Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9457870" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/F6jrxEl.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Verinwine ValeBarring the capital of Cimbrine, each of Gnolune’s major regions take up one hex and follow a similar format: an outline of 7-8 major locations with relevant NPCs and events/quest hooks present; a d6 table of Rumors that can tip the party off to current goings on; NPCs local to the area and what they Want out of life or present goals; and a d8 table of Random Encounters, which includes hostile fights as well as less-hostile encounters for some local flavor. For the major locations, 2-3 of them are detailed as their own independent entries in this book, usually dungeons and the like.Verinwine Vale is your idyllic rural valley with cozy-looking cottages and lush farmland. Imagine the Shire but being mostly human. It is also home to the city of Cimbrine, and its geographic position is equidistant and adjacent to all other regions. Some interesting locations include the inviting Ten Thorn Tavern that is actually a safehouse for the Riverkeeper League; Broggle Hill, which contains a ruined tower often home to altering groups of poets, bandits, and stargazers; and the town of Estelat, whose local legal loopholes allow people to duel on the other side of the river, and the ruling Quern noble family wear masks at all times. Regarding some interesting NPCs, we have Fortimus d’Anwin, the traveling minstrel who steers adventurers into dangerous situations in hopes of gaining enough inspiration to pen the bloodiest song ever; Sister Sussura, the owner of an orphanage who secretly supplies child laborers to Dagin Quern in order to pay off her gambling debt; Baron Scilis, a nobleman who murdered Dagin Quern and assumed that one’s identity in order to destroy the Quern legacy from within; and Thirsty Benyam, a wandering drunk who can be found in various taverns and can answer questions truthfully by going into a magical trance on the full moon, provided that he is first gifted an alcoholic beverage.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/ULOrBZP.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The Ignoble Court is a monthly gathering during the full moon, attended by fey, monsters, and outcasts of all sorts who act as the loose governing body of all those deemed outlaws and illegal by Gnolunian society.If PCs fail to show respect for a dead monster or otherwise treat it cruelly, the Ignoble Court will send them a summons where they must stand trial for their crime. The Court runs on Unseelie fairy logic, where attendants are as good as their word but love various types of competition to make things interesting. Trials can be determined a variety of ways, with examples such as singing competitions, reading the entrails of a slain animal, or invoking the random nature of Chaos via a coin flip, die roll, or similar activity. Their more “fun” games include hunting kidnapped people through the forest and letting the victor eat them as a reward, playing a kind of Russian Roulette but with poisoned wine cups, and roasting each other with the wittiest insults they can think of.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/RyO817Z.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The Wandering Tower is a mobile location, not tied down to any one place on the map. It is home to an order of Tower Knights, with civilian Stone Servants attending to its maintenance and upkeep. These people are all regular humans, having come to the Tower via dreams, and act as defenders of the common folk. The Tower is bound to no particular land, appearing where tyrants rule unopposed and the Tower Knights ride out to administer justice. Due to this, they are respected by Gnolune’s commoners and the Riverkeeper League, but hated by the Conclave and Silvered Nobles.The Tower’s inhabitants have a secret mission; the search for Saint Selos, a former king who achieved enlightenment after receiving a heavenly vision. He came to the conclusion that the ideal society is one where everyone is equal and each person is like a king unto themselves. Saint Selos is a prisoner of the Conclave in the Tower of the First Heresy, bound by shackles that prevent others from finding him via divination. If freed, the Tower will learn of his location and seek him out.But besides the freeing of a Saint, the people of the Tower have four sample quests and rewards for adventurers, such as retrieving the body of a Stone Servant killed by monsters or looking into the troubles of Little Motte in the region of Becqueshire (detailed later in this book). Four rewards are provided as well, such as gaining a tome full of secret knowledge determined by the DM, or a magical hammer that can easily break doors and other obstacles but makes a shrill, piercing sound upon doing so.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/46kSLWf.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Sunbelow Abbey is the major dungeon of Verinwine Vale, a 21-room, 3-story complex that has seen better days. The former home of the monastic Vindiminine Order of the Conclave, a small group of monks learned of buried treasure in their vineyard and ended up resorting to murder in order to keep its location secret from the others. This evil act woke one of the fivefold facets of the Drunken God, who began hunting down and murdering the rest of the Abbey’s inhabitants and then turning them into undead. The undead monks now look for human sacrifices to revive the rest of the Drunken God’s facets, and by the time the PCs arrive two of them have manifested in the world. The Abbey was formerly renowned for brewing a unique magical beverage known as Deepshine Umbral, harvested from the fruits growing on Deepshine vines. The vines are the result of the Drunken God’s influence, and now they grow out of control, twisting through the Abbey’s rooms.The Abbey has a Ritual Clock, a metagame measurement reflecting the monks’ progress in reviving the Drunken God. They need one sacrifice for each remaining facet. The Drunken God’s facets are moderately powerful monsters who each have their own unique special ability. For example, the Clown can tell a joke so funny that a target dies laughing on a failed save, while the Boor says a swear word that causes an inanimate object to break apart. The facets are immune to non-magical, non-silver weapons, and all have their own immediate desires on what they’ll do and where they’ll go once resurrected. For instance, the Bully will try to