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[Let's Read] Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen
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<blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 8846769" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/jwDqUi9.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p> <p style="text-align: center"><strong>Chapter 4: Shadow of War</strong></p><p></p><p>I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something off about this image. The art style is noticeably different from the rest of the book in that it has that “screenshot from a video game” vibe.</p><p></p><p>This is another 2-level chapter: the PCs reach 5th level <em>before</em> retaking Wheelwatch Outpost, and hit 6th level after they complete the Raided Catacombs at the end of the chapter.</p><p></p><p>We first open up with an overview of Kalaman, Beacon of the East. Its walls and harbor beacons still hold strong long after the Cataclysm, and the city is run by a governor and the leaders of various trade guilds who are predominantly humans and hill dwarves.</p><p></p><p>The PCs will first arrive with the refugees of Vogler, and after resolving business with Darrett’s armor and handling small conflicts between refugees the party will discover that both Lord Bakaris and his son are missing. Mayor Raven of Vogler will give the PCs the authority to approach Kalaman’s leaders to negotiate for the safety of her people. In fact, Bakaris the Younger and elder have departed from the village hours ago, and Lord Bakaris is currently addressing the city’s leaders! Both of them are selfish glory hogs, with Lord Bakaris convinced that he can attain more wealth and power by throwing Kalaman’s forces at the Red Dragon Army while he and his son sit back and claim all the credit. The PCs will need to attend the council meeting and provide their own more sensible advice and recounting of events. Marshal Vendri, the commander of Kalaman’s armed forces, will give the laydown of how various smaller villages have been attacked and razed but they couldn’t find the culprits, and Vogler is an exception in having a large number of survivors. Trusting that the PCs have proven themselves in the eyes of said survivors, they will be appointed as special operatives of the city’s military. Or as free agents under Darrett’s guidance for those independent-minded types.</p><p></p><p><img src="https://i.imgur.com/kqsthpk.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>The only major quest in the city involves PCs who are initiates of High Sorcery delivering the scroll they received to Wyhan. She is a black-robed wizard operating a local apothecary, and the scroll is enchanted to let her know the deliverer’s alignment and if they opened the scroll. From this she will make a prediction of which Order the PC(s) will join after asking them some open-ended questions on their ideologies and motivations for why they wish to study magic. Those of morally neutral alignment will be the Red Robes regardless of whether they opened the scroll, but those of Good alignment will be White Robes if they didn’t open the scroll and Red if they did. Vice versa for Evil alignment, which is Black if they opened it and Red if they didn’t.</p><p></p><p>This is a first in Dragonlance material, and more or less explicitly spells out that moral alignment isn’t set in stone for the Orders. But the PC(s) isn’t an official member yet, for they must undertake the Test of High Sorcery at the Tower of Wayreth. But Wyhan first needs to hear from the Tower’s leaders for an opportune time to travel given the current political situation.</p><p></p><p>I will spoil things ahead of time and say that at no point does a mage PC travel to Wayreth, as the Orders deem the war in eastern Solamnia too risky on account that they don’t want to be perceived as “taking sides” in the Dragon Army conflict. The PC(s) will be considered a provisional mage, and will become an official member after a test from an archmage in Chapter 6.</p><p></p><p>While this makes sense in line with the campaign to avoid needless detours and additional material that may be bypassed by many gaming groups, I do wish that the adventure was better structured. In a way that the levels a PC may gain the Robe Adept feats at (4th) to better match them making progress in the eyes of NPC wizards of the Order.</p><p></p><p>Speaking of which, there are hardly any Solamnic Knights for PCs to interact with in this adventure path either. The closest we have is Darrett, who is still a squire, and Becklin who is pretty much consigned to death or DM Fiat for the rest of the campaign.</p><p></p><p><img src="https://i.imgur.com/6B8UJJZ.