Something This Anon Has Wanted To Explore Many A Time- An Adventure Wherein Traditionally 'evil' Creatures

Something this anon has wanted to explore many a time- an adventure wherein traditionally 'evil' creatures go through a reverse dungeon crawl- escaping the fortress in order to desert the Dark Lord's armies!

Campaign Starter: From Under the Shadow

No where to go but up

Setup:  More than a mere underdark fortress, Ykandri’s Shackle is a marvel of engineering and hubris that only the Duergar could have managed. Filled with visions of industry and conquest, the architects tasked with building a simple lift through a miles long fissure through the world below let their ambitions sprawl, becoming a make-work project for their subterranean empire and a monument to the pride of their succession of dour and powermad rulers. 

Like any expansionist Military power, the Duergar of the “Great-Chain” conscript their defeated foes and societal rejects to do the worst of the labor, toiling away to expand the warrens supporting the Shackle or fending off the beasts of he dark vastness that infest the surrounding caverns. This is where we find our party, the lowest of the low, captives bound together by their mutual desire for escape. 

 Adventure Hooks: 

While freedom is their primary goal, the party must keep up appearances and thier first mission will be a crawl through an mine and adjoining excavation site that has recently become infested with underdark pests. This will give them a chance to show off their characters and you an opportunity to hammer home just how miserable life on the Shackle really is. What’s more, having them return victorious and then being forced to hand over their gear and trophies under threat of lashes will set up great minor taskmaster/guards villains that they can avenge themselves against on the way out. 

Have them plan their escape like a heist, rolling out a hastily drawn sketch of the Shackle standing between them and nearby underdark portals. Lay out what sidetasks they may need to perform or challenges they’ll need to overcome to get the resources they’ll need for their escape.  

While preparing for their great escape, the party hear whisperings of  some tumult among the upper ranks of the Clan’s hierarchy, something to do with a prisoner and the overreach of the notoriously wicked spymaster. Leadership may shuffle from time to time but the lot of those captive in the Shackle never does. “ Different Boot, Same Neck” goes the saying... at least it does until a blinding burst of divine light suffuses the fissure and a band of high-level heroes from the surface world come to rescue that prisoner and bring the Tyrants of the Great Chain down in the process. Pull this trigger before your party is fully ready to escape, or just as things go righteously wrong after they’ve decided to attempt a more risky escape.  It’ll be clear they need to get out while the getting’s good, now having to sprint through a warzone rather than sneak through a prison. 

Portals in the underdark are tricky things, leading an escaping party to all manner of potential locales ( that they may might not know ahead of time unless they stole the right information). Maybe they’ll end up in a disused mine on the outskirts of a city of new beginnings, a far cavern trading post with fortunes waiting to be made,    a friendly settlement of exiles and make their reputation while defending its swampy borders. Perhaps somewhere even more strange? 

Operation of the Shackle:   The Shackle was built to ferry supplies, thralls, and soldiers en-mass across the great altitudes of the fissure, a task that could otherwise take days of marching or carting and be equivalent to descending a tall mountain. Instead, cargo is loaded from one level into an adjoining  fortified platform attached to the great chain, which is raised as the other side decends, until it comes level with another  platform. Cargo from one is loaded into the other, and then the mechanism reverses, sending the first platform down while the second platform ascends the way it came. By this way are the Shackle’s contents moved where they need to go by way of an overly elaborate, two way bucket chain, a process important to know should the party seek to escape their current level, or later should they wish to return to the site of their imprisonment and raid its ruins. 

Future Adventures: 

During the hatching of their escape plan, the party are slipped a few vital supplies by a drider merchant who did a little black market business on the shackle and took a shine to them in the process. Delighted to find the party no worse for ware ( despite possibly hopping dimensions) and that they’re now in a position to afford his more exclusive stock, the drider will be happy to send them on missions to fill their pockets then sell them things to empty them again. 

The Party and their favorite spider boy aren't the only survivors of the Shackle, as one of the mercenary captains hired to keep order in the prison fortress has made it out with a newly formed legion of followers, and is interested in carving out a new territory for himself that just so happens to include the party’s new home.  

