Children of Solgan

I've recently completed writing up this little adventure that I ran with some friends last weekend. It uses a bunch of various 4e monsters and concepts, and we all had a great time running through it!

Originally, I was reading a bunch of stuff about the Scalegloom Halls, and then I decided to make my own dungeon, which got to be a bit more complex and needed a story... So now it's some 13 pages of story!

[sblock=Click to read what happened when my group played this adventure]

We played an awesome game of D&D 4e on Sunday! We started around 1 pm, and went until after 1 am! The game was really designed for 6 characters, and since 2 of the players couldn't make it, some doubled up. Jess played Erais (the cleric) and Kathra (the fighter). Mike played Corrin (the paladin) and Tira (the warlock) - interesting combo for a player! Lisa played Riardon (the ranger), until she went to bed at 10 pm and passed her character to Jenny. Jenny played Skamos (the wizard).

In addition to the items on their character sheets, the party starts with 4 scrolls of identify and 2 items from the following list, as equipment granted to them by the kingdom:

1) +1 Vicious Longbow
2) +1 Symbol of Life
3) +1 Dwarved Plate Armor
4) +1 Cloak of Resistance
5) Belt of Vigor
6) +1 Heavy Shield of Protection

I rolled the Symbol of Life and Dwarven Plate Armor. So the Paladin and Cleric got magic items to start with - not a bad combination!

The story begins with our characters, a band of tax assessors for the Kingdom of Kincynth. They don't collect taxes, but instead travel as adventurers through the outlying colonies, to determine their population size, defensibility, and wealth. This information is used to determine garrison requirements and levy taxes. They have recently completed their survey in the town of Feldspur, near the Moonglow Mountains. The town has grown considerably since the previous assessment, and is cabable of supporting its own garrison - excellent news! The group is getting low on coin and supplies, and is returning to the capitol city. They had just passed through the Gloommist Rainforest when Riardon reported that a storm is coming up and they should seek shelter for the night. To this end, they detour to the nearby town of Solgan.

Solgan was a prosperous trading town at a crossroads leading to the colonies. In recent years, more direct roads have often left Solgan out of the loop, and the town has certainly felt the pinch. The town was large enough to have weathered the change, but it is smaller and more introverted than it was.

Town Center Map:


The residents of the town were cautious of the players in general, and the Tiefling (devil-kin, according to them) in particular. Still, they weren't openly offensive, and the characters perused the shops and bought many necessary (and some not-so-necessary) supplies.

After the shops closed, the group settled in at the Life's Reward tavern. They took a table near the door just in case a fight broke out - they were pretty concerned about the town's reaction to the Tiefling. Corrin got the tavern's proprietor to bring out a half-keg of his finest brew, and got him talking over 5 SP worth of ale. It turns out that some 5-7 years ago (he doesn't remember exactly, he was drunk at the time...) there was some problem brought on by a devil living in the Goommist. The town leaders made some sort of deal with the beast, the details of which slip his mind at the moment. Anyway, since then the town has become leery of people who travel through the Gloommist, since they are trespassing on the devil's land and they don't want to be the target of retribution. And, since this group is traveling with a devil-kin, they are even more suspect. The mayor and the town's clergy don't drink, so there's little chance for the party to talk with the mayor until tomorrow.

--GM Note--
The devil in the Gloommist is a henchman of a reclusive Elven Warlock who believes he is the guardian of the rainforest. He has poisoned the waters that supply Solgan, and part of the pact between him (through his devil proxy) and the Mayor and Clergy of slogan is that they will not drink alcohol. The Mayor and Clergy have no idea why this has been required of them, but it is because drinking alcohol would counteract the effects of the poison. The poison is slowly driving them insane, and since they control the city, their insane ideas can cause all kinds of havoc. This story helps with the plot of this game, but it is not the plot of this game.
----

The group resolves to meet with the mayor in the morning and discuss the pact he has made with the devil. If the pact requires a reoccurring payment, this will have to be dealt with since only the King is allowed to tax his towns. With this being the decided course of action, the group wanders through the rainstorm back to their room (#1 at the Last Star inn).

