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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy E Grenemyer" data-source="post: 7889984" data-attributes="member: 12388">SOME BACKGROUND ON TYBOLD’S TERRIBLE SHIELDSLongtime readers are no doubt familiar with the occasional extended adventuring party writeups I post to this thread. These are exceptions to the short writeups I normally share, 4-5 sentences being limit I place on myself for each writeup so I have just enough room to inspire players looking for ideas for new characters, and to leave room for DMs need a simple description for NPC adventurers that they can adapt to fir their campaign.My goal for the extended writeups is a little bigger. It's not just to provide a (hopefully) entertaining read, but to give Dungeon Masters and aspiring Dungeon Masters a framework from which to build an adventure--or, in the case of Tybold’s Terrible Shields, a sequence of adventures. I try to use the Realms resources at my disposal as much as possible when I create an extended writeup. Not to stick to canon (canon, shmanon), but to pick and choose the best bits of the Forgetten Realms that are inspiring and that sound fun.For the Tybold’s writeup, I thought it would be fun for DMs to start a campaign away from Cormyr. The Forgotten Realms Wiki has a pretty good writeup for <a href="https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Ormpur" target="_blank">Ormpur</a>, and since DMs might like a change from battling orcs and goblins and kobolds, starting 1st level play in Ormpur makes it easier to introduce low CR Yuan-ti as foes; they're great as schemers and as foes to battle in combat.Ed Greenwood's Forging the Realms article <a href="https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/so-many-reaching-hands" target="_blank">"So Many Reaching Hands"</a> gave me the idea for an adventurer that used to be a true Reaching Hand, though I reversed the concept. Ed describes the Reaching Hands of the Sword Coast as nondescript people, usually human or halfling females, that are good at not being seen and at getting things done behind the scenes. Zorabrantha, on the other hand, fits the stereotype everyday people of the Realms assume to be true: that Reaching Hands are badasses of the first order.Zora's name is, like just about every Realms name I come up with, a variant of a name I found in my long, long spreadsheet list of Forgotten Realms NPCs. In this case Zobrant Alnrith of Ormpur, first introduced in Dragon #417, who was slain by the Sword of Spells. I gave Zora the last name Tybold, to fit the name for the adventuring band I'd created back in <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/adventuring-company-names-and-what-they-are-up-to.473088/#post-6771762" target="_blank">December of 2015</a>. Everything else in the first paragraph (the Divided Road and the Saffron Hammer (ship and magic item)) I made up based on what I gleaned from the wiki about Ormpur. To me it's important that DMs not merely use what they can find in a Realms resource--those things exist to inspire DM creativity, not just to inform DMs of what is where in the Realms.The second paragraph in the writeup moves Zora north to the Vilhon. The end of the first paragraph left her crewing on a ship, and a merchant ship sailing the Shining Sea can deliver to any port on the Lake of Steam, which shares its northern land border with the Vilhon Reach. After she made the crossing north, she established herself among the merchants of the Reach as a rough and ready Reaching Hand able to take on all foes, so the next step was to move her further north to Cormyr. I figured the best place to find a big batch of bad guys to cause Zora trouble would be the city of Westgate: its mercantile reach is long, its presence at the mouth of the Dragonmere makes it a perennial headache for Cormyr, the Vilhon, and even Sembia, and the worst of the city's occupants--the Fire Knives, the Night Masks, the vampires, the ruling Croamarkh (a member of the Bleth noble family exiled from Cormyr), the Nine Golden Swords, etc., are all bad news. I decided to use Painbless Hall after I read about it in Erik Scott de Bie's excellent <a href="http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=18458" target="_blank">"Backdrop: Westgate"</a> article in Dragon 428. I love using the different names for priests of the Realms, so I turned to <a href="https://www.dmsguild.com/product/166568/Ed-Greenwood-Presents-Elminsters-Forgotten-Realms" target="_blank">"Ed Greenwood Presents: Elminster's Forgotten Realms,"</a> for his writeup of the Loviathan church, pages 151-152. This led me to Ed's description of Andratha Dorntalon--who really is charged with slaying the worst foes of Loviatar's church--which provided a way to end the writeup on a cliffhanger of sorts in the sixth paragraph.For the third paragraph, the idea of a running ship battle sounded fun, so I tried to describe two of them, the first ship to ship, the second a pitched battle aboard two entangled ships. I took some inspiration from Volo's Guide to Cormyr about The Coast (page 76 features an illustration of a ship running dangerously close to the base of a massive sea cliff). I figure DMs could use the content in <a href="https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/ghosts-saltmarsh" target="_blank">"Ghosts of Saltmarsh"</a> here.The fourth paragraph delves a little more into Cormyr as I've come to envision it in my own DMs Guild writing. Volo's Guide to Cormyr gives information about Smuggler's Stone (page 80). To this I combined an encounter with gnomes who'd come to settle there in 1479 DR (Year of the Ageless One), using an old Current Clack entry I'd written up for the month of Kythorn (June) of that year:To round out the fourth paragraph I drew a little inspiration from Xanathar's Guide to Everything--specifically the downtime activity of Carousing for Contacts (page 126-128)--and on my own as yet unpublished writings about Moonever, which will be included in Part III of Nobles of Cormyr: The Knight of Owl Well, the first two parts having already been published in issue <a href="https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?keywords=Eye+on+Cormyr&sort=4a&x=0&y=0&author=JEREMY+GRENEMYER&artist=&pfrom=&pto=" target="_blank">#3 and #4 of "Eye on Cormyr"</a> on the DMs Guild. The Keskrels of Marsember were featured in the article "The Thing in the Crypt" by Ed Greenwood, in Dragon #412. I've since created <a href="https://twitter.com/sanishiver/status/1199200297270173696" target="_blank">a family tree for House Keskrel</a>, which will also be included in Part III of Nobles of Cormyr.The Keskrels have a reputation for doggedly pursuing whatever interests them, and I didn't want to describe Zora as operating on the Skeleton Shore without saying why, so I figured Lord Keskrel was determined to find something he believes to be hidden on that part of the Dragon Coast, and that he viewed Zora as the right person to both find it and to find out who or what put an end to the first two groups of adventurers he sent there, all of this forming the content of the fifth paragraph. You can find a copy of the Mike Schley map of Cormyr that I used as a reference for this writeup on page 3 of <a href="http://www.wizards.com/files/365_backdrop_cormyr.pdf" target="_blank">"Backdrop: Cormyr" by Brian R. James</a> (the article made available for free thanks to the generosity of Wizards of the Coast), that shows the names for different parts of the southern shores of the Dragonmere (aka the Dragon Coast), the narrow channel Zora sailed through ("The Neck"), the location of Westgate, and Smuggler Stone (due north of the "X" marking the Cliffs of Karthaut, on the north shore of the Dragonmere). To wrap this all up: I believe the Realms are best used as a means of inspiration, and not just as a source of information. What I've tried to do here is what a Dungeon Master would do over time as they create NPCs and encounters and campaign plots to fill a series of adventures in the Realms. I hope elements of the Tybold's writeup inspires you to do the same.Good gaming to you and yours.</blockquote>

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