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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9789330" data-attributes="member: 6750502">[ATTACH=full]420851[/ATTACH]<img src="http://" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />This chapter details nine locations in the Outer City. Due to the sandbox nature of the campaign, there are no explicit recommended levels for each location beyond that they’re intended to be explored early, allowing for 3rd level characters to reach 6th level after exploring most of them. The Rat’s Nest and Chapel of Saint Brenna are likely places the PCs may explore early on, as they’re tied to missions for the five factions.Black Ivory Inn is a short location-based encounter with a heavy focus on investigative mystery. A highly-regarded hotel and music hall before Drakkenheim’s destruction, the cosmic taint of the delerium trapped the building and its immediate environs in a time loop of the last 4 and a half hours before the meteor fell. The inn appears strangely pristine and undamaged to an outside viewer, with people laughing inside as music is played and the plants outside are flush with life.The cause of the time loop is a woman named Miss Charlotte, who gained a wish from an extraplanar entity to be the best pianist of all time. Due to being the best already, the wish instead made her immortal and created a supernatural bond between her and her piano; as long as the piano remains unbroken, she will survive. When she was embedded by a delerium crystal falling from the sky, the Haze interacted with the wish spell’s magic to create a time loop. The only way to break the loop is to destroy Miss Charlotte and her piano, the woman now existing as a monster beneath the inn. We have a list of rules for what happens when characters get trapped; in short, they cannot perceive or interact with things outside the Inn, where the outside world appears like a pre-ruins version of Drakkenheim. While the loop prevents true death in that every cycle grants them a Long Rest benefit and restores broken items, each loop threatens a random form of insanity on a failed DC 5 Intelligence save. Quite a low DC if I do say so myself.Miss Charlotte projects an illusory version of herself as a pianist, and she and her piano are immune to all damage as long as the monster lives. The Black Ivory Inn is filled with people who are mostly Commoners that are incapable of realizing that the world outside has changed, even if presented with proof. However, the inn is also home to a group of similarly-trapped smugglers who use a secret underground passage that can be a valuable asset into going into Drakkenheim beneath the walls.* There are more recently-trapped visitors who belong to each of the five factions, and the PCs may be sent to rescue them as part of a mission.*Although it leads into a cistern beneath Slaughterstone Square, the latter of which itself is home to the Executioner. It’s an incredibly strong monster that is pretty much a telegraphed “some fights you should run away from” encounter for all but the highest-level PCs.Miss Charlotte is a Protean Abomination, a CR 6 mutated aberration that can regain hit points by eating corpses and can engulf creatures it grapples. She takes the form of a mound of flesh spreading across the walls and surfaces around it. The Black Ivory Inn doesn’t have any significant valuables or treasure, but rescuing a faction member can see the party rewarded, such as a Falling Fire pilgrim giving them a Bag of Holding or Alchemy Jug along with arranging a personal meeting with Lucrecia Mathias.Thoughts: This is a pretty creepy location, placing more emphasis on exploration and social interaction than outright combat. The Protean Abomination can be a deadly foe for low-level PCs, particularly in melee, but there’s a fair chance that they may have some NPCs aiding them which can really tip the scales in their favor. As such, it’s not a high-risk location, and even the Intelligence save is low enough to not be a significant hindrance.Buckledown Row used to be an entertainment district for Drakkenheim’s working class. It still bears this role but for a new clientele: rotating members of the Queen’s Men use it as a neutral meeting point for rest, relaxation, and business. Violence between the outlaws is less frequent than elsewhere, as the Row is home to an underground fighting pit that serves as the primary means of settling disputes and blowing off steam. While outsiders aren’t exactly welcome, the Queen’s Men have a high turnover rate so people are used to strangers coming in as new recruits. Hooded Lantern and Silver Order members draw