A couple hours go by, and everyone's asleep, except the Ranger. Something about trying to sleep inside. Or maybe the ground's just too level. Anyway, he's still awake, fighting for sleep, when he hears the sound of breaking glass outside. He goes over to the window and peers out at the warehouse across the street, certain the sound came from there, but sees nothing.

To be sure, he wakes the dwarf and has her take a look. She sees a light come on over there, and remarks that it's odd that someone would be working in the warehouse at this time of night. She then notices some lizard-like beast run down the alley between the warehouse and the Molten Thunder smithy. Pretty soon everyone's awake and taking turns looking at the warehouse. The tiefling says, 'That light's awfully bright, like it's on fire...'

The cleric decides it might be a good idea to tell someone about the fire so he jumps up and runs to get the innkeeper, while the others start a water train from the fountain to the warehouse. Originally they were going to leave via the window (and opened it), which would have given them the shortest route, but they decided that would be too suspicious if anyone saw them going out their window.

Soon the town guards are helping them pour water on the fire, and the paladin, warrior, and tiefling (with Fire Resist 5) enter the warehouse to pour water directly on the fire. The ranger and the warlock follow the tracks of the lizards to the edge of the forest. The paladin checks to see if there was a likely target for the fire - i.e. a specific item someone would want destroyed, but finds nothing.

The ranger decides that it's not a good idea to try to follow the lizards deep into the woods alone on a dark, rainy night such as this, so they start back. The ranger's been trying to figure out what kind of beasts they're dealing with, but keeps failing the nature roll. About the time that they get back to town, he realizes that they are kobold tracks.

After the fire is out, the party is discussing the fire and kobold invaders with the owners of the warehouse when a disturbing mob approaches through the market square. Many of them carry torches, some are hastily or partially dressed, and the mayor is with them. They call for the guards, who are over with the players and shop owners. The guard captain and his lieutenant go over to the mayor and have a quick, hushed conversation while cries of 'bring out the devil-kin' can be heard from the angry mob.

Of course, the party will have none of that. The halfling and dwarf climb through the window back into their room and start passing weapons and armor out the window to the party (previously, only the Ranger and Warlock, who went after the kobolds, were combat-ready). By the time the guards get done taking with the mayor, the party is fully armed and armored!

Two guards come up and say, 'Hand over the devil-kin!' The party refuses, of course, and they recognize one of the guards, Richard, as being the guard who gave them directions when they first arrived in town.

'Richard,' says the warrior, 'what's this all about?'

'Eight children have been spirited away by small devils with glowing eyes! You outsiders, going through the Gloommist with a devil-kin, are clearly the cause of this calamity! The people hope that by killing the devil-kin, the Gloommist Devil will be satisfied and return the children.'

Somehow, the party isn't convinced by Richard's logic. (Imagine...) The Ranger steps forward, and says, 'The beasts that did this are not devils, but kobolds. I have spied their tracks and can follow them to their lair. Allow us to go, and we will slaughter those vermin and bring back your children!'

It's a good speech, but the people aren't convinced that the devil-kin won't just escape. After some negotiating, it is decided that the players will leave their mounts (worth sever hundred gold in total), and that Richard will go with them.

--Another GM's Note--
This dungeon is designed for a party of 5. In fact, it's expected that a party of 5 would need to be somewhat lucky and well organized - a party of 6 is more likely to be able to complete it. A party of 4 would most likely fail, so several monsters would have to be removed or downgraded, as would several traps. This is not for the faint-hearted!
----
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[sblock=And the story continues into the dungeon]

The party follows the tracks to a small hole in an earthen mound in the forest. The hole is barely large enough for a large human to walk through, but soon opens into a larger passageway with ornate carvings on the walls, which opens into a room with a large eye emblazoned on the floor in blood and a bonfire beyond it. Three kobolds, in scale mail and wielding swords and shields stand guard.

This was a pretty easy encounter. In the first round, six kobold minions enter and surround the paladin who foolishly ran up, but many of them were killed by the wizard's area attack. After the first round only two dragonshield kobolds and two minions remained, and if the melee characters could only hit their targets there surely wouldn't have been a third round. I think this room lasted four rounds, with Richard (the NPC Guard), the Ranger, and the Wizard doing all the dirty work. The others just stood around taking damage as necessary.