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>Once the PCs finish up any errands in the city, they will be given lodgings in the castle and Darrett will meet with them to provide a series of missions in dealing with the Red Dragon Army threat. The first four are 1 plot-significant encounter and 3 smaller ones which can be summed up as random encounters in terms of length and importance and it’s up to the DM how many of those to run and in what order. At any time during these missions captured soldiers can reveal more workings about the Dragon Army such as their use of wyverns and dragonnels for flying mounts, or the capabilities of more powerful draconian types. The first mission involves leaving the city to find a gnomish artisan named Rookledust in the Vingaard Mountains; Kalaman wishes to hire her as a mechanical consultant for the boilerdrak and other possible devices the Dragon Army may employ.</p><p></p><p>Coincidentally Rookledust is the creator of the boilerdrak and sold it to the Dragon Army, but they lied to her in claiming they needed it for weed control. When the gnome caught on to their bad intentions she refused to sell anything else to them, so the Army sent a warband of goblins led by a hobgoblin to teach her a lesson. By the time the PCs arrive they will see goblins engaged in a chaotic battle with various clockwork devices, and this Battlefield Encounter doesn’t have a Fray zone but it does have a table of various gnomish inventions going haywire such as thrashing whip cords or a mechanical chicken laying explosive eggs in midair.</p><p></p><p>Rookledust is thankful to be saved and is willing to accompany the party back to Kalaman. She will also share a new device with them, the fargab, which is basically a backpack-sized walkie-talkie with a range of 18 miles.</p><p></p><p>The next missions are smaller individual encounters. The book suggests running more scenarios from Warriors of Krynn to show how Kalaman’s soldiers are faring against the Dragon Army, but these interludes provide no in-game benefits if the PCs win. The missions involve ambushing a human Dragon Army Soldier training hobgoblin recruits, locating missing scouts who have been captured by draconians, and figuring out the motives of a mysterious third party of armed soldiers…who turn out to be the survivors of the Ironclad Regiment, and Cudgel is more than happy to ally with Kalaman’s military. The PCs hit 5th level once they’ve done all of these missions.</p><p></p><p><img src="https://i.imgur.com/iLg6euX.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>The next mission for the PCs is a big one: Kalaman’s southernmost outpost has been taken over by the Red Dragon Army and the PCs have to help them retake it. They won’t be doing this alone technically, as a detachment of Kalaman’s army will lie in wait as the party weakens the outpost’s defenses and opens the gate for them to charge inside.</p><p></p><p>This mission encourages a stealthy pursuit. PCs can perform Investigation checks at a safe distance to mark sentry numbers and patrols, and the Outpost is home to 16 Dragon Army Soldiers, 1 sivak, 2 baaz, a Dragon Army Officer and a dragonnel who is the Officer’s mount. The soldiers are spread out around the Outpost, and PCs may be able to enter nonviolently if they can disguise themselves as Dragon Army soldiers. The prison holds two people: Lanal the human soldier of Kalaman and Elgo Duckditcher the kender. They are both willing to help the PCs retake the fortress, although Elgo won’t leave the cell until the PCs recover her hoopak which is found elsewhere in the Outpost. As for Lanal, he can tell them about the fortress’ layout and how to work the gate, but only if he’s separated from Elgo; he finds her annoying and she insists he is her long-lost cousin Flannel.</p><p></p><p>Let’s go over the new enemies. Dragon Army Officers are tougher versions of Dragon Army Soldiers, but they can multiattack and perform a rechargeable Assault Orders ability that lets up to 2 other creatures make a melee attack as a reaction. Sivak draconians are Large-sized monsters with a flight speed and can attack up to 3 times per round with 2 swords and a tripping tail attack. They can take the illusory form of a humanoid they killed, and their death throes cause a shrieking image of their killer to impose the Frightened condition on a failed Wisdom save. Finally the Dragonnel is a Large-sized dragon who has some keen senses (blindsight 30 feet, darkvision 120 feet) and can only perform rending melee attacks but can avoid opportunity attacks when they fly out of an enemy’s reach.</p><p></p><p>As for Lanal and Elgo their stats are nothing to write home about, save that Lanal can grant advantage to an adjacent ally’s saving throw as a reaction and Elgo is immune to the Frightened condition and her Taunt imposes disadvantage on all attack rolls of a targeted creature (not just on targets besides the kender) and can be used an infinite number of times. Hey, why do NPC kender get better abilities than PCs?!