attention and harassment from locals. The Fighting Pits are the main attraction, where PCs can take bets and participate in fights against other contestants. Such fights are either 1-on-1 or 2-on-2. Doing well in the Pits can net the PCs an audience with the Queen of Thieves.Thoughts: Buckledown Row makes for a seedier version of Emberwood Village, although more limited in scope and services. Besides the Fighting Pits, the other locations and people are outlaw groups, so PCs visiting the Row will likely be here for one major errand at most.Chapel of Saint Brenna is a 10 room dungeon crawl spread across 3 floors. Dedicated to the Faith of the Sacred Flame, it is not the only one of its kind in Drakkenheim, but this particular Chapel is notable for holding the valuable Sceptre of Saint Vitruvio. This relic is sought out by the Falling Fire, Silver Order, and Queen’s Men. The former two groups want it for its religious value and don’t want it to fall into unworthy hands, while the Queen’s Men hope to sell it to the highest bidder. The Sceptre is a +2 quarterstaff with charges that can be used to cast Guiding Bolt, Flaming Sphere, or Flame Strike. It is one of several holy relics needed to revive the gold dragon hero Argonath beneath Saint Vitruvio’s Cathedral, which can affect how the campaign ends.PCs might be hired by an appropriate Lieutenant to retrieve it, and the other two factions the party isn’t working with will send their own Strike Teams to the Chapel to get the Sceptre. Said teams will be located in one of the first two rooms, arriving at two different times: one can show up after the PCs take a Short Rest, and the other when the party is about to leave with the Sceptre.There are no delerium-themed monsters in the Chapel, instead having more localized defenses such as mephits who will not allow intruders further into the chapel unless bribed, a winch-based puzzle involving an Immovable Rod (or similar blockage) to go further into the dungeon, various alchemical and divine-based treasures such as scrolls of healing magic, and a mummy which is the preserved corpse of a saint serving as the final monstrous combat encounter in the dungeon.The book notes that even if violence breaks out with a strike team, then that shouldn’t lock them out of working with the faction. Future interactions will be soured, but the party is currently regarded as mercenaries; if they return the Sceptre to the Lieutenant, the rival factions will see the party’s actions as “business as usual” and direct most of their anger to their employers. But if the PCs killed one or more strike team members and chose to keep the Sceptre for themselves, then they’ll be branded as an enemy of said faction. Of course, this really only matters if the party left any witnesses from the strike team to report back.Thoughts: In addition to being a thematic dungeon crawl with a nice treasure at the end, the Chapel highlights the adversarial relationship between the factions. The Sceptre’s granting of the powerful Flame Strike spell can be a tempting offer for the party to keep it for themselves, providing a risk-reward tradeoff.<img src="http://" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />[ATTACH=full]420852[/ATTACH]Eckerman Mill is a regular meeting point for adventurers as well as faction agents who wish to conduct meetings away from prying eyes and ears. The mill is riddled with graffiti of various adventuring parties, listing names of people (and crossed-out ones who were confirmed killed in action) and various messages, warnings, maps, questions, and riddles. We don’t get any specifics, instead filled in via DM discretion.Thoughts: There’s nothing really here to drive adventures or plot hooks on its own, so there’s not much for me to say. I do like the idea of a graffiti-based bulletin board system shared among adventurers, though.Rat’s Nest Tavern is our other big dungeon crawl-based location, consisting of 8 rooms spread across a single floor of sprawling tunnels. The name of this tavern achieved a sort of poetic irony, when a piece of the meteor that destroyed the building was taken underground by a nearby colony of ratlings. The meteorite contains an incredibly valuable delerium crystal worth 1,000 gold, and PCs might be hired by the Amethyst Academy to retrieve it at a net profit for 1,250 gold. Additionally, a patrol of Hooded Lanterns were ambushed by ratlings, and Petra Lang was taken down to their warrens, so that faction might hire the PCs for a rescue mission. Ansom Lang cannot come along to save his sibling as he’s recovering from Contamination.The ratling burrow is made up of tight, twisting tunnels with a few