The party gathered up the kobold's spears, because it's always good to have a few extra thrown weapons. The rusty shortswords and tiny shields of the dragonshield warriors were left behind. There are two exits from this room (not counting the entrance): a narrow corridor to the north with an erie green light coming from it, and a large dark corridor going east. Since the kobold minions came from the north, the party goes that way.

The narrow corridor goes to a room with two coffins flanking a pool of glowing green ooze. A raised wooden deck along the far wall goes over the pool of ooze and leads to a door to the north. Two short stairways lead up to the deck on either side. A large hole makes it impossible to get to the nearest stairway unless they are willing to walk over the top of the nearest coffin. (As Skamos put it, 'Don't mind me, I'm just uneasy about standing on a coffin between a pit and the deep green sea.') Two kobold archers are on the platform, one in the middle of it and one on a ledge on the far side. A kobold skirmisher stands near the far coffin.

Unfortunately, this was an encounter where initiative was really important, and the party rolled poorly. No sooner had the warrior stepped into the room than he was surrounded by several kobold minions who swarmed up from the pit, as well as the skirmisher who had charged him. This made it extraordinarily difficult for the rest of the party to even enter the room - they essentially had to kill kobolds just to make room to stand. Eventually they had cleared out the minions, and only the archers and the skirmisher remained. For some reason, no one could hit the skirmisher - and it really didn't have that high an AC! Riardon shot one of the archers, which made both the archers start shooting him. Since everyone else was concentrating on the invincible skirmisher, this really put the hurt on the Riardon. Eventually the skirmisher went down, and everyone made it around to the archers.

At the end of the battle, Riardon had used all but one healing surge, but the paladin still had his full suite of lay on hands, so the party decided to push on. Before moving on, they collected all the remaining spears and arrows from the kobolds, and searched the coffins, finding a black silk robe. The wizard quickly discovered that it was magical and used a scroll of identify. It was the Cloak of Resistance, which was given to Riardon since he seemed to be the most vulnerable.

They went through the north door, into a square arena with a large pile of bones in the middle. At the north end of the room a stairway lead to a crenelated balcony which ran along the north and east edges of the arena. Several kobolds could be seen poking thier noses out from behind the crenelations. (At this point things could have been somewhat worse since I forgot to tell the players that there wasn't much light in here - the human and halfling would have needed a better light source.)

Several things made this an interesting fight. Since the kobolds had effectively full cover, the casters were having to guess where their targets were and fire blind. Nonetheless, they did an extremely effective job with several lucky rolls in a row! The kobolds were flinging pots of glue onto the characters, to root them in place. At the end of the first round, a large boulder fell from a hole in the west wall, narrowly missing the warlock as it rolled towards the center of the room. When it hit the bone pile, it was redirected randomly and rolled right towards the halfling, who managed to dodge out of the way! The warrior, paladin, cleric, and guard charged up the stairs and made short work of the minions at the top. For some unfathomable reason Riardon thought it would be a good idea to stand on top of the bone pile. This turned tragic when the boulder, slowed only slightly by its impact with the wall, returned to the bone pile and rolled right over Riardon, knocking him down. Also, being prominently displayed in the center of the arena atop a pile of bones made him a prime target for the kobolds. In response, the Paladin made a swift retreat from atop the battlements to heal Riardon, as the other fighters finished off the remaining kobolds. (The paladin had to heal him because he was down to one remaining heaing surge, which he would need for his second breath. The clerics healing prayer, while ranged, uses the healing surges of the target. The paladin's Lay on Hands uses the paladin's healing surges to heal the target.) Everyone got out of the way of the boulder, which eventually came to a stop near the door they came in. A short, ornate passageway from behind the balcony lead toward tall, ornately carved wooden doors.

The players decided to rest here before discovering what lay beyond these great doors. They searched the bone pile, where they found and identified the Belt of Vigor.