It’s inevitable that the party left unfinished business on the Shackle, and some time into their adventures they may feel the call to return to their one time prison/home. Thoroughly in shambles after the heroes hit it with everything they had, the seat of empire has now become a patchwork of warlords fighting over the remnants of power, with vast stretches inhabited by the beasts of underdark attracted by the slaughter. Bonus points if the party runs into the pests they first fended off in the mines, grown in size, threat and swarming number without their population being culled. 

House Hunters: D&D Edition. 

Alright, on a more serious note, I was inspired by a recent ask to redo my original building generator that I made a while back (and add a lot more tables and detail to it). It’s by no means an end-all-be-all set of rolling tables, just an outline to get things started and developed. Have fun looking for a home base for your adventurers!

The artwork used is stock by Fumar-Porros. They create all of it using SketchUp and Photoshop. It’s really impressive!

Buy Me a Coffee?

Even a simple looking vial can be a great asset to a young adventurer.

Dare: The Glittering Reef: 

“While the dragon may long be dead, there’s more than one predator in these waters. You best be quick if you wish to claim your prize.“

Setup: Generations ago the crystal clear waters of the Ildathan coast ran red with blood, as a terrible archdrake terrorized the trade routes and savaged any merchant ship it caught eyes on. Known to locals as Hullraker, this beast would use its powerful claws to crack open the body of ships to gorge itself on sailors and treasure alike. 

While its a myth that dragons eat gold, they do sometimes devour valuable objects to spit up into their hordes later. This habbit would eventually lead to the drake’s defeat, as a group of clever pirates tired of the drake’s meddling caste a series of golden cannonballs, then hollowed them out and filled them with black powder, and an alchemical compound that would ignite after being exposed to the drake’s insides for some length of time.  Loading up a dummy ship with their deadly decoys and piles of coin as bait, they watched in glee as the drake’s belly exploded mid air, showering the sea with golden shrapnel and sending Hullraker plunging into the reef below. 

The Challenge: Since the time of its death, treasure hunters have paddled out to the glimmering reef in the hopes of  reclaiming a portion of the dragons last, fatal meal. Having stripped most of the upper reef clear of coins. Now after years of plundering only the strongest of divers can make it down to the dark, shark infested shelf of the reef where the dragon’s bones and the bulk of its treasure remains. Tradition is that each diver only takes a single coin, and while one gold piece isn’t much to an adventure, a “drowned queen” (one of the particular printing of coins the pirates used for the bulk of their bait) is a mighty prize among sailors and other folk of the sea, said to confer the luck and cunning of the pirates that took Hullraker down. 

Stone drakes themselves look like living statues, seeming like ornate carved stone. As drakes they lack wings and move around on all fours. When they bite creatures, so long as the drake can see, its eyes force transmutation upon the victim, petrifying them. It uses these eyes to reanimate creatures to serve it, and its lairs are full of them. Adventurers must act quickly to save fallen allies, as after 24 hours the creature dies, and the servant is no different than a zombie. The stone drakes eyes are useful for a wide variety of transmutation effects, such as spell components, creating spell scrolls, or magical items.

Lair actions under the cut

Lair Actions

On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), the drake takes a lair action to cause one of the following effects; the drake can’t use the same effect two rounds in a row:

Up to 3 statues in the lair that the drake can see reanimate, make a single weapon attack, before repetrifying.

One statue in the lair that the drake can see reanimates, breaths or otherwise creates a 60 foot cone, any creatures must make a DC 14 Dexterity or Constitution (DM's choice) saving throw or take 21 (6d6) damage of the dms choice of type.

Ooooookay, so I did some proofreading, formatted the thing, and made it a bit nicer to look at. This took me faaaar longer than I wanted it too, and I’m not even done. Since this is a playtest I only included the single fortification type (walls), and have kept the maneuver system simple to avoid any complications since there are so many systems working in unison here. I know this is definitely going to need tweaks, but for now it’s at least usable. I need to find some time to do some dry runs with it to work out the kinks but things are for too hectic right now to be able to set aside time for mechanical testing. If anyone gets a chance to go over this please let me know how it goes!

As always, questions and comments are welcome. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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