D&D 5E (2014) my First Eberron campaign!

[Parmandur]

I'm not going to run The Lost City. Wasn't to my taste. But I could potentially include Zargon as a daelkyr in some other fashion. I particularly like "When a Star Falls", and I think my group will enjoy it since it includes two groups of gnomes for their all-gnome party to encounter.

Ope, misread that! The Pyramid being an ancient Hobgoblin king still makes sense...and Zargon transplanted might still be a good idea?

 

[pukunui]

Ope, misread that! The Pyramid being an ancient Hobgoblin king still makes sense...and Zargon transplanted might still be a good idea?

No worries! I suppose it doesn't help that The Lost City includes a ziggurat partially buried by sand and Pharaoh includes an Egyptian-style pyramid!

If I use Zargon, it won't be till later, I think. He's a bit too strong for 6th level PCs.

 

[Parmandur]

No worries! I suppose it doesn't help that The Lost City includes a ziggurat partially buried by sand and Pharaoh includes an Egyptian-style pyramid!

If I use Zargon, it won't be till later, I think. He's a bit too strong for 6th level PCs.

Kind of a weird amount if conceptual overlap for the same anthology, I suppose?

 

[pukunui]

So last session I started running Beyond the Crystal Cave. I substituted Tantamar in the Lhazaar Principalities for Sybarate, and the Eternal Garden is located in Thelanis, but otherwise I've not changed much.

We managed to get through the preliminary stuff and then the PCs fought their way through the Cave of Echoes. We finished just as they all stepped through the portal to the garden. Although there's not a lot of combat opportunities in the garden itself, I still expect it to take us about two sessions to play through it.

Once we finish this adventure, the PCs will gain a level, and I'll run the next Golden Vault adventure (Vidorant's Vault).

I'm also thinking I'll end this campaign around level 12, as there's not a lot of content to use after that point. (The final Golden Vault adventure is for level 11, for instance.) I would like to use the Ruined Colossus section from Vecna: Eve of Ruin, but I'd probably have to downgrade it a bit since it's for level 13.

 

[pukunui]

We just finished Beyond the Crystal Cave. It was fun. They managed to figure things out in the Eternal Garden quickly and without visiting all the locations, and then because they all went into the tomb, they all got a wish. One wish went towards freeing the lovers from their enchantment, then another wish went toward conjuring up a 25,000 gp gem-encrusted crown (which they intend to break up and sell to buy some property most likely), the third wish went towards giving the four of them resistance to psychic damage, and then the last wish was for the party plus the lovers to be teleported back to the lovers' hometown shortly after they'd left (which let them avoid the Feywild time distortion effect! I'd been keeping track and they would have returned six months later if they hadn't used one of their wishes in that way.)

The PCs are now 7th level!

I know I said before that I was going to run Vidorant's Vault next, but I'm thinking I might actually run one of the older Eberron adventures instead - either Steel Shadows or Crypt of Crimson Stars. I've got a few weeks till our next session, so I'll read over both and see which one takes my fancy.

 

[pukunui]

Since I am intending to run Vecna Vol: Eve of Ruin for my group later, I am now wondering if it might be worth running Eyes of the Lich Queen after all as a sort of foreshadowing. I think I’d want to run it just for a single level not as a 5-9 adventure. I might aim to make it a level 8 adventure and just beef up the early stuff (and tone down the final fight if need be).

EDiT: I initially opted to skip Grasp of the Emerald Claw but now I am thinking about running it after all as well. I want to get the players used to the Emerald Claw as antagonists.

 

[pukunui]

I recently ran "Song of the Sky" from the Oracle of War series. This features an Emerald Claw necromancer named Irullan Karnach as the main baddie. In the Oracle of War series, she has a magic item called the Crystal Skull that enhances the attuned wielder's undead-related spells and also allows them to cast Raise Dead 1/week.

I am pondering making Karnach a recurring baddie. Perhaps she has a minion attune to the skull so they can cast Raise Dead on her if she dies. OR maybe it works more like a lich's phylactery, in that it casts Raise Dead on the attuned wielder automatically with the process taking 1 week. However, maybe it slowly and secretly turns the attuned wielder undead!