Finally, they opened the large doors to reveal a large ornate hall. Statues of warriors flanked the entrance while a large gargoyle statue stared down from atop a stairway, with a burning brazier at its feet. The ranger and warlock decided to scout ahead, Riardon going left and Skamos going right. Each of them found a small cell with a child in it! They told the children to remain calm (Skamos, being a tiefling, had a bit more of a challenge here!) Riardon returned to the party as Skamos surveyed the situation, noting four vampires behind a set of pillars in the center of the hall, and a mage sitting at a desk next to a bookshelf at the end of the hall! Skamos uses Ghost Sound to whisper this to the party (and, somewhat humorously, the Paladin tried to whisper something back, but I had to tell him it didn't work that way). Then, ominously, the mage locked eyes with Skamos, laughed a rauckus laugh which resonated throughout the hall, and said, 'Go forth, my minions, and feed!'

Two of the vampires were immediately atop Skamos, and one hit for more than half his HP! The other missed, luckily, because it certainly would have killed Skamos immediately. The warlock cast a Ray of Frost at the vampire furthest from the group, hoping to slow it. She did better than that, though, as the vampire froze and shattered! Then the cleric used Turn Undead on the remaining three, who had clustered near Skamos. His diety was definately with him, and a burst of light turned the three vampires into small piles of ashes.

This did not please the mage, who remained in the glowing blue square around his desk and chair. The fighter had run up next to the bookcase, and the paladin was just to the left of the pillars in the middle of the room. Suddenly a huge fire erupted right where the fighter was standing, extending twenty feet from the bookcase! The paladin was similarly engulfed in the middle of a 40 foot arc of lightning! This set the fighter on fire and dazed the paladin. Then the mage cast a spell on the warlock, bringing her below half her HP! and -2 to all her defenses!

The cleric spent the next couple rounds healing the warlock and the wizard, who were both nearly unconsious at this point. The warlock used her daily power, Acid Arrow, but it went right through the mage, exploding against the far wall! The fighter, still on fire, ran up and swung at the mage, but missed. The paladin ran up to just outside the mage's glowing blue square, falls to his knees and recites a prayer (On Pain of Death). That's his daily power, and he also misses, but it does half damage.

Richard, the town guard, stays back and tries to free the children from their prisons.

When the turn comes back around for the mage, he sets off another trap; a cloud of poisonous gas engulfs the paladin, blinding and confusing him. The paladin's player remarks that if this were an ongoing campaign, the paladin would have some serious issues to deal with: He falls to his knees in prayer, and then he's blinded and confused! The mage then cast his ranged attack against the ranger, but missed.

The next round the Warlock tries to hit the mage with a Force Orb, and again it goes through him! When it gets around to the paladin's turn, he retains control, but is still blind, confused, and dazed. As a result he runs forward, blindly slashing with his sword until he runs into the mage's desk. He makes his save against the dazed effect from the lightning, but he's still blind and confused. The fighter runs over to the mage and attempts his daily power, Brute Strike, and misses! Unlike the other's, the fighter's daily power is not expended on a miss. The fighter fails to put out her fire.

During all of this the ranger is making careful strikes, as his daily power, Split the Arrow, is useless against a single foe. I know the arrows hit once, and went through the mage once, but I'm not sure when. Also, at this point the group was convinced that the mage was, in fact, invisible, and that the image of the mage was merely an illusion to throw them off. As a result, the warlock, archer, and cleric tried to go around the cloud of gas to get at the large section of runes near the mage, where they supposed the actual mage was hiding. In actuality, the mage was where they saw him, but had a power that, once per round as a reaction, he would phase out, causing a ranged or area attack that hit to do no damage.

The mage touched the fighter, severly wounding her. The attack did a great deal of necrotic damage, as well as dazing her. The mage then shifted away from the fighter.

Having decided that her abilities were worthless, the Wizard decided to run through the fire by the bookcase (since Tieflings have Fire Resist 5) to get around to the runed area. The wizard had to spend his standard action to move in order to get so far, and therefore did not get an attack. He begins to study the runes. The ranger, warlock, and cleric ran around the other way, but did not make it to the runes. Similarly to the previous round, the paladin managed to keep control of himself, but being blind there was little he could do. He managed to save against blindness, but was still confused. The fighter used her second wind; a minor action for a dwarf, and attacked the mage with Brute Strike again, hitting and bloodying the mage. The fighter finally succeeds in putting out her fire.

