Stories of misfortune are often exaggerated, especially when they have been retold many times. For that reason, most people aren't taking seriously the claim that a sea monster living along the coast is eating whole ships full of sailors and swallowing entire families. But there's no denying a few facts -- the town of Lochfell is losing its citizens to a sea monster (one that walks on water no less), someone is stealing that same town's dead, and ships are beginning to choose other ports for unloading their goods. Such a scenario could doom the residents of the small port town to either a monster's gullet or the poorhouse. No one seems to know whether the town's two ongoing problems are connected, but the sea monster never leaves behind a corpse to bury. Is it collecting bodies for some dark purpose? Or did some more powerful evil creature create the sea monster to do its dirty work? Someone in Lochfell knows the answer, and it's up to the PCs to find it out. Lochfell’s Secret is a short D&D adventure for four 15th level player characters (PCs). The story is set in and around the port town of Lochfell. You can place the action in any section of your campaign world where a coastal town on a bay might exist. If there is a small town that the PCs visited in a past adventure but haven’t returned to in quite a while, so much the better. As always, feel free to adapt the material presented here as you see fit to make it work with your campaign.
Wherein a solid plan to ransom captured wands turns sour for three friends and their employees, and a local luminary loses his tongue.
When Pathfinder Colm Safan entered the Nethys-linked heart of the fabled dungeon known as the Ravenous Sphinx, the Pathfinder Society expected to solve one of Osirion's greatest riddles. Months passed with no word from Safan, and you and your fellow Pathfinders find yourselves dispatched into the desolate wastes of Osirion's notorious Parched Dunes to find the sphinx, find Safan, and uncover the mystery he sought. With a band of cloaked riders on your trail and a trap-filled dungeon ahead, will you solve the third riddle before time runs out?
Despite the bitter cold that reigns here nine months of the year, the Timberway Forest has long been a source of prosperity for civilized folk who live nearby. Many trappers and hunters spend the better part of the year within its borders, stockpiling furs and meat to trade in the frontier towns to the south, where they spend their winters. Most feel that the value of these commodities makes braving the Timberway Forest worth the risk. Recently, though, a small group of trappers and hunters has awakened a terrible new menace in the forest. Based in a remote hunter's abode called the Bluerock Lodge, they hunted the animals of the woods more out of a deep-seated desire to be cruel than a need to feed themselves. In particular, they focused their hateful attention on the local Timberway lion population. Timberway lions are rather small (more like leopards), but they are known for being lithe and wary. Still, the trappers had the advantage of intelligence and tools, and before long they had slaughtered the entire pride save for its leader. As the winter worsened and game grew ever more scarce, this last surviving lion began to starve. At that point, the darker forces of nature took notice, and the Timberway Forest gained a predator like no other. Frozen Whispers is a short D&D adventure for four 3rd-level player characters (PCs). The scenario is set mostly in and near a remote hunter’s lodge in a snowy forest. The scenario can be placed in any cold area of your campaign world that features a remote tract of woodland—a copse of trees near the arctic circle, a swath of taiga near the treeline on a high mountainside, or even a normally temperate forest caught in the grip of an unnaturally snowy winter. As always, feel free to adapt the material presented here as you see fit to make it work with your campaign.
The characters have escaped the maze only to find themselves in strange dimensions of fire, stone and ice, and a strange idyllic hunting ground where all is not as it appears.
A new D&D adventure for first-level characters. Scourge of the Howling Horde is a D&D adventure for first-level characters that pits heroes against a menacing tribe of goblins and their monstrous allies. It showcases a new encounter format designed to help Dungeon Masters run memorable encounters more easily. It also includes sidebars that contain useful advice such as differences when running the adventure for new players or for seasoned players.
Freeport is a fantasy “free city” you can place in a fantastic setting. Its basic premise is a pirate city gone legit… at least on the surface. In truth, the pirate tradition is alive and well in Freeport, but camouflaged by a veneer of respectability. These days the city’s pirates are privateers, legalized pirates Freeport loans out to the highest bidder. You’ll learn more in the short history of the city that follows. This should help give you a taste of the flavor of Freeport before the adventure begins and the given background is all you need to run this adventure. It is an ideal starting place for a new campaign as the player characters find themselves stranded in Freeport after a deal goes sour. A seemingly simple job plunges them into the strange underside of the city, where they uncover secrets worth dying for. Death in Freeport is the first from the Freeport trilogy, together with Terror in Freeport and Madness in Freeport. Synopsis: Death in Freeport drops the player characters into the midst of political and magical intrigue, as the hidden Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign manipulates events to bring its dread god to the world. Freeport is still a bustling center of trade, but evil currents run beneath the surface. There are secrets here, and questions unanswered. The characters will undoubtedly learn there is more here than they expect in a simple seaport. The question is, will that knowledge kill them? As the adventure begins, the player characters (PCs) have just come to Freeport on a merchant ship. While on the docks, the PCs are attacked by a press gang, who mistake them for easy marks. The press gang is handily beaten off; since they are unused to real resistance. A bookish young man named Brother Egil then approaches the PCs. He says that he’s been looking for a group that can take of itself, and that he has a job for them if they are interested: finding a missing librarian. The missing man, Lucius, disappeared two days previously, and Egil is eager to find him. Egil gives the PCs some background on Lucius and his strange behavior. The PCs are then free to investigate: They are likely to visit Lucius’s home, the temple to the God of Knowledge, and an orc pirate ship. This should form a picture of Lucius as a man searching for his own past—who found something he wasn’t counting on. Following a trail of clues, the PCs learn about the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign. With a little luck, the PCs can trail the cultists back to their hideout, penetrate the lair, and discover secret tunnels underneath it. Deep underground they find degenerate serpent people, and eventually Lucius himself. The librarian has been tortured badly and will die without aid. The PCs also have to deal with the leader of the cult, a man they may recognize from the temple. When the cult priest is slain, they are in for an even bigger surprise. He was not human at all, but a serpent man in disguise. What this means for Freeport only the gods can say.