convince the PCs to kill the knights and wasps inhabiting the Abbey, or kill the PCs if he thinks they know too much. Their Hit Die and Hit Points grow based on the number of awakened facets, so in addition to being more of them they all get stronger, so PCs who take too many losses or leave too many bodies within easy reach and transportation for the monks can quickly get overwhelmed if they opt to fight the Drunken God.The rate of the monk’s progress can differ depending on how much the PCs get involved. While murdering party members and taking them to the ritual space is one way for monks to advance the Clock, a second faction in the dungeon provides ample opportunity. They are the Knights of the Upended Goblet, a group of warriors who got addicted to the Abbey’s magically addictive alcohol and are unaware of the monks’ true nature.The third faction in the dungeon are the paperwork wasps, giant sapient wasps who occupied the Abbey’s bell tower in the name of their queen and built a huge hive visible from the outside. The wasps are the exemplar of Lawful Stupid, viewing their Queen as a godlike figure without fault and enforcing her constantly-changing, nonsensical laws. These laws randomly update each time the PCs encounter a new group and there’s a d8 table for determining What Is Forbidden and Under What Circumstances. Three of the laws are random, but one of them bans talking in the northern corridor, for the vines located there grow in size from the presence of spoken words and can quickly overwhelm the area in dense foliage.As for how these factions relate to each other, the Monks are obviously secretly hostile to the Knights, and regard the Wasps as a useful pawn to fight them. The Knights can’t stand the Wasps and there’s already been some fights between them, and the Wasps regard the Monks as potentially useful yet lacking in the brains department. One of the Knights secretly plots to betray their leader in order to keep more Deepshine Umbral for himself. None of the factions start out as hostile to the PCs by default, but this can change based on the party’s actions within Sunbelow Abbey.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/v0yNT5t.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Some of the interesting areas in the dungeon include paperwork wasps manning the entrance, who will ask for the PC’s names to jot down and warn them of a randomly-determined law; the murdered abbot’s body in his quarters, which contains a personal journal detailing fears of corruption among the monks as well as a set of magical chimes which can expend a charge to can kill undead who fail a saving throw within hearing range; casks and bottles of Deepshine Umbral that can bestow a variety of random effects, such as healing and restoring spent spells or causing hindering visions and addiction; a book of herbalism in a trashed infirmary, which if studied grants the reader knowledge in preparing a variety of recipes, which have their own sidebar of 6 remedies and accompanying rules; the chapel, which houses the ghosts of the three monks responsible for the murder, who all have their own conflicting desires and requests for the PCs, such as one who wants to move on and wants the party to use the magical chimes to destroy them, another who wants the Drunken God’s facets slain in hopes of reviving (this won’t return them to life), and a third who wants the PCs to conduct a necromantic ritual under false pretenses to consume the other ghosts and grow in power; the buried treasure cache out in the vineyard which can be found via two halves of a treasure map elsewhere in the dungeon; the wasp queen’s hive in the belltower, and PCs who obeyed her laws may be granted an audience and given minor quests in the form of Royal Tasks with magical scrolls as a reward; and a subterranean lake crypt that contains Saint Jeseldyr, a heroic slayer of gods.For the last area mentioned, PCs who show respect via an offering of fresh vegetables will summon the Saint’s spirit. An opportunity to swear an Oath of the Harvest is provided, which basically involves destroying fonts of supernatural evil in order to make a better world, and a PC who swears will be offered a unique magic sickle known as Caladfalx. It’s a d8 weapon that deals additional damage to enchanted/constructed/summoned creatures, and can destroy a magical item. The sickle becomes dulled immediately upon destroying such an item, but can be restored to its former power after a day of cutting grain.As for the outcome of the Drunken God’s fate, PCs who manage to banish his facets from the world cause the surviving monks to become living again as their souls return, and will reward the PCs as they set about cleaning up the Abbey and driving out the paperwork wasps. The surviving Knights will also depart, having grown bored of the place. If all five facets of the Drunken God are restored, he will use the Abbey as a base for spreading the doctrine of the Forever Feast, with the long-term goal of turning Gnolune and eventually all of Wildendrem into a riotous forever festival of non-stop partying. If the PCs are on positive terms with the God, they have the opportunity to swear the Oath of Revelry, which revolves around decreasing glumness and increasing merriment, finding ways to encourage celebration, and revolts against the staid and the powerful.Thoughts So Far: Verinwine Vale provides a strong first impression of Gnolune’s weird yet deadly saccharine atmosphere. There’s a theme of selfish happiness present, from the Ignoble Court’s jaded sadism as enforcers of the Valley’s monstrous underbelly, to the Drunken God’s planned society. The paperwork wasps’ insistence on irrational laws serves as a contrast against the irresponsible-seeming Knights, painting a picture of an Abbey where just about everyone is mad in some unique way.The smaller local locations and NPCs provide for nice touches, being more mundane and down-to-earth in comparison yet have their own eccentricities and dark secrets. There’s ample material when it comes to the DM fashioning personalized adventures from them, and the existing adventure hooks and rumors tie nicely into other locations and even hexes with listed page numbers for convenience. This chapter alone instills in me a strong desire to run this adventure, and I otherwise have no real complaints so far.Join us next time as we venture into the Brobdin Wood, home of the Riverkeeper rebels, a cursed knight and remorseful monster, and a wizard’s tower turned upside-down from a literal fallen star!</blockquote>

Verification