</p><p></p><p>The “win condition” for this mission doesn’t necessarily involve killing the Officer or everyone at the Outpost, although if the latter happens it may as well be a win. If the PCs can open both the north and south gates then the Kalaman military will charge in and make short work of the Dragon Army. The gate control mechanisms are locked, requiring either thieves’ tools or keys found in a footlocker or carried by the commander to open. They take one minute each to fully raise the gates, and are obvious enough to attract the attention of creatures in the courtyard and nearby guard towers and fortifications. So even if PCs are stealthy and seek a “0 kill” run of this mission, it’s kind of inevitable that combat will happen.</p><p></p><p>The Battle of Steel Springs takes place after the PCs are heading back to Kalaman, where they will learn from an aide that Lord Bakaris has taken Darrett and a group of soldiers to fight some Dragon Army troops who broke away from a larger force. Darrett cannot disobey but knows Bakaris’ poor judgment will lead them to ruin, so the aide slips the group a sealed note explaining the danger. The Battle occurs once the PCs ride out to the war zone, which is both a Warriors of Krynn interlude (winning grants the PCs advantage on their next Deception or Persuasion roll to influence a soldier of Kalaman) and a Battlefield Encounter. The PCs have to rescue six Kalaman soldiers (same stats as Lanal) from four Dragon Army Soldiers on warhorses, and the lair action table includes a Kalaman soldier collapsing from their wounds, a stray arrow AoE, the summoning of additional allied or enemy units, and a dragonnel-riding enemy soldier falling to their deaths near a PC.</p><p></p><p>Darrett quickly takes command of the surviving forces, as Lord Bakaris has become unresponsive from a thousand-yard stare. Talk about a series of disastrous events! But back at Kalaman the city has received unexpected help with the unlikely arrival of the Knights of Solamnia! Things seem to be looking up!</p><p></p><p><img src="https://i.imgur.com/gqIOXOe.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>Or are they? The knights have entered the city without a word to meet with the governor and guild leaders, and nobody has heard any new developments. In reality these knights are Lord Soth and undead wights, and they murdered Kalaman’s leadership! Caradoc, a ghostly undead who can possess the bodies of others, sits in the council chamber in the body of a possessed living Knight waiting for any nosy do-gooders (such as the PCs) to come in and find out what’s going on. PCs can quickly realize that something is wrong as the Knights are silent, and passive Perception can reveal that their armor is rusted and incredibly old.</p><p></p><p>Caradoc will mock the PCs as he fights them, and he has a rechargeable ability where he can possess others and has a bonus action where he can force a target to attack an ally within their reach on a failed Wisdom save. He can be defeated the old-fashioned way, but if he is not possessing a target at the start of his turn he will be forcefully teleported back to Dargaard Keep (Soth’s headquarters) if he fails a Charisma saving throw. The knight Caradoc is possessing will be at 0 hit points if unpossessed, but if revived can help the PCs fight the undead.</p><p></p><p>At the end of the battle the PCs will find a letter from Lord Soth proclaiming himself as ruler over the province of Knightlund (the former name of Nightlund), and one of Soth’s banshees will appear to point to a hidden door in the chamber telling them of a secret that Soth can’t be allowed to possess.</p><p></p><p>For those Dragonlance newcomers, Lord Soth is tormented by banshees who in life were the elves who claimed that his wife was unfaithful, causing him to abandon his mission of stopping the Kingpriest to instead slay his wife in anger. This banshee, Leedara, is helping the PCs because she takes pleasure in making Lord Soth’s job harder than it needs to be, but won’t say anything else to them.</p><p></p><p>The Raided Catacombs is our first real dungeon crawl in the campaign, being a 7 room haunted dungeon which served as a tomb-temple for fallen Knights before the Cataclysm. When the Cataclysm happened the cursed fires of that horrible event still remained in pockets across Ansalon, such as these very tombs. As the PCs go through the dungeon they will witness visions of phantom flames playing out scenes of Lord Soth’s old life and detailing his fall from grace.</p><p></p><p>But what is this precious secret Leedara mentioned? These catacombs are also the resting place of Zanas Sarlamir of the Order of the Crown. When the Kingpriest of Istar built a floating pleasure-city powered by the souls of dead dragons atop one of their graveyards, the metallic dragons threatened to knock it out of the sky. Sarlamir was tasked by Paladine himself to broker peace between Istar and the dragons, but fearing the worst he took along a dragonlance that was his family’s heirloom. When the Kingpriest refused to back down, Sarlamir sided with Istar and used the dragonlance to kill the leader of the gold dragons, causing this sacred weapon to rust away and the dragons to knock the flying city out of the sky. None of the humans knew of what transpired, with the story then spun of Sarlamir defending the innocent from rampaging evil dragons. So his body and what remained of the dragonlance were taken back to Kalaman to be given a burial.