Even A Simple Looking Vial Can Be A Great Asset To A Young Adventurer.

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

Adventure: The Clockmaker’s Daughter

Setup: a generation ago you couldn’t visit a battlefield or costume ball without seeing one of Markus Relvolo’s marvelous clockwork soldiers. Originally a humble craftsman commissioned to create a single artificial guardsman for a noble’s estate, master Relvolo’s creation was so impressive that soon everyone, including the crown, wanted their own unsleeping guardians.   The riches rolled in, Relvolo was given a workshop and a royal commission, and soon his soldiers became emblematic of the nation’s formidable strength and forward thinking industry. 

The problem with clockwork soldiers is that however complex the mechanisms that drive their actions, they lack the common sense the gods gave to even the most brickheaded guard, being incapable of making judgement calls outside of their strict programming.  It was this strictness that led one of Relvolo’s creations to publicly and grusomely execute a trespasser on its owner’s estate. Nevermind the fact that the trespasser was a child who’d wandered from the public gardens, or that the murder happened right in front of said child’s mother, or that the noble had apparently been so protective of their front lawn they’d turned property defense to “extreme prejudice” in the clockwork’s decision making protocols. 

The scandal spread over the kingdom overnight, and by the next morning, Markus Relvolo and his creations were kicked to the curb, retroactively made monsters for the crime of another and dying in penniless infamy. 

Adventure Hooks: 

Where once they guarded palaces and temples, today most of Relvolo’s machines are consigned to the scrapheap. a paltry few were de-armed and sold as cheap labor, though most often they do backroom work, or pull night soil carts as even the lowest of the low does not want to be seen employing child-murdering machine. Poorly maintained these constructs are likely to go haywire, fulfilling their seemingly banal tasks with disastrous compliance.  The party may encounter an axewielding clockwork that having finished making firewood out of its assigned log pile has moved on to the walls of the surrounding houses.  

Heedless of their infamy, Criminals have no qualms about using these lethal automata, as their unquestioning lethality makes them Ideal muscle for those gangs capable of retaining a skilled salvage mechanic. What’s more, their ubiquity in the urban scrapheap makes them ideal boobytraps, indistinguishable from any of the other dozen clockwork hulks an unwary intruder might have passed that day.

Inheriting her father’s masterful skill and withering social stigma, Viola Relvolo, has worked her way out of squalor and is  intent on redeeming her father’s legacy. Life on the streets has given Viola no qualms about working with outlaws, and already she’s begun to weave her underworld contacts into the tentative foundations of a criminal syndicate reliant on her brilliance.  Unsatisfied with simply resurrecting her father’s creations, she labors to increase their thinking ability and reasoning, all the while equipping her criminal patrons with upgraded clockworks. 

Toxling look the purple torsos of a large spider, lacking a head or abdomen, the underside is a pale almost white color.

They have excellent hearing and leap at any creature nearby as they can hear the blood pumping through them. Once they find prey they latch on and several stingers on the bottom of its body stab into the creature. Should it fall prey to their poisons they begin to slurp out the digested insides through a special mouth part in the center of their body.

Their carapace hides a thing layer of gases that isolate all sound coming from inside the toxlings body preventing them from interfering with the toxlings sense of hearing, however should this gas heat up it is violently flammable.

Bigger man kraken thing here enjoy

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.

Resource: 1d100 Random Mysterious Objects

Have you ever wanted to give your players something weird but not powerful, just to leave them scratching their heads? Or maybe your campaign starts with a rat-infested cellar, where the players find something strange that kickstarts their adventure to become legendary heroes. Want to introduce a mystery, plot hook, original loot, or a clue for a puzzle? These rolling tables should help!

This resource provides a d100 rolling table of random mundane or magical objects that leave your players wondering. Where did it come from? What's its purpose? Who made it? The other two tables provide you with options for the object's original purpose, and its current or original owner or creator! Maybe the BBEG demilich uses that portrait of a lost companion to draw power from, or that strange copper cube is actually a complicated key that opens the tomb of a long-dead legendary hero. The possibilities are endless!

For better, full-page high quality imagery, take a look at “1d100 Random Mysterious Objects” at the Homebrewery here!