The PCs killed Karnach when they confronted her in "Song of the Sky". I'm not sure what they did with her body, but I want her to return as a recurring antagonist since I am going to have the Emerald Claw be the main baddies leading into Vol: Eve of Ruin.

I am running an upscaled conversion of the 3.5e Eberron intro adventure, "The Forgotten Forge", at the moment. I made Glaive, the warforged from Eve of Ruin's Mournland chapter be the assassin at the start of the adventure, and I've been considering having Karnach show up at the end. But then I thought maybe that's too soon, so I've replaced her with a Bone Knight. But maybe she could be there with the Bone Knight, monologue for a bit, then leave? Just to show the PCs that she's still alive and is playing a long game? (She doesn't really care if the PCs defeat her minions here, because she can still claim the macguffin they're retrieving later.)

I'm going to be running Grasp of the Emerald Claw soon. I can either replace Garrow (this adventure's Emerald Claw baddie) with Karnach, or I could have a scene where the PCs see Garrow conversing with Karnach (Star Wars hologram style maybe) so they know she's involved somehow.

Eyes of the Lich Queen features a recurring Emerald Claw baddie named Dura ir'Matellan. IIRC she's a Blood of Vol cleric. The PCs can kill her several times, and she keeps coming back, with her final appearance being as an undead creature. I suppose it might be a bit silly to have two recurring Emerald Claw baddies who keep coming back and ultimately become undead at the end, so I could either replace Dura with Karnach or just have Dura be the initial Emerald Claw baddie and then have Karnach take her place later in the adventure.

And then, when I get to Vol: Eve of Ruin, instead of having Kaius take Kas' place in the adventure, I can have Karnach be the secret spy. She wants to usurp Vol's ritual for herself. I'll have the Wizards Three be Chamber agents. Narcy of Xandrar (secretly a gold dragon) from "The Last Word" can stand in for Alustriel Silverhand, while Sur'kil (secretly a silver dragon) from Eyes of the Lich Queen can stand in for Mordenkainen. Karnach, now a lich and masquerading as someone else, can be the secret traitor and the Tasha stand-in. Just gotta figure out who she's pretending to be.

 

[JConstantine]

I am pondering making Karnach a recurring baddie. Perhaps she has a minion attune to the skull so they can cast Raise Dead on her if she dies. OR maybe it works more like a lich's phylactery, in that it casts Raise Dead on the attuned wielder automatically with the process taking 1 week. However, maybe it slowly and secretly turns the attuned wielder undead!

I'd go with the phylactery idea because relying on a minion to cast raise dead a. requires her to trust said minion, b. requires the minion to be loyal enough to do it, and c. requires that minion to actually be alive and attuned to do so (and we all know what adventurers are like).

But then I thought maybe that's too soon, so I've replaced her with a Bone Knight. But maybe she could be there with the Bone Knight, monologue for a bit, then leave? Just to show the PCs that she's still alive and is playing a long game?

Assuming the phylactery idea, I think whether it's too soon will depend on how much in-game time has passed. If she does show up, the players are very likely going to try to kill her again.

I'm going to be running Grasp of the Emerald Claw soon. I can either replace Garrow (this adventure's Emerald Claw baddie) with Karnach, or I could have a scene where the PCs see Garrow conversing with Karnach (Star Wars hologram style maybe) so they know she's involved somehow.

I prefer the latter idea, if only because it shows that this isn't Karnach's one woman band.

Eyes of the Lich Queen features a recurring Emerald Claw baddie named Dura ir'Matellan. IIRC she's a Blood of Vol cleric. The PCs can kill her several times, and she keeps coming back, with her final appearance being as an undead creature. I suppose it might be a bit silly to have two recurring Emerald Claw baddies who keep coming back and ultimately become undead at the end, so I could either replace Dura with Karnach or just have Dura be the initial Emerald Claw baddie and then have Karnach take her place later in the adventure.