</p><p></p><p>As for the crashed city? Well it now lies in the wastelands of northern Solamnia, now known as the City of Lost Names and the rumored great weapon that Kansaldi Fire-Eyes and Lord Soth are trying to rediscover.</p><p></p><p>As for the dungeon itself, it is light on monsters (all of which are undead) but heavy on magical treasure, including a new magic item: a Kagonesti Forest Shroud which gives advantage on Stealth checks and once per day lets the wearer teleport up to 30 feet and gain advantage on their next attack roll after doing so. Lord Soth used a portion of the Cataclysmic flame to reanimate Sarlamir as a Skeletal Knight to serve as the “boss” of this dungeon. The Skeletal Knight is a new undead type who has an Enervating Blade which prevents a target from regaining hit points until the Knight’s next turn but otherwise can’t do much else offensively. During the fight Sarlamir will drop clues, saying that he is commanded to destroy those who oppose Lord Soth and that he has been summoned to the City of Lost Names in the Northern Waste to rejoin Soth’s side. In the event of extremely lethal PCs he can relay this information as a “final dying breath.” The PCs can find the rusted spearhead of a Dragonlance as treasure, although its magic cannot be reactivated until later in the adventure when it’s consecrated in the Temple of Paladine in the City of Lost Names.</p><p></p><p><strong>Thoughts So Far:</strong> I like this chapter more than When Home Burns for several reasons. The first is that the missions have some more variety, such as an actual dungeon crawl and retaking an Outpost that encourages stealth and reconnaissance over straightforward fighting. Caradoc serves as an interesting <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PuzzleBoss" target="_blank">puzzle boss</a> in that his special abilities can put PCs in the unenviable dilemma of having to hurt their allies, and I like how the PCs can learn more about the Dragon Army via captured intelligence.</p><p></p><p>I’m not as fond of the pre-Wheelwatch missions, in that they feel like very obvious filler content, and if done on separate days the PCs can easily overcome the enemies by making full use of spells and other per-day resources. I wish that there was more side content for PCs to do in Kalaman besides the High Sorcery sidequest, and Sarlamir’s predictable “melee fighter” tactics feel like a letdown in contrast to Caradoc’s more novel encounter.</p><p></p><p><strong>Join us next time as we embark on a hexcrawl in Chapter 5: the Northern Wastes!</strong></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Libertad, post: 8846769, member: 6750502"] [CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/jwDqUi9.jpg[/IMG] [B]Chapter 4: Shadow of War[/B][/CENTER] I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something off about this image. The art style is noticeably different from the rest of the book in that it has that “screenshot from a video game” vibe. This is another 2-level chapter: the PCs reach 5th level [I]before[/I] retaking Wheelwatch Outpost, and hit 6th level after they complete the Raided Catacombs at the end of the chapter. We first open up with an overview of Kalaman, Beacon of the East. Its walls and harbor beacons still hold strong long after the Cataclysm, and the city is run by a governor and the leaders of various trade guilds who are predominantly humans and hill dwarves. The PCs will first arrive with the refugees of Vogler, and after resolving business with Darrett’s armor and handling small conflicts between refugees the party will discover that both Lord Bakaris and his son are missing. Mayor Raven of Vogler will give the PCs the authority to approach Kalaman’s leaders to negotiate for the safety of her people. In fact, Bakaris the Younger and elder have departed from the village hours ago, and Lord Bakaris is currently addressing the city’s leaders! Both of them are selfish glory hogs, with Lord Bakaris convinced that he can attain more wealth and power by throwing Kalaman’s forces at the Red Dragon Army while he and his son sit back and claim all the credit. The PCs will need to attend the council meeting and provide their own more sensible advice and recounting of events. Marshal Vendri, the commander of Kalaman’s armed forces, will give the laydown of how various smaller villages have been attacked and razed but they couldn’t find the culprits, and Vogler is an exception in having a large number of survivors. Trusting that the PCs have proven themselves in the eyes of said survivors, they will be appointed as special operatives of the city’s military. Or as free agents under Darrett’s guidance for those independent-minded