As the party faces an ancient foe who has never been defeated, their hunt threatens to unleash the buried ghosts of a forgotten feud between two of Waterdeep's powerful merchant houses. The third adventure in the Vampires of Waterdeep Campaign Arc. Pgs 70-93
The city is gripped in fear! The Ripper has returned after a 125-year absence and is once again carving a trail of blood through the slums of Millers Court. Also returned is the ghost of Mari Kell, his last victim from more than a century ago, and she haunts the streets where she was killed. The city watch is at a loss to solve this supernatural mystery, much less apprehend the Ripper himself. All the clues point back to the hovel where Mari Kell was slain long ago. If the heroes are brave enough to enter, will they find the Ripper himself there?
A supernaturally powerful storm, mudslides, and agitated dinosaurs are the least of the worries in the tropical village of Mora. The village's spiritual leader, the Zombie Master, has gone missing, and now undead rise from sodden graves and the village matriarch lies dead, murdered by her own son. What dire menace awaits in the flooded catacombs below? Set on the infamous Isle of Dread.
An embattled outpost at the edge of the wilderness has finally been overthrown. Strange creatures patrol the land. A local hamlet is in ruins. But just who-or what-has taken over this once mighty fortress?
For months, the brutal serial killer Crimson stalked the streets of Saltmarsh, preying on dozens of men and women. Now the murderer lies dead, but although justice has been done, the danger has not yet passed. A soul as wicked and deprived as Crimson's does not rest quietly, and the local cult of Graz'zt has plans for the coming monstrosity. A D&D adventure for 1st-level characters.
The crown of the kobold king will be anointed in blood. Five children from the town of Falcon’s Hollow have gone missing, dragged off into ruins underneath a cursed dwarven monastery. Soon they will be sacrificed to the crown, all to the glory of the twisted King of the Kobolds. If they are to be saved from this gruesome fate, brave heroes must follow their trail to the monastery and plumb the depths of its trap-laden and monster-infested halls.
Smoke still rises from the shattered buildings and ruined streets of the troubled town of Cauldron, yet if not for the actions of a band of heroes, it would not exist at all. A sinister cabal of cultists bent on plunging Cauldron into the prison plane of Carceri had awakened the volcano below the town, and amidst the attacks of dragons and fiends from the outer planes, these heroes were able to evacuate the city and then strike at the cultists in their lair near the volcano's heart. Now, this cult, the Cagewrights, lies shattered, their members put on the defensive for the first time. All that remains is to finish the job, but the surviving Cagewrights still have some surprises left in their mysterious stronghold under the snake-haunted ruins of Shatterhorn. "Strike on Shatterhorn" is a Dungeons & Dragons adventure designed for four 18tth-level characters. This adventure is part of the Shackled City Adventure Path that began with "Life Bazaar" (Dungeon #97) and continued with "Flood Season" (Dungeon #98), "Zenith Trajectory" (Dungeon #102), "The Demonskar Legacy" (Dungeon #104), "Test of the Smoking Eye" (Dungeon #107), "Secrets of the Soul Pillars" (Dungeon #109), "Lords of Oblivion" (Dungeon #111), "Foundation of Flame" (Dungeon #113), and "Thirteen Cages" (Dungeon #114). The Adventure Path concludes in Dungeon #116 with "Asylum." Pgs. 56-82
This module is designed for characters who have made their way through the Freeport Trilogy. Characters new to Freeport are at disadvantadge, however. Hell in Freeport sends the characters to the depths of the Hell as pawns of an undead duke. When they discover the truth of their mission, they must race against a sinister clock to save two cities. Act 1 kicks off with a battle against a cornugon on the Freeport docks. The characters are hailed as heroes for defeating the fiend, and are summoned to the Church of Retribution to help in the battle against Hell. Tee old inquisitor who greets them is actually Jalie Squarefoot, an infernal lich who took this form to search for the perfect cat's-paw. Squarefoot wants to take the souls of Freetown, a city in Hell, but must first get around a contract poin: he can't take the city until the Tyre tower clock-now stopped- strikes midnight. He sends the party to Devil's Cry, an inslan off the coast of Freeport, with instructions to close the gate to Hell hidden inside. In truth, he knows the party will be transported straight to the Third Circle when they try. Inside Devil's Cry the party finds the remnants of a great battle fought between an invading devil's army and the Church of Retribution, and battle their way past undead defenders until they reach the gate itself and unwittingly trigger it. Act 2 begins with the party in a twin of the complex they explored in Devil's Cry, but now they are deep in Hell. They