing a wo­man sow­ing seeds, trees around them, and the sun rising be­hind. Scattered on the floor are leaves and other debris.

The stairs lead to area 12.

If a char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on a DC 18 Wis­dom (Per­cep­tion) check, they will no­tice a darker patch on the tapestry. On the back of the main tapestry, there is a pas­sage, scrawled in com­mon. Nobody in the vil­lage knows of the ori­gin and Lady Glyn­lamin is un­aware it is there.

The liar tricks to be un­bound.
The lover fights again and fails.
The raider strikes at all his kind,
The captor flees to moun­tain trails.
The caster pur­sues an end com­bined,
The fighter tells his an­cient tales.

2. South cor­ridor 2

Candles, half of which are un­lit, din­gily light the walls. A dusty but oth­er­wise well main­tained pat­terned rug fol­lows the cor­ridor path, in­clud­ing the curve in the middle from east to south.

3. Lib­rary 2

The lib­rary door is locked when not in use by Lady Ay­meluma, which it fre­quently is. On a DC 15 Strength (Ath­let­ics) check, a char­ac­ter can break the door down. On a DC 12 Dex­ter­ity check, a char­ac­ter can un­lock the door with thieves tools.

Books and scrolls line the walls and the shelves are un­tidy. A win­dow provides light to the desk where books are strewn. A few un­fin­ished let­ters are scattered across the desk.

The lib­rary con­tains books about the his­tory of Ay­meluma and its re­la­tion to other areas. Con­tent about Ely­dir was des­troyed by the Coun­cil of Eld­ers out of shame. The let­ters are to other vil­lages with ad­vice on mat­ters, none of which seems rel­ev­ant to the at­tack in the night.

If a char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on a DC 13 In­tel­li­gence (In­vest­ig­a­tion) check, and spend an hour re­search­ing, they will find out that the re­la­tions with the fol­low­ers of Sil­vanus in the Forest of Beasts have al­ways been pos­it­ive and re­spect­ful. They will also find that, while there are books about the gods in here, the book about Sil­vanus is miss­ing. If a char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on a DC 17 In­tel­li­gence (In­vest­ig­a­tion) check, they will real­ise that there are ref­er­ences to books and his­tory that is miss­ing from 500 years ago.

4. Par­lour 2

The warm au­tumn col­ours and fab­ric tapestries that ad­orn the walls don’t stop the cold from seep­ing in. At the far end, a grand fire­place is empty, apart from charred re­mains and ash. Above, a large por­trait, with an old elf man, wear­ing robes of Sil­vanus and a gold leaf, he wears an oak leaf signet ring on his hand. On the man­tel­piece is an empty dec­or­at­ive bell jar.

The gold leaf in the por­trait looks sim­ilar to the golden oak am­u­let. A char­ac­ter who suc­ceeds on a DC 13 In­tel­li­gence (In­vest­ig­a­tion) check will no­tice that num­ber of en­graved veins is the same on both.

5. Draw­ing room 2

The dark room is filled with com­fort­able pad­ded chairs and benches, and dusty tables and cab­in­ets. The cur­tains are un­opened.

There is noth­ing of in­terest in this room.

6. North cor­ridor 2

The short cor­ridor, with a pat­terned rug fol­low­ing the curve from east to north.

7. Din­ing room 2

A large table fills this din­ing room and it’s covered in dirty plates on a stained table­cloth.

There is noth­ing of in­terest in this room.

8. Ser­vant cor­ridor 2

This cor­ridor is short with no fur­nish­ings and is lit by a single candle.

9. Ser­vant room 2

On one side of this room is a small clean and tidy bed­room. On the other side, a messy stor­age area with tables and chairs.

Of­ten, Aien can be found hun­gover in this room.

10. Kit­chen 2

The kit­chen has plates and bowls piled in the sink and flour and dust over the sur­faces.

If this is in the day after the at­tack in the night, then read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion:

On the floor is a smashed glass and a puddle of wine.

The glass was smashed by Maiele when she was rush­ing to leave, after Aien ar­rived back early.

If a char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on an DC 12 In­tel­li­gence (In­vest­ig­a­tion) check, they will no­tice that there is a streak of wine that points to­wards the pantry.

11. Pantry 2

The back door is usu­ally locked. If a char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on a DC 17 Strength check, they can break down the door. If a char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on a DC 13 Dex­ter­ity check, they can un­lock the door with thieves tools.

This pantry is lined with bar­rels and jars, smelling fresh, though it is a little dusty.

If a char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on a DC 15 In­tel­li­gence (In­vest­ig­a­tion) check, they will no­tice that there is a patch of dried red wine on the door frame.

12. Bal­cony 2

The bal­cony looks down onto the stairs in­side, and a win­dow looks out to the vil­lage square. There’s a door to the north and to the south.

On the bal­cony, the door to the south leads to Glyn­lam­in’s bed­room. The door to the north leads to a guest bed­room.

13. Lady Glyn­lam­in’s room 2

A large bed­room with a grand bed and med­it­a­tion area. The room is clean.

In the days after the at­tack on the night, Lady Glyn­lamin will rest in here. She will be wear­ing her oak signet ring. This ring will not match the pat­tern of the signet on the wax seal on the fake let­ter.

14. Guest bed­room 2

An empty bed­room, with the bed un­made and cur­tains closed.

There is noth­ing of in­terest in this room.

Ro­le­play­ing Lady Alymir Glyn­lamin 2

The leader of the Ay­meluma, Lady Alymir Glyn­lamin (NG elf noble wo­man), does not place her­self above the rest of the elves in the vil­lage. She has lead the vil­lage for 100 years and over that time she has come to be­lieve in their tra­di­tion of sup­port through com­munity.

However, Lady Glyn­lamin is at odds with the Coun­cil of Eld­ers and does­n’t trust them as much as she wants to. She knows they hide a secret about the past of the vil­lage but has failed to get any use­ful in­form­a­tion about them. She will only ad­mit this to those that she trusts and she will swear them to secrecy.

From the war against Ely­dir that Lady Glyn­lamin lived through child­hood (though she did­n’t know the cause), she has a fear of vi­ol­ent con­flict and will avoid it at all cost. Be­cause of this, the vil­lage barely has a mi­li­tia. Dur­ing con­flict, she will hide. She is ashamed of this and wishes she could face her fears.

Re­cently, Lady Glyn­lamin has had the hard task of lead­ing Ay­meluma through dis­aster after dis­aster. While the vil­la­gers has worked hard to sup­port one, she has real­ised that. She will wel­come whatever sup­port from out­side the vil­lage.

If ques­tioned about the gold oak leaf am­u­let, she will say it was stolen from her years ago, along with a book about Sil­vanus, but they never found out who it was. She can con­firm that the gold oak leaf am­u­let is hers.

She is re­luct­ant to let people into her study as there is sens­it­ive in­form­a­tion about the Ay­melumans in there.

Ro­le­play­ing Aien, the house-ser­vant 2

Aien (CN elf com­moner man) is lazy, sar­castic, and of­ten in­sult­ing. Since the dis­asters in the vil­lage, he has been shirk­ing his even­ing job of watch­ing the house to drink at the Eas­ing Wa­ter. He will blatantly lie about this, even if caught. He is usu­ally hun­gover.

Aien has some in­form­a­tion that might be use­ful to the party, though he will want a price (10gp) to be paid for it:

• He has been keep­ing Lady Glyn­lam­in’s cow­ardice a secret, hop­ing to make the most out of it.
• There is a ten­sion between Lady Glyn­lamin and the Coun­cil. Aien has heard an ar­gu­ment about the Coun­cil hid­ing something from Glyn­lamin.
• The main set of keys to the house are miss­ing, though he won’t give that he was drunk when they went miss­ing.

If asked about the golden am­u­let, he will talk about how it was stolen a few years ago, along with a book about Sil­vanus from the lib­rary.

Coun­cil of Eld­ers 2

An or­nate stone build­ing with large wooden doors. Two dec­or­at­ive pil­lars show rising suns. Out­side the build­ing are three large well main­tained bushes, growth creep­ing out un­der them.

There are four vine blights, hid­ing un­der the large well main­tained bushes. These are con­trolled by Maiele. She will only use them if she feels threatened by the char­ac­ters.

1. Pub­lic cham­bers 2

There’s a small stage at the far end of the room with a read­ing plinth.

The doors to the other rooms are la­belled with the in­hab­it­ants or pur­pose in elvish. Each of the doors to the per­sonal rooms, apart from the private cham­bers are locked. A char­ac­ter who suc­ceeds on a DC 16 Dex­ter­ity check will be able to un­lock the doors.

2. Private cham­bers 2

There’s a large table in the centre of the room with three chairs around it. One cab­inet is stocked with pa­pers, the other is stocked with table­ware. Op­pos­ite the main en­trance is a well stocked fire, keep­ing the room warm.

The cab­inet con­tains pa­pers re­lat­ing to the laws of the vil­lage.

The coun­cil will usu­ally meet in here between noon and dusk, for busi­ness and for din­ner.

3. Kit­chen and pantry 2

The kit­chen smells of bread and fruit. The pantry is well stocked.

There is noth­ing of in­terest in this room.

4. Re­cords room 2

Shelving of books and scrolls fill this room.

It’s easy to find the treat­ies with neigh­bour­ing areas, in­clud­ing the pact with the Sil­vatans, not to ex­pand into each oth­ers land. It’s easy to see that this has been fol­lowed.

The text is to do with the his­tory of the vil­lage and its in­hab­it­ants. If char­ac­ters in­vest­ig­ate for a day and suc­ceed on a DC 18 In­tel­li­gence (In­vest­ig­a­tion) check, they will find that there is a lack of his­tory from around 500 years ago in here through miss­ing ref­er­ences.

5. Ser­vant Ori­hil’s room 2

While the door to this room from the pub­lic cham­bers is locked, the door to the kit­chen is un­locked.

This tidy room is for both work and rest. There’s a nar­row bed on one side. A win­dow provides a little light to the room. A small desk has a set of keys on it. A large wash tub filled with pink­ish wa­ter has a purple cloak draped over the side.

The keys on the desk will open the doors to the coun­cil mem­bers rooms.

The purple cloak is Maiele’s with a wine stain - the stain is barely out of it.

6. Elder Ilphas’s room 2

Book­cases sur­round the walls of this room. A bed is pushed up against the book­cases on one wall. A desk up against the wall op­pos­ite the door.

The table has draft law about the im­port on ma­gical items, like po­tions of heal­ing. The lib­rary is mostly books about law from places near and far.

7. Elder Maiele’s room 2

This room is very tidy and empty. On the left hand side is a bed and med­it­a­tion area. In the centre is an empty desk, apart from a single key. On the other side is a ward­robe.

If the char­ac­ters open the ward­robe, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion:

The ward­robe is partly full, with many items. There is a chest at the bot­tom.

The chest in the ward­robe is locked. The chest is trapped and if it’s opened without press­ing the but­tons on either side, it will trig­ger a cloud of Malice poison gas within 10 ft of the chest. A char­ac­ter who suc­ceeds on a DC 12 check will no­tice the but­tons on the side. If a char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on a DC 17 Dex­ter­ity check, they can un­lock the chest with thieves tools. If a char­ac­ters suc­ceeds on a DC 14 Strength check, they can break the chest open - this will trig­ger the gas.

In­side the box is the fol­low­ing:

• A signet ring with oak leaf. This is a for­gery cre­ated by Maiele to cre­ate the fake let­ter from Lady Ay­meluma.
• A book about Sil­vanus (stolen from Lady Glyn­lam­in’s lib­rary).

8. Elder Alasse’s room 2

This bed­room room is filled of small trinkets and items. A writ­ing desk is covered with pa­pers and a small lib­rary over­flows with books.

This is Alasse’s room.

If searched, the char­ac­ters will find there are a few books on the eth­ics of ma­gic. Her journal will be filled with thoughts about whether or not the Swornight is ef­fect­ive.

Coun­cil lore 2

In ad­di­tion to the in­form­a­tion known to the Ay­melumans, the coun­cil mem­bers know the fol­low­ing lore:

• Lady Glyn­lamin suffered vi­ol­ent con­flict in her child­hood and is un­able to de­fend the vil­lage from con­flict.
• They think lady Glyn­lamin does not trust them and is up to something.
• The world was warm be­fore Ely­dir.
• Their fam­il­ies fi­nal act of ma­gic was to cre­ate the hot springs that keep their areas safe.
• Lady Glyn­lam­in’s father fol­lowed Sil­vanus.

Ro­le­play­ing the Coun­cil of Eld­ers 2

The Coun­cil of Eld­ers each lived through Ely­dir’s reign and de­struc­tion of their people. They have agreed to never dis­cuss Ely­dir with the vil­lage - that the secret will die with them.

Elder Ilphas (LN elf noble man) be­lieves in the law. He is a very ser­i­ous man, with little hu­mour. Through fear of ma­gic, fol­low­ing Ely­dir’s wrath, he cre­ated and of­fi­ci­ates the Swornight ce­re­mony. He is un­for­giv­ing for any who break those rules, no mat­ter the cir­cum­stances, though he will not use force or vi­ol­ence but will in­stead seek to isol­ate the rule breaker. Many of the vil­lage fol­low his thoughts on this. Ilphas will be crit­ical of any solu­tion the char­ac­ters bring to them about the at­tack in the night.

Elder Maiele (NE elf cult fan­atic wo­man) is Ely­dir’s older sis­ter and secretly worked with her when she was in power, out of an­ger for how the vil­lage sold her. She knows that Ely­dir is still alive. She works in two ways against the vil­lage: use the tra­di­tion of no ma­gic to weaken them, and to frame Lady Glyn­lamin for the dis­asters hap­pen­ing to the vil­lage. She be­lieves that this re­venge will bring peace. She will act care­fully in secrecy but if she her plots are dis­covered, she will aim to cause as much de­struc­tion as pos­sible.

Elder Alasse (NG elf noble wo­man) be­lieves the vil­lage should take a softer ap­proach the re­stric­tion of ma­gic through edu­ca­tion to pre­vent it from be­ing used again. However, she does not have the will to go against Ilphas and Maiele, though she is more likely to side with Ilphas. She hopes to out­live Ilphas and Maiele and bring around a pos­it­ive change for the vil­lage.

Ser­vant Ori­hil (LE elf spy man) works closely with Maiele, en­joy­ing her power and the be­ne­fits that come with it. She has lead him to be­lieve that the ma­gic re­stric­tions are pre­vent­ing the vil­lage from reach­ing its best out­comes. He spies on the other Eld­ers and other vil­la­gers for Maiele. He will gen­er­ally de­cline to speak to any­body but the Eld­ers, as his job keeps him so busy - though he is ef­fi­cient at it.

Shafina res­id­ence 2

TO DO

Ro­le­play­ing the Shafina fam­ily 2

TO DO

Fires of the Spring - Smithy 2

A warm light flick­ers from the door of this build­ing and smoke bil­lows from the chim­ney. A sign hangs with elvish text on it and a steam­ing river.

The elvish text says Fires of the Spring.

The smithy fire burns hot in the centre of the room. Gold, sil­ver and iron bars are stacked on one side. Ag­ri­cul­tural and build­ers equip­ment is stacked on the other. A single sword is hung up on the op­pos­ite wall to the en­trance.

The black­smith, Ena Mag­phine the Strong (CG elf com­moner wo­man), is a burly wo­man who is well mannered and smart. While she works in a smithy, she be­lieves you need to be in touch with nature and take good care of your­self. She be­lieves you should just try to get along rather than con­trol one an­other.

Ena has traded with the Sil­vatans be­fore, with gold, and they have al­ways been friendly. She knows that their past re­la­tions have been good, with agree­ments to keep to their own lands. She saw a fig­ure cloaked in purple enter the Eld­ers very late last night, while she was lock­ing up. She will be will be re­luct­ant to speak badly about the Eld­ers and will ap­pear nervous when ques­tioned.

The Eas­ing Wa­ter - Inn 2

A sign hangs from the inn, with a paint­ing of a steam­ing pool with a bare ches­ted man re­lax­ing in it, text in elvish be­low it. The out­side is dec­or­ated with swirl­ing pat­terns like steam and flow­ing wa­ter.

The text in elvish reads The Eas­ing Wa­ter.

In­side the inn 2

The inn is small and dec­or­ated blue and white. A large fire­place keeps the room warm. A small bar with bottles of wine and wine glasses fill the shelves on the back wall, apart from a hole for a closed hatch. A door to right of the bar has a sign in elvish above it.

The text in elvish reads Hot springs.

The innkeeper, Uldreiyn Caigeiros (TN elf innkeeper man) is very per­cept­ive. He be­lieves it is im­port­ant to do what feels good and likes to chat about ru­mours and things he’s seen. He will al­ways re­com­mend us­ing the hot springs, call­ing it “the ma­gic of the elves”.

If the char­ac­ters stay to have a drink, he will be will­ing to talk to them about the go­ings on of the town. In ad­di­tion to the gen­eral lore, he also knows that Aien is of­ten drink­ing at the pub in the even­ings when he’s meant to be work­ing and that he was even that drunk once that Ser­vant Ori­hil had to take him home - and when the Ori­hil stole the keys for Maiele keys were stolen.

Aien was at the inn last night dur­ing the at­tack in the night but Uldreiyn asked him to leave early after he drank too quickly.

The bar sells only the grape wine grown loc­ally for 1sp per glass.

Hot springs 2

Walls sur­round four steam­ing pools of wa­ter. Seats have been carved into the nat­ural stone of the springs. The hatch to the bar is on the wall for the build­ing Small tables for drinks sur­round the pool.

A Wa­ter Weird will at­tack the char­ac­ters here dur­ing the at­tack in the night.

Grain­sheaf Farm 2

A marble single story farm­house faces out to the north to large wheat fields. Wind flows across the tall wheat, which looks limp and pale.

Bey­ond, a dark pine forest looms.

The farm owned by Kendel and Tor­oss Umelee, two mar­ried male elves. The farm has been suf­fer­ing from the fail­ing springs and their crops are weakened be­cause of it.

Ro­le­play­ing the Umelee fam­ily 2

Kendel Umelee. Broader than most other elves, Kendel (NG male elf com­moner) is fiercely pro­tect­ive of Tor­oss and the farm. He has heard of the re­cent wolf at­tacks to the other farms and has car­ried. He car­ries a scythe to de­fend his fam­ily and a horn to warn the rest of the vil­lage. While he is an ex­pert farmer, Kendel has no ex­per­i­ence fight­ing with the scythe.

He be­lieves that the wolves aren’t after food but are con­trolled by something evil as they have only been at­tack­ing people.

Tor­oss Umelee. Scep­tical of the Kendel’s ideas about the wolves, Tor­oss (N male elf com­moner) is wor­ried about Kendel’s plans to de­fend the farm.

1. Boot room 2

The smell of mud and dirt fills the air. Dirty boots and smal­ler farm­ing equip­ment is stored on the right. There is one wooden door op­pos­ite you and one to the left.

2. Din­ing room 2

The fur­niture is del­ic­ately but simply craf­ted. A table and chairs in the centre of the room, and a cab­inet against the wall. There is a door to the left.

3. Kit­chen and store 2

The door to this room is locked.

4. Par­lour 2

Simple, well loved fur­niture. Paint­ing of Kendel and Tor­oss.

5. Bed­room 2

Single double bed.

6. Barn 2

Horse and equip­ment in barn.

Forest clear­ing 2

To the south of the vil­lage is a large clear­ing in the forest. This is of­ten used for vil­lage fest­ivals.

Sil­vanus Shrine 2

The shrine is to the north west of the vil­lage, just off the path to Sil­vat.

