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amazing! Awesome! Never forget the utility of home brew for writing prompts.
Dungeon: The Veiled Palace
Sorrow pervades this valley, the painful ache that remains after tears and screams have exhausted themselves and the body can only linger on in faltering surrender. You can feel it in the rain, in the rocks, in the chill of the wind as it pulls the mirth from your bones.
Setup: Forlorn and forgotten thought it may be, the Veiled palace was said to have been constructed by a besotted celestial and played home to a succession of demigod warlords before it and the surrounding lands were reclaimed by nature at the end of the last civil war, transforming into a vast hinterland ripe for exploration.
Hooks:
Though the warlords have been gone for generations, their most cunning servants, a coterie of assassins live on, location concealed by ancient enchantments that cloak their fortress and their movements in near impenetrable mist. They now sell their services to the innumerable nobles and merchants of the lowlands as the “Serpent-Unseen”, a group the party will only hear of after taking an innocuous job that sees their prospective employer killed half way through and the party hastily pinned for the crime.
In addition to the isolated human villages in mountains, there are also encalves of aarakocra and jaguar-tabaxi in the region, both of whom retain scraps of lore about the palace and its formation, but have become increasingly unfriendly towards outsiders of late. Someone has been wandering their territory and ensnaring their people through the use of a bewitching flute, and all those who try to rescue the ensorceled are never heard from again.
Tales in local roadhouses tell of Tamha, a long vanished village in the mountains that once traded in heavenly treasures, some beautiful or powerful beyond beleif. While these rumors may incite the party to start combing the rainforest for trinkets, they’ve also inspired the Serpent-Unseen’s latest leader, Janbek the collector, aspirations for his organization far above being petty cutthroats. Having found a few of these trinkets ( such as the flute), the collector realizes that the Veiled palace is a storehouse of powerful enchantments that could lead him and his people to true power far beyond the swords and poisons they currently wield.
Those traveling high into the mountains should be wary, as to hear the locals tell it a soaking wet ghost that appears wandering the roads in the area dazed and confused, bloodless save for the silvery ichor which drips down from a bone-bearing gash in his head. As the ghost story goes, should the specter clasp you in his deathly grip, you’ll start to drown on land, all while he pleads with you to help him find his way home, dissolving into tears should his victim fight their way free.
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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.
Magic Shop: The Ascendant Apothecary
“New lofty location: Same low prices!”
Setup: While exploring a town in the highlands, the players come across a rather obvious crater at the edge of the settlement, obviously unnatural in origin. Asking around, they discover that the damage was caused when the town’s alchemist decided to pack up shop and leave town after one too many of his clients complained of unsatisfactory side effects in his creations. Though most thought him nothing more than a feckless swindler, the Alchemist Jashik Meuller, apparently managed enough magic to rip his shop and its surrounding anchorage free of the earth and have it float up into the mountains. Though the anger that nearly had Meuller chased out of town by a mob has long faded, his neighbors remember him with little fondness, instead spinning tall tales about al the mischief his creations caused.
Adventure Hooks:
Before he was a village apothecary, Meuller spent years as a traveling huckster attempting to use his middling magical power to charm the powerful into giving him patronage. Invariably one of his slapdash spells causes trouble, and the party are hired to seek him out in the hopes of putting right the chaos he inadvertently caused. Following rumors of his antics, the party eventually finds themselves at the edge of the crater left behind by his sudden departure: and the dangerous, chilly mountain they’ll have to climb if they want to finally track the man down.
While traveling in the mountains, the party runs across a young woman gathering herbs and other small ingredients in the foothills. This is Jashik’s daughter Lisbyth, who’s spent the last ten out of her sixteen years following her father about from one scheme to the next. Unbothered by a life of constant change and frequent “misunderstandings”, she’s delighted to have someone new to talk to as she completes her chores. When it looks like a sudden storm may force the party to find shelter for the evening, Lisbyth suggests that they might shelter in her father’s shop and warm themselves by their hearth.
The Strangely coloured clouds that’ve started drifting down from the mountain are getting a very mixed reception: No one minded the spiraling clouds which rained beautiful hues of light, and the glinting ones that drizzled pennies across the trade river was quite an event, but the pokadotted ones that hail needles, or the mottled sort that rain mice are ill received by the populace. These clouds are caused by the oblivious Jashik “evaporating” the remnants of his failed experiments with a newly built machine, and someone needs to go up the mountain and inform him before he starts a truly disastrous period of trial and error.
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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.
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.