The road to the remote village of Swordfall is a long and winding one. It takes pilgrims who wish to visit the holy site from the main trade road, through the hills, and into the mountains where once, thousands of years ago, two gods engaged in an epic battle. Now, all that remains of the battlefield is a lone sword, several hundred feet tall, embedded in the ground at the center of a massive crater. Over the years, a large temple to Thuul, god of battle, sprung up around the site. Now, warriors and fighters from across the land travel to Swordfall to pay their respects once in their lifetime. Recently, however, pilgrims have begun going missing. Somewhere between the main road and Swordfall itself, something, or someone, has been waylaying travelers. Unbeknownst to most, a cult to Ghenna has taken over one of the lone inns along the route and has begun using it to capture and sacrifice pilgrims to their own dark god. Unless a group of adventurers can stop them, the sacrifices won't stop.
Something is amiss in the remote mountain town of Zuria. The head priest has not filed a report in months, and traders following the winding road into the high-altitude valley do not find their way back home. The Church of Palnor, benefactor and watchers of the Tomb of Kings, are greatly concerned. Can the PC discover what has happened in this isolated mountain town before events turn disastrous?
Old-School Essentials Adventure A hole in an old oak tree leads characters down to a maze of twisting, root-riddled passageways, the chambers of an ancient wizard-complex, and the banks of an underground river where once a reptile cult built their temples. A classic expedition into the Mythic Underworld for characters of 1st to 2nd level. 60 keyed areas, rumour table, loot summary, dungeon background info, suggestions for expanding the dungeon. Keyed in a quick-reference, bullet point format. Unlabelled map included for VTT use. The Hole in the Oak can be linked with The Incandescent Grottoes to form a large, 3 level dungeon with over 115 keyed encounter areas!
The Thieves Guild Ebonclad has assigned to party a mission to find the missing Ebonclad Seeker, Osme Sunshadow, as well as investigate the prospective thief Korina Ren. The mission’s conclusion takes the party on a “traditional” dungeon dive in search of a missing guild member, however, how they get there will depend on the work they do in the city. Finally, the mission gives you, the GM, multiple scenarios to choose from that will affect its outcome.
The Last Point is a prison and outpost of the Corrive Empire, a realm ruled by a cruel green dragon named Lady Corrive. The Corrivians are well known for their hatred of magic users, and their extensive slave trade industry. A forest realm with coasts on three sides and mountains running through the center, Corrive is rich with a variety of resources. However, the rocky northern coast is out of the way of their navy and relies heavily on hired ships to help transport various goods including prisoners and slaves to isolated outposts, training centers, and slave colonies. The northwest coast of Corrive is rocky and many parts of it are elevated, making it isolated from much of the mainland. The Last Point is a recycling center where captives meant for death row who are either deemed “not important enough” to execute publicly or “too disgraceful” to execute publicly are sent to be tortured and then killed. The place seems to operate on sort of a “well, we have too many so some have to go now” policy. The Last Point has no official deadlines for killing.
A deathpriest hierophant of Orcus has turned the lower catacombs of a cemetery into a base for the undead and demonic horde it is gathering. The deathpriest loses control, however, with the arrival of a balor, and its carefully orchestrated forays to snatch victims have turned into wholesale slaughters. The PCs arrive in a nearby town to meet with a merchant who promised to sell them a long-coveted magic item. They are not altogether pleased to arrive to find the aftermath of a brutal attack—and no sign of their item. Pgs. 150-155
You possess a map to the tomb of the cursed archmage Bigby. Legend has it that the dungeon itself changes, altered by a powerful artifact and changed each time the tomb is entered. Some tales say that Bigby is trapped in magical stasis seeking something to prolong his life. All agree that great treasure and magic lie within if you are brave enough to face the hazards.
The Temple of Pure Ice lies beneath dozens of feet of thick ice which is often covered in even more feet of snow. The only ones who find it are those who already know where it is, which is an exceptionally short list. After working through the issue of finding the entrance, the challenges have just begun. Adventurers that make their way into this temple will endure battle while leaping across chunks of frozen ice, cross vast chasms with ancient arbalests, slide down twisted frozen pathways, and even be attacked by frozen raptors! But adventurers know that glory doesn't come easy.
This is a trapped corridor which can be dropped into any castle, dungeon, ruin or underground adventure. It features full rules on how to scare the living be-jesus out of your adventurers and have sone great fun with them too. Get ready... as the 'Umber Eyes' is ready to receive you...
Delbert's friend Thordyn has been wrongfully arrested and placed in quarantine inside the Lazar's Walls, where all those who have contracted King's Evil are banished to. It is your missing to infiltrate the settlement, and free Thordyn. The task will not be simple, as a crime syndicate rules the Lazar's Walls with an iron fist.
