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MrPereira's WOTBS D&D 3.5 Campaign (SPOILERS IN THE POSTS)
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<blockquote data-quote="Mrpereira" data-source="post: 6844420" data-attributes="member: 6781484"><p><strong>The party</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong>Galion – Elf ranger lvl. 9 / Arcane archer 2 (I allowed him the feat Sword of the arcane order to qualify for Arcane archer)</strong></p><p><strong>Shaith – Fire elf fire domain wizard lvl. 5 / Incantatrix 6</strong></p><p><strong>Killian – Human priest of Heironious lvl. 3 / Church Inquisitor 1 / Ordained champion 5/Divine Crusader 2 (variant)</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong>NPC</strong></p><p><strong>Deena – Rogue lvl.6 / Fighter lvl. 5 </strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong>June 1 continued</strong></p><p>After ending the meeting, the players travel down to Eresh again with the orb in their possession. The winds are once again blowing up leading to another day of frustrating delay for the players. Especially Killian is feeling the need to get away from the extreme calm and serenity of the monks.</p><p></p><p><strong>June 2-4</strong></p><p>Around midday the winds calm enough for the players to risk their journey down from the mountains. The trip is uneventful and takes a few days.</p><p></p><p><strong>June 4</strong></p><p>The party reaches the foot of the mountains in the late afternoon and after another hour of travel they reach a village, where they spend the night. They spend the evening talking a little with the townspeople trying to get an idea of the lay of the land and how the population is feeling in general. </p><p>They conclude that while most people have no love for the Ragesians they also have little fighting spirit in terms of taking up arms in rebellion. Those who did have the spirit left long ago for a distant Sea town where the resistance is gathering.</p><p></p><p><em>DM note: I wanted to let them get a feel for the Sindarese people and their plight. I portrayed them more as an occupied country that as a vassal state, as that is how I interpreted the story.</em></p><p></p><p><strong>June 5-9</strong></p><p>The next morning the party sets out towards Castle Korstull, a journey that will take several days. For the most part their trek takes them through the countryside as they decided to avoid most settlements and running into the Ragesian army. As they travel closer to Castle Korstull they find the signs of a lot of people having travelled away from the area. Settlements and farms are generally abandoned as they get closer to the edge of the firestorm, which is something they have been able to see in the horizon for several days.</p><p></p><p><strong>June 9</strong></p><p>As they were not willing to travel blindly through the night, they camped a few miles away from the edge of the firestorm, planning on using a full days march through it to reach the castle, so as not to waste too much of the precious duration of the orb. </p><p></p><p>However, as they start to travel towards the edge of the firestorm, they see and hear signs of trouble in a nearby settlement, which obviously hasn’t been abandoned.</p><p>They spot a group of Ragesian knights having a “conversation” with a farmer. Even from a distance of roughly 400 feet Galion manages to understand what they are saying</p><p></p><p><em>DM Note: My players tend to maximize a few of their skills, leaving most at the bare nothing. Those skills that are maximized are at a ridiculously high level, meaning that they can accomplish some pretty impressive DCs. Shaith, the Incantatrix, has a spellcraft check around +36 for instance. In this case it was Galion, who “only” has a +20 on his check, but rolled a 20.</em></p><p></p><p>The conversation turned out to be about the Ragesian knights telling the man to move away from the firestorm and abandon his home. They told him to travel lightly and leave behind everything he didn’t need to survive, his daughters and wife for instance. This naturally upsets Galion as he pretty much realizes that the conversation, which already included a few fists and booted feet, would end up with a dead man and his family violated. </p><p></p><p>He reacted by pulling out his bow and started firing arrows taking his own friends by surprise too. The fight was tougher than expected, especially the leader turned out to be a handful, as he could turn invisible due to a magic weapon.</p><p></p><p>In the end the party prevailed. The man is lying dead, as one of the knights decided to use his first action to kill him before taking on the party. To make matters worse, in the farmstead they find the bodies of a woman and two girls at the age of 10 and 12. It is clear that the mother thought all hope was gone and decided that death would be a kinder fate than the one they would have had at the hands of the Ragesians.</p><p></p><p><em>DM note: I like to portray the world in a gritty and dark way, especially in this adventure where the moral dilemmas will force the players into siding with people that they don’t’ really like or see eye to eye with. In this case they really dislike the Ragesian army, not knowing that some of them actually are not allied with Leeska and later may be allies.</em></p><p></p><p>They spend the night at the farm, having spent a lot of resources fighting the soldiers. They decide that they would rather be 100% fit for fight when they activate the orb and start the timer on the duration.