larger caverns, and the residents make heavy use of traps such as mudslides that cause forced movement or a rat swarm at the bottom of a camouflaged spiked pit. In terms of stats, Ratlings are very much beginner-level fodder on par with goblins and kobolds, being Small CR ⅛ monsters that individually are weak in both damage and hit points. Their strong suits include being able to Hide as a bonus action, have the Pack Tactics trait, and have swimming and climbing speeds for additional mobility. Guttersnipes are more elite versions of ratlings, who use Spy stats but have various traits of the default ratling.The two most prominent ratlings include Squeaks the Seer, a Warlock of the Rat God who focuses on trickery-based magic such as Invisibility and Misty Step; and the Rat Prince, who serves as the “boss” of this dungeon as a CR 3 Medium sized monster whose bite attack and a limited set of crossbow ammunition can potentially afflict levels of Contamination . Besides the meteorite, there is some treasure in a room containing an idol made of their patron deity, the Rat God, notably spell scrolls and shards of delerium.Unlike many other monsters in Drakkenheim, ratlings are intelligent enough to be self-aware and are fluent in Common. The book notes that it's thus possible for PCs to reason with or broker an alliance with the Ratlings, referencing a scheme the PCs did in the original Actual Play campaign. There is an indirect warning, however, noting that the ratlings aren't good-intentioned, as they effectively view everyone else (and even each other if the situation permits) as food and don't really have a moral compass beyond "take what you want" and "might makes right." If the other monster groups such as the Garmyr (basically gnolls) are killed off, the ratlings will have no natural predators to keep their numbers in line.Thoughts: I suppose it says something about my jaded ass that I find ratlings a bit too…generic fantasy in flavor for a cosmic horror adventure path. While I don’t expect every creature in this module to be a squirming aberration, anthropomorphic animals kind of lack that extra bit of unknown weirdness. And while I am not a Warhammer nerd, I do know enough about the Skaven that I would’ve liked to see the ratlings have a bit more of a niche like that monster has. For instance, some of the Skaven clans which have their own unique brands of magic and machinery. As they stand, ratlings are just furry goblins. They do get expanded on quite a bit in Monsters of Drakkenheim, but right now I’m reviewing them as they are in this book.<img src="http://" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />[ATTACH=full]420853[/ATTACH]Reed Manor is an abandoned mansion now repurposed as the home and research lab of Oscar Yoren, a mage studying the Haze and delerium. Most notably, he mastered the recipe for Aqua Expurgo, a potion capable of granting temporary protection against Contamination. Unwilling to share his research, Yoren is a very valuable individual in Drakkenheim, and he currently sells potions to the Hooded Lanterns. The faction Lieutenants might hire the PCs to either convince him to switch to them as an exclusive customer base (Queen’s Men) or to steal his research notes (Amethyst Academy). The Hooded Lanterns might hire the party after the last few potions sold turned out to be faulty. The Academy isn’t willing to buy Yoren’s services because he’s on bad terms with them.Oscar Yoren is very much your unethical mad scientist archetype, who believes that he’s the only one who knows what he’s doing and has no qualms against killing or torturing others for the furtherance of his studies. Even should PCs manage to gain his aid, if they attacked, deceived, or mistreated him then Yoren will plot revenge at a later time. He uses a Mage (2014) stat block, but with a heavier focus on “dark magic” style spells such as Animate Dead, Blight, and Cloudkill, and he has a spellbook filled with some valuable mid-level spells such as Dimension Door and Contact Other Plane.Reed Manor is a 12-room dungeon crawl spread across 3 floors. Not every room is detailed, instead grouped by commonalities: outside grounds, the manor house itself, and the secret lab. The only other creatures here besides Yoren and his quasit familiar are human and ogre zombies and four of his apprentices which use Hedge Mage stats detailed in an appendix in this book. There’s a good deal of valuable treasure here, including delerium crystals, potions, spell scrolls, relevant brewing-based tool kits, and raw materials for crafting if the DM is using such a sub-system.While it’s indeed possible that the PCs might enact