The mage activates the last trap, a huge whirling inferno, under the wizard. Even though the teifling resists fire damage, the sheer amount of fire is enough to damage him, and set him on fire until he saves. The mage then touched the fighter again, knocking her unconscious.

The warlock and ranger continued to use ranged attacks against the mage, which generally missed. The cleric had already used all his healing abilities, so tried to use his Lance of Faith against the mage, but missed. The wizard stepped out of the fire and tried to run around the mage, hoping to get into position to bull rush him into the fire. The problem with this tactic was that the mage was two squares from the fire, and bull rush will only push the target one space. Still, the fighter can also push a target one space, so the wizard gets into position. The paladin is still confused, but no longer blinded. He sees his downed ally and uses his lay on hands to bring her back up.

The mage uses his ranged area affect attack to hit the fighter, paladin, and wizard all at once. This drops the fighter (again) and the wizard.

The warlock and ranger continue their ranged assault, scoring a little damage. The cleric begins to run around the poison fog to get to his wounded friends - even though he can't cast healing spells, he can still stabilize them and bring them back to consciousness. The paladin fails his roll to maintain his wits against the confusion, and runs into the fire!

The guard finally succeeds in freeing one of the children.

The mage turns off the fire at the bookshelf, and flies past the fog to the center of the room. Everyone is surprised that he is suddenly fleeing! Then they worry that perhaps he is chasing after the guard, who is attempting to free the second child.

The warlock starts running around the fog to chase down the mage. The ranger teleports across the inferno to get a line of sight to the mage, but misses. The paladin gets control of himself, runs out of the fire and heals the wizard. He fails to save against the burning, though, and is still on fire. He does, finally, save against the confusion, and so is now in complete control of his painfully burning self.

The mage flies past the doors of the chamber, out of line of sight for any of the players. The players valiantly give chase,(through the lightning field) with the warlock getting close enough to cast Eldrict Blast against him, which unfortunately pass right through him. The paladin tells the cleric to chase down the mage, and he'll heal the fighter, which he does.

The mage's ranged area attack finally refreshes, and he uses it to little effect against the warlock and cleric. He then continues his flight to the middle of the arena. The players know this is their last chance to stop the mage before he gets away, because the players don't fly and can't afford to risk 2d6 falling damage. The players still haven't figured out why their attacks keep missing, and they're despairing their inability to vanquish this foe. What else they don't know is that the mage has 6 HP remaining, so all they need to do is hit twice (since the first one will pass through) and he'll be dead.

The warlock casts Eldrict Blast, which, expectedly, passes through the mage. The cleric casts Lance of Faith, which misses. The ranger, in reluctant desperation ('Shall I fire? It won't do any good! But I must!') makes a final Careful Attack, and hits for 13 damage, slaying the mage at last, to everyone's amazement. The players had been consoling themselves that at least they had survived to fight another day and had driven the mage from his lair - they were already anticipating an extensive search for the mage after some rest, healing and research about their foe's powers.

As it's after 1:00 am, we called the game there. There were still two rooms the players hadn't explored: one with a blazing skeleton and a boneshard skeleton in a room with four caskets and a bunch of pressure plate poison traps; and the final room with a cage and a cell, each containing one of the missing children. This room had a single skeleton warrior guarding the cells, and two cavern lurkers waiting to strangle unwary passers-by.

If you'll recall, there were 8 children captured, and only four remained in the dungeon. This raises the question, what happened to the other four? Well, speaking of raising things, there were 4 vampire minions in that last boss fight...

Yep, that's right. The mage had been studying immortality in these chambers for decades. He'd recently come across the secret of vampirism, and while it was far too crude to use on himself, he determined that an army of vampires could be a useful tool. The kobolds had dug into his lair, so he had killed their leader and subjugated the remainder as minor guards. Then he sent them to kidnap the children which he would use to create the first batch of vampires. Kobolds really can't be asked to kidnap grown adults very effectively, and the process for creating a vampire without an existing vampire on hand causes rapid aging of the subject.
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One important change I'd make is when the players are dealing with the angry mob, don't have it be a passive Diplomacy check. Have it be a skill check, difficulties 11/15/19, and let the players decide how to deal with it. Make suggestions at the bottom of a handful of skills, but if the players come up with good ideas on their own, go for it. Examples could certainly include Diplomacy, but just as easily Intimidate to mention killing a "Devil-Kin" could upset the Gloommist Devil or Nature to argue that the tracks don't belong to demons at all but natural monsters.