</p><p></p><p>The remaining few citizens at the tiny hamlet tell the players that soldiers were trying to get them to move away, as the edges of the firestorm have been coming closer and soon the hamlet will be inside the fiery edges of the storm. They also spend some time learning a little about the castle, even if it is quite a bit away, the locals do know a little about it.</p><p></p><p><strong>June 10</strong></p><p>They buff up with quite the arsenal of spells and head out towards the castle. It is a long trek of about 8 hours before they reach their destination. The orb is doing the job it should making it possible for the party to travel unhindered.</p><p></p><p>As they reach the castle the storm parts a little and they notice something that looks like a window, some 300 feet up in the air. They have the feeling that they are being watched. The storm closes around the window again and a lightning strikes down in the middle of a large amount of skeletons.</p><p></p><p>The first thing they notice is that there are 3 wagons on the other side of the pile of skeletons, with halflings and gnomes in and around them. They are just as shocked as the players are to see someone else here. Before they can react to this discovery the skeletons come alive and start attacking the two groups.</p><p></p><p>After the fight the two groups start talking and the players learn that the other party, Clan Millorn, are treasure hunters. At first they agree to some friendly competition, where each group goes its own ways and keep what they find. With regards to the treasure room they agree to share it 70-30 with 70% going to the party who manages to get there first.</p><p></p><p>The party, however, decide that they need to come clean because they have a hard time seeing how to divide an invaluable artifact, so they tell that they are here for the torch. It is not a surprise for Clan Millorn, who have no interest in the torch.</p><p></p><p><em>DM Note: It would be too much trouble to keep with all the interested parties and too hard to sell anyway for them – if the buyers wouldn’t just kill them for it. So the clan is quite happy to make this deal.</em></p><p></p><p>They agree to sharing the treasure room 90-10, where the players get 10% and the torch, the rest goes to Clan Millorn.</p><p></p><p><em>DM Note: Gallion especially is having a hard time with that deal, in his mind it is a lot of treasure that they have bartered away. He is basically hoping that Clan Millorn won’t make it out alive, so that they can keep it all </em></p><p></p><p>They also decide who goes left and who goes right before entering the castle, with Clan Millorn getting their wish fulfilled. They head up to the main doors and defeat the guardians and break open the doors.</p><p></p><p>Inside the players decide to head upstairs first, but the door is barred and they head down instead. The party have decided that their aim is to head upstairs as fast as possible, they won’t leave it to chance and clan Millorns honesty with respect to finding the torch and keeping the deal.</p><p></p><p><em>DM note: This sequence gave me to ideas that I decided to live out later on in the chapter. First I decided to let them ride the elevator unprepared as a premonition, so I would get to play out the deathtrap and secondly I decided that Deception at some point would have to live up to its nature and deceive one of the innocent clan members to go into the shrine and his death. Deception being what deception is, and it might give the party a hint about something being wrong – it is after all the same entity that convinced another NPC to take her own life. </em></p><p></p><p>They find the elevator pretty soon, but are taken by surprise by the undead in the elevator. Deenas soul is captured and Gallion has his strength drained to almost nothing. In the end Shaith and Killian manage to take care of it.</p><p></p><p>They soon realize that the elevator is not working, it simply isn’t powered up. Much to their annoyance they now have to spend more time on the ground floor finding out to turn on the power, and maybe even powering up the traps. Suddenly they hear some sounds that indicate that something has been turned on. From ahead of them they see Clan Millorn walking out from the pump room. They have started the pumps, but there is not much water, the flow seems to be blocked somehow.</p><p></p><p>The party is clearly annoyed with being second to the clan in reaching the pump room and they head towards barracks. They have figured out that the underground river must be passing through the western quarter of the castle. Here they fight the knights and defeat them and restore the flow of the river.</p><p>Having done this they head towards the guest quarters and defeat the skeletons and the bulette. At this point they have all but used their resources and decide to call it a day. They choose one of the guest quarters for their night camp and go to sleep, with one person keeping watch.</p><p></p><p>During the night they are suddenly rushed by a group of skeletons. Shaith has the watch and wake the others with shouts. The confined space of the rooms combined with Reddengot coming through the walls turn out to be a bigger challenge than anyone could have expected. To make matters worse, one of the sergeants manage to hit Killian with a critical hit with his axe. The blow is fatal and Killian dies. Just as things are looking very dire Grellfin arrives and turn the tide. He saw a lot of skeletons heading into the castle and on hios way he saw a wraith singing to himself heading towards the elevator.