types. [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/kqsthpk.png[/IMG] The only major quest in the city involves PCs who are initiates of High Sorcery delivering the scroll they received to Wyhan. She is a black-robed wizard operating a local apothecary, and the scroll is enchanted to let her know the deliverer’s alignment and if they opened the scroll. From this she will make a prediction of which Order the PC(s) will join after asking them some open-ended questions on their ideologies and motivations for why they wish to study magic. Those of morally neutral alignment will be the Red Robes regardless of whether they opened the scroll, but those of Good alignment will be White Robes if they didn’t open the scroll and Red if they did. Vice versa for Evil alignment, which is Black if they opened it and Red if they didn’t. This is a first in Dragonlance material, and more or less explicitly spells out that moral alignment isn’t set in stone for the Orders. But the PC(s) isn’t an official member yet, for they must undertake the Test of High Sorcery at the Tower of Wayreth. But Wyhan first needs to hear from the Tower’s leaders for an opportune time to travel given the current political situation. I will spoil things ahead of time and say that at no point does a mage PC travel to Wayreth, as the Orders deem the war in eastern Solamnia too risky on account that they don’t want to be perceived as “taking sides” in the Dragon Army conflict. The PC(s) will be considered a provisional mage, and will become an official member after a test from an archmage in Chapter 6. While this makes sense in line with the campaign to avoid needless detours and additional material that may be bypassed by many gaming groups, I do wish that the adventure was better structured. In a way that the levels a PC may gain the Robe Adept feats at (4th) to better match them making progress in the eyes of NPC wizards of the Order. Speaking of which, there are hardly any Solamnic Knights for PCs to interact with in this adventure path either. The closest we have is Darrett, who is still a squire, and Becklin who is pretty much consigned to death or DM Fiat for the rest of the campaign. [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/6B8UJJZ.png[/IMG] Once the PCs finish up any errands in the city, they will be given lodgings in the castle and Darrett will meet with them to provide a series of missions in dealing with the Red Dragon Army threat. The first four are 1 plot-significant encounter and 3 smaller ones which can be summed up as random encounters in terms of length and importance and it’s up to the DM how many of those to run and in what order. At any time during these missions captured soldiers can reveal more workings about the Dragon Army such as their use of wyverns and dragonnels for flying mounts, or the capabilities of more powerful draconian types. The first mission involves leaving the city to find a gnomish artisan named Rookledust in the Vingaard Mountains; Kalaman wishes to hire her as a mechanical consultant for the boilerdrak and other possible devices the Dragon Army may employ. Coincidentally Rookledust is the creator of the boilerdrak and sold it to the Dragon Army, but they lied to her in claiming they needed it for weed control. When the gnome caught on to their bad intentions she refused to sell anything else to them, so the Army sent a warband of goblins led by a hobgoblin to teach her a lesson. By the time the PCs arrive they will see goblins engaged in a chaotic battle with various clockwork devices, and this Battlefield Encounter doesn’t have a Fray zone but it does have a table of various gnomish inventions going haywire such as thrashing whip cords or a mechanical chicken laying explosive eggs in midair. Rookledust is thankful to be saved and is willing to accompany the party back to Kalaman. She will also share a new device with them, the fargab, which is basically a backpack-sized walkie-talkie with a range of 18 miles. The next missions are smaller individual encounters. The book suggests running more scenarios from Warriors of Krynn to show how Kalaman’s soldiers are faring against the Dragon Army, but these interludes provide no in-game benefits if the PCs win. The missions involve ambushing a human Dragon Army Soldier training hobgoblin recruits, locating missing scouts who have been captured by draconians, and figuring out the motives of a mysterious third party of armed soldiers…who turn out to be the survivors of the Ironclad Regiment, and Cudgel is more than happy to ally with Kalaman’s military. The PCs hit 5th level once they’ve done all of these missions. [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/iLg6euX.png[/IMG] The next mission for the PCs is a big one: Kalaman’s southernmost outpost has been taken over by the Red Dragon Army and the PCs have to help them retake it. They won’t be doing this alone technically, as a detachment of Kalaman’s army will lie in wait as the party weakens the outpost’s defenses and opens the gate for them to