In a small clear­ing just bey­ond a small, a carved wooden statue of a semi-draped man holds out an oak branch. Its legs ap­pear to grow out from the stone plinth. The stone plinth has an oak leaf carved into it. The area is kept clean, though a few dead shrubs rustle in the wind around it.

Be­low the statue is a hid­den box. In­side the box is a sealed with an oak leaf signet, which has been planted by Elder Maiele. The let­ter says the fol­low­ing:

B. At­tack the re­main­ing farm to­mor­row. Kill the in­hab­it­ants. AG

If a char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on a DC 12 Wis­dom (Per­cep­tion) check, they will no­tice a stone gap built into the base of the statue. If the golden oak am­u­let is placed into the stone plinth, it will un­lock. If a char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on a DC 17 Strength check to move the base, they will break the stone apart the stone base. If they suc­ceed on a DC 13 Strength check, they can break the legs of the statue and get into the stone plinth from above.

If the hand­writ­ing or seal is com­pared to a real Lady Glyn­lam­in’s char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on an DC 12 In­tel­li­gence (In­vest­ig­a­tion check), they will no­tice in­con­sist­en­cies.

If a char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on a DC 18 In­tel­li­gence (In­vest­ig­a­tion) check, they will find tracks lead­ing to the Coun­cil of Eld­ers.

When the char­ac­ters try to leave the shrine, 12 Twig Blights, cre­ated by Elder Maiele will at­tack the char­ac­ters.

Spe­cial events 2

Wolf at­tack 2

This event hap­pens when the char­ac­ters first ar­rive at the vil­lage. To the north of Grain­sheaf farm, wolves be­gin to at­tack. Im­me­di­ately, the Kendel Umelee of the farm will sound a horn and then Tor­oss will run to the vil­lage.

You hear a long horn blast to the north. A few seconds later you hear a man shout­ing “the wolves are at­tack­ing our farm, they’re get­ting my hus­band.”

Four wolves are at­tack­ing the elves at the farm, aim­ing to at­tack the people and not any live­stock or other an­im­als. These wolves can’t be frightened off but will flee when two of the wolves have been killed.

Add the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion to the Grain­sheaf farm:

Al­most hid­den by the wheat, you see an elf (Kendel) swinging a scythe at two wolves who are ap­proach­ing him. An­other wolf jumps out from the wheat at him.

Once the wolves have been killed or driven off, the char­ac­ters will be urged to seek Lady Glyn­lamin by most bystand­ers. Lady Glyn­lamin will be shaken by the at­tack. She will of­fer 50gp to the party for find­ing the source of the at­tacks and an­other 50gp for stop­ping them.

At­tack in the night 2

This event hap­pens when the char­ac­ters re­turn from fight­ing the wolves.

Lady Glyn­lamin has been at­tacked by Elder Maiele dur­ing the night us­ing _Vi­cious Mock­ery_to mock her cow­ardice. Elder Maiele entered through the door left un­locked as Aien was drink­ing at the Eas­ing Wa­ter. Be­fore the at­tack, she placed a golden leaf in her of­fice. Elder Maiele has sug­ges­ted, to the coun­cil, that Lady Glyn­lamin has fab­ric­ated this event to de­flect from her re­cent fail­ings - which the coun­cil agree could be a pos­sib­il­ity.

While there are no phys­ical wounds, Lady Glyn­lamin will be fe­ver­ish and in­con­sol­able about her cow­ardice and will be re­luct­ant to talk about what happened to her. If a char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on a DC 15 Cha­risma (Per­sua­sion) check to get in­form­a­tion, she will tell them the fol­low­ing:

• She was at­tacked dur­ing the night.
• The at­tacker should­n’t have been able to get in past Aien.
• The at­tacker spoke un­fa­mil­iar words and then cursed her for her cow­ardice.
• The at­tacker fled after hear­ing a noise down­stairs, but said “You’re lucky to get an­other night, cow­ard.”
• She could­n’t see the at­tacker be­cause of a cloak and the dark - but it was a wo­man’s voice.

Read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion when the char­ac­ters ar­rive in the vil­lage:

The vil­lage looks empty, you don’t see any­body around. You can hear noise com­ing from the vil­lage square.

Read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion if the char­ac­ters reach the square:

The noise comes from the tall build­ing to the west.

Read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tions if the char­ac­ters enter the Coun­cil of Eld­ers, if it is the char­ac­ters first time vis­it­ing the Coun­cil of Eld­ers, read the de­scrip­tion of the build­ing:

In­side the main room, a rest­less crowd is gathered. Three of the an­cient elves stand in front of the crowd, two wo­men and a man. Many of those in the crowd turn to look at you.

After a few minutes, as the noise quietens, the man says “Lady Glyn­lamin was at­tacked dur­ing the night. She sur­vived and is re­cov­er­ing. We will find in­vest­ig­ate what happened.”

The crowd will then dis­perse.

The coun­cil will greet the party. They will ask what they found out about in the forest so far - they will give the re­ward prom­ised by Lady Glyn­lamin.

They will ex­plain that Lady Glyn­lamin says she was at­tacked in her house at night, though she shows no wounds. The coun­cil will ask them to in­vest­ig­ate what happened. If the char­ac­ters talk of the in­volve­ment of the wolf at­tacks with Sylvanus, the coun­cil will say that Lady Glyn­lam­in’s father was a fol­lower. The coun­cil will sug­gest that they are con­cerned that the at­tack could be fab­ric­ated to dis­tract from her fail­ings. They will ask them to bring the an­swer to them.

Dur­ing the char­ac­ters in­vest­ig­a­tion, Elder Maiele will send 3 Vine blights to at­tack the char­ac­ters. She will at­tempt to use this to ban­ish the char­ac­ters from the vil­lage due to their trouble mak­ing.

In­va­sion 2

As part of get­ting ven­geance on the…

Ap­proach­ing the vil­lage 2

When the play­ers ap­proach the vil­lage after the in­va­sion, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion.

There’s a stench on the wind. An op­press­ive, ma­lig­nant smell. Blood. Smoke.

Through the trees, you can see glimpses of the or­nate stone build­ings with walls charred.

All of the build­ings are either fully des­troyed or

Vil­lage square 2

When the char­ac­ters ar­rive in the vil­lage square:

The stench of de­struc­tion is over­power­ing here.

The small river flows se­renely, des­pite the ter­rible scenes in front of you. On the north side of the river, you can see a small town square, dark click red patches cover the paved square.

Most of the other build­ings have col­lapsed, their con­tents smoul­der­ing and their white husks blackened. Crack­ing stains of car­mine are scattered along their walls. There are broken carved pil­lars and arches - hints of the elab­or­ate pat­terns and or­nate struc­tures.

On the west side of the town square, a slightly lar­ger build­ing is still mostly stand­ing. Its walls are blackened, like most of the oth­ers, and you can see that the ceil­ing has col­lapsed in a few places.

If the char­ac­ters have got to this vil­lage within a day of the at­tack De­naura, if they make a suc­cess­ful DC20 Wis­dom (Per­cep­tion) check to hear if any­thing is in the area, they will hear what sounds like dis­tant shout­ing to the south.

In­vest­ig­a­tion checks DC15 will show signs of dragged bod­ies to carts and tracks to the south.

Hid­ing girl 2

If the play­ers have made it to the vil­lage within three days of the at­tack, they will find a young elven girl, Shyrrik Shafina trapped in the Glyn­lamin res­id­ence. She will shout for the play­ers if she sees or hears them.

She will want her mother, Pharom Shafina, who she saw be­ing dragged away by orcs. She will re­mem­ber see­ing a cloaked fig­ure with the orcs.

If they fail to make it within three days, they will find Shyrrik Shafina’s body in­stead.

This is the lar­ger build­ing in the town, the walls are blackened like most of the oth­ers and some of the ceil­ing has col­lapsed on parts but the

The doors out­side the build­ing show the sym­bol of Ely­dir, on them.

Piled in the centre of the room is smoul­der­ing fur­niture and books.

The proph­ecy 2

Within the Glyn­lamin res­id­ence, the proph­ecy.

The liar tricks them to un­bind.
Her lover fights again and fails.
The raider strikes at all their kind.
Her captor flees to moun­tain trails.
The caster’s end to search and find,
Her fighter tells his an­cient tales.

Orc en­camp­ment 2

For two days after the in­va­sion, there will be an orc en­camp­ment.

Within this en­camp­ment, there are about twenty-five elves are in cages; one of the elves looks like Ely­dir but younger. There are ten large orcs are camp­ing.

A black or­nate tent is next to the fire. The same sym­bol on the mes­sen­ger stone is on the tent. Two orogs guard this tent. In­side the tent, is Qa’­por. If she sees the play­ers, she will try to at­tack them and sub­due them, to cap­ture them for tor­ture.

The Forest of Beasts

Chapter 5

The people of Ay­meluma rarely travel into the forest of beasts. Packs wolves of­ten roam, there have been sight­ings of owl­bears, and there are tales of a great eight legged beast that roams at night. The elves don’t hunt in the forest as it’s dif­fi­cult to track creatures.

Deep in the Forest of Beasts, Briid the Wolf Mother sends her wolves to drive the elves from Ay­meluma. While she be­lieves she is serving Sil­vanus, she has been tricked into these ac­tions by a pro­jec­tion of Ely­dir.

To the north west of Ay­meluma, druids wor­ship Sil­vanus. Their re­la­tions with Ay­meluma have been good. Briid once lived here, un­til she was ex­iled due to her ex­treme at­ti­tudes to­wards Ay­meluma.

Ran­dom en­coun­ters 2

Deer corpse 2

An stench fills your lungs, rot­ten flesh and blood. The trail is un­clear. The forest is quiet all around you, the trees stand still.

If a char­ac­ter makes a suc­cess­ful DC 13 Wis­dom (Per­cep­tion) check, they will find the source of the smell.

You find the source of the stench. The par­tial re­mains of a deer.

This deer has been killed by wolves and there are lots of tracks all around. A char­ac­ter who suc­ceeds on a suc­cess­ful DC 10 In­tel­li­gence (In­vest­ig­a­tion) check will no­tice that this deer was killed by wolves and a trail of bloody wolf paw-prints giv­ing an ad­vant­age to the next check to fol­low the trail.

Bind­ing roots 2

The path des­cends into a gorge, you can’t see the end through the trees. You can see the bare roots of trees cov­er­ing the floor.

The gorge is 100 foot long and covered in roots. Once a char­ac­ter reaches 50 feet into the gorge, the roots start grasp­ing at the char­ac­ters.

If a char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on a DC 15 Wis­dom (Per­cep­tion) they will no­tice the roots mov­ing. While in the area, and the roots are grasp­ing, a char­ac­ter must suc­ceed on a DC 11 Strength sav­ing throw or be re­strained. While re­strained, they take 1d4 bludgeon­ing dam­age.

Each 5 foot square of roots has an AC of 12 and 4 HP. They have vul­ner­ab­il­ity to fire.

Climb­ing up the walls of the gorge takes a DC 13 ac­ro­bat­ics check to es­cape.

Dis­tant howl­ing 2

The forest stirs with a gust of wind. You hear wolf howls in the dis­tance.

If the char­ac­ters are trav­el­ling, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion:

The trail is dif­fi­cult to fol­low.

If one or more of the char­ac­ters make a suc­cess­ful DC 14 Wis­dom (Per­cep­tion) check, they will identify that the wolves are in the east. If they choose to fol­low the howl­ing, they get an ad­vant­age on the check to fol­low the wolf trail.

If the char­ac­ters try to con­tinue to find the path, they will get a dis­ad­vant­age on the check to fol­low the wolf trail.

False trail 2

This en­counter oc­curs only if the char­ac­ters are trav­el­ling, oth­er­wise, treat the res­ult as no en­counter.

A foot trail cuts across the wolf trail.

Briid left this trail. Fol­low­ing it in either dir­ec­tion leads to a spiked pit (see “Sample Traps” in chapter 5 of the Dun­geon Mas­ter’s Guide).

If the char­ac­ters fol­low this foot trail and at­tempt to re­turn to the wolf trail, they will get a dis­ad­vant­age on the check to fol­low the wolf trail.

Hid­den bundle 2

This en­counter oc­curs only if the char­ac­ters are trav­el­ling, oth­er­wise, treat the res­ult as no en­counter. If at least one of the char­ac­ters has a pass­ive Wis­dom (Per­cep­tion) score of 11 or higher, read:

A corner of leather pack peeks out of the snow.

In the pack is 1d4+1 elec­trum pieces and a tar­nished gold am­u­let in the shape of bug.

The trail is clear and the char­ac­ters don’t need to make an­other sur­vival check to keep on fol­low­ing it.

Wolves 2

If at least one of the char­ac­ters has a pass­ive Wis­dom (Per­cep­tion) score of 11 or higher, read:

Wolves howl nearby, too close for com­fort.

If more than one wolf is present, the oth­ers are close by. If none of the char­ac­ters has a pass­ive Wis­dom (Per­cep­tion) score of 11 or higher, the wolves catch the party by sur­prise.

If a single wolf is re­main­ing, it will at­tempt to flee to­wards the Hol­low Oak Tree.

Fol­low­ing its trail will grant an ad­vant­age on the next check to fol­low the wolf trail.

Gi­ant spider 2

If the char­ac­ters are trav­el­ling, read the fol­low­ing:

Large webs cover between trees. The wolf tracks cut through, un­der the webs.

The webs are con­nec­ted to the spider’s Web sense. If the play­ers try to cir­cum­vent the spider’s lair, they have a dis­ad­vant­age on their next check to fol­low the wolf trail.

In the lair, there is 1 gi­ant spider and 1d4 spiders. Hungry and wait­ing pa­tiently, they will am­bush any prey fool­ish enough to enter. There is a dead hu­man co­cooned and hanging wear­ing com­moner clothes. If searched, the hu­man has 9 sp in its be­long­ings.

If the char­ac­ters are rest­ing and at least one of the char­ac­ters has a pass­ive Wis­dom (Per­cep­tion) of 13 or more, read:

You hear clicks and a creak. A gi­ant spider scuttles down the nearby tree.

If none of the char­ac­ters has a pass­ive Wis­dom (Per­cep­tion) of 13 or more, the gi­ant spider catches the party by sur­prise.

Ban­dits 2

These ban­dits are hos­tile, look­ing to prey on people in the woods. There are 1d4+3 ban­dits.

If the char­ac­ters are trav­el­ling, read the fol­low­ing:

You hear bois­ter­ous laugh­ing and the light of a fire in a clear­ing up ahead.

If the char­ac­ters are rest­ing and at least one of the char­ac­ters has a pass­ive Wis­dom (Per­cep­tion) of 11 or more, read:

You hear a branch snap and see the out­line of a crouched fig­ure in the un­der­brush.

The other ban­dits will be close by.

Owl­bear 2

If at least one of the char­ac­ters has a pass­ive Wis­dom (Per­cep­tion) of 11 or more, read:

There are deep scratches in the bark of the trees. Bushes have been trampled.

If the char­ac­ters are mov­ing quietly and not car­ry­ing light sources, they can try to hide.

The owl­bear is hungry. If it loses more than half of its hit points, it flees into the forest.

The char­ac­ters have a dis­ad­vant­age on the next check for fol­low­ing the wolf trail.

Fol­low­ing the wolf trail 2

As you travel into the woods, it gets cold and snowy. The warm and safe feel­ing of Ay­meluma quickly leaves your body.

The wolf trail is 6 miles long through the forest. The forest is dif­fi­cult ter­rain. A char­ac­ter must suc­ceed on a Wis­dom (Sur­vival) DC 15 check to fol­low the trail. On a suc­cess, the char­ac­ters suc­cess­fully fol­low the trail - for every half an hour of travel, they go half a mile. On a fail­ure, it takes 1 hour to find the trail again.

Each day that passes, the add 3 to the Wis­dom (Sur­vival) DC to fol­low the trail.

En­coun­ters 2

Ran­dom en­coun­ters. Check for a ran­dom en­counter after each 30 minutes of travel. An en­counter oc­curs if a res­ult of 15 or higher is rolled. Don’t check if the char­ac­ters have already had three ran­dom en­coun­ters out­doors in the past 12 hours. After each en­counter, the char­ac­ters must make an­other sur­vival check to fol­low the trail.

Fixed en­coun­ters. The river en­counter will be found after the 4th mile.

River 2

The char­ac­ters can only en­counter this once.

You can hear wa­ter rush­ing ahead of you. A river flows quickly, it’s 4 feet deep and 15 feet across. The wolf tracks lead into the wa­ter. To your left, a wa­ter­fall crashes down a 20 foot cliff onto rocky out­crops. Tall trees and mossy boulders line the wa­ters edge. Slime covered stones peek out of the wa­ter.

Us­ing the stones, a char­ac­ter who makes a suc­cess­ful DC 13 Dex­ter­ity (Ac­ro­bat­ics) check will suc­cess­fully cross the river. On a fail­ure, the char­ac­ter must make a DC 13 Strength save to avoid be­ing dragged over the wa­ter­fall edge.

Wad­ing across the wa­ter, a suc­cess­ful DC 13 Strength (Ath­let­ics) check. On a fail­ure, the char­ac­ter is swept away with the cur­rent over the wa­ter­fall edge.

A char­ac­ter who is swept away with the cur­rent over the wa­ter­fall edge will take 2d6 bludgeon­ing dam­age from the fall.

To climb up or down the cliff, a char­ac­ter will need to suc­ceed on a DC 15 Dex­ter­ity (Ac­ro­bat­ics) check. On a fail­ure, they will fall and take 1d6 bludgeon­ing dam­age.

The char­ac­ters have a dis­ad­vant­age on the check to fol­low the wolf trail.

Hol­low Oak Tree 2

Out­side 2

The path slopes down into a crater. In the the centre is a gi­ant oak tree. Its branches are bare and leaves cover the ground. Small pools steam around the crater. An or­ganic pas­sage­way flows into the tree.

A pack of five wolves lies out­side the pas­sage­way, shel­ter­ing un­der the tree’s branches, one stands watch­ing around.

The tree is over 100ft wide and 250ft tall

The wolves are guard­ing the en­trance and will at­tack to ward off in­truders. Any char­ac­ter that tries to sneak past must make a DC 18 check on a if ap­proached and will pro­tect the en­trance.

1. En­trance 2

If the char­ac­ters have at­tacked the wolves out­side, char­ac­ters hear the a wo­man plead­ing to help from a pro­jec­ted im­age of Ely­dir pos­ing as a ser­vant of Sil­vanus, who aban­dons her. Read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion:

A thick pil­lar of smooth wood grows in the middle of the room. An­imal furs cover the walls and rick­ety wooden fur­niture leans against the nat­ural wooden walls. Carved bowls over­flow with fresh nuts and ber­ries. Scattered candles cast a dim light. In­cense smoke fills your lungs.

To your left, hanging furs hang as a door­way. From here, you can hear two wo­men ar­guing.

“They’re here, they’re here,” one cries. “They’re go­ing to kill us. Please pro­tect me.”

“You served your pur­pose. Go now and die in what way seems best to you,” a cold voice says.

It grows quiet, apart from sob­bing.

2. Druid liv­ing area 2

Read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion when the char­ac­ters enter:

A small bed covered in an­imal furs leans against the wall. In the centre of the room is 15 foot dia­meter chalk circle; at the centre of the circle, more furs.

A wo­man wrapped in an­imal furs sobs. She stands in the way of two wolves.

Briid is a hu­man Druid. She car­ries a gold am­u­let, the golden oak am­u­let, in the shape of an oak leaf (5gp) as her spellcast­ing fo­cus and a gem worth 10gp on her per­son.

When she casts en­tangle oak roots and branches sprout from the tree in­stead of grasp­ing weeds and vines.