</p><p></p><p><em>DM Note: The outcome of the fight that night took me by surprise, I had not expected to kill one of the party members. They were in such dire straits that I had to let Reddengot go away or they would all have been dead, or close to it. I decided that he was so arrogant in his victory that he went upstairs to report his victory prematurely.</em></p><p></p><p>After the fight the group retreats outside where clan Millorn is camped. The clan had some luck during the day and had actually found some nice treasure, including a Scroll of True resurrection.</p><p></p><p><em>DM Note: I know the book states that the skeletons came from the outside, but it was just easier and made more sense that they had their camp with their wagons. I could simply not see any reason or logical explanation for someone to suddenly appear at Castle Korstull, so unless they were going to play a man short for quite some time, I had to let them be able to resurrect Killian.</em></p><p></p><p>The party buys the scroll from the clan at market value, paying in some of their own heave loot. A deal both parties are happy with. The party got rid of some heavy gear that were close to slowing them down and the clan got a lot of items that are easier to sell than an expensive scroll.</p><p></p><p>Killian is resurrected and is very grateful towards the Clan, his attitude clearly improved. With that issue out of the way the rest of the night passes without incident.</p><p></p><p><strong>June 11</strong></p><p>The next morning they head inside the castle, the elevator is fully powered and ready to go. They party enters the elevator together with the three heroes from Clan Millorn.</p><p></p><p><em>DM Note: This is of course the premonition I mentioned earlier, as the elevator wouldn’t be powered up yet. My twisted mind gave me the idea of letting Pilus be the sender of the premonition, help from an unwanted source just felt right. </em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>During the trip in the elevator I had to turn up the difficulty of the traps to the extreme, just to be able to drop one of the players. I got to kill two of the clan heroes, but the players were all but impossible to slay. I had them reach the 6th floor before someone dropped, and that being with a lot deadlier elevator than originally written. When the first dropped I paraphrased the rest of the trip ending with them being killed, squashed against the ceiling and then waking up outside the castle.</em></p><p></p><p>The elevator trip is one big, long trap ending with the death of the players and they wake up from their sleep in the camp outside the castle. The whole scene is clearly some kind of premonition, and Gallion can feel some something emanating from the earring that Pilus gave them. They realize that Pilus gave them a warning/premonition; they are not ready to go upstairs yet. They have to figure out how to use the elevator.</p><p></p><p><strong>End of session.</strong></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mrpereira, post: 6844420, member: 6781484"] [B]The party Galion – Elf ranger lvl. 9 / Arcane archer 2 (I allowed him the feat Sword of the arcane order to qualify for Arcane archer) Shaith – Fire elf fire domain wizard lvl. 5 / Incantatrix 6 Killian – Human priest of Heironious lvl. 3 / Church Inquisitor 1 / Ordained champion 5/Divine Crusader 2 (variant) NPC Deena – Rogue lvl.6 / Fighter lvl. 5 June 1 continued[/B] After ending the meeting, the players travel down to Eresh again with the orb in their possession. The winds are once again blowing up leading to another day of frustrating delay for the players. Especially Killian is feeling the need to get away from the extreme calm and serenity of the monks. [B]June 2-4[/B] Around midday the winds calm enough for the players to risk their journey down from the mountains. The trip is uneventful and takes a few days. [B]June 4[/B] The party reaches the foot of the mountains in the late afternoon and after another hour of travel they reach a village, where they spend the night. They spend the evening talking a little with the townspeople trying to get an idea of the lay of the land and how the population is feeling in general. They conclude that while most people have no love for the Ragesians they also have little fighting spirit in terms of taking up arms in rebellion. Those who did have the spirit left long ago for a distant Sea town where the resistance is gathering. [I]DM note: I wanted to let them get a feel for the Sindarese people and their plight. I portrayed them more as an occupied country that as a vassal state, as that is how I interpreted the story.