violence on Oscar Yoren, the party can work for him to help with his research. Notably, he requires eldritch lilies to create the potions, a plant monster that can be found in the Queen’s Park in the Inner City. If the PCs return with samples from the monster, he is willing to hear out their representative factions. The book has a very lengthy sidebar that takes up most of a page, detailing in-character research notes by Oscar Yoren along with how PCs can make use of it to make Aqua Expurgo themselves. The book also explains what each of the factions will seek to do should they gain access to his research: the Amethyst Academy is best able to create more copies of the potion; the Hooded Lanterns will seek to use the research as a future bargaining chip with the Academy; the Queen of Thieves wants to ensure that she and she alone has access to the research and may hire the PCs to kidnap Yoren later to basically become her apothecary slave; the Silver Order is unwilling to produce it themselves due to its connection to delerium but will leave it up to the PCs want to do with it; the Followers of the Falling Fire already have a ritual to grant immunity to contamination and thus have no interest in the research.Thoughts: Reed Manor is perhaps the most risky and difficult of locations in the Outer City should PCs seek a more violent approach. Not only is Oscar Yoren a capable spellcaster by himself, he has a good amount of backup as well. That being said, this manor also contains the most valuable loot in this chapter by volume. I like how there’s various means of resolving the associated quests regarding Yoren, his potions, and his research.Shrine of Morrigan is a site holy to an ancient warlike god. An elven druid-priest known as Eoghan Ghostweaver can be found here, and he lives in a nearby mound with a trio of treants serving as camouflaged security. Several of the faction leaders know of Eoghan’s presence, and he’s not the most sociable of people. The main reason why someone would visit the shrine is for Eoghan to bring someone back from the dead, for he has access to the Resurrection spell along with a variety of other powerful druidic magic. The elf does not ask for mere money for his services: a diamond or delerium* of equivalent value must be given for the spell’s component, and a “blood for blood” living sacrifice of a humanoid with an equal or greater level or Challenge Rating than the resurrected character’s value. Finally, Eoghan asks for an open-ended gift that can range from a pleasant meal to merely providing him company. The book says “basically, give him a nice gift that would please a grandfather.”*Using delerium in this manner afflicts the resurrected person with a random form of insanity.Thoughts: While paying for resurrection magic would ordinarily feel out of place in a dark fantasy or horror setting, the addition of a “blood price” along with Eoghan’s creepy nature provides an appropriately thematic feel. It also helps answer a possible question over why the faction leaders and VIPs don’t have him on payroll for resurrection. Being the highest CR NPCs in this adventure path, to bring one of them back from the dead would require killing one of the others. Limiting the sacrifice’s creature type to Humanoid further helps prevent PCs from stockpiling monster corpses for payment, and adds in the moral dilemma that it requires the death of someone who is unequivocally a person.Smithy on the Scar is an extensive mining operation by a clan of dwarves known as the Ironhelms. The meteor’s afteraffects left deep gashes in the nearby land filled with delerium, which is conveniently located near an intact Smithy that survived the onslaught from the sky. Numbering 24 in total, the Ironhelm dwarves run an efficient and lucrative business in the delerium trade. While originally paying the Queen of Thieves for protection, the dwarves grew confident and secure enough that they felt no more need of her services.As can be expected, each of the five factions have quests tying into the Ironhelms. The Queen of Thieves wants the PCs to convince the dwarves to honor their deal and destroy only enough of their mining equipment to make a statement, but not enough to prevent them from mining entirely. The Amethyst Academy and Hooded Lanterns are willing to talk business with the dwarves, the former wanting in on the delerium trade and the latter for the dwarves to build and maintain weapons for them. The Silver Order and Falling Fire want to outright stop their delerium mining, although the Silver Order would prefer the PCs to do so with minimal casualties, such as destroying their equipment and fortifications