Ro­le­play­ing Briid the Wolf Mother 2

Briid, a thin young wo­man with blonde hair, has ab­so­lute faith in her pur­pose to serve Sil­vanus to re­claim the hot springs and Ay­meluma back for him. However, it has not been a ser­vant of Sil­vanus ap­pear­ing to her but Ely­dir. Briid cares about her wolf pack over everything else. Her at­tacks on Ay­meluma have come at little cost.

She will not at­tack the char­ac­ters first, if she is cornered with her wolves. She will plead with party to let her wolves free as she does­n’t want them harmed and will of­fer to have the play­ers take her life in ex­change for the wolves. She will ex­plain that, without her lead­ing them, they will avoid the vil­lage.

However, if she learns of the party’s ap­proach and they have been trav­el­ling for a few days, Briid will bring the fight to them.

Whether or not the party let the wolves go, Briid will want re­venge them through their deaths. While she may have agreed to al­low the char­ac­ters to take her life, she won’t give it will­ingly.

3. Store 2

Small pots and bar­rels cover tot­ter­ing shelves. These are filled with vari­ous po­tion in­gredi­ents, nuts, dried ber­ries, and dried fruit. A small chest sits in the middle of the room.

The chest con­tains 4 gp, 3 sp, and 35 cp, a po­tion of heal­ing, and a 10gp gem. There’s enough dried food for 10 ra­tions.

Sil­vat

Chapter 6

A path con­nects Ay­meluma and the set­tle­ment, through the forest of the beasts. However, the en­trance to the druid set­tle­ment is hid­den in loc­a­tion by a maze de­signed so that only those con­nec­ted to nature can reach through it.

Sil­vatan lore 2

The Sil­vatans know the fol­low­ing:

• Briid was ex­iled by Yorhorn in­stead of killed as an act of mercy after she tried to kill Yorhorn.
• The Sil­vatans sing of the shared warmth between the vil­lages of Ay­meluma and Sil­vat and an an­cient agree­ment.
• Briid wanted the Sil­vanus druids to at­tack Ay­meluma but most dis­agreed be­cause of the good re­la­tions.
• Briid said she was see­ing an avatar of Sil­vanus. But it was only cold dread that the vil­lages could feel.
• THe Sil­vatans oc­ca­sion­ally trade with Ay­meluma for gold.

Path 2

The path to the Druid set­tle­ment is 2 miles long. Check for a ran­dom en­counter after each 30 minutes of travel. An en­counter oc­curs if a res­ult of 15 or higher is rolled. Don’t check if the char­ac­ters have already had three ran­dom en­coun­ters out­doors in the past 12 hours.

A nar­row path goes to the north west. While the path is easy to fol­low, vines and roots make this path dif­fi­cult to walk.

Druid maze 2

Read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion when

Ahead of you, the trees and un­der­growth grow in­ter­twined to form a 5ft wide tun­nel, tall enough to walk into. The walls of the tun­nel are thick.

Be­fore the en­trance of the maze is a carved wooden sign.

Without the secret of heart,
Far you will walk and wander,
But danger in times’ squander,
And you can­not dream to part.

Ex­it­ing the maze 2

Each tile has three exits, the wolf (W) exit, the owl (O) exit, and the bear (B) exit. Each time the char­ac­ters ar­rive leave through an exit, add a new tile to the maze, con­nect­ing the E of the new tile to the exit the char­ac­ters left through. To exit the maze, they must exit a tile first by the owl, the next tile by the bear, and the fi­nal tile by the wolf.

When the char­ac­ters first reach the Wolf statue, read the de­scrip­tion:

In the tun­nel, a wooden statue of a wolf, mid step, stares out fur­ther into the maze.

When the char­ac­ters first reach the Owl statue, read the de­scrip­tion:

In the tun­nel, a wooden statue of an owl, wings stretched in mid flight, stares out fur­ther into the maze.

When the char­ac­ters first reach the Bear statue, read the de­scrip­tion:

In the tun­nel, a wooden statue of a small bear, mid step, stares out fur­ther into the maze.

If the char­ac­ters try to break out through the walls, read the de­scrip­tion:

As you dam­age the walls, vines and branches re­grow quickly to fill the area.

Centre room 2

At the centre of each tile, I is a room with the fol­low­ing text:

Four large trees grow tall in each corner of the room, their can­opy like a vaul­ted ceil­ing. Light trickles through, il­lu­min­at­ing a wooden po­dium into which words are carved.

At first my beak is sharp,
Then honey stops the hun­ger’s smart,
Un­til at last I howl to the moon,
Fol­low me and we will part.

For each tile the party has suc­cess­fully trav­elled through, the as­so­ci­ated text for the exit for that tile will have dis­ap­peared from the riddle room.

The awakened tree 2

De­fend­ing the maze is an awakened tree. This trees can move through the walls of the maze. Each time the char­ac­ters move within range, the tree will at­tack once and then dis­ap­pear through the walls of the maze. To de­term­ine the loc­a­tion of the tree, roll two d10s. The first is the ho­ri­zontal loc­a­tion of the tree left-to-right, and the second is ver­tical loc­a­tion top-to-bot­tom. If the tree is in the path, it will be in­dis­tin­guish­able from a wall and block the path, if it’s in the wall, it will be in­dis­tin­guish­able from the wall its in. De­term­ine the tree’s loc­a­tion whenever the char­ac­ters move to a new tile or after the tree moves.

Druid set­tle­ment 2

Once the char­ac­ters have ex­ited the maze, read the fol­low­ing:

Tall pine trees circle three wooden build­ings, each shaped like the shell of an acorn. The closest is lar­ger than the oth­ers and its door faces the maze exit. You smell the smoke which drifts out of the top of each. Around the build­ings, six oak leaf shaped pools steam mak­ing . You can see a few elves, half-elves, and hu­mans work­ing in the area around it.

Each build­ing is very sim­ilar.

A large fire provides a little more warmth for the build­ing. Druids, wrapped in thick furs, work. Most are work­ing while around the fire. A chat­ter fills the air, like the smoke from the fire. You can hear a work­ing song about a seed of warmth that flows

In the lar­ger build­ing:

A half-elf man and an elf wo­man stand chat­ting. The man stands tall, a golden crown in the shape of twigs and branches on his head and wears well main­tained fur robes.

The man is Yorhorn and the wo­man is Endi.

Ro­le­play­ing the Sil­vatans 2

Yorhorn (NG half-elf man) is an in­tim­id­at­ing man who stands tall, and speaks rarely and softly. He is pro­tect­ive of Sil­vat and his in­hab­it­ants. He is too trust­ing, show­ing too much com­pas­sion and mercy to those who op­pose him. In ad­di­tion to the in­form­a­tion that the Sil­vatans know, Yorhorn met an elf wo­man from Ay­meluma who traded a gold leaf for some ma­gic. Yorhorn gave the gold leaf to Briid, who was a child at the time. He can’t re­mem­ber what the trader looked like, other than she was an older wo­man who wore a purple cloak with gold em­broid­ery.

Endi (NG half-elf wo­man) is very pop­u­lar and al­ways has a sym­path­etic ear. She be­lieves it is im­port­ant to achieve your goals and pro­tect Sil­vat. She be­lieves clean­li­ness is a waste of time - it’ll just get dirty again. She en­cour­aged Yorhorn to ban­ish Briid.

Ax­ilya (CN elf wo­man) wear­ing simple, prac­tical clothes, and a well-worn trav­el­ling cloak. She is a so­cially awk­ward. She be­lieves it is im­port­ant to con­nect with nature and take everything in mod­er­a­tion. She be­lieves ex­cel­ling at a skill is­n’t all it’s cracked up to be. Ax­ilya knows of the loc­a­tion of the Well­springs of Vi­tal­ity. She will agree to take the char­ac­ters to the Well­springs in re­turn for some ammo for hunt­ing.

Well­springs of Vi­tal­ity

Chapter 7

The Well­spring of Vi­tal­ity flows and warms. The bit­ter cold of De­nau makes it im­possible for many to sur­vive but the Well­spring’s hot wa­ters gives life a chance to en­dure and, at times, thrive.

The ori­gins of the springs have been for­got­ten by most. A fi­nal al­li­ance between Ay­meluma and Sil­vat com­bined ma­gic with the nature of the fire deep in the moun­tain when the cold ar­rived from Ely­dir over 500 years ago.

The Icebring­er’s Ic­tus have twis­ted the pur­pose of the en­chanted gems of this spring, which en­hance the power of the mol­ten earth be­low, to freeze the in­com­ing wa­ter - pre­vent­ing the flow of new hot wa­ter.

Now the power of the springs is wan­ing, and soon, all those who live in its warmth could per­ish.

Ran­dom en­coun­ters 2

Check for an ran­dom en­counter whenever the party, back­tracks, rests for 10 minutes, or at­tracts at­ten­tion. On a res­ult of 18 or more, a ran­dom en­counter oc­curs.

Chuul

Cult Fan­atic

Cult­ists

Ice mephits

Gi­ant rats

Dark Mantle

Snow golem

Out­side 2

Ap­proach­ing from a dis­tance:

You glimpse the near­ing moun­tains through the tops of the trees. The hills get­ting steeper to­wards the moun­tains. As you climb, the wind bites and whips at you.

From close by:

The trees give way to a 30ft semi-cir­cu­lar clear­ing be­low a cliff, the tall moun­tains hid­ing the sky above. An en­trance to a cave tun­nel is 10ft up the cliff face. Four thug­gish hu­mans huddle around a fire in the clear­ing be­low, pelts and tents break­ing the wind. A fig­ure cloaked in ice blue stands in the cave en­trance, mostly look­ing out and oc­ca­sion­ally scowl­ing down at the people be­low.

The thugs and cult­ist fan­atic have been told by the cult­ists to de­fend the en­trance of the caves and not let any­body in. They will aim to dis­cour­age oth­ers from en­ter­ing be­fore fight­ing (it’s easier money to not die).

The cult­ist at will to warn the other cult­ists in­side that oth­ers are com­ing.

A char­ac­ter must suc­ceed on a DC 13 check to climb up the cliff-face.

Up­per cave 2

The up­per cave is cold and icy. The cult­ists have wrestled con­trol over it and have frozen the wa­ter­falls.

B1. En­trance tun­nel 2

The nat­ural tun­nel twists into the moun­tain, frost cov­ers the sur­faces. With each step the air gets colder but stil­ler.

Each of the other tun­nels in the cave are also frosty and cold.

B2. Lake room 2

An ir­reg­u­lar trench cuts across this cav­ern from east to west, a thick layer of ice cov­er­ing the bot­tom. In­side the chan­nel, twelve cloaked fig­ures, robed in icy blue chant. The fig­ure closest to the back wears lar­ger and brighter robes. A small spec­tral orb floats in the centre of the room above them, thick snow spill­ing out of it.

At either end of the chan­nel is a smal­ler tun­nel. To the north, op­pos­ite to the en­trance, a pas­sage­way is blocked by fallen rock. The cav­ern is 30ft at its widest, 20ft at its tallest, and 40ft long. The chan­nel is 20ft wide in the middle, 10ft wide at the edges, and 10ft deep.

In the space south of the trench, frag­ments of a shattered stone tab­let lie on the floor, be­low a po­dium.

If the char­ac­ters enter the chan­nel, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion:

At the bot­tom of the chan­nel, be­low the ice, two thick veins of metal runs through it. The chan­nel slopes up­wards slightly to the east.

The bot­tom of the chan­nel is slip­pery ice (DMG p110).

One of the ice wor­ship­pers is a cult fan­atic, Mor­row, the oth­ers are cult­ists. The ice wor­ship­pers are chant­ing to open a small portal to the ice realm. They will ac­cel­er­ate their ef­forts if they are in­ter­rup­ted, aim­ing to open a smal­ler un­stable portal. At the end of each round, check if the ice wor­ship­pers are suc­cess­ful in open­ing a portal. Roll 1d20, if the res­ult is less than the num­ber of cult­ists chant­ing, open a portal in the centre of the room, bring­ing in 1d4 ice mephits. This can be done at most 10 times in 24 hours.

If the char­ac­ters in­spect the broken frag­ments, give the char­ac­ters the dun­geon puzzle.

The blocked pas­sage leads to the pas­sage op­pos­ite B6, the chan­nels lead­ing to the east and west por­tions of B3.

B3. Wa­ter chan­nels 2

The icy floor is dif­fi­cult to walk on and the cold seeps through your boots. Two thick metal veins fol­lows un­der­neath the ice.

When the wa­ter is fol­low­ing, it is dif­fi­cult to travel through the chan­nels.

If the char­ac­ter falls into the wa­ter, they must make a DC 14 Strength sav­ing throw or be swept down­stream, tak­ing 1d8 points of bludgeon­ing dam­age.

The bot­tom of the chan­nel is slip­pery ice (DMG p110).

East

This con­nects area B2 to areas B4 and B5, the pas­sage split­ting as it goes along.

West

This cuts across the main pas­sage­way (area B6), between areas B8 and B9, then curves to­wards area B9, join­ing the chan­nel from area B8.

B4. East wa­ter­fall 2

A wa­ter­fall of ice flows down the east wall around a vein of thick metal into the chan­nel. Set into the ice at the top of the metal vein is a large blue gem.

A tun­nel to the north leads to B5 and the chan­nel leads to B2.

The blue gem is a Nixig­nis Gem. Once re­moved, the wa­ter­fall will slowly melt over 24 hours.

B5. North east wa­ter­fall 2

A wa­ter­fall of ice flows down the north east wall around a vein of thick metal into a chan­nel.

A skel­eton lies in the corner, a small pack to its side.

Five an­gu­lar winged creatures with blue skin breath fly near the wa­ter­fall. One breaths frosty breath onto it.

The tun­nel to the north is the en­trance to area B6.

There are five ice mephits in this room who are try­ing to keep the wa­ter­fall frozen un­til the cult­ists sent be­low re­turn with the fi­nal gem. If they are stopped, this wa­ter­fall will melt in 6 hours.

If a char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on a DC 13 medi­cine check, they will find that the skel­eton be­longs to an elf. On the skel­eton, is a [Ring of Fire Res­ist­ance]. The pack con­tains a Lan­tern of Re­veal­ing, and 12gp.

B6. Main pas­sage 2

This walls of this stone pas­sage are smooth. The moss on the walls turned to ice. Sounds echo along this oth­er­wise si­lent cor­ridor.

This pas­sage starts at area B5 and con­nects to areas B7, B8, and B9. Between areas B8 and B9, the west wa­ter chan­nel (area B3) cuts across this. A pas­sage to B2 is blocked.

If the char­ac­ters reach the west wa­ter chan­nel for the first time, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion.

A chan­nel cuts across this cor­ridor, ice at the bot­tom.

After the wa­ter­falls have been melted and the char­ac­ters reach the wa­ter chan­nel, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion:

Wa­ter rushes through the chan­nel in this cor­ridor, spray­ing on each side.

B7. Stairs 2

From carved stone stairs, warmer air rises and, with it, a smell of damp and mil­dew. Wa­ter trickles down the steps from slowly melt­ing ice.

On each side of the stairs, a stone statue of an elf stands, each with their hands out­stretched and a rising sun em­blazoned across their robes. At the bot­tom of the stairs is a dark room.

These are Fire-breath­ing statues, with the fire com­ing out of their hands. The pres­sure plate cov­ers the space across the stairs.

The stairs start con­nec­ted to B6 down to C1.

B8. North west wa­ter­fall 2

This is a very cold cave. A wa­ter­fall of ice flows down from the north west into a chan­nel. In­side the ice, one foot in, you see a blue gem.

Two fig­ures cloaked in el­eg­ant blue robes stand watch­ing the cave en­trance.

Two cult fan­at­ics guard the gem in this wa­ter­fall, talk­ing about the fly­ing ser­pents be­low.

B9. Whirl­pool 2

Carved into the ground of this large cave is a huge fun­nel, 30 feet across, its walls coated in ice. At the bot­tom, a 5 foot wide dark void swal­lows the dim light of the room. A chan­nel from the north con­nects par­al­lel to side of the fun­nel, at the point closest to the en­trance. Three metal veins, start­ing from the chan­nel, spiral around and turn into ice covered poles, equidistant down the fun­nel’s hole.

A skel­eton lies in the corner of the cave.

The bot­tom of the chan­nel is slip­pery ice (DMG p110).

If a char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on a DC 13 medi­cine check, they will find that the skel­eton be­longs to an elf. Between the bones is a spell scroll of Stone Shape and 2 gems worth 10 gp each.

Lower cave 2

The lower cave is warmer than the up­per levels, though it’s not hot. The cult­ists have struggled to gain con­trol over this level. Ini­tially, they trav­elled with force to steal the Nixig­nis gems from the deep but were thwarted by the Cou­atls, Tlene and Icpi, though Tlene was also slain in the pro­cess.

C1. Stairs 2

Warmer air flows from two carved stone cor­ridors, one to the east and one to the west.

C2. East reser­voir 2

Once area C5 has filled with wa­ter, this cave re­fills at 5ft per hour per wa­ter­fall, up to the top of the empty basin.

When the char­ac­ters enter this reser­voir, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion if the wa­ter is­n’t flow­ing:

This gi­ant reser­voir is empty of wa­ter, a large is­land, now a hill, in the centre. A 10 wide chan­nel opens into the reser­voir, 25 foot up the south west wall, the shad­ows bey­ond im­pen­et­rable.

To the north of the reser­voir stands a 30 foot tall slimy cliff atop which a tun­nel exits. A boat hangs down the wall, chained to the top of the cliff.

Read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion if the wa­ter is­n’t flow­ing:

Wa­ter sur­rounds a large is­land at the centre of this reser­voir. Wa­ter flows in from a chan­nel on the west wall, the shad­ows bey­ond im­pen­et­rable.

To the north of the reser­voir, a tun­nel exits onto a short dry cliff. A chain hangs down into the wa­ter.

Then, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion.

At the top of the is­land, a hunched old man sits near a small fire, star­ing into it, a bag of weapons to his side. Closer to the man, a mound, shaped in a cres­cent is covered in a sheet.

At the edge of the is­land, to the east, a few small bunched mounds are covered by a white sheet. Nearby those, two un­con­scious blue robed fig­ures are tied up.

The chan­nel in the south west wall of the basin leads to area C4. The tun­nel leads to area C1.

A char­ac­ter who suc­ceeds on a DC 15 Strength check can pull the boat up us­ing the chain.

The man at the centre is Icpi, Icpi­c­ou­alt, (LG Cou­atl male) in the form of a Vet­eran male. Icpi is mourn­ing the loss of his mother, Tlene (Tlene­nepil­c­ou­alt), and is plan­ning on burn­ing her body. He has been tasked by his mother, and there­fore the gods, to pre­vent the power of the Nixig­nis gems from be­ing used for ill. Tlene had pro­tec­ted these be­fore against the an­cient wiz­ard who used the lava cav­ern as its base.

Icpi is not quick to trust oth­ers and will be fear­ful of. He will use his abil­it­ies to mind read co­pi­ously, and be very ques­tion­ing of any other creature’s pur­pose here. He will be evas­ive of any ques­tions and will try to lead oth­ers seek­ing the Nixig­nis Gems away. If he be­lieves there are those that will help, he will ask them to re­turn the Nixig­nis Gems to their right­ful place and to drive any re­main­ing cult­ists from the caves. In re­turn, he will warn them of what is likely to hap­pen once the wa­ter flows again and will of­fer to help them es­cape when the time comes. He also knows of the flameskull in the Lava Cav­ern.