fight their way back to the cavern entrance, only to find that they are not on the Prime anymore. When they voyage back their homeport, they instead find themselves in Freetown, a city of scaped slaves in a dark mirror image of Freeport. Once in Freetown, they make the acquaintance of the city's mayor Wycleffe-a servant of Jalie Squarefoot-who persuades them to go on a quest to Tyre to restart the tower clock. They travel the Styx to the Eight Circle and fight their way into a long-buried vity, and then into the tower clock itself. They restart the clock and begin the trip home, but are waylaid by devils and taken prisioner. Act 3 opens with the party naked and in chains in the infernal prison called the Forge. They learn that Jalie Squarefoot and Wycleffe have duped them, and that the supposed rebels of Freetown are actually its protectors. The characters must escape or win their freedom in the gladiator pits before the tower clock they restarted destroys both Freetown and their home city of Freeport. They battle back to Freetown, taking revenge on their captors in the process, and capture the city from Wycleffe with the help of the rebels. Finally it falls to the PCs to enter the tower clock and stop it and Jalie Squarefoot before the fiend's plan can come to fruition. After being tricked and manipulated throughout the adventure, the party finally has their revenge on the duke and his minions.
The town of Falcon's Hollow needs a miracle. The plague has come to the town of Falcon's Hollow, and not even the town's priest can abate its wretched course. With the coughs of the sick and the wails of the dying echoing through town, the local herbalist uncovers a cure, but she needs some brave heroes to retrieve the ingredients. Finding the cure means risking the dangerous Darkmoon Vale, infiltrating a witch's haunted hut, and delving the ruins of an abandoned dwarven monastery.
On Olarune 9th in the 918th year since the founding of the Kingdom, one of the city of Sharn's floating towers fell from the sky, crusing much of the Godsgate District. Now, a band of bestial savages searches Godsgate for the remnants of a broken statue, pulling the PCs into a plot that could destroy Sharn itself. The city of Sharn is one of the wonders of Khorvaire. Its towers seem to touch the sky, rising up more than a mile from the shores of the Dagger River. But it takes more than stone and steel to support the spires of Sharn: the area is suffused with mystical energy drawn from the plane of Syrania, which empowers all forms of flight. Yet with such wondrous inventions come wondrous tragedies, for when the magic of a flying tower fails, it has to land somewhere... Pgs. 18-29
The path to save Korvosa leads far beyond the ravaged city’s walls. In the burning plains of the Cinderlands the tenacious tribes of the Shoanti barbarians protect an ancient secret that might be the only way to save the Jewel of Varisia from ruin, but Korvosa has been their enemy too long for the proud natives to give up their knowledge freely. Only by learning the ways of the barbarians and facing their sacred trials can the PCs hope to save their city, but are the savage warriors’ ordeals impossible? Especially when the PCs already have angry natives, evil priests, and deadly assassins hot on their trail? This volume of Pathfinder includes: ► “A History of Ashes,” an adventure for 10th-level characters, by Michael Kortes. ► An exploration of the Cinderlands, a scorched wasteland where nature is as deadly as the monsters that stalk its blistered ground, by Jacob Frazier. ► Learn the trials and traditions of the Shoanti, Varisia’s fierce barbarian natives, by Eric L. Boyd and Michael Kortes. ► Eando Kline finds himself caught in the middle of an all-out orc war in the Pathfinder’s Journal, by Richard Pett. ► Five new monsters by Michael Kortes and J.D. Wiker.
Hezzrack the imp escaped a prison of stone only by entering a prison of words. His only chance now is for a helpful group of adventurers to rescue him from certain servitude as a goblin adept's familiar. When his wizardly master's tower collapsed ages ago, the imp Hezzrack found himself trapped in the basement for a long, long time. After spending many years playing chess with himself and arranging macabre passion plays with the animated skeletons that survived the collapse, he finally found a way to escape. Unfortunately, that escape required signing a contract with a particularly unpleasant goblin adept; Hezzrack had managed to escape his prison of stone by leaping into a prison of servitude. If only a group of adventurers were to come along and take care of the goblin and release him completely! Pgs. 18-28
Oblivion is a town like no other. Situated in a hidden valley within a high mountain range and accessible only via air or a secret tunnel through the mountains, it has remained unknown to all except its inhabitants for uncounted centuries. What happens when a natural disaster exposes the town to the world and lets loose an ancient danger at the same time? Will the PCs aid those in need?