to convince them to give up.Twenty of the dwarves use either Thug and Veteran stats, but four of them are siblings who are named NPCs with individual writeups and personality traits. They use the Assassin, Gladiator, Mage, and Priest stat blocks, the classic fantasy RPG party!PCs working for the Amethyst Academy or Hooded Lanterns need to prove that their faction is reliable enough to work for, and to do that the PCs must help manage the night watch. During this time, 4 different waves of monsters will attack the Smithy: haze husks, bigger and stronger haze hulks which are as they sound,* a chimera followed by more haze husks, and a swarm of ratlings. In addition to the dwarf NPCs, the fortifications have cannon siege weapons which can be used during the battle, although the dwarves won’t let PCs use them unless they convince them they’re capable enough in handling gunpowder and firearms.*CR 4 monsters, their mutations include ripping off their own flesh to throw as an AoE attack, a trample attack, and tendrils that can grapple and reel targets towards them.The mission to sabotage the mining operation is much more open-ended, instead providing a list of brief possibilities such as stealing or igniting their gunpowder, getting them exiled from Emberwood Village, or luring enough monsters to the area to exhaust their resources. The section ends with a broad sidebar detailing a list of possible rewards and consequences regarding the Smithy’s fate and which faction(s) got the upper hand.Thoughts: While cool in concept, the “tower defense” style of resolution looks like it will be a headache to run. Not only does the DM need to juggle up to two dozen allied NPCs, they also have to manage their hit points and resources spread across four encounters. While the book notes that 6 dwarves accompany the PCs during a shift, there is the very real possibility of combat spilling over or reinforcements coming in based on PC actions.While this is more of a 2014 problem, the lack of reprinted stats for firearms and cannons means that I’ve seen a FAQ of DMs asking for stats for this section of the module as a result. Now that guns are a core option in the 2024 Player’s Handbook this should be less of a problem, but siege weapons are still in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide.<img src="http://" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />[ATTACH=full]420854[/ATTACH]Stick’s Ferry is our final entry for this chapter, detailing a convenient means of passage across the dangerous Drann River. In life, a ferryman known as Pixis Stick plied his trade via rowboat on Drakkenheim’s south side. He became a haze husk in death, but unlike others of his kind he has enough memories of his old life to continue performing his trade. Now known as the Ferryman to others, he can be paid to take passengers across the water, but he won’t sail into Drakkenheim proper. The Ferryman isn’t initially hostile, and his payment is one coin of any type per person. He will reform undamaged upon death unless Remove Curse is cast on his remains.The Ferryman keeps the coins he collects in a duck-shaped buoy containing satchels with 2,374 gold pieces in total. PCs who discretely follow him from afar may spot him returning to the buoy to add the day’s payment to his loot.Thoughts: Not really much to say. The lack of bridges outside Drakkenheim will surely necessitate using the Ferryman’s services at least once during the campaign. The gold pieces can make for a nice treasure for more inquisitive characters.Thoughts So Far: Of the nine locations, my favorites are the Black Ivory Inn for the atmosphere, the Chapel of Saint Brenna for being a thematic dungeon crawl and highlighting the faction interplay, and Reed Manor for an interesting antagonist that can be dealt with in a variety of ways. Buckledown Row feels rather empty for possible events and services, although I imagine that the authors didn’t want to detract too much from Emberwood Village or cram an unequal amount of content for primarily one faction, so this is understandable.One thing I really like is that every location that has multiple faction hooks has detailed post-adventure writeups for rewards and developments. Said rewards include Boons, but also some unique ones that help differentiate the factions’ strong points. One example is the Silver Order giving some free mounts to the PCs, should Theodor Marshal take a liking to the party after resolving the Chapel quest.Join us next time for Chapter 7, where we take a few swigs of Aqua Expurgo and venture Inside the Walls of Drakkenheim!</blockquote>

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