Be­neath the white sheet closest to Icpi is the corpse of Tlene. Un­der the other sheet are corpses of the cult­ists who failed. Icpi is also plan­ning on burn­ing those corpses, out of re­spect, though he does­n’t know that this would be blas­phem­ous to them. If a char­ac­ter suc­ceeds on an DC 12 In­tel­li­gence (In­vest­ig­a­tion) check, they will see that none of the corpses have weapon marks on them, but bite marks.

The fire at the centre of the cav­ern is in­cred­ibly hot, des­pite its small size. At the centre of it, is a Nixig­nis Gem.

A char­ac­ter who at­tempts to scale the cliff, either up or down must make a DC 14 Ath­let­ics (Strength) check or fall, tak­ing fall dam­age. If a char­ac­ter at­tempts to climb around the cav­ern, they must suc­ceed on a DC 16 Ath­let­ics (Strength) check or fall.

C3. West reser­voir 2

Once area C5 has filled with wa­ter, this cave re­fills at 5ft per hour per wa­ter­fall, up to the top of the empty basin.

When the char­ac­ters enter this reser­voir, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion if the wa­ter is­n’t flow­ing yet:

This large cave has an empty basin. A make­shift lad­der climbs down the 30ft slimy basin cliff, at the top of which a tun­nel exits fur­ther to the north east. Strewn around the bot­tom of the lad­der, slime covered corpses lie dis­figured.

To the south, 25 foot up the basin wall, a dark tun­nel stares out at you.

If the cave is is re­filled, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion:

Apart from a small area of ground to the north, this large cave is flooded with wa­ter. A make­shift lad­der floats on the wa­ter. A couple of slime covered dis­figured corpses lie half sub­merged at the edge of the wa­ter. Wa­ter flows into the cave from a chan­nel in the south.

If the cave does­n’t have any wa­ter in it, at the bot­tom there are three gelat­in­ous cubes, stay­ing per­fectly still. One is dir­ectly at the bot­tom of the lad­der, wait­ing for an un­lucky vis­itor. If the cave is filled with wa­ter, the gelat­in­ous cubes will be wait­ing just be­low the wa­ter at the edge of the cliff.

A char­ac­ter who at­tempts to scale the cliff, either up or down must make a DC 14 Ath­let­ics (Strength) check or fall, tak­ing fall dam­age. If a char­ac­ter at­tempts to climb around the cav­ern, they must suc­ceed on a DC 16 Ath­let­ics (Strength) check or fall.

The tun­nel to the north east leads to C1, the tun­nel to the south leads into C4.

C4. Wa­ter pas­sages 2

Once area C5 has filled with wa­ter, this is flooded.

Read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion if the wa­ter is­n’t flow­ing:

The tun­nel floor and lower walls are smooth and slip­pery. Stalac­tites hang down from the ceil­ing.

Read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion if the wa­ter is flow­ing:

The wa­ter flows quickly through this chan­nel. Stalac­tites hang down from the ceil­ing.

The wa­ter is flow­ing at 5 feet per second.

There are six dark mantles in the main pas­sage that exits C5. When a creature ap­proaches them, they will use their dark­ness aura to sur­prise the un­sus­pect­ing vic­tim. Read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion if this hap­pens:

The room plunges into dark­ness. You hear pop­ping and squelch­ing above you.

This pas­sage con­nects areas C2 and C3 to area C5.

C5. Stairs to the deep 2

This cave re­fills at 5ft per hour per run­ning wa­ter­fall, up to 40ft.

When the wa­ter is­n’t flow­ing read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion:

This large square room has been slowly softened by time.

When the wa­ter is flow­ing, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion:

Wa­ter fills this large square room.

Then, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion:

The smell of sul­phur fills the air. A plat­eau, 80ft high and 20ft wide, stands in the centre. Half way up the plat­eau a stone pro­trudes out and, from it, a 10 foot wide stair­case climbs around the plat­eau. Four statues stand atop it, watch­ing out to be­low. The air around shim­mers like them air on a hot sum­mer’s day.

Two corpses lie broken on the pro­tru­sion, dried blood cov­er­ing their clothes. To the north east and south west, tun­nels exit 20ft up into room.

The statues are [an­im­ated ar­mour] and will ac­tiv­ate when creatures reach the 3rd on the steps. The cor­ridor to the north east leads to area C4 and the cor­ridor to the south west leads to C6.

When the char­ac­ters reach the top of the stairs, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion:

A glow­ing red light em­an­ates from a spiral, caus­ing the air to shim­mer around it. You feel hot dry air flow from it, along with the stench of sul­phur.

The stairs lead to area D1.

C6. Whirl­pool 2

This huge cyl­indrical room has been cleanly hewn from the walls. The ground feels warm be­low your feet though the air fall­ing down from the small hole at top. Three metal poles stick around the centre of the room from the floor to the ceil­ing.

The hole in the top leads to area B9. A cor­ridor leads to area C5.

Lava cav­ern 2

There is a Flameskull hid­ing in the lava which wants the Nixig­nis Gems, cre­ated by its long-gone mas­ter to pro­tect them. The ma­gic of the cave pro­tects the Nixig­nis pyr­amid from un­dead when powered. If the gems are in place, any un­dead within a 60ft of the plat­form be­come frightened of the plat­form.

The Flameskull is in­tel­li­gent and will choose a mo­ment with ad­vant­age to at­tach the any­body who has the gems. It will try to con­vince the char­ac­ters to give it the gems, if the gems are re­turned to their place.

Throughout the build­ings of the lava cav­ern, there is weakened floor. If a char­ac­ter steps on the weakened floor, it will col­lapse, and the char­ac­ter must suc­ceed on a DC 10 dex­ter­ity sav­ing throw or fall into the lava.

A creature takes 6d10 fire dam­age when it enters lava for the first time on a turn or when it ends its turn there.

D1. Broken stair­case 2

The spiral stair­case is built into a huge stalac­tite. The tower be­low. The re­main­ing tower built up to reach it has col­lapsed.

The stair­case spir­als down, hewn into nat­ural rock. Sconces spread a dim red light from the walls.

130 feet down the stairs, the stairs end, leav­ing a 40 ft drop to a tower be­low.

The stair­case ends in the air in this huge lava flooded cav­ern. Three fea­tures stand out of the lava 80 feet be­low: a frag­men­ted castle, with a half-broken tower; a hexagonal pyr­amid, with three large statues stand­ing at the top; and a broken bridge between. The half-broken tower reaches to­wards the stair­case, leav­ing a 40 foot gap. Around the tower, you see a few bod­ies wear­ing blue robes, some burnt, some broken. A knot­ted rope hangs down from the stair­case to the tower be­low.

D2. Old castle 2

The floor of the castle is 10 feet above the lava.

The old castle’s found­a­tions and outer walls are broken in many places, leav­ing pools of lava be­low. Areas of the floor look are cracked and un­even. Very little fur­niture re­mains. The few in­ner walls that stand in­side are crum­bling.

D3. Broken bridge 2

The bridge spans the 60 foot gap between the castle and the pyr­amid.

D4. Hexagonal pyr­amid 2

When the char­ac­ters reach the hexagonal pyr­amid, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion:

Three statues stand fa­cing out­wards on ever other side of this pyr­amid. Each statue holds their right hand low, a dia­mond shaped hole in their palms; their other hand holds onto the shoulder of the next statue. Between each statue, there are holes to pools of lava be­low. Metal poles des­cend from the ceil­ing to each, wrap­ping around to form their cloth­ing - the poles split down into each of the lava pools. The statue fa­cing the left of the bridge is a man wear­ing ar­mour fash­ioned after oak leaves. The statue to the right of the bridge is a wo­man wear­ing a tu­nic with im­ages of fruit and har­vest and her hair covered in carved wild­flowers. The statue fa­cing away is wear­ing a plated ar­mour, a hel­met con­ceal­ing his face.

The statues are Sil­vanus, Chauntea, and Helm.

Restor­ing the Nixig­nis gems to this struc­ture will re­turn the heat to the metal con­duits that run to the wa­ter­falls. For every gem re­stored and each thirty minutes there­after, the wa­ter level in the dun­geon rises by five feet. After an hour, the wa­ter also be­comes to hot to touch in the lower cave. Any creature who touches the hot wa­ter must make a DC 13 dex­ter­ity check. A creature takes 1d10 fire dam­age on a failed save or half as much dam­age on a suc­cess­ful one.

When the char­ac­ters re­store a gem, read the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion:

From each of the gems across the metal flows a golden light. The light flows along the poles to­wards the roof of the cav­ern.

When a gem is re­stored, the Nixig­nis Gem goes into hot form.

Car­nelu

Chapter

Car­nelu 2

Vil­lage of about 800 people.

The Toad’s Inn 2

The inn is a single storey half-timbered build­ing, with dwarf-wrought iron tables and chairs. It is well lit by an iron chan­delier. Ac­com­mod­a­tions con­sist of sev­eral ham­mocks in the com­mon room. Very pop­u­lar with the loc­als, has very poor ac­com­mod­a­tion and food but cheap and plen­ti­ful beer. The innkeeper is a wil­lowy fe­male hu­man named Suse.

The Grey Hunt­ress 2

The inn is a grand half-timbered build­ing, with carved wooden doors. Ac­com­mod­a­tions con­sist of sev­eral large rooms with beds and wool­len mat­tresses. The inn is loc­ally known for the vari­ety of its meads and wines. The innkeeper is an old male hu­man named Altes.

Mar­ket 2

There’s a small mar­ket which has gen­eral, easy to buy wares. There is a trav­el­ling mer­chant who will sell finer wares.

Cav­ern of Stars

Chapter

Cav­ern of Stars 2

A tran­quil mon­as­tery built into the moun­tain, into a cave of lu­min­es­cent gems. Many of those, who still the many who mourn their lives or losses travel here to med­it­ate in peace. Only those given per­mis­sion by a Plan­etar, Mydaiel, can enter into the Cav­ern of Stars.

It is staffed by Hound Arch­on’s, who act as care­takers, guards, and ad­min­is­trat­ors of the mon­as­tery. There are two guards, three care­takers, and one ad­min­is­trator.

Si­lence is ex­pec­ted in the Cav­ern of Stars, though tele­pathic com­mu­nic­a­tion and non-verbal com­mu­nic­a­tion is al­lowed. The pa­tients are likely to re­port any­body un­ex­pec­ted to the Hound Arch­ons, though this won’t be taken ser­i­ously im­me­di­ately be­cause of how un­ex­pec­ted and un­likely it is.

Any vis­it­ors who break these rules will be asked to leave by the Hound Arch­ons, though only the guards will show force, and even that will only be in the most dire of situ­ations. The Hound Arch­ons will alert su­per­i­ors if any­body break­ing the rules ap­pears.

The in­side of the Cav­ern of Stars is Hal­lowed. Ce­les­ti­als are ex­cluded from the nor­mal ef­fects. In ad­di­tion, bright light fills the area. Ma­gical dark­ness cre­ated by spells of a lower than level 8 can’t ex­tin­guish the light.

Cav­ern of Stars In­terior 2

In the deeper in­terior, the cor­ridors and rooms have the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion

The walls and floors are the same ma­ter­ial as the outer cave but are pol­ished in­stead. Carvings with mark­ings filled with gold, and painted mur­als cover the walls de­pict­ing peace­ful vis­tas and godly fig­ures. Oc­ca­sion­ally, there is a statue of an an­gel or other an­gelic be­ing.

The Grand Door­way 2

The path is steep up the moun­tain. To your right, a steep val­ley with a river flow­ing through it; the river flows from out of a cave be­low - a light shin­ing out of it.

At the end of the path, large marble doors are built into the cliff. Two an­gelic statues stand be­side the door, hold­ing their swords over the door­way. A large garden is built around the door­way and statues, filled with small wa­ter fea­tures, benches and chairs.

Just in front of the marble doors, a single Hound Archon is stand­ing guard.

A main door is guarded by a Hound Archon, Dram­mer. He is un­der or­ders to guard the en­trance and to al­low pre-agreed people into the mon­as­tery. These must be checked with the mon­as­tery ad­min­is­trator on their ar­rival. He is a loyal guard and fol­lows these or­ders without ques­tion or hes­it­a­tion, though per­haps a little too the let­ter.

Mor­can­loth may be “rest­ing” in the gar­dens in a new dis­guise, if he reaches the Cav­ern of Stars be­fore them.

Be­hind the large doors, you can see a cor­ridor. Bright light, as if it was a bright sum­mer’s day, shines out from in­side. Deeper in­side, it glistens.

This door­way leads to the Bal­cony of Joy.

Bal­cony of Joy 2

You walk into a marble en­trance hall and out onto a huge white stone bal­cony that over­looks an im­mense cav­ern. The cav­ern’s sur­face is covered in spark­ling stones and iri­des­cent gems. Mil­lions of pin­pricks of light shine upon you from the walls - though you can’t see a light source. The cav­ern is roughly cir­cu­lar, about 100ft across in all dir­ec­tions, ex­cept to the east where it opens out through a nat­ural arch.

Straight ahead, to the north, a huge nat­ural pil­lar, shin­ing like everything else, rises from the bot­tom of the cav­ern. Around the pil­lar is a marble plat­form - an­other garden, some­body tend­ing to it. A bridge crosses from the bal­cony you’re on across to the cent­ral plat­form.

Across to the north-east there’s a smal­ler bal­cony, tables and chairs are laid out. This bal­cony is sep­ar­ate with no vis­ible path­ways to it.

To your left, the bal­cony nar­rows to a path around the edge of the cave, reach­ing a door on the far-west side of the cav­ern. An­other bridge spans from this door across to the cent­ral pil­lar.

To your right, a marble stair­way fol­lows around the edge of the cav­ern, down­wards. In the area 50ft be­low the bal­cony, a few people are spar­ring with wooden swords, spears, and staffs. To the east, be­low the huge arch­way, is a large sil­very lake, a river flows from this out of the cav­ern, be­low you, to the south, a bridge crosses it.

Im­me­di­ately to your left, in the en­trance hall, is a marble door­way.

The only sound you here is the wa­ter flow­ing and the wood weapons hit­ting each other.

If the play­ers are in sight of the door across the other side of the cav­ern:

Hid­den be­hind the cent­ral pil­lar, you can now see an ad­di­tional bridge across to an­other door on the far North side.

There are four en­trances and exits:

• the door to the west leads to the West Res­id­ency En­trance.
• the door to the north leads to the North Res­id­ency En­trance.
• the stair­way down to the right leads to Lower Cav­ern East.
• the door im­me­di­ately on the left leads to the Ad­min­is­trat­or’s Room.

Ad­min­is­trat­or’s Room 2

Or­derly scrolls and books line the shelves of marble room. Sit­ting at a desk is a Hound Archon, deep in its work.

A Hound Archon, Brammer, is the ad­min­is­trator of the Cav­ern of Stars.

If he meets the char­ac­ters, he will ask who they are and will check to see if they are al­lowed in. If not, he try to es­cort them out.

Cav­ern Pil­lar 2

Around the cent­ral pil­lar, is a beau­ti­ful garden. Trees flour­ish, the beds are full of strange and won­der­ful flowers, huge ivies drape over the edge. A dwarf, dressed in white, tends the gar­dens in si­lence. A Hound Archon dressed in robes stands with them.

The dwarf is An­den Bar­rel­back

River From a Cav­ern 2

A wide river runs out of the cave, the wa­ter runs quickly. Walk­ing through the wa­ter dir­ectly will take a DC17 strength check. Hanging on the edges will take a DC16 strength check.

This river leads into the cave, a bright light shines.

Read a mod­i­fied ver­sion of the Bal­cony of Joy if the play­ers suc­cess­fully enter this way.

Lower Cav­ern East 2

A stair­way curves up to­wards the up­per bal­cony.

Lower Cav­ern Train­ing Area 2

A large marble floor with wooden weapons. An elf, Ayas Vir­rin, and a halfling, Grifo Hope­singer, are spar­ring.

West Res­id­ency En­trance 2

This also ap­plies to the North Res­id­ency En­trance:

There are six doors here, three on each the left and the right. The middle door on the right is open. Be­side each of the doors is an in­scrip­tion (in ce­les­tial). At the end of the cor­ridor, an arch­way opens out into an­other room.

North Res­id­ency En­trance 2

See the de­scrip­tion for Cav­ern of Stars In­terior.

There are three doors:

• one to the left, to the kit­chen, where the char­ac­ters can smell food be­ing cooked
• to the right is an open door to the stor­e­room
• straight ahead is a closed door to the baths

The cor­ridor also goes off to the left and to the right, just past the nearest doors.

Go­ing left, there’s a longer cor­ridor, with five rooms on the right and four rooms on the left, and an open arch­way at the end. The closest door on the left is the lib­rary, the rest are abodes.

Go­ing right, there’s a shorter cor­ridor with an open arch­way at the end.

Gal­lery 2

Paint­ings show heroic battles between an­gels and demons, fam­ous good deeds, Mount Ce­les­tia, and mag­ni­fi­cent re­li­gious build­ings. Statues de­pict gods, the Triad and lesser gods, and an­gels.

One of these paint­ings in here shows the Temple of the Cor­rupt Orb.

Din­ing Hall 2

A large din­ing hall with or­nate tables and fine cloths.

The child, Kya, can usu­ally be found eat­ing here.

Baths 2

A shared bathing pool is carved into the cave rock, the wa­ter flow­ing over a marble wall on the far side into an­other huge cave. Des­pite the cave be­ing the same ma­ter­ial as the out­side, it’s mostly in dark­ness, some light from the bathing area re­flect­ing back. Steam­ing wa­ter tumbles out of a hole in the east wall.

A half-elf is bathing.

The half-elf is JJhaan Yel­nan.

Stor­age 2

A stor­age room full of fine meats and fruit.

Kit­chen 2

A Hound Archon is pre­par­ing food in here.

Lib­rary 2

A large lib­rary, study, and art stu­dio. It has large open arched win­dows that open out into the cav­ern.

Qia Qian can usu­ally be found here.

Abodes 2

These are the liv­ing quar­ters of the souls who in­habit the Cav­ern of Stars. Some have been here for months, oth­ers, for thou­sands of years.

Abode 1, Ayas Vir­rin 2

The door is closed. Ayas Vir­rin is en­graved on a plaque in Ce­les­tial on the door.

In­side the room:

A broadsword sword hangs on the wall, an­cient runes in­scribed, the blade melted. The in­terior is simple, a bed and a desk. A suit of ar­mour is on a stand, with a sword in hand. Most of the room is taken up by a statue in the shape of a small dragon.

On the desk, is a rough draw­ing of a wo­man fight­ing a dragon.

This is the room of an elf fighter, Aras Vir­rin, who lost a battle to a young black dragon who stole her daugh­ter. She is likely to be spar­ring with Grifo Hope­singer in the train­ing area.

The dragon statue will wake if they pick up the sword (and will sleep if they put down the sword). It’s a Young Black Dragon con­struct. It has the ad­di­tional dam­age im­munit­ies of poison, psychic; bludgeon­ing, pier­cing, and slash­ing from non­ma­gical at­tacks not made with adam­antine weapons. It also has the con­di­tion im­munit­ies, charmed, ex­haus­tion, frightened, para­lysed, pet­ri­fied, poisoned. It has the pro­po­erty Im­mut­able Form. It can­not use its Acid Breath at­tack.

Abode 2, An­den Bar­rel­back 2

The door is locked. A suc­cess­ful DC 10 Dex­ter­ity Check to pick the lock, or a DC 18 Strength check to break the door down. An­den Bar­rel­back is en­graved on a plaque in Ce­les­tial on the door.

The room’s walls are full of im­ages of plants and fungi. Plants are grow­ing around the room. Two small birds flut­ter around the room, and a hare bounces around.