On the one hand, having two villains with the same gimmick is repetitive, but on the other it can reinforce the idea that this is the Emerald Claw's schtick and why they're so hard to stamp out. How it comes across at the table will largely come down to execution.
All this said, having Karnach, Garrow and Dura might water things down too much, so I'd probably choose two. Either keep Garrow and fill Dura's role with Karnach, or replace Garrow with Karnach and have her conversing with Dura in the holocall homage. And if you haven't already, I'd maybe drop mention of Lady Illmarrow just to hint that it's even wider spread.

 

[pukunui]

I am running Pharaoh from Quests from the Infinite Staircase next. After some major indecision, I settled on the book's suggestion of placing the adventure in the Blade Desert.

I'm making it a post-Dhakaani Empire goblinoid kingdom named Bakaar. So Amun Sa and most of the undead in the tomb were hobgoblins in life, while some were bugbears or goblins. The Dhakaani Empire fell about 5000 years before Eberron's present day. Since the real Pyramids of Giza are 4500 years old, that works nicely!

The Tears of Athis are a group of goblinoids from Darguun who claim descent from the Bakaarans. The two siblings on guard duty at the entrance will be bugbears, while Iaseda will be a hobgoblin, and her assistants will be goblins.

The dead elves in the maze were a Valenar warband. I'm getting rid of the doppelgangers because I just can't be bothered trying to make their deception work. Instead, the Valenar will have been skeletonized by scarab swarms (Van Richten's). There will be a double-bladed scimitar in the room. I'm thinking I'll have the PCs encounter a Valenar warband (which may have been tracking the Tears of Athis) on their way back to the Infinite Staircase door. They can potentially hand over the scimitar as a peace offering. Otherwise they might have to fight the Valenar.

The Hands of Plenty bandit gang will be a group of downtrodden humans from Valenar (the ones descended from Khunan migrants who were first oppressed by Cyran nobles and then by the Valenar). I'm also making Cateline a Bandit Deceiver instead of a Bandit Captain.

Uma the lone surviving adventurer will be a Cyran avenger. She will come from the group planning a suicide attack on Valenar in retribution for the slaughter of Cyran refugees on the Day of Mourning. (This is a little snippet taken from one of Keith Baker's Dragon magazine articles.) If the PCs find her and ally with her, she'll try to convince the three of them who are Cyran refugees to join her cause - or they can try and talk her out of hers.

My PCs are all level 8, and I won't level them up during the adventure. At CR 6, Nafik seems a little underpowered. I know he's got his animated fist, some shadows, some ochre jellies, a wall of flame, and such to help him out, but I still reckon he'll fall too easily, so I'm going to give him max HP. (Interestingly, while the 2025 mummy lord has a higher CR, Nafik is actually a bit tougher in some regards.)

I'm going to have Nafas give the PCs a little hint about the offering bowl's teleportation effect because that is a potential chokepoint. (I know it makes sense within the context of the adventure.) I'm also going to make it hard but not impossible for the PCs to climb up the water chute between P6 and P18 (the adventure doesn't say anything about going up, just down).

I've adjusted the desert random encounters a little bit - I've added a Flame Storm (hazard from Tasha's) as a Fernian manifest zone effect, along with a Flaywind (another hazard from Tasha's) as a Shavarath manifest zone effect. I've also added a group of Talenta halflings who can trade for food and water. I'm not going to roll for the random encounters ahead of time. I like not knowing what's going to happen on the day. (I'll also roll for things like hours of extreme heat at the table. I can't tell ahead of time if the players will decide to travel during the day or wait and travel at night and so on.)

I'm looking forward to seeing how the PCs react when the Tears of Athis ask them to hand over Amun Sa's Staff of Ruling and the Star Gem of Mo-Pelaar (since they want the PCs to leave all items of "cultural, historical, or religious significance" in the pyramid). They'll argue that Amun Sa said they could have them, but even though the Tears of Athis will get a glimpse of his ghost at the end, he speaks to the PCs telepathically, so the PCs will have a hard time convincing the Tears that they can have those two most special items.