charge inside. This mission encourages a stealthy pursuit. PCs can perform Investigation checks at a safe distance to mark sentry numbers and patrols, and the Outpost is home to 16 Dragon Army Soldiers, 1 sivak, 2 baaz, a Dragon Army Officer and a dragonnel who is the Officer’s mount. The soldiers are spread out around the Outpost, and PCs may be able to enter nonviolently if they can disguise themselves as Dragon Army soldiers. The prison holds two people: Lanal the human soldier of Kalaman and Elgo Duckditcher the kender. They are both willing to help the PCs retake the fortress, although Elgo won’t leave the cell until the PCs recover her hoopak which is found elsewhere in the Outpost. As for Lanal, he can tell them about the fortress’ layout and how to work the gate, but only if he’s separated from Elgo; he finds her annoying and she insists he is her long-lost cousin Flannel. Let’s go over the new enemies. Dragon Army Officers are tougher versions of Dragon Army Soldiers, but they can multiattack and perform a rechargeable Assault Orders ability that lets up to 2 other creatures make a melee attack as a reaction. Sivak draconians are Large-sized monsters with a flight speed and can attack up to 3 times per round with 2 swords and a tripping tail attack. They can take the illusory form of a humanoid they killed, and their death throes cause a shrieking image of their killer to impose the Frightened condition on a failed Wisdom save. Finally the Dragonnel is a Large-sized dragon who has some keen senses (blindsight 30 feet, darkvision 120 feet) and can only perform rending melee attacks but can avoid opportunity attacks when they fly out of an enemy’s reach. As for Lanal and Elgo their stats are nothing to write home about, save that Lanal can grant advantage to an adjacent ally’s saving throw as a reaction and Elgo is immune to the Frightened condition and her Taunt imposes disadvantage on all attack rolls of a targeted creature (not just on targets besides the kender) and can be used an infinite number of times. Hey, why do NPC kender get better abilities than PCs?! The “win condition” for this mission doesn’t necessarily involve killing the Officer or everyone at the Outpost, although if the latter happens it may as well be a win. If the PCs can open both the north and south gates then the Kalaman military will charge in and make short work of the Dragon Army. The gate control mechanisms are locked, requiring either thieves’ tools or keys found in a footlocker or carried by the commander to open. They take one minute each to fully raise the gates, and are obvious enough to attract the attention of creatures in the courtyard and nearby guard towers and fortifications. So even if PCs are stealthy and seek a “0 kill” run of this mission, it’s kind of inevitable that combat will happen. The Battle of Steel Springs takes place after the PCs are heading back to Kalaman, where they will learn from an aide that Lord Bakaris has taken Darrett and a group of soldiers to fight some Dragon Army troops who broke away from a larger force. Darrett cannot disobey but knows Bakaris’ poor judgment will lead them to ruin, so the aide slips the group a sealed note explaining the danger. The Battle occurs once the PCs ride out to the war zone, which is both a Warriors of Krynn interlude (winning grants the PCs advantage on their next Deception or Persuasion roll to influence a soldier of Kalaman) and a Battlefield Encounter. The PCs have to rescue six Kalaman soldiers (same stats as Lanal) from four Dragon Army Soldiers on warhorses, and the lair action table includes a Kalaman soldier collapsing from their wounds, a stray arrow AoE, the summoning of additional allied or enemy units, and a dragonnel-riding enemy soldier falling to their deaths near a PC. Darrett quickly takes command of the surviving forces, as Lord Bakaris has become unresponsive from a thousand-yard stare. Talk about a series of disastrous events! But back at Kalaman the city has received unexpected help with the unlikely arrival of the Knights of Solamnia! Things seem to be looking up! [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/gqIOXOe.png[/IMG] Or are they? The knights have entered the city without a word to meet with the governor and guild leaders, and nobody has heard any new developments. In reality these knights are Lord Soth and undead wights, and they murdered Kalaman’s leadership! Caradoc, a ghostly undead who can possess the bodies of others, sits in the council chamber in the body of a possessed living Knight waiting for any nosy do-gooders (such as the PCs) to come in and find out what’s going on. PCs can quickly realize that something is wrong as the Knights are silent, and passive Perception can reveal that their armor is rusted and incredibly old. Caradoc will mock the PCs as he fights them, and he has a rechargeable ability where he can possess others and has a bonus action where he can force a target to attack an ally within their reach on a failed