This is the room of a dwarf ranger, An­den Bar­rel­back, who be­came lost and caused his party to die after mis­tak­ing two mush­rooms - a mis­take he never should have made. He can usu­ally be found around the cent­ral pil­lar garden.

Abode 3, Faurin 2

The door is closed. Faurin is en­graved on a plaque in Ce­les­tial on the door.

His room is full of books and scrolls stacked neatly or on large shelves. A map of De­naura is on one of the walls. A simple bed is in one corner, a large desk in an­other. A fire­place and a small arm­chair closer to the en­trance.

A hu­man sits quietly at the desk, you re­cog­nise him as Faurin, the ghost that you once fought in the Tomb of the Lost Den­hari. Though still gaunt and sad, his hair is thicker and his eyes are no longer blood­shot.

This is where [Faurin][faurin] rests. He knows about Ely­dir’s old plans and her want to com­bine the pieces of the Staff of Skon­arith. He knows the loc­a­tion through the hid­den path, and the pass­word to “un­bind”.

Abode 4, Is­ad­ore of Gill­hall 2

The door is closed. Is­ad­ore of Gill­hall is en­graved on a plaque in Ce­les­tial on the door.

A man dressed in finery is paint­ing a mural on the wall, tears stream­ing down his face. A Hound Archon dressed in simple whites stands be­side him.

The room is full of fine items, a large bed. Thick cur­tains cover the walls.

This is the room of a no­ble­man who died un­able to save his town from a flood after warn­ing a sign from the gods. He is usu­ally in his room.

Abode 5, Qia Qian 2

The door is open. Qia Qian is en­graved on a plaque in Ce­les­tial on the door.

Holy sym­bols of many sym­bols cover the room’s walls.

A holy book is on a lectern, a pas­sage high­lighted in ce­les­tial, “Those who fail to pro­tect their people are not worthy.”

The room of a hu­man priest, Qia Qian who ques­tions his wor­thi­ness, des­pite lead­ing a self­less life. She can usu­ally be found in the Lib­rary.

Abode 6, Menna Saz 2

The door is closed. Menna Saz is en­graved on a plaque in Ce­les­tial on the door.

In a simple room, a wo­man is lean­ing against a Hound Archon, weep­ing quietly.

A hu­man com­moner, Menna Saz, who’s wife was evil. She is usu­ally found in her room, mourn­ing.

Abode 7, Grifo Hope­singer 2

The door is closed. Grifo Hope­singer is en­graved on a plaque in Ce­les­tial on the door.

A room full of statues of gods and an­gels, large weapons, and suits of ar­mour.

A halfling an­cient paladin knight, Grifo Hope­singer who failed to de­feat an evil in­va­sion of orcs. She can usu­ally be found train­ing with Ayas Vir­rin.

Abode 8, Zat-Kor-Zor Zojivihd 2

The door is closed. Zat-Kor-Zor Zojivihd is en­graved on a plaque in Ce­les­tial on the door.

A very bare room, a simple mat­tress and a staff.

A hu­man wo­man wear­ing simple clothes sits in the middle of the room, med­it­at­ing, she will open her eyes an­grily when the play­ers enter.

A monk who never achieved en­light­en­ment. She is usu­ally med­it­at­ing in her room.

Abode 9, Kya 2

This door is ajar. Kya is en­graved on a plaque in Ce­les­tial on the door.

A room filled with toys and simple books. A small bed has a stuffed bear on it.

A hu­man girl, lost and con­fused. She is usu­ally eat­ing in the din­ing area. She will be the most likely to talk to the play­ers not truly un­der­stand­ing the rules of the si­lence, but she will do so nervously. She will be­come at­tached to the most hu­man char­ac­ter, or one that shows her the most af­fec­tion.

Abode 10 2

This door is locked. A suc­cess­ful DC 12 dex­ter­ity check, or a suc­cess­ful strength strength check of 18 will open the door. Danger is en­graved on a plaque in Ce­les­tial on the door.

The room is empty apart from a single flower, dark sil­ver, light sil­ver, and light purple petals.

The door to this room will auto­mat­ic­ally close if not propped open.

The flower if touched will let out a pois­on­ous gas. Any creature in the room must suc­ceed on a DC 18 Con­sti­tu­tion sav­ing throw or be para­lysed for 4 hours. If they all suc­cumb, they will be taken to the cent­ral pil­lar gar­dens.

This flower, the True An­gel’s Acon­itum, if pre­pared cor­rectly, can be used to cre­ate a Po­tion of Re­move Curse.

Abode 11, Jhaan Yel­nan 2

The door is closed. Jhaan Yel­nan is en­graved on a plaque in Ce­les­tial on the door.

A room full of pot­tery, tapestries, and homely items. A fire­place is built into the corner. Simple hand-made fur­niture fills the room.

A half-elf, Jhaan Yel­nan who ac­ci­dent­ally killed in­hab­it­ants of a neigh­bour­ing vil­lage due to an ill­ness. The half-elf can usu­ally be found bathing.

Abode 12 2

The door is closed. Noth­ing is en­graved on the plaque on the door.

The room is empty.

Abode 13, As­im­ina 2

The door is closed. As­im­ina is en­graved on a plaque in Ce­les­tial on the door.

Orbs and scrolls are in piles around the room.

In the centre of the room, an elf in deep red robes chants and moves her arms in com­plex man­oeuvres.

An elvish sor­cerer, As­im­ina, who tried to avoid us­ing her powers dur­ing her life­time. In a mo­ment of des­per­a­tion, she ac­ci­dent­ally des­troyed her own vil­lage and her­self in a surge of wild ma­gic, try­ing to heal her mother. She spends her time try­ing to per­fect the spells to not have a wild ma­gic surge. She killed her whole fam­ily.

If she is dis­trac­ted, this will fail. She will have a look of ter­ror across her face and scream “nooo-”. As a wild ma­gic surge, she will cast fire­ball as a 3rd-level spell centred on her­self.

Abode 14, Al­mar Tor­rie 2

The door is closed. Al­mar Tor­rie is en­graved on a plaque in Ce­les­tial on the door.

The room con­tains a bed, an easel, and lots of un­fin­ished paint­ings.

An hu­man artist, Al­mar Tor­rie, who failed to com­plete his work for the local church which was then des­troyed in an un­re­lated light­ning strike. He can usu­ally be found in the gal­lery.

Cloud­peak Mon­as­tery

Chapter

De­nau Cloud­peak Mon­as­tery 2

Cloud­peak Mon­as­tery is the lair of a sil­ver dragon, Xolbi who is in hu­man form. This mon­as­tery is served by ten aco­lytes and a priest of Torm.

The mon­as­tery is 12 miles from the split in the path, fur­ther up the moun­tain. Play­ers need to be care­ful they don’t get lost (Be­com­ing Lost p111 DMG) fol­low­ing this path. In the dis­tance, up the moun­tain, they can hear a bell ring every hour.

After 11 miles of travel up this path (or fur­ther if they get lost), the char­ac­ters will reach a point where the wind calms and the snow stops.

From a dis­tance:

Ahead of you, the cold weather. Huge cliffs of clouds and fall­ing snow sur­round a temple. The temple leans against the moun­tain, its walls made of worn stone some of which have crumbled.

The temple has a steep gabled roof, a spire on the left, and a spire miss­ing on the right. It has a door that door faces south. To the west a much smal­ler ad­joined build­ing con­nects to the west, nestled between the moun­tain and the temple.

To the east, there is rubble with a large bell stick­ing out of the snow.

They won’t be able to hear any­thing from the out­side but on a DC 16 Wis­dom (Per­cep­tion) check, they will see move­ment in one of the towers. The aco­lyte on watch, Jrena, has a pass­ive per­cep­tion of 11 and, if she sees the play­ers, she will warn Xolbi that they’re com­ing.

As the play­ers ap­proach the build­ing from a dis­tance:

You see that, what ori­gin­ally looked like broken walls there are clouds hold­ing in shape. The miss­ing spire and bell-tower are also fash­ioned in this way as well. The door will have the sym­bol of a right hand gaunt­let with the palm fa­cing for­ward, a closed eye fa­cing out­ward.

When the play­ers get close to the door, the eye will open, and a sound will come from it. It will pose them a ques­tion:

Wel­come, trav­el­lers, to Cloud­peak Temple. To enter here, you must an­swer my ques­tion truth­fully:

You’re in a con­fer­ence with a be­ing of in­cred­ible might. This be­ing has given you an of­fer - peace and tran­quil­ity for all of those in the world. However, it’s at a price. You must choose a in­no­cent creature, an in­no­cent child of a farmer who is your friend, and tor­ture this child for etern­ity. On this child’s tears, this new world would be built.

An­swer me hon­estly, each of you, would you take this be­ing’s of­fer?

No mat­ter, the an­swer that the play­ers, give, the door will let them in. Those who an­swer that they won’t will be given the be­ne­fits of Bless spell for 24 hours.

Once they are let in:

Light and warmth fills the very large room which fills the whole space within. Torches ad­orn the walls. You can smell spices and bread.

The walls and ceil­ing are a mix­ture of stone and cloud. About eight people are pray­ing quietly in this temple.

If they have been no­ticed, Xolbi will be wait­ing to wel­come the char­ac­ters. Oth­er­wise, when they enter, the priest will greet them and an aco­lyte will be sent to fetch Xolbi.

Xolbi 2

A tall, slender fig­ure stands be­fore you, with a friendly smile and arms out, wel­com­ing. They have sharp cheekbones, a thick jaw, with cropped hair and is wear­ing lav­ish col­our­ful robes.

Xolbi will wel­come them in, and of­fer rest, food, and shel­ter to the char­ac­ters.

Xolbi knows in­form­a­tion about how to get to Mount Ce­les­tia. However, they will want to get an item back that was stole from him a few years ago.

The item is the an­cient crown of Re­hani that had been re­covered from the old tomb a very long time ago. This crown will boost a char­ac­ter’s Cha­risma by 2 up to a max­imum of 20.

They know that it’s been taken by a Drow thief who is now in De­naura, tak­ing ad­vant­age of the re­cent chaos to try to sell it re­cently. They know that the item is hid­den in a cache, hid­den in an old ma­gi­cian’s vault in the ware­house dis­trict, around Iron­wood Street. They show the char­ac­ters a small glyph which the thief uses.

Once the char­ac­ters have re­turned the crown to Xolbi, Xolbi will point the char­ac­ters to travel to the top of Mount De­nau dur­ing the next full moon (the fol­low­ing even­ing) at mid­night. It’s there that they can find how to get to Lunia, the first layer of Mount Ce­les­tia. Xolbi will also help the char­ac­ters by keep­ing the weather calm un­til they get there.

When the char­ac­ters de­part, Xolbi will say “I wish good­will on you and to those who you may meet on your jour­ney.”

De­nau Moun­tains

Chapter

Mount De­nau Peak 2

The path winds fur­ther up the moun­tain to­wards the peak.

On the way up the peak, the char­ac­ters will be given the op­tion to save a lost monk. The lost monk is a Deva in dis­guise.

The wind howls at the top of the peak but the sky is clear. At night, the moon can be seen rising up. Once it’s at its peak, the wind will calm and a sum­mers warmth will fill the char­ac­ters. A sil­ver pool will ap­pear, and the monk that they met on the way up the moun­tain along with it. After he ap­pears, large white wings sprout from his back and ar­mour and a large swords ap­pear. If they did not save him, he will try to pre­vent the char­ac­ters from reach­ing the pool, oth­er­wise he will let them past.

The sil­very pool is opaque but if the play­ers are well footed, they can put their heads through. On the other side, the char­ac­ters can see that the portal is 20ft in the air above a sil­very sea. If they look around they can see a few small boats. To the north, they can see land.

The air feels sum­mery the sea is calm.

The ses­sion ends when the play­ers jump in.

Trav­el­ling Around Lunia 2

Most of the safest paths re­quire trav­el­ling up the moun­tain, to meet an­other path that goes down the moun­tain which is time con­sum­ing and ex­haust­ing.

While Lunia is gen­er­ally a safe place, off the paths the play­ers may en­counter creatures who are try­ing to get into Lunia.

Vari­ous trav­el­ling de­scrip­tions:

• The road up­hill is tir­ing. Few people pass you on the way down, but you over­take many on the way up.

• A few people stop and ask if you need help or as­sist­ance on the jour­ney and help point you in the right dir­ec­tion.

• You pass a large se­lec­tion of shrines to all the god of good.

• Back down the hill, you travel through a vil­lage.

• The ashen trees sway in the breeze on either side of you. The beauty from this vant­age point is breath­tak­ing.

Safer route en­coun­ters 2

If the party choose to fol­low an safe route, along the paths, across the ter­rain, roll a d8 every 6 hours of travel: on a 1-3, choose the event with the num­ber rolled be­low.

Band of Hound Archon Sol­diers 2

From the dis­tance, you see a band of Hound Arch­ons or­derly march­ing to­wards you.

As they ap­proach the play­ers, a few of the sol­diers will stop and ask for a Mark of Mydaiel from the play­ers. If they don’t have one, they will be asked to be es­cor­ted to the Hall of Sa­luta­tion

Stub­born Priest 2

You reach a bridge over a 20ft wide wa­ter­fall which drops down into a pool 50 ft be­low. A hu­man, dressed in robes, hold­ing a sym­bol of Il­ma­ter stands in your way and shouts:

“Trav­el­lers, you may not pass over this bridge un­less you are worthy.”

A hu­man priest, Nol, he will not let them over un­less he be be­lieves are good or law­ful enough. He is a com­moner. He will not stop them if they try to climb across the edge of the bridge, or if they try to wade through the wa­ter.

On a suc­cess­ful DC 17 Strength check, a char­ac­ter can wade through the river. On a fail­ure, they will be swept away, and down over the wa­ter­fall, tak­ing 5d6 bludgeon­ing dam­age.

On a suc­cess­ful DC 15 Dex­ter­ity check, a char­ac­ter can climb across the edge of the bridge. On a fail­ure, they will fall into the wa­ter and need to make a DC 17 Strength save or fall over the edge and take 5d6 bludgeon­ing dam­age.

An al­tern­at­ive away around will add an­other 4 hours of jour­ney.

In­vis­ible Stalker 2

This is an at­tack from an In­vis­ible Stalker sent by Mor­can­loth, if she knows who the play­ers are. If he does­n’t, then ig­nore this en­counter.

A sharp wind blows across the tops of the trees to your right in a line. It’s quiet oth­er­wise.

Pick a ran­dom player to be at­tacked first by an In­vis­ible Stalker.

Un­safe route en­coun­ters 2

The un­safe routes will take the char­ac­ters through forests and along steep moun­tain passes.

If the party choose to fol­low an un­safe route, across the ter­rain, roll a d8 for every 6 hours: on a 1-4, choose the event with the num­ber rolled be­low. If you have rolled it already be­fore, noth­ing hap­pens.

Vari­ous trav­el­ling de­scrip­tions:

• You walk through a deep forest, the trees ashen, the light from the stars light your path.

• You pass an dwarf who helps you for a short while in the right dir­ec­tion.

• You pass a shrine to Eldath at the base of a wa­ter­fall. A few pil­grims are here.

• You care­fully walk along a moun­tain cliff path.

Cor­rup­ted lan­tern 2

Deep pass and a cor­rup­ted lan­tern:

You’re on a nar­row path, about 10 foot wide, hug­ging along the side of a cliff, drop­ping down 30ft to the right. The path is un­stable on the right and does­n’t hold you well.

A slow red pulsat­ing light is in the dis­tance, dart­ing around sharply and ran­domly.

Ap­proach­ing the red light:

As you get closer the light stops. It looks like an Archon Lan­tern. It holds still for a mo­ment be­fore fly­ing to­wards you.

Roll ini­ti­at­ive. This has the stats of an Archon Lan­tern.

Mauled body 2

You’re deep in the woods, You find a mauled body of a male elf, scratched and bruised. It does­n’t look like it’s been around for long, blood still pour­ing around it.

A Nycan­loth will try to at­tack the play­ers stealth­ily. A per­cep­tion check of DC 14 will re­veal the Nycan­loth.

Trapped Lan­tern Archon 2

Sur­roun­ded by the ashen trees you see a cave, deep and dark. You can smell a damp­ness and must, something you’ve not smelt since you’ve ar­rived in Lunia.

The en­trance is trapped with a fall­ing net, a suc­cess­ful DC 17 Wis­dom (Per­cep­tion) will al­low a char­ac­ter to spot the trap. A suc­cess­ful DC 15 Dex­ter­ity check us­ing thieves’ tools breaks the trip wire harm­lessly. Without thieves’ tools, it is done at a dis­ad­vant­age with an edged weapon or tool. On a failed check, the trap trig­gers.

When the trap is triggered, the net is re­leased, cov­er­ing a 10-foot square area. Those in the area are trapped un­der the net and Re­strained, and those that fail a DC 14 Strength sav­ing throw are also knocked Prone. A creature can use its ac­tion to make a DC 14 Strength check, free­ing it­self or an­other creature within its reach on a suc­cess. The net has AC 10 and 20 Hit Points. Deal­ing 5 slash­ing dam­age to the net des­troys a 5-foot-square sec­tion of it, free­ing any creature in that sec­tion.

If here with Briglin, she will en­cour­age the char­ac­ters in­side the cave while she waits out­side. If they be­come trapped, she will use this op­por­tun­ity to at­tack them. If they’re not here with Briglin, she will ar­rive a minute after the trap is set off.

In­side the tun­nel:

The en­trance of the cave is a 15ft tun­nel, lead­ing into a wider room. It is dark apart from a flick­er­ing shin­ing light at the end of the tun­nel. Wa­ter drips down the walls. You hear a mu­sical cry­ing in the dis­tance.

At the end of the tun­nel:

The tun­nel opens out into a darker room, 15ft square. In the centre of the room is a small pile of treas­ure, on the top of which is a lan­tern. The lan­tern is roughly made of a dark metal dec­or­ated with evil de­monic faces faces on each of the top corners, each star­ing out. In­side the lan­tern is a Lan­tern Archon, faded and pale, cry­ing.

The Lan­tern Archon, Zur­iel, is trapped in this lan­tern. The lan­tern can be opened by any­body.

The char­ac­ters will find:

• 150gp
• 100sp
• 500cp
• a small golden statue of Lath­ander, worth 200gp

Skree slope 2

You reach a fork in the nar­row path you’re fol­low­ing. Straight ahead, the path has loose rock strewn around, you hear some rocks fall­ing and scrap­ing in the dis­tance. To the left, you see a path that goes up the moun­tain with more even foot­ing far in the dis­tance.

Go­ing up the moun­tain will add an­other 2 hours to the jour­ney. Go­ing along the scree, the play­ers must make a DC 12 dex­ter­ity check or take 2d6 bludgeon­ing dam­age.

De­naura

Chapter

De­naura is a pros­per­ous an­cient city which has sur­vived thou­sands of years of change.

Nobles 2

Mor­cant 2

The Princes of De­nau

Tel­netar 2

The fam­ily of Tel­netar were some of the earlier sup­port­ers of the Mor­cant’s and have main­tained a very close re­la­tion­ship with the crown. They were a rich mer­chant fam­ily, fo­cus­sing on rich foods and drinks.

The leader of the Tel­netar, Men­eri Tel­netar is cur­rently con­trolled by Qa’­lir.

Farnit 2

The fam­ily of Farnit own mul­tiple mines, ran­ging from eco­nomic metals to pre­cious metals and stones.

Per­tana 2

The fam­ily of Per­thana own a large amount of the land.

Ap­proach­ing De­naura 2

You’re fol­low­ing the road south to­wards the city, through the forest in the foot­hills of the moun­tain. The ground is icy and a thin layer of snow cov­ers the road. Most of the trees are bare.