[/I] [B]June 5-9[/B] The next morning the party sets out towards Castle Korstull, a journey that will take several days. For the most part their trek takes them through the countryside as they decided to avoid most settlements and running into the Ragesian army. As they travel closer to Castle Korstull they find the signs of a lot of people having travelled away from the area. Settlements and farms are generally abandoned as they get closer to the edge of the firestorm, which is something they have been able to see in the horizon for several days. [B]June 9[/B] As they were not willing to travel blindly through the night, they camped a few miles away from the edge of the firestorm, planning on using a full days march through it to reach the castle, so as not to waste too much of the precious duration of the orb. However, as they start to travel towards the edge of the firestorm, they see and hear signs of trouble in a nearby settlement, which obviously hasn’t been abandoned. They spot a group of Ragesian knights having a “conversation” with a farmer. Even from a distance of roughly 400 feet Galion manages to understand what they are saying [I]DM Note: My players tend to maximize a few of their skills, leaving most at the bare nothing. Those skills that are maximized are at a ridiculously high level, meaning that they can accomplish some pretty impressive DCs. Shaith, the Incantatrix, has a spellcraft check around +36 for instance. In this case it was Galion, who “only” has a +20 on his check, but rolled a 20.[/I] The conversation turned out to be about the Ragesian knights telling the man to move away from the firestorm and abandon his home. They told him to travel lightly and leave behind everything he didn’t need to survive, his daughters and wife for instance. This naturally upsets Galion as he pretty much realizes that the conversation, which already included a few fists and booted feet, would end up with a dead man and his family violated. He reacted by pulling out his bow and started firing arrows taking his own friends by surprise too. The fight was tougher than expected, especially the leader turned out to be a handful, as he could turn invisible due to a magic weapon. In the end the party prevailed. The man is lying dead, as one of the knights decided to use his first action to kill him before taking on the party. To make matters worse, in the farmstead they find the bodies of a woman and two girls at the age of 10 and 12. It is clear that the mother thought all hope was gone and decided that death would be a kinder fate than the one they would have had at the hands of the Ragesians. [I]DM note: I like to portray the world in a gritty and dark way, especially in this adventure where the moral dilemmas will force the players into siding with people that they don’t’ really like or see eye to eye with. In this case they really dislike the Ragesian army, not knowing that some of them actually are not allied with Leeska and later may be allies.[/I] They spend the night at the farm, having spent a lot of resources fighting the soldiers. They decide that they would rather be 100% fit for fight when they activate the orb and start the timer on the duration. The remaining few citizens at the tiny hamlet tell the players that soldiers were trying to get them to move away, as the edges of the firestorm have been coming closer and soon the hamlet will be inside the fiery edges of the storm. They also spend some time learning a little about the castle, even if it is quite a bit away, the locals do know a little about it. [B]June 10[/B] They buff up with quite the arsenal of spells and head out towards the castle. It is a long trek of about 8 hours before they reach their destination. The orb is doing the job it should making it possible for the party to travel unhindered. As they reach the castle the storm parts a little and they notice something that looks like a window, some 300 feet up in the air. They have the feeling that they are being watched. The storm closes around the window again and a lightning strikes down in the middle of a large amount of skeletons. The first thing they notice is that there are 3 wagons on the other side of the pile of skeletons, with halflings and gnomes in and around them. They are just as shocked as the players are to see someone else here. Before they can react to this discovery the skeletons come alive and start attacking the two groups. After the fight the two groups start talking and the players learn that the other party, Clan Millorn, are treasure hunters. At first they agree to some friendly competition, where each group goes its own ways and keep what they find. With regards to the treasure room they agree to share it 70-30 with 70% going to the party who manages to get there first. The party, however, decide that they need to come clean because they have a hard time seeing how to divide an invaluable artifact, so they tell that they are here for the torch. It is not a surprise for Clan Millorn, who have no interest in the torch. [I]DM Note: It would be too much trouble to keep with all the interested parties and too hard to sell anyway for them – if the buyers wouldn’t just kill them for it. So the clan is quite happy to make this deal.