Sorry I can't hide this in the same way you could, I don't know the coding for this board. Also, there were a few spots where the names of things changed, particularly where you called the village "Slogan."

In addition during your Playtest report, you mention a once per round ability - that isn't quite the case. Unless you've decided to change it radically from what we've seen on the DDM card, it actually is an Encounter ability, and functions but once per fight.

Yeah, I thought about making the mob into a skill challenge. My concern is if they fail the skill challenge, then what? The mob steps up to take Skamos, and there's a nasty fight? That's not the direction that I want it to go. I haven't been able to come up with a better solution. I welcome ideas.

Thank you, I located the misspelling. I also noticed that it went from Solgan to slogan, which indicates either Word or my fingers were auto-correcting. I'm sure I've got a number of other typos, and in my writeup of the play-through I got the wizard and warlock confused from time to time.

I believe the once-per-round ability that you refer is the Sudden Phasing ability of the Spectral Magelord. The DDM card isn't terribly explicit, it says,

Sudden Phasing Reaction, when hit by or atk; no dmg.

Click to expand...

I took that to mean that as a Reaction, it could be used once per round as his immediate action, similar to how the Fighter uses his combat challenge to attack one shifting opponent per round.

Alternatively, if you were referring to his Spectral Dissipation, it recharges on a 4, which happened several times during the fight.

If you were referring to something else, let me know so I can look it up & make changes as necessary.

Also, to help with the board code, I'm new here and had to scour the boards to figure out how people were doing that. The link to vB Code at the bottom left is supposed to go to a page that describes these things, but the link is broken and this appears to be a known issue. Anyway, to make a show/hide button, use:

only replace { and } with [ and ].

Scalding said:

I believe the once-per-round ability that you refer is the Sudden Phasing ability of the Spectral Magelord. The DDM card isn't terribly explicit, it says,

I took that to mean that as a Reaction, it could be used once per round as his immediate action, similar to how the Fighter uses his combat challenge to attack one shifting opponent per round.

Click to expand...

Thank you, I had tried "Spoiler" before to blank it over, but that simply turned it blank. I was indeed referring to the Sudden Phasing ability. The reason I think it's limited to a once per encounter power is because it's listed under the Limited Powers section and doesn't include a Recharge.

Also looking at the stat block for the Spectral Magelord, I noticed it doesn't include his Insubstantial trait. Was this an intentional change to make him a more suitable challenge for 1st level PCs? As is, he'd be a solid fight for six level 1 characters on his own, let alone with the rest of the millieu in that encounter.

I don't think Monsters have per-encounter abilities.
The reason why is because they don't get more than 1 encounter.
So all abilities have recharge, except those that are round-by-round like a basic melee attack or this power in this case.
That's my limited-knowledge interpretation.

hennebeck said:

I don't think Monsters have per-encounter abilities.

Click to expand...

They do. It's a bit rare, but for example the Hobgoblin Warcaster gets Hobgoblin Resilience as an encounter power (make an immediate save when an ongoing effect hits).

And the lich template lets the lich refresh an encounter ability. Wouldn't make much sense if there were none.

I think they are listed as encounter powers when there is no recharge.

TheLordWinter said:

Also looking at the stat block for the Spectral Magelord, I noticed it doesn't include his Insubstantial trait. Was this an intentional change to make him a more suitable challenge for 1st level PCs? As is, he'd be a solid fight for six level 1 characters on his own, let alone with the rest of the millieu in that encounter

Click to expand...

No, this was simply an oversight on my part. It seems that this would greatly extend his longevity, and the first time we played the game it certainly would have resulted in a TPK. However, we just finished playing through it again (took about 8 hours) with a more experienced group, and the final battle with the Spectral Magelord was surprisingly short. Luck of the dice, but also because we've played two 4e fan adventures (Second Son and Return of the Burning Plague) already, so everyone was well aware of their abilities and strategies. If we had used his Insubstantial trait this time, the encounter would have been far more satisfying, and I'm confident that the characters would have prevailed.