The forest clears after a few miles, show­ing the bare foot­hills sur­round­ing the City of De­naura which is a few miles away. Though most of the city is hid­den from you by the sur­round­ing val­ley, you can see the fa­mil­iar sight of the scarred city walls and a few of the taller build­ings that are in the lower parts of the city. The city gate is open but only a few people are passing in and out of it. Smoke rises from some of the chim­neys of the homesteads but their farms are quiet. A few look to be en­tirely aban­doned.

Nestled in a steep val­ley is a small city: the val­ley’s im­pass­able nat­ural walls over­shad­ow­ing the stone-craf­ted ones. There’s a castle bur­rowed into the top reaches where the sur­round­ing moun­tains draw closest. A single gate­house guards the walls that span the bot­tom of the steep val­ley.

City gates 2

As you ap­proach the city, you can see that the walls scarred and worn, some newer stone­work re­places sec­tions.

A steady flow of people are passing in and out of the gates. A couple of bored look­ing guards stand­ing on either side, al­most ig­nor­ing the small rabble.

Any­one who wants to know the his­tory of the city and makes a suc­cess­ful DC 15 In­tel­li­gence (His­tory) check knows that it’s an

The guards give the char­ac­ters no trouble en­ter­ing the city.

En­ter­ing the gates 2

You’ve passed through the city gates. A busy main street climbs up. Be­hind the stone houses that are set against the moun­tain­side, you can see the tops of the castle’s towers.

The street, lead­ing to the city’s square, is lined with an as­sort­ment of busy mar­ket stalls. Farm­ers and mer­chants are bar­ter­ing. A pro­ces­sion of robed fig­ures part the crowd, walk­ing away from you to­wards the centre of the city. Guards wander, chat­ting with mer­chants, watch­ing the stalls.

Here the char­ac­ters have a whole range of op­tions for find­ing out where the tomb is:

• mer­chants will point the char­ac­ters to­wards March, the bar–keep at The Dragon’s Claw which is ‘just up the road — the bar–keep there talks about mad things like this’, if they’re con­vinced by the char­ac­ters
• guards will point the char­ac­ters to­wards the scholar, Ret, who works in the castle lib­rary, if they’re con­vinced by the char­ac­ters
• priests will wel­come the char­ac­ters to join their pro­ces­sion to the Temple of Il­ma­ter where the schol­arly aco­lytes might know of such a place
• gen­eral popu­lace will be re­l­at­ively help­ful, point­ing the char­ac­ters straight to March The Dragon’s Claw

Temple of Il­ma­ter 2

In the centre of the city’s square, there’s a large round build­ing. Out­side, there’s a statue of a bound man on his knees weep­ing. The fig­ure is scarred and his limbs are at un­set­tling angles. On it, in com­mon, is in­scribed:

We wel­come all to the house of Il­ma­ter.

At the temple, the char­ac­ters will be en­cour­aged by a greeter, who will in­tro­duce them­selves as Wurcon, to pray.

The temple has a scholar that knows of the local tombs. Wurcon will take the char­ac­ters to the her in the “re­cords” room fur­ther in the temple.

Wurcon pushes a small door open that takes you into a small room small room, only a few feet wide, lit by candles. The room has a few book­cases in it, with scrolls and tomes on their shelves.

Des­pite you en­ter­ing the room rather loudly, a young wo­man who is hunched at the desk, has not looked up from the scroll she was read­ing. Next to her is a dis­carded plate of bread and cheese.

“Glanna. Glanna? Glanna! Hey! We have some trav­el­lers look­ing for some in­form­a­tion about a nearby Tomb and I was hop­ing you could help them.”

It seems to take her a little to re­turn to the world from the text, and she still glances back to it.

The scholar will help the char­ac­ters but won’t do it gladly. She will be sharp with them and not really go­ing too much out of her way to give them in­form­a­tion.

The scholar, sigh­ing, will find a map and will point the char­ac­ters to the cor­rect place on a map. She knows a little of the his­tory of the tombs.

This is to the Tomb of the Last Re­hani where the old Kings are bur­ied — this is from be­fore our cur­rent rulers, the Mor­cant fam­ily came here. Un­for­tu­nately — we those who wor­ship Il­ma­ter (the God of En­dur­ance) — we’re not that good at keep­ing de­tailed re­cords of his­tory.

From my study of our small col­lec­tion of his­tor­ies, I can tell you that their rule was tu­mul­tu­ous. There were dif­fer­ent powers at play within the city lead­ers. I think that lead to their de­clin­ing power and, ul­ti­mately, to the mar­riage of their daugh­ter with the Mor­cant fam­ily.

I’m sorry I can’t be any more help­ful with the de­tails here.

You’re wel­come to read through the books on his­tory that we have here but I don’t think you’ll find much more than I’ve given you. If you do choose to do so, I’d prefer for you to go else­where so as not to cause any more dis­trac­tion to me.

The Dragon’s Claw 2

Fight­ing away the cold, a roar­ing fire crackles. The funk of pipe weed smoke and stale beer linger. There are a few people sit­ting around the inn: a small group of younger men are play­ing dice, a hooded fig­ure watch­ing the door from an al­cove, a wo­man hunched at the bar.

Be­hind the bar a bald­ing man with sil­ver hair is clean­ing tank­ards.

At the inn, the bar–keep, March, will very gladly wel­come the char­ac­ters to sit at the al­most–empty bar and to have a drink. He will gladly tell mildly ac­cur­ate stor­ies about a nearby tomb.

I don’t know of the Tomb of the Last Re­hani but there is an old tomb out­side the city. The old Lords of this city are bur­ied there.

Ooooo­hhh, there’s lots of ru­mours about this place. Some people say it’s haunted by a ghost sworn to pro­tect it. Oth­ers say that the dead them­selves walk the halls. I know that a scholar from the castle lib­rary went there re­cently never to re­turn.

I doubt it’s the dead that got her, though. Much more likely that it’s the gob­lins that use the place as a hide–out. I know that’s not a ru­mour! They don’t really cause a prob­lem to the people in the city so the Lord here has­n’t done any­thing about them.

He con­tin­ues to ramble about the troubles that the gob­lins cause to the farm­ers.

Up­per city 2

As your tir­ing jour­ney takes you higher up the city, closer to the castle, the build­ings be­come closer to­gether, mak­ing the city nar­rower. Closest to the castle, the path fol­lows the side of one of the val­ley walls with large man­sions on the other side.

The Castle 2

Castle wall 2

The castle’s wall is guarded by eight guards.

Even­tu­ally, you pass the last build­ing and ahead of you are the walls to the castle. These walls stretch across the val­ley from one side to an­other, though that space is now only 50 ft.

Be­hind the walls you can see a stone castle with two towers at the front. Lay­ers con­tinue be­hind it, each one build­ing on the moun­tain’s in­cline.

The path takes you to the centre of this wall to a gate­house. There are 4 guards stand­ing at this en­trance, bar­ring your way. More stand on the wall.

The guards will only al­low the play­ers to pass un­der the con­di­tion of be­ing ac­com­pan­ied by a guard if:

• The char­ac­ters can show a right of pas­sage doc­u­ment signed by a Lord or Lady.
• The guards are bribed for 8gp per char­ac­ter.
• The char­ac­ters suc­ceed at a DC 20 Cha­risma check.

Castle court­yard 2

Through the gate is a court­yard and gar­dens, the castle about 60ft away from you. In the centre is a foun­tain, al­though there’s no wa­ter flow­ing.

Here, you can only see the front of the castle, a round tower built up against the walls of the moun­tain. Large carved wooden doors are closed at the front, a guard stand­ing on either side.

There’s al­most a dir­ect path along the middle to­wards the wooden doors. A path runs to the right, fol­low­ing the val­ley’s wall, to a smal­ler side en­trance with little or­na­ment­a­tion.

Ser­vants’ cor­ridor 2

The stone cor­ridor is nar­row. Plain doors

Path to the secret en­trance 2

This cave en­trance can be seen with a tele­scope or sim­ilar ob­ject from dis­tance.

The char­ac­ters will have to find a way to get up to the cave en­trance which is 150ft up the cliff or 50ft across the cliff.

If they have the ap­pro­pri­ate gear, they will be able to do it without any checks.

Cave en­trance 2

The cave is damp and slip­pery. It looks like it’s been hewn from the rock. There is no light and the you can’t see the end.

At the end of the pas­sage, the char­ac­ters can see it open out into the bridge across the chasm.

Bridge across the chasm 2

From earlier in the pas­sage, you could have mis­takenly think this opened into a room. It is, however, a huge chasm. On both your side and the other side there’s a bal­cony about 50 feet across, with bal­us­trades on the sides. Across the middle is a bridge that’s 10 feet across and about 40 feet long. The bridge does­n’t have any rail­ing.

To the left and right of the bridge on both bal­conies, statues look ahead with swords held out.

At the far end is a door, in front of which is a small ob­elisk.

The statues will wake (An­im­ated Ar­mour) un­less the char­ac­ters bow to them. If the char­ac­ters bow to them after they wake, they will re­turn to their guard­ing po­s­i­tions.

When the play­ers reach the ob­elisk:

The ob­elisk has a small roun­ded in­dent at the top.

The key (the small orb) must be placed on the top of the ob­elisk for the door to open. The char­ac­ters will hear a click when they put it on top of the ob­elisk.

Be­hind the door is a spiral stair­case that leads up­wards.

Up to the castle 2

A spiral stair­case takes the char­ac­ters up­wards. When the reach the top of the spiral stair­case, they will reach a wall with a lever. The wall will have small eye holes that the char­ac­ters can see through which they will see by the light com­ing out of them. They will be able to hear a man weep­ing.

The char­ac­ters will be able to see through the holes in the wall a throne room, with torches on the wall. A man is on a throne, weep­ing.

Pulling the lever will cause the wall to slide open, caus­ing a loud scrap­ing sound.

This wall will re­veal the throne room.

The throne room 2

The throne room is set up for din­ing, full of tables and chairs. There is nobody else in the room apart from the weep­ing man. At the far end of the room is a set of double doors.

The scrap­ing noise of the wall open­ing will cause the man to jump up in sur­prise. He will shout “You should­n’t be here. Leave! Run!”

The mo­ment he shouts that, you hear a loud crack and a cloaked fig­ure ap­pears, push­ing the man back into his throne. She has a chiseled face is ob­sidian with dark blue streaks and she has white hair. She has a sym­bol of a sun em­blazoned on her cloak with a dag­ger in front of it.

The fig­ure laughs and with an elvish ac­cent says, “Shut up old man.”

"Now, now, this is a sur­prise. I heard you were in the city, El­mon, Mer­i­ele, and Aseir. Ru­mours of your de­struc­tion in the city over the last few days have reached my ears. I was­n’t ex­pect­ing to find you right in here, though!

“Let me in­tro­duce my­self, I am Qa’­lir Olin­arEly­dir.” She bows. "I am glad to be fi­nally meet­ing you. You see, I am in great debt to you, it’s through your ac­tions that I can be here today.

“Please! Sit! I’ll call the ser­vants in and they can bring us some food.”

If the char­ac­ters don’t sit, she will start walk­ing to­wards them the torches in the room will flicker, she will raise her hand to­wards them and shout “I will en­joy des­troy­ing you. Hahahahahaha!”

If the char­ac­ters do sit:

She claps and two wights come in through the doors at the end of the throne room.

“It’s my hon­our to rep­res­ent Ely­dir in this city. She sent me here to take the city. The de­struc­tion that I’ve been able to cause.”

She smirks and laughs.

"With you here now, I would like to make you an of­fer. I’ve seen what havoc you can wreak.

“Join me, swear al­le­gi­ance to Ely­dir. We can cause so much dev­ast­a­tion.”

If the play­ers re­fuse to join her, she will cast cloudkill on where the play­ers are and misty step away.

The Castle Lib­rary 2

The large room is filled with books and scrolls. Every ac­cess­ible inch of the room is taken up by shelves with the nar­row­est of spaces between them.

A man dressed in robes is mov­ing books to what some­body might call a desk, al­though it could just be more stor­age.

He hap­pily gasps as you walk in, smil­ing.

Info about Ely­dir’s his­tory and nearby elven vil­lage, Ay­meluma, from the sym­bol that they show the. The sym­bol that he knows of does­n’t in­clude the chain.

Things that the castle lib­rar­ian knows:

• Ay­meluma is lead by the Glyn­lamin fam­ily.
• The loc­a­tion of the vil­lage, on the other side of the moun­tains. The op­tions to get there: the moun­tain pass that gets there, which should take less than a day; or the roads around the moun­tains that would take a week in­stead.
• There’s an an­cient con­nec­tion between the city and the elven vil­lage. The eld­est son of King Re­hani was meant to marry an elf from there but that was be­fore the Mor­cant fam­ily took over rule from the Re­hani.

He will ex­plain to the play­ers about the tomb’s loc­a­tion and how to get there, al­though that they don’t know much about it now — the mad King Bleiduid Mor­cant a few gen­er­a­tions ago de­man­ded the burn­ing of any­thing about the Re­hanis. He will ex­plain that one of his ap­pren­tices went there a few weeks ago but never re­turned, which he sounds very sad about. He will ask them to see if they can find this ap­pren­tice.

Iron­wood Street hideout 2

Iron­wood Street is a small back-ally of a much lar­ger road in the city.

A sym­bol shown to the play­ers by Xolbi can be found here, and it marks the loc­a­tion of the hideout. This can be found us­ing a DC 16 per­cep­tion check, or by us­ing thieves cant.

The en­trance to the hideout is a small door which is locked that re­quires a DC 18 check to un­lock it, or a DC 15 Strength check.

This opens out into a small, 15ft by 20ft room. The room has a table, and a chair and the floor is covered in straw. At the other end of the room is a stair­case that leads down, torches on the walls.

A cloaked man stands in the room with a knife out, li­quid glistens on the blade.

This man is an as­sas­sin who will de­fend the stair­well.

This door leads into a brightly lit room. The room is rect­an­gu­lar and is 20 ft on the side you just entered on, and 30ft long. Along the walls are sconces filled with flame.

There are two po­di­ums in the room, one 5ft away from you, the other 5ft away from the other wall. The closest po­dium has a glass orb on it.

At the other end of the room, there is a stone door­way but no handle or key­hole.

There’s a door at the other end of the room which will be opened if the orb is moved from one po­dium to the other.

When the orb is re­moved, the char­ac­ters must suc­ceed on a DC 22 Dex­ter­ity sav­ing throw or else be thrown to a ran­dom place in the room. The per­son hold­ing the orb must suc­ceed on a DC 12 Dex­ter­ity sav­ing throw or else drop and smash the orb.

In the room be­hind the door, there’s 200gp, an an­tique carved wood plate, in­laid with bone (40gp), a sturdy ala­baster fig­ur­ine of a tower, set with a chalcedony (80gp), and a dur­able adam­antine bowl, in­laid with plat­inum (500gp). On top of the pile is a simple golden crown, which is the Re­hani crown.

City of De­naura 2

Jour­ney to De­naura 2

Ap­proach­ing the city 2

There are eight guards at gate, two on each side, four stand­ing in a line across the middle. When the char­ac­ters reach the gate, the guard closest to the middle on the right will ask the char­ac­ters to halt and as what their in­ten­tions in the city are.

If the guards think the char­ac­ters are sus­pi­cious, they will let them in the city but re­port them to Qa’­lir.

The main street 2

Where the main street was pre­vi­ously busy and full of life, only a few stalls re­main staffed. Sit­ting in the al­ley­ways and streets are beg­gars.

The beg­gar out­side the Dragon’s Claw 2

The beg­gar, as the char­ac­ters pass the Dragon’s Claw, will say “If you El­mon, a little help for an old friend.” It will re­quire a DC 18 In­tel­li­gence (In­vest­ig­a­tion) roll for him to re­cog­nise it’s the lib­rar­ian from the castle. In any case, in ex­change for food and drink, he will prom­ise the char­ac­ters some in­form­a­tion if they will speak in a private place. If the char­ac­ters ig­nore the beg­gar, he will seek them if they enter the Dragon’s Claw, claim­ing to the bar­man that he’s re­turn­ing an item to the char­ac­ters that they dropped out­side.

In the private place, he will help the will give the char­ac­ters some in­form­a­tion about the de­pos­ition of the old King Mor­cant where the Lord and his daugh­ter es­caped.

The Dragon’s Claw 2

The mood in the dragons claw is a lot less friendly than the last time.

The bar­keep will be happy to serve them. He will try very hard to sell them on ac­com­mod­a­tion for the night that would nor­mally be con­sidered com­fort­able.

The char­ac­ters may hear about a re­cent an­nounce­ment that a clerk from the Temple of Il­ma­ter is go­ing to be ex­ecuted in the morn­ing of the next day.

The Temple of Il­ma­ter 2

A few guards will be in the Temple of Il­ma­ter, ar­guing with a senior priest that the char­ac­ters will re­cog­nise as Wurcon.

“She is a mem­ber of the Il­ma­teri, you have no right to ar­rest her as no other Lord has be­fore,” shouts Wurcon.

“Do not blame us for her ar­rest old man,” one of the guards says, “the or­der came dir­ect from Lord Tel­netar and it was his own guards that cap­tured her. We are only un­der or­ders to pre­pare for her ex­e­cu­tion.”

As Wurcon steps for­ward an­grily, “You must-.” The si­lent guard pushes him to the ground and says, “Do not threaten us, there is noth­ing we can do.”

Wurcon, if helped by the char­ac­ters, will take the char­ac­ters to a side room to ex­plain the re­cent events re­gard­ing their clerk, Glanna. He will know that Glanna left, say­ing that she had some temple busi­ness at the Tel­netar man­sion, though he now thinks that she was up to something.

Farnit’s man­sion 2

If the char­ac­ters go to Farnit’s man­sion, they will be in­formed by ser­vants that their mas­ter is not around. The ser­vant will know where Farnit is but is re­luct­ant to re­veal that in­form­a­tion.

Per­tana’s man­sion 2

If the char­ac­ters go to Per­tana’s man­sion, they will find both Farnit and Per­tana “dis­cuss­ing busi­ness” in the study. The ser­vants will be re­luct­ant to let them see the nobles.

The rooms in the man­sion are well dec­or­ated and it’s clear that Per­tana is rich.

Farnit and Per­tana will be shocked to be in­ter­rup­ted, will try to hide all of the doc­u­ments that they have out, draw weapons and will be­rate their ser­vants for in­ter­rupt­ing them. They won’t at­tack straight away but Per­tana will be­grudgingly ask the play­ers, “What busi­ness is so im­port­ant that you must in­ter­rupt our private meet­ing?”

The study is large with books and parch­ment on large book cases on the wall. Wood pan­el­ling sur­rounds the room and it is or­nately dec­or­ated. A fire crackles in the large fire­place.

A portly middle-aged gen­tle­man is look­ing over parch­ment and books at the desk. An wo­man is seated, read­ing out a pas­sage from a book in­tently, “… and the Van­quisher, Faurin, took his own life…”

Hear­ing you enter the wo­man throws the book to the ground and quickly draws a short sword. The man throws his cloak over the con­tents of the table. The wo­man shouts, “What is the mean­ing of this in­ter­rup­tion! Ser­vants! You were ordered to pre­vent any­body from en­ter­ing my study.”

If Farnit and Per­tana think that the play­ers might be use­ful or friendly, given their no­tori­ety, Per­tana will give them the fol­low­ing in­form­a­tion:

"I only im­part this know­ledge be­cause we, the Watch­ers, are des­per­ate. We are not gen­er­als or war­ri­ors, just traders and schol­ars from a pros­per­ous city. We have not fought in hun­dreds of years and we would­n’t even know where to start. Many are call­ing Farnit and I apathetic to­wards the cir­cum­stances we face.