[/I] They agree to sharing the treasure room 90-10, where the players get 10% and the torch, the rest goes to Clan Millorn. [I]DM Note: Gallion especially is having a hard time with that deal, in his mind it is a lot of treasure that they have bartered away. He is basically hoping that Clan Millorn won’t make it out alive, so that they can keep it all [/I] They also decide who goes left and who goes right before entering the castle, with Clan Millorn getting their wish fulfilled. They head up to the main doors and defeat the guardians and break open the doors. Inside the players decide to head upstairs first, but the door is barred and they head down instead. The party have decided that their aim is to head upstairs as fast as possible, they won’t leave it to chance and clan Millorns honesty with respect to finding the torch and keeping the deal. [I]DM note: This sequence gave me to ideas that I decided to live out later on in the chapter. First I decided to let them ride the elevator unprepared as a premonition, so I would get to play out the deathtrap and secondly I decided that Deception at some point would have to live up to its nature and deceive one of the innocent clan members to go into the shrine and his death. Deception being what deception is, and it might give the party a hint about something being wrong – it is after all the same entity that convinced another NPC to take her own life. [/I] They find the elevator pretty soon, but are taken by surprise by the undead in the elevator. Deenas soul is captured and Gallion has his strength drained to almost nothing. In the end Shaith and Killian manage to take care of it. They soon realize that the elevator is not working, it simply isn’t powered up. Much to their annoyance they now have to spend more time on the ground floor finding out to turn on the power, and maybe even powering up the traps. Suddenly they hear some sounds that indicate that something has been turned on. From ahead of them they see Clan Millorn walking out from the pump room. They have started the pumps, but there is not much water, the flow seems to be blocked somehow. The party is clearly annoyed with being second to the clan in reaching the pump room and they head towards barracks. They have figured out that the underground river must be passing through the western quarter of the castle. Here they fight the knights and defeat them and restore the flow of the river. Having done this they head towards the guest quarters and defeat the skeletons and the bulette. At this point they have all but used their resources and decide to call it a day. They choose one of the guest quarters for their night camp and go to sleep, with one person keeping watch. During the night they are suddenly rushed by a group of skeletons. Shaith has the watch and wake the others with shouts. The confined space of the rooms combined with Reddengot coming through the walls turn out to be a bigger challenge than anyone could have expected. To make matters worse, one of the sergeants manage to hit Killian with a critical hit with his axe. The blow is fatal and Killian dies. Just as things are looking very dire Grellfin arrives and turn the tide. He saw a lot of skeletons heading into the castle and on hios way he saw a wraith singing to himself heading towards the elevator. [I]DM Note: The outcome of the fight that night took me by surprise, I had not expected to kill one of the party members. They were in such dire straits that I had to let Reddengot go away or they would all have been dead, or close to it. I decided that he was so arrogant in his victory that he went upstairs to report his victory prematurely.[/I] After the fight the group retreats outside where clan Millorn is camped. The clan had some luck during the day and had actually found some nice treasure, including a Scroll of True resurrection. [I]DM Note: I know the book states that the skeletons came from the outside, but it was just easier and made more sense that they had their camp with their wagons. I could simply not see any reason or logical explanation for someone to suddenly appear at Castle Korstull, so unless they were going to play a man short for quite some time, I had to let them be able to resurrect Killian.[/I] The party buys the scroll from the clan at market value, paying in some of their own heave loot. A deal both parties are happy with. The party got rid of some heavy gear that were close to slowing them down and the clan got a lot of items that are easier to sell than an expensive scroll. Killian is resurrected and is very grateful towards the Clan, his attitude clearly improved. With that issue out of the way the rest of the night passes without incident. [B]June 11[/B] The next morning they head inside the castle, the elevator is fully powered and ready to go. They party enters the elevator together with the three heroes from Clan Millorn. [I]DM Note: This is of course the premonition I mentioned earlier, as the elevator wouldn’t be powered up yet. My twisted mind gave me the idea of letting Pilus be the sender of the premonition, help from an unwanted source just felt right. During the trip in the elevator I had to turn up the difficulty of the traps to the extreme, just to be able to drop one of the players. I got to kill two of the clan heroes, but the players were all but impossible to slay. I had them reach the 6th floor before someone dropped, and that being with a lot deadlier elevator than originally written. When the first dropped I paraphrased the rest of the trip ending with them being killed, squashed against the ceiling and then waking up outside the castle.[/I] The elevator trip is one big, long trap ending with the death of the players and they wake up from their sleep in the camp outside the castle. The whole scene is clearly some kind of premonition, and Gallion can feel some something emanating from the earring that Pilus gave them. They realize that Pilus gave them a warning/premonition; they are not ready to go upstairs yet. They have to figure out how to use the elevator. [B]End of session.[/B] [/QUOTE]
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