Wisdom save. He can be defeated the old-fashioned way, but if he is not possessing a target at the start of his turn he will be forcefully teleported back to Dargaard Keep (Soth’s headquarters) if he fails a Charisma saving throw. The knight Caradoc is possessing will be at 0 hit points if unpossessed, but if revived can help the PCs fight the undead. At the end of the battle the PCs will find a letter from Lord Soth proclaiming himself as ruler over the province of Knightlund (the former name of Nightlund), and one of Soth’s banshees will appear to point to a hidden door in the chamber telling them of a secret that Soth can’t be allowed to possess. For those Dragonlance newcomers, Lord Soth is tormented by banshees who in life were the elves who claimed that his wife was unfaithful, causing him to abandon his mission of stopping the Kingpriest to instead slay his wife in anger. This banshee, Leedara, is helping the PCs because she takes pleasure in making Lord Soth’s job harder than it needs to be, but won’t say anything else to them. The Raided Catacombs is our first real dungeon crawl in the campaign, being a 7 room haunted dungeon which served as a tomb-temple for fallen Knights before the Cataclysm. When the Cataclysm happened the cursed fires of that horrible event still remained in pockets across Ansalon, such as these very tombs. As the PCs go through the dungeon they will witness visions of phantom flames playing out scenes of Lord Soth’s old life and detailing his fall from grace. But what is this precious secret Leedara mentioned? These catacombs are also the resting place of Zanas Sarlamir of the Order of the Crown. When the Kingpriest of Istar built a floating pleasure-city powered by the souls of dead dragons atop one of their graveyards, the metallic dragons threatened to knock it out of the sky. Sarlamir was tasked by Paladine himself to broker peace between Istar and the dragons, but fearing the worst he took along a dragonlance that was his family’s heirloom. When the Kingpriest refused to back down, Sarlamir sided with Istar and used the dragonlance to kill the leader of the gold dragons, causing this sacred weapon to rust away and the dragons to knock the flying city out of the sky. None of the humans knew of what transpired, with the story then spun of Sarlamir defending the innocent from rampaging evil dragons. So his body and what remained of the dragonlance were taken back to Kalaman to be given a burial. As for the crashed city? Well it now lies in the wastelands of northern Solamnia, now known as the City of Lost Names and the rumored great weapon that Kansaldi Fire-Eyes and Lord Soth are trying to rediscover. As for the dungeon itself, it is light on monsters (all of which are undead) but heavy on magical treasure, including a new magic item: a Kagonesti Forest Shroud which gives advantage on Stealth checks and once per day lets the wearer teleport up to 30 feet and gain advantage on their next attack roll after doing so. Lord Soth used a portion of the Cataclysmic flame to reanimate Sarlamir as a Skeletal Knight to serve as the “boss” of this dungeon. The Skeletal Knight is a new undead type who has an Enervating Blade which prevents a target from regaining hit points until the Knight’s next turn but otherwise can’t do much else offensively. During the fight Sarlamir will drop clues, saying that he is commanded to destroy those who oppose Lord Soth and that he has been summoned to the City of Lost Names in the Northern Waste to rejoin Soth’s side. In the event of extremely lethal PCs he can relay this information as a “final dying breath.” The PCs can find the rusted spearhead of a Dragonlance as treasure, although its magic cannot be reactivated until later in the adventure when it’s consecrated in the Temple of Paladine in the City of Lost Names. [B]Thoughts So Far:[/B] I like this chapter more than When Home Burns for several reasons. The first is that the missions have some more variety, such as an actual dungeon crawl and retaking an Outpost that encourages stealth and reconnaissance over straightforward fighting. Caradoc serves as an interesting [URL='https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PuzzleBoss']puzzle boss[/URL] in that his special abilities can put PCs in the unenviable dilemma of having to hurt their allies, and I like how the PCs can learn more about the Dragon Army via captured intelligence. I’m not as fond of the pre-Wheelwatch missions, in that they feel like very obvious filler content, and if done on separate days the PCs can easily overcome the enemies by making full use of spells and other per-day resources. I wish that there was more side content for PCs to do in Kalaman besides the High Sorcery sidequest, and Sarlamir’s predictable “melee fighter” tactics feel like a letdown in contrast to Caradoc’s more novel encounter. [B]Join us next time as we embark on a hexcrawl in Chapter 5: the Northern Wastes![/B] [/QUOTE]
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