"We are not, however, apathetic. We are fight­ing in our own way. Mostly we gather in­form­a­tion hop­ing to find some way of end­ing the tyranny of Tel­netar. While we have not found any­thing that Farnit and I can do, I now think there is something the three of you can do.

"The day after Tel­netar at­tacked the castle, a guarded car­riage went from the castle to his man­sion in the dead of night. The guards went into his man­sion and fight­ing could be heard there. We saw the guards drag­ging some people out, into the car­riages. The car­riage did­n’t go back to the castle but in­stead to one of Tel­net­ar’s ware­houses.

"The day be­fore last, Glanna (who I think you have met be­fore) in­sisted that the best thing to do was to find out what happened in the man­sion, as clearly something not­able happened that night. However, she’s not re­turned and we have heard news that she will be ex­ecuted.

"I fear that we, Farnit and I, have been re­vealed and that we will soon be.

“I im­plore you to help us find out what happened here. I think it might be key to sav­ing this city. Do whatever you think is best here, whether that is in­vest­ig­at­ing the man­sion, sav­ing Glanna, or in­vest­ing the ware­house.”

Ro­le­play­ing Per­tana 2

Tel­net­ar’s man­sion 2

There’s a small guard pres­ence out­side the front gates of the man­sion, pre­vent­ing easy ac­cess, these guards are un­der or­der from the new Lord to pre­vent ci­vil­ians from en­ter­ing the Lord’s man­sion, though they don’t know what’s in­side. The guards will re­act to loud noises in­side the manor, wor­ry­ing that they’ve failed at their job.

Iron fences, 10ft high, with hedges be­hind them sur­round the Lord Tel­net­ar’s man­sion grounds. The fences are in good con­di­tion but the hedges are.

A few ser­vants lucky to sur­vive have bar­ri­caded them­selves in the noble’s cham­bers. This cham­ber con­tains the key re­quired to open the secret en­trance to the castle.

The grand en­trance hall 2

What was once clearly a great en­trance hall is ruined. Dust, debris and dried blood cover most of the sur­faces.

A grand stair­case is straight ahead, though the top half of it has col­lapsed en­tirely, re­veal­ing a stony dark cor­ridor be­hind a dis­in­teg­rat­ing wall. Large chunks of the marble ban­is­ter have fallen into the stair­case. A large arch­way opens from the top of the stairs to the fist floor but the floor has col­lapsed where the stair­case would have ended. Through an arch at the end of the stairs al­lows you to see into a large light room.

A mangled, rot­ting body is slumped against the far left wall, a sword aban­doned in its chest. Its stench filling the room.

To both the left and the right of the main door are or­nate arches. Through the left you can see shattered lounge fur­niture and through the right a gal­lery, though the art­work lies scattered and torn on the floor.

On either side of these arches are col­lapsed suits of ar­mour, apart from to the left off the left door.

From the dark cor­ridor you hear the echo­ing a wo­man cry out in pain and a deep raspy laugh.

If the char­ac­ters ap­proach either of the doors, the ar­mour guard­ing that door will be­come an­im­ated. These are An­im­ated Ar­mour (see page 19 of the Mon­ster Manual).

If the char­ac­ters ap­proach the rot­ting body, the sword in the body will be­come an­im­ated. This is a Fly­ing Sword (see page 20 of the Mon­ster Manual).

If the char­ac­ters at­tempt to climb over the rubble, they will need to make a DC 13 Dex­ter­ity check or oth­er­wise fall down the rubble and down the stairs.

The draw­ing room 2

The draw­ing room has shattered fur­niture all around. Signs of fight­ing are here as well. The door to the din­ing room is ajar and the char­ac­ters can smell rot­ting food from there.

There is a secret door, lead­ing to the ser­vants’ pas­sage, dis­guised as a wall on the right wall of the room.

The din­ing room 2

The stench of rot­ting food fills this room, the long din­ing table is on its side, food all over the floor.

There are two secret doors, both lead­ing to the ser­vants’ pas­sage, dis­guised as the wall, one on the right side of the room, one on the far side of the room. The secret door at the far side of the room is ajar.

The gal­lery 2

The paint­ings are torn, frames shattered; the statues broken. At the end of the room, there’s a barred door which has a couple of broken statues bar­ring it shut. Be­hind the doors you can hear some scratch­ing and shuff­ling.

The barred doors lead to the lib­rary.

There is a secret door, lead­ing to the ser­vants’ pas­sage, dis­guised as a wall on the left side of this room.

The lib­rary 2

This room, like the oth­ers lies in ruin. It was once a lib­rary, the book cases are shattered and the books are on the floor.

There are eight zom­bies in here, they are all wear­ing ser­vant’s cloth­ing.

There are two secret doors, both lead­ing the ser­vants’ pas­sage, dis­guised as the wall, one on the left side of the room, one on the far side of the room.

The ser­vants’ pas­sage 2

A nar­row stone pas­sage.

Where the col­lapsed wall and stairs are from the man­sion’s en­trance hall, there are stairs lead­ing down­wards; however, the top step is if you come at the stairs from the other dir­ec­tion.

The pas­sage at the end has a spiral stair­case up and three or­din­ary doors lead­ing to the ser­vants’ quar­ters. At the top of the spiral stair­case, there is im­me­di­ately a wooden door. From be­hind it, shuff­ling noises can be heard.

There are plain doors that match up to the secret doors in the draw­ing room, the din­ing room, the gal­lery, and the lib­rary.

The ser­vants’ quar­ters 2

The beds in this room are scattered, all of the bed­ding has shred­ded. There’s no sign of any move­ment at all.

The kit­chen 2

The stench of rot­ting food also fills this room. The pre­par­a­tion tables are full of half-pre­pared food. A large cauldron has been knocked over at the far end of the room un­der a chim­ney. Ashes cover the floor. Pots and pans are scattered every­where.

There’s no sign of any move­ment in this room.

The stor­e­room 2

A room full of bar­rels but most of the bar­rels are empty apart from some stale bread and a few mouldy apples.

The grand cor­ridor 2

A long cor­ridor, wider and or­nately dec­or­ated. At the far end is a large win­dow. To the left are three doors, the middle and lar­ger one is closed. The oth­ers are open. To the right is a large open arch­way.

In the cor­ridor, four zom­bies wear­ing ser­vant’s cloth­ing.

From the spiral stair­case, the doors on the left hand side (closest to fur­thers) lead to the study, mas­ter’s bed­room, and dress­ing room.

The door to the mas­ter’s bed­room won’t open if the play­ers try to push it open. When the play­ers do this, a man’s voice from in­side will shout “Wake up! They’re try­ing to get in again!”

The door will take a DC 14 Strength check to open it.

The ball­room 2

A large ball­room with a large wooden ceil­ing. On each of the walls are two large win­dows. The broken stair­case is at the other end of the room.

In the room are an­other ten zom­bies wear­ing ser­vant’s cloth­ing.

The study 2

The study is an­other room full of de­struc­tion. The desk is smashed and there is pa­per every­where.

The dress­ing room 2

The dress­ing room is an­other room full of de­struc­tion. There is rich clothes of both lords and ladies scattered around the floor.

The mas­ter bed­room 2

This room, slightly lar­ger than the rooms down­stairs, also has ruined fur­niture. A broken four poster bed and chest of draw­ers are piled dir­ectly in front of you, moved out of the way to let you through the door.

A pile of food is against the left wall, in far left corner is a pile of bed­ding.

To the right of the room there’s a large closed chest.

There are four ser­vants and a boy look­ing tired and be­draggled, their cloth­ing torn and soiled: two of the ser­vants are closer to you, hav­ing moved the fur­niture; one is sit­ting on the bed­ding with the boy, the other is stand­ing in guard of the chest.

The four ser­vants in here man­aged to hide dur­ing the fight and then hid in this room. They hid un­der the food in the bar­rels, one of them hid the chest with them when they saw what was hap­pen­ing.

In the chest is:

• a carved ivory statuette
• a sil­ver and gold broach
• a ce­re­mo­nial elec­trum dag­ger with a black pearl in the pomel
• a lute (Doss Lute)
• a dag­ger (a Dag­ger of Venom)
• a small carved wooden box with an in­scrip­tion on it

On the small carved wooden box, the in­scrip­tion says:

In your oath to me, you have bent your knee. Re­mem­ber this oath, when us­ing this key.

In­side the box is a small orb wrapped in fab­ric which has an inked map which shows the castle and its walls and marks a small pas­sage in the cliff out­side the castle walls to the south.

The cel­lar 2

The cel­lar is dim, lit only by a couple of torches.

At the end of the room are are iron barred prison door, both are open. To the left of the room is a table.

In the centre of the right of the room is a bound wo­man and gagged wo­man, she’s sob­bing. Stand­ing above her is a man ready to strike her. His skin is very pale ashy taut skin, he wears dark scaly ar­mour.

At the table are two hooded fig­ures.

The man stand­ing next to her is a wight, the two hooded fig­ures are cult fan­at­ics.

Tel­net­ar’s ware­house 2

This is where Tel­net­ar’s fam­ily is be­ing held cap­tive.

When al­ley for the en­trance of the ware­house is trapped. If the play­ers trip the wire, they will cause a loud crash­ing sound that will alert the guards in­side. The trip wire is 3 inches off the ground and stretches between the two walls. A DC to spot the wire is 10. A suc­cess­ful DC 15 Dex­ter­ity check us­ing thieves’ tools will suc­cess­fully dis­able the trap. Try­ing without thieves’ tools will re­quire a check with a dis­ad­vant­age. On a failed check the trap trig­gers.

There are no guards stand­ing out­side the ware­house.

Entry room 2

This small room has some tools for mov­ing boxes and bar­rels and a small table with a couple of chairs.

If the trap was­n’t triggered, two cult­ists will be in this room, sit­ting at a table. If the play­ers make enough noise, the ware­house de­fend­ers in the first store room will join the fight.

If the trap was triggered, there will be the two cult­ists plus the ware­house de­fend­ers in the first store room.

There’s a door on the op­pos­ite side of the room which is barred and locked (DC 17 strength to un­lock it). There’s a door to the right that is open if the char­ac­ters triggered the trap and closed oth­er­wise. If the char­ac­ters make a lot of noise dur­ing the fight and the trap has­n’t been triggered then

Store room: 1 2

This room has vari­ous lux­ury wares, it has a door that leads back to the entry room and an­other locked door to the left.

This room has two cult­ists in it and a cult­ist fan­atic. The cult­ist fan­atic has keys to the pris­on­ers’ room (the same key fits both doors).

Store room: 2 2

This store room is filled with large boxes, chests and bar­rels. There are five cult fan­at­ics wait­ing to am­bush the play­ers.

Pris­on­ers’ room 2

Most of the items have been taken out of this room. There’s a table with a couple of chairs.

In this room there’s a cult fan­atic who is guard­ing the pris­on­ers.

The pris­on­ers are a wo­man and two girls who are all sit­ting in one of the corners of the room.

The pub­lic ex­e­cu­tion of Glanna in the city square 2

This will oc­cur on the morn­ing of the second day that the char­ac­ters are in the city, if the char­ac­ters haven’t saved Glanna.

Her last words will be “From the scrip­ture of Il­ma­ter, ‘go to the Swift’s old nest to find the way to the new nest.’”

Qa’­lir’s in­ter­fer­ence 2

When Qa’­lir be­comes aware of the char­ac­ters, she will try to in­ter­fere with them.

Thugs 2

If Qa’­lir be­comes aware of the char­ac­ters in the city, she will send eight thugs to threaten them.

The thugs will threaten the char­ac­ters if they find them­selves some­where more se­cluded in the city. The thugs will at­tack the char­ac­ters if pro­voked.

We think it’s time you took your busi­ness out­side the city.

The cap­tain of the thugs will have a let­ter from the Qa’­lir with the in­struc­tions. It will only be signed with a sym­bol with wings and

As­sas­sin­a­tion 2

If the thugs fail, Qa’­lir will send an In­vis­ible Stalker as an as­sas­sin. It will be un­der in­struc­tion to kill the char­ac­ters in a private place, prob­ably their room in an inn or even a safe-house. When the char­ac­ters enter the

Guards 2

If the as­sas­sin fails, Qa’­lir will send guards to in­car­cer­ate the char­ac­ters (if their loc­a­tion is known) for treason. These guards will at­tempt to jail the char­ac­ters in the

After suc­cess 2

• Re­main­ing wights un­der Qa’­lir’s con­trol will wreak havoc. Most of them were sta­tioned with the guards and will have been taken down
• Cult­ists will flee
• Con­structs will con­tinue to fight but will fight the cult­ists
• Tel­netar will leave the castle and city
• Per­tana will rule un­til King Mor­cant re­turns

Jairnt

Chapter

Jairnt 2

Small vil­lage with a tav­ern called The Watch­ers Tav­ern, the ac­com­mod­a­tion is mod­est.

The play­ers may hear about the ru­mours.

The Watch­ers 2

Out­side the tav­ern:

The tav­ern leans against its neigh­bours, the tiled roof sag­ging. Warm light spills out of the win­dows and bois­ter­ous chat­ter em­an­ates, in­vit­ing you in from the quiet cold and dark. You can smell wood smoke and charred meat.

In­side the tav­ern:

The mo­ment you open the door, warm air floods out. The must of to­bacco smoke and spices fill the room, com­bin­ing with the smoke and charred meat. The many merry pat­rons chat­ting loudly amongst them­selves hardly look over, though one shouts, “Get in! Quickly! You’re let­ting the warmth out.” A few people keep to the corners, alone and cloaked but little at­ten­tion is paid to them.

The bar has a few people be­ing served at the bar by a young teen boy.

The bar serves cheap wine, reas­on­able ale, and cider. Some spiced meats can be served as well.

The Lonely Tower

Chapter

The tower stands tall, around 130ft, it nar­rows slightly to­wards the top. There’s no dec­or­a­tion and no win­dows. The un­weathered stone is smooth to touch.

A prison for Ely­dir, she is bound here un­til the Dawns­word Am­u­let is re­turned to her.

The door faces to­wards the en­trance of the val­ley and is easy to find.

The door 2

Al­though the rest of the tower lacks dec­or­a­tion, carved into the stone is the shape of a huge door. Above the door, you can see runes mak­ing up 5 words that you do not re­cog­nise and can­not read.

Any­body who tries to work out which lan­guage it is and makes a suc­cess­ful DC 15 In­tel­li­gence (His­tory) check dis­cov­ers that the lan­guage is Car­nian, a lost lan­guage. If the lan­guage can be un­der­stood, it reads: ‘Safe we keep her. Al­low no will.’ The ori­ginal in­tent, however, was: ‘This keeps us safe from her, do not free her.’

To enter, the char­ac­ters must speak the word un­bind or free.

En­ter­ing the tower 2

The stones mak­ing up the door­way turn to a bright light. The light fades, re­veal­ing a short pas­sage into the tower. The pas­sage leads to a brightly lit land­ing; glass half–bowls filled with flame on the walls. From here, stairs spiral up­wards, start­ing on your right. Apart from this, the land­ing is empty.

The pas­sage stays open after every­body walks in.

The stair­way fol­lows up and around, even­tu­ally reach­ing a land­ing with a door on the left — fa­cing the centre of the tower.

The lamps are made with Con­tinual Flame.

Reach­ing the study 2

After you open the door, you see a large cir­cu­lar room be­fore you. The same torches as be­fore light it. Lux­uri­ous fur­niture is sparsely spread around the room, al­though its style is un­like any­thing you’ve seen be­fore.

On the left wall, there’s a four–poster bed with a chest sit­ting at the end, and large ward­robe to the side of the bed. On the op­pos­ite side, a huge book­case is crammed with scrolls and books. In the centre of the room is a large table that’s dressed with food. Closest to you is a desk fa­cing the door. The smell of in­cense fills the room.

Sit­ting at the desk is a wo­man: her hair grey and face wrinkled, poin­ted ears poke out un­der a circlet with a ruby gem­stone set, and her robes are a deep dark red with in­tric­ate sym­bols laced in a golden thread.

No­ti­cing you ar­riv­ing, she smiles to­wards you and stands, ges­tur­ing you into the room to­wards the table.

‘Ah! I’m glad that you de­cided to join me. Please, come in.’

Here, the wo­man in­tro­duces her­self as Ely­dir. She of­fers the char­ac­ters food and drink, and if they ac­cept, food will ap­pear at the table.

She will ex­plain that her quest is to have her stolen am­u­let re­trieved. She’s chosen them be­cause it was taken from her a long time ago and it’s likely to be a per­il­ous jour­ney to re­trieve it. The am­u­let is in the Tomb of the Last Re­hani, which is close to the City of De­naura which is a 2 day jour­ney from here, across the moors. She does­n’t know where the tomb is.

She will give the ad­ven­tur­ers an very old map and some food sup­plies for 3 days travel.

The map shows the tower and the moors with the sur­round­ing area. The tower is in the west and the city in the east. The moors sur­round the tower for west half of the map. The city is against the moun­tains in the east. A road comes from the south–east to the centre of the map, fol­low­ing on east to the city. To the south of the road is a small amount of forest be­fore moun­tains, that con­tinue east of the city. To the north west of the moors and to north of the road is a forest.

Chest 2

In­side the chest:

• Sil­vanus robes and broach
• 100 gold pieces

Temple of Af­fin­ity

Chapter

This is also known as the Temple of the Cor­rupt Orb. This is where the Ith has been kept safe from the world, and the world safe from Ith. In­side the temple, the Orb can de­tect the thoughts and feel­ings of any creature. Ad­di­tion­ally, it can speak to any creature tele­path­ic­ally.

The temple is Hal­lowed cast at 8th level, ex­clud­ing Ce­les­ti­als from the stand­ard ef­fects. The spell also has the ad­di­tional ef­fect, all hu­manoids in the area can­not be frightened.

You find the hid­den pas­sage that Faurin told you about. It leads you into a deep gorge, though the stream has ran dry. The pas­sage winds back and forth un­til you reach an open­ing. The gorge widens and you see the stars above. Ahead, a temple, its stone worn, built across the gorge. Pil­lars dec­or­ate the front. The forest is creep­ing down into the gorge but it has left the temple un­touched.

Above the door, ce­les­tial script is en­graved.

The ce­les­tial script says “Speak the Pass­word to Free the Orb”.

The Temple En­trance 2

The door opens. In­side, there’s a small room, only 15ft wide and 10ft along. The walls are cracked and the floor dusty. In the quiet, the air rings a con­tinu­ous high pitched. Ahead of you are two doors, both closed.

On the wall across the room, text is en­graved on the wall. Though you don’t re­cog­nise the script but each of the play­ers hears a voice speak:

Be­ware, those who enter here, Of what you seek. We know not if it is evil, Or strong or weak. It hears your thoughts and feel­ing, As if you speak.

As the play­ers what their char­ac­ters are cur­rently feel­ing as their primary emo­tion. The Orb will in­tro­duce it­self to the play­ers at this point, speak­ing to the play­ers dir­ectly by the emo­tions that they’re feel­ing. It will apo­lo­gise for in­trud­ing on their thoughts. It will warn them that their friend­ship will be tested if they con­tinue with three chal­lenges ahead.

Chal­lenge 1 2

After a chance to speak. Ith will give the char­ac­ters a choice.

Either dex­ter or sin­is­ter, a fight you will meet. The sin­is­ter, ar­du­ous but re­war­ded. The dex­ter, easy and un­tir­ing.

When you’re ready, each of you think your choice don’t say it, and I will open the door that you choose, though, it does­n’t have to be un­an­im­ous.

C1.1: Op­tion 1 2

In this room, there are 4 an­im­ated ar­mour and 3 fly­ing swords.

C1.2: Op­tion 2 2

In this room, there is a shield guard­ian. After the fight 3 heal­ing po­tions will ap­pear.

Chal­lenge 2 2

Ith will give the op­tion as be­low but it will do the op­pos­ite of what the char­ac­ters voted for.

To the left, there’s a fight. To the right, a puzzle with a risk but re­ward.

C2.1: Op­tion 1 (Left) 2

In this room, there’s an earth ele­mental.

C2.2: Op­tion 2 (Right) 2

A puzzle, with only one chance.

   _____________________________
  /         |         |         \
  |  .      |  x      | x       |
  |    > .  |    > x  |   > . x |
  |  .      |  .      | x       |
  \_________|_________|_________/
       |                   |
       |  x x .            |
       |         >   x . x |
       |  . x .            |
       \___________________/
      _______________________
     /                       \
     | x . . .               |
     |           >  - - - -  |
     | x . x .               |
     \_______________________/

     O           O           O
 ____|____   ____|____   ____|____
/         \ /         \ /         \
| . x . . | | . . x x | | . x x . |
\_________/ \_________/ \_________/

On a fail­ure, a shield guard­ian will ap­pear from a door on the right. On a suc­cess, 3 greater heal­ing po­tions from a door on the left.

Chal­lenge 3 2

It will of­fer the choice between the fol­low­ing but only di­vulge cer­tain in­form­a­tion and will lie to the play­ers:

• The room on the left is an harder fight.

• The room on the right has a fight.

• The room on the right has a re­ward.

He will then pick a player at ran­dom and say that to an­other that this player is ly­ing.

C3.1: Op­tion 1 (Left) 2

• 1x Helmed Hor­ror
• 2x An­im­ated Ar­mour

C3.2: Op­tion 2 (Right) 2

• 1x Helmed Hor­ror

Temple Nexus 2

The door opens into a much lar­ger room, dust cov­ers the floor. In the centre of the room, at the top of a stepped pyr­amid, a statue stands a red­dish orb at its heart.

If the play­ers have worked in unity and are in unity at this point, the orb will leave its hous­ing.

If the play­ers haven’t worked in unity or are not work­ing in unity at this point, it will fight them.

It is a Shield Guard­ian with a bo­nus of +9 to hit in­stead be­cause of its abil­ity to read thoughts. It will try to stay at the top of the pyr­amid and will push them down.

The Haunt of the Lonely Dag­ger

Chapter

The Haunt of the Lonely Dag­ger 2

This is a very large castle. Its walls guarded by gob­lins, orcs, and ogres.

The Ice Portal

Chapter

Tomb of the Last Re­hani

Chapter

Tomb of the Last Re­hani 2

Trav­el­ling to the Tomb 2

When they reach the path, read out the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tion.

The old road was not easy to find — the forest re­claim­ing it. Plants climb over crum­bling sen­tinels, guard­ing each side of the road. Plant lit­ter cov­ers the floor and bushes and trees grow from the cracks in the stone.

A suc­cess­ful DC 16 Wis­dom check will al­low a char­ac­ter to see gob­lin tracks head­ing along the path.

For about an hour, the path con­tin­ues over­grown, get­ting steeper. It ends where the moun­tain rises, a col­lapsed door in front of you.

1. En­trance to the tomb 2

At the foot of the moun­tain is the col­lapsed door.

There’s a gap large enough for small creatures at the bot­tom, or me­dium creatures with a suc­cess­ful Dex­ter­ity check of 15.

Some of the rubble can be shif­ted in­stead, with a suc­cess­ful Strength check of 15 but it will cause some of the re­main­ing rubble to col­lapse and the gob­lins to be pre­pared

The rubble can also be climbed over with a suc­cess­ful Strength check of 15.

2. Gob­lin hideout 2

As you enter the cor­ridor, the first thing that hits you is the stench of gob­lins. Frag­ments of the walls and ceil­ings lie on the floor. Fur­ther down the cor­ridor, there’s a small amount of light.

If the gob­lins know the char­ac­ters are com­ing, then the cor­ridor is si­lent; oth­er­wise, laughter and ar­guing can be heard.

You can see a cham­ber ahead. At the op­pos­ite end of the cham­ber there’s a set of double stone doors. In the room there’s crude tables and chairs. A prim­it­ive wooden bar­ri­cades is a couple of feet into the room.

If the gob­lins heard the char­ac­ters com­ing, then the tables are empty (but torches are lit), the gob­lins hid­ing be­hind the bar­ri­cade and walls; oth­er­wise, gob­lins are at the tables and chairs, play­ing cards.

After com­bat is fin­ished:

Above the door is text that the play­ers can­not un­der­stand. There are six orbs, three on each side of the door. Above the door are six lines, each with a dot at the end.

.          .
 \   -.   /    \     /   .-
                .   .

The orbs must be pressed in the right or­der. Press­ing the wrong one re­sets it but the player who presses the orb, gets thrown back from the wall by 10 feet, tak­ing 1d4 dam­age.

3. Tomb of King Lunit Re­hani 2

Com­ing through the main doors, an ex­pans­ive vaul­ted room is be­fore you. It’s about 120ft long. In the centre of the room a large sar­co­phagus is built onto a stone plat­form with steps run­ning up to it. A blue crys­tal­line stone out­crop is right above the sar­co­phagus, cast­ing weird flick­er­ing light from the torches around the room.

Between the centre and each corner are 4 pil­lars. Each of these 4 pil­lars in­ter­twine to build up to the vaul­ted ceil­ing.

There is a large en­grav­ing on the ground in front of you.

Col­lapsed at one of the pil­lars is a slashed and blood­ied body wear­ing robes. A back­pack lies on the floor be­fore the en­grav­ing, its con­tents strewn.

After two minutes in the room, the stone above the centre of the room flashes a bright blue. Noth­ing hap­pens for a couple of seconds un­til the char­ac­ters can hear the scrap­ing of stone. The sar­co­phagus lids are slid­ing open. Skel­et­ons be­gin to climb out. There are 11 skel­et­ons.

The large en­grav­ing shows a simple carved map with each of the rooms la­belled; the en­grav­ings are in Car­nian.

The back­pack (and the area around the back­pack) con­tains the fol­low­ing sup­plies:

• a ham­mer
• 10 pitons
• 10 torches
• a tinder­box
• 10 days of ra­tions
• a wa­ter­skin
• 50ft of hempen rope
• a par­tially trans­lated copy of the en­grav­ing show­ing:
  • the “Lord’s Tomb”
  • the “Lord’s guard tomb”
  • a stor­age room
  • “The Tomb of the Van­quisher” — the writ­ing seems to have been in­ter­rup­ted.

4. Grand cor­ridor 2

There’s grand cor­ridor carved out of the stone. Torches of a sim­ilar design from Ely­dir’s tower ad­orn the walls, fire flick­er­ing out of them. The cor­ridor is about 200ft long and about 10ft wide. You can see 3 cor­ridors off the left hand wall and 2 off the right hand wall — these are built at odd in­ter­vals. The space in here is al­most pristine, apart from dust. The grand doors that are at the end of the cor­ridor are open.

The smal­ler cor­ridors as the char­ac­ters go along:

1. a cor­ridor on the right, it’s about 70ft long.
2. a cor­ridor on the left, it’s about 90ft long.
3. a short cor­ridor on the right, and then a door
4. a short cor­ridor on the left, and then a door
5. a short cor­ridor on the right, and then a door

5. 4The Lord’s guard room 2

If the play­ers try to go through this room, 6 skel­et­ons will leave their sar­co­phagi to at­tack the play­ers al­most im­me­di­ately.

Gi­ant spider’s cham­ber 2

Door is stiff to open.

Room full of spider webs, some light fil­ters down from a hole in the ceil­ing, sar­co­phagi are closed.

When the play­ers enter, the skel­et­ons will try to get out of their sar­co­phagi — 3 suc­cess­fully will do so, the char­ac­ters can hear the other skel­et­ons scrap­ing to get out.

After about 18 seconds, a gi­ant spider will come to in­vest­ig­ate.

The spider and skel­et­ons may at­tack each other.

Tomb of the Van­quisher 2

Raised sar­co­phagus in the middle of the room. Arch across the middle of the room. Can see some more sar­co­phagi past the arch.

Play­ers will feel a sense of un­easy sad­ness and un­ful­fill­ment as they walk into the room. The room feels a lot colder as well.

The play­ers will re­cog­nise the text as the same that’s on the stone en­grav­ing, and now on their map:

Faurin, Van­quisher of Ely­dir

If the play­ers open the sar­co­phagus, they will find a skel­eton with an am­u­let. If they take the am­u­let, the door will slam shut. A pale white fig­ure will ap­pear between the door and the play­ers.

‘That am­u­let must stay here,’ it says sor­row­fully. ‘I can­not let you leave with it or know­ledge of it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

After say­ing that to the play­ers, it will start to move to­wards them with its sword out. If the play­ers at­tack, the skel­et­ons will join Faurin, al­though the ghost will step out of the fight at the start.

The ghost, gone mad with time, is only fo­cussed on pre­vent­ing it from ever get­ting to Ely­dir and it will be very dif­fi­cult to reason with it. If the play­ers men­tion be­ing sent or who they were sent by, the ghost will be­come vi­ol­ent and im­possible to deal with.

The ghost will not be con­vinced to let the play­ers leave with the am­u­let and it can only be taken by force.

STOR­AGE 2

Room large enough to have a short rest in. Has a chest con­tain­ing mostly rot­ted/​de­cayed be­long­ings that have turned to dust. There’s 50gp and 2 gems each worth 50gp each.

The door can be shut and barred if the play­ers wish to rest.

Locked door 2

This locked door re­quires a DC 22 Dex­ter­ity check to un­lock it.

Col­lapsed pas­sage­way 2

The cor­ridor has com­pletely col­lapsed, rubble block­ing it en­tirely.

Hid­den door­way 2

A suc­cess­ful Per­cep­tion (Wis­dom) check of 20 DC will un­cover a door.

* Ad­di­tional Tombs 2

Each con­tains 3 skel­et­ons that will at­tack the play­ers al­most im­me­di­ately. In each of the tombs, the play­ers will find 3d10 gold.

Char­ac­ters

Ap­pendix A

This in­cludes in­form­a­tion about the ma­jor char­ac­ters in this cam­paign.

Ely­dir 2

Spell list 2

• Scry­ing
• Dream
• Pro­ject Im­age

Faurin 2

Faurin was a half-elf sworn to the De­nauran Schol­ars - a school de­voted to the Re­hani. He was Ely­dir’s closest friend and lover. While he gen­er­ally sup­por­ted Ely­dir’s vis­ion of the fu­ture, he dis­agreed with the de­struc­tion she caused try­ing to achieve it. His ghost in­hab­its the Tomb of the Last Re­hani but if freed his soul will travel to Mount Ce­les­tia.

In ghostly form, his grey thin­ning hair is scrapped back off his nar­row hag­gard face. His eyes are blood­shot and tears per­man­ently wet his cheeks. He wears simple wool­len robes. He ap­pears much health­ier and a little younger if he is freed to Mount Ce­les­tia - his hair thicker and his eyes are no longer blood­shot. He is gen­er­ally mel­an­cholic but, in his rare smiles, his face softens and shines sin­cer­ity and warmth.

Faur­in’s prom­ise. Prince Bainot Re­hani, brother of the murdered King Lainot Re­hani, con­vinced Faurin to kill the Ely­dir. However, in his love of her he in­stead im­prisoned her in a power­fully war­ded tower, tak­ing her am­u­let as proof of killing her. In hope that he may even­tu­ally be able to save Ely­dir by strip­ping her of her powers, the war­ded tower would only al­low her to leave if the am­u­let was re­turned and the tower’s door­way re­opened.

Lost hope. Faurin re­turned to the prince with the am­u­let, his vic­tory cel­eb­rated. He spent the rest of his life in high re­gard with the lord. He spent much time work­ing in secret to find a way to free Ely­dir but to no avail but over time, he be­came a frus­trated and bit­ter man, killing him­self in a deep de­pres­sion. Still cel­eb­rated, he was bur­ied with the fam­ily in the Tomb of the Last Re­hani, the am­u­let bur­ied with him. Des­pite his wish to leave the world, Faur­in’s know­ledge that there is no hope of stop­ping Ely­dir if bound him to the am­u­let as a pro­tector. If freed, his soul will travel to Mount Ce­les­tia.

Faur­in’s Traits 2

Ideal: Know­ledge. Through know­ledge the world can be bettered.

Bond: No mat­ter the wrong that Ely­dir has done, I love her.

Flaw: Though I will help oth­ers fight against Ely­dir, I will not let them kill her.

Banir Any-kin (Mor­can­loth) 2

An Ar­canaloth in dis­guised as a fair elf, Banir Any-kin, us­ing the Al­ter Self spell. In his pack are dark tomes, spell scrolls, and dark ar­cane com­pon­ents.

He seeks know­ledge and be­lieves that it will lead him to power and self agency. Dur­ing his travels, he has been in search of the Lost Book of Keep­ing that con­tains his name. When he sees something that is ma­gical or full of know­ledge, he can’t think of any­thing else other than how to get it.

He has taken a long and dif­fi­cult jour­ney to Lunia to find [Ith, the Orb of Em­pathy][ith] for Ely­dir, in ex­change for ac­cess to the lib­rar­ies. He knows that Faur­in’s loc­a­tion and that he has know­ledge of where Ith is.

He wears a Ring of Mind Shield­ing.

Already ex­hausted, if the char­ac­ters speak to him, he will show a very brief flash of an­noy­ance which any char­ac­ter who makes a suc­cess­ful check against a Wis­dom (In­sight) DC 19 will see. He will then po­litely give the reason to be­ing here is to trade with people in Hearts Faith.

He has bribed the cap­tain to hide him from any patrol ships that move nearby, pay­ing him with an old copy of a com­mon novel.

If he comes to learn who the char­ac­ters are, he will try to use them and their know­ledge to reach the weapon.

Qa’­lir and Qa’­por 2

The first of the Olinar-Ely­dir, Qa’­lir, trav­elled to De­naura to over­throw King Mor­cant and place a pup­pet in his place.

Qa’­lir’s sym­bol is a rope burn­ing in the middle. The sym­bol on the shared send­ing stone with Ely­dir is shown by a rope burn­ing in the middle un­der Ely­dir’s sym­bol.

The second, Qa’­por, is trav­el­ling to bring armies of evil creatures to Ely­dir’s side. It’s un­likely that the char­ac­ters will find Qa’­por, though they will find in­form­a­tion that will help them find Qa’­por in the fu­ture.

Qa’­por’s sym­bol is a shattered chain. The sym­bol on the shared send­ing stone with Ely­dir is shown by a shattered chain un­der Ely­dir’s sym­bol.

Qa’­lir and Qa’­por share a send­ing stone, the sym­bol shows a shattered chain and a burn­ing rope in a circle, tied to­gether.

Treas­ures

Ap­pendix B

A. Dawns­word Am­u­let 2

Ely­dir’s am­u­let used to bind her to the tower. If this is re­turned to her, she will be freed from her prison.

This is pro­tec­ted by a ward that pre­vents those who in­tend to free Ely­dir from find­ing it.

This can­not be des­troyed by nat­ural means.

B. Ful­crum. The Staff of Skon­arith 2

Skon­arith was a tyr­ant who dom­in­ated the world through his ma­gic. When he was de­feated, his soul was trapped his or­na­mental staff so that his powers could be har­nessed by the usurper. When the usurper be­came pos­sessed by the staff, it was split into three parts, split­ting its abil­it­ies: Ith, the Orb of Em­pathy; Sko, the Staff of Dom­in­a­tion; and Nar, the Braces of In­de­pend­ence.

Re­com­bin­ing the Staff 2

If each of the ele­ments is will­ing (or is forced), the staff can be re­formed from its parts.

Ith, the Orb of Em­pathy 2

Won­drous Item, Rare (re­quires at­tun­e­ment by a good creature)

A dark red pear­les­cent orb, its con­tents swirl­ing, was split from the Staff of Skon­arith. It is kept safe in Lunia, Mount Ce­les­tia, out of fear it may hold the evil of Skon­arith. If un­der the right con­di­tions, this can be re­com­bined with the other parts The Staff of Skon­arith.

The orb has 3 charges. While hold­ing it, you can use an ac­tion and ex­pend 1 charge to cast the de­tect thoughts spell (save DC 15) from it. The orb re­gains 1d3 ex­pen­ded charges daily at dawn.

Sen­tience. Ith is a sen­tient neut­ral good won­drous item with an In­tel­li­gence of 12, Cha­risma of 12, and Wis­dom of 18. It can read, speak, and un­der­stand Ce­les­tial and Com­mon. It can com­mu­nic­ate tele­path­ic­ally with any creature within 60ft and with any char­ac­ter that is at­tuned to it. It has hear­ing and vis­ion out for 30ft.

Per­son­al­ity. When feel­ing a par­tic­u­larly strong emo­tion, Ith will some­times lose con­trol of it­self and tele­path­ic­ally broad­cast this to other creatures nearby.

Ith is the em­pathy of Skon­arith, what little em­pathy there there was, but in sep­ar­a­tion from the rest, it has grown in power.Ith wants to pro­tect oth­ers from harm, es­pe­cially op­pres­sion, though, it be­lieves its own powers should only be used against those who dom­in­ate.

The orb misses Nar, the Braces of In­de­pend­ence, and wishes to be re­united with the bracers.

The orb is ashamed of its weak­ness and the hurt that caused to oth­ers and that it may end up be­ing by Sko again. If it is asked to use the powers against those who do not de­serve it, a con­flict will arise between it and its wielder.

Sko, the Staff of Dom­in­a­tion 2

Won­drous Item, Le­gendary (re­quires at­tun­e­ment)

It has the power to con­trol oth­ers.

Nar, the Braces of In­de­pend­ence 2

Won­drous Item, Le­gendary (re­quires at­tun­e­ment)

It has the power to shield it­self from dom­in­a­tion.

Golden oak am­u­let 2

This am­u­let was cre­ated by Lady Glyn­lam­in’s father and kept in their after his death. It was stolen by Elder Maiele, who cursed it, and she traded it with the Sil­vatans. The Sil­vatans gave it to Briid.

The curse al­lows Ely­dir to ap­pear and speak to wearer and view the area around them.

Nixig­nis Gem 2

A thin rhom­bus shape, this gem amp­li­fies the tem­per­at­ure of any­thing it’s in con­tact with, de­fin­ing its form. Its col­our de­pends on its form.

If the gem is in con­tact with ice, it will go into cold form. In cold form, the gem glows blue. Un­less neut­ral­ised, when a char­ac­ter moves within 5 feet of it, it must make a DC 12 con­sti­tu­tion sav­ing throw or take 2d10 cold dam­age on a failed save, or half as much on a suc­cess­ful save. While in cold form, if the gem takes fire dam­age, it is neut­ral­ised for 30 seconds.

If the gem is in con­tact with a hot sur­face (too hot for hu­man touch) or fire, it will go into hot form. In hot form, the gem glows red. Un­less neut­ral­ised, when a char­ac­ter moves within 5 feet of it, it must make a DC 12 con­sti­tu­tion sav­ing throw or take 2d10 fire dam­age on a failed save, or half as much on a suc­cess­ful save. While in hot form, if the gem takes cold dam­age, it is neut­ral­ised for 30 seconds.

If the gem is­n’t in con­tact with ice or a heated ma­ter­ial, it will be in neut­ral form. In neut­ral form, it does­n’t cause any dam­age.