Towering obelisks stab the sky. Monstrous knights with blazing lances prowl the night. Huts burn, and entire villages are taken as slaves to be fed darksome pits. The cries of terror and panic give the horrors a name: the Beakmen have come. But you are no mere peasant or serf, cowering the in the dark. You and your companions are reavers, with bloodied blades and spells wrenched from the dreams of demons. You stride through chaos while others flee, turning your steps towards the great stone obelisk, the source of the beakmen and their alien magics. Whether for the cause of justice or merely to acquire these strange blazing weapons for you own, tonight there shall be an accounting: a blazing brand thrust into The Shadow of the Beakmen.
A long, perilous ocean journey behind them, the crew of the Sea Wyvern finds itself shipwrecked on the Isle of Dread. Their destination lies well over 150 miles to the south, miles heavy with the threat of the island's terrible inhabitants. Yet the unknown enemies are far more sinister, for more than just dinosaurs hunt the vast jungles. Before long, a cunning fiend picks up their trail, and its duplicitous master demands their sacrifice. "Here There Be Monsters" is the fourth chapter of the Savage Tide Adventure Path, a complete campaign consisting of 12 adventures appearing in Dungeon. For additional aid in running this campaign, check out Dragon's monthly "Savage Tidings" articles, a series that helps players and DMs prepare for and expand upon the campaign. Issue #352 of Dragon explores the Isle of Dread in detail, providing a complete ecology of the island and the writing of Larissa Vanderboren. This article can be used as a player handout to represent the journals the group recovered from the Vanderboren family vault in the first adventure in the Campaign. Shipwrecked on the Isle of Dread! Faced with a dangerous journey, the PCs must escort a ragged band of castaways through monster-infested wildlands in order to reach the safety promised by the colony of Farshore on the isle’s southern tip. Pgs. 32-60
Darkness festers deep inside the forest of Logard. A beast has emerged, killing and abducting local villagers. A secret society of monster hunters has enlisted the heroes to help find one of their missing members and aid them in killing the beast… The Great Rebirth is a streamlined Draw Steel adventure with embedded rules references to make running and playing fun and easy. The adventure is laid out so players are introduced to a new mechanic (tests, combat, montage, and negotiation) one at a time, keeping the game and story engaging, without being overwhelming. What is this adventure about? The heroes have answered the call to eliminate a beast that has rampaged through the local village of Logard. They receive help in navigating Logard forest where they discover and explore a set of ruins while learning about tests. The ruins are trapped and a group of cultists send the heroes plummeting into their lair; combat ensues. From there it's a fast-paced journey of survival as the heroes escape a collapsing dungeon in a montage test, then negotiate with a speaking stone door in order to finally gain access to the monster they’ve been looking for: a being that has undergone the evil saint Eseld’s ‘Great Rebirth.’ Who is this adventure for? This is an ideal adventure for those wanting to run Draw Steel for the first time or looking to onboard newer players. The adventure is broken into various encounters, each focused on separate mechanics. This allows players to learn the different aspects of Draw Steel in a digestible and fun way. The Great Rebirth Features: - A 3-6 hour level 1 adventure for 5 players. (Balance suggestions included for various party sizes.) - 3 custom encounter maps (2 for combat, 1 for tests). - Embedded stat blocks and ‘Rules Recap’ text to keep things flowing at the table and minimize time spent searching for common answers. - All original artwork from Katrina Neyra (cover art) and Shaeomar.
The Hag's Hexes is a 66 page guide designed by Dungeon Masters Guild luminaries like JVC Parry and Janek Sielicki alongside rising stars and old stalwarts like Matt Butler, Matthew Gravelyn, and Tim Bannock. It was created with one thing in mind: to make hags more than the sum of their (often meager) Challenge ratings, giving them the mechanics, roleplay potential, and weird magic that can inspire campaigns, lay low kings and warlords, and potentially ensnare unwary Player Characters into campaign-changing curses or long-term bargains that force them into terrible moral quandaries! Split into five chapters, the authors have provided everything a DM needs to terrify their players for years to come. The Bestiary features over a dozen monsters; some are new hags, some are their minions or even their mobile lairs, and one of them -- the Shaitan AKA Desert Hag -- was featured in Monsters of the Guild! Bargains & Curses is a chapter filled with ideas that can kick-start campaigns, threaten valued NPCs, or put Player Characters' very existence and morality at stake. Chapter 3 includes two dozen items of wonderment, weirdness, and dread, ranging from fairy tale-inspired items of whimsy to terribly cursed items of horror. Chapter 4 is titled "Filthy, Vile & Downright Dirty" and provides dozens of roleplaying tips to make hags come alive, new mechanics inspired by and expanding on Volo's Guide to Monsters (coven spell lists, aunties, grandmothers, alternative coven members), and ends with useful combat tactics for each of the hags from the Monster Manual and Volo's Guide, as well as tactics for covens. Finally, Chapter 5 presents five encounter groups (with sub-encounters) to give you quick story seeds and monster lists that you can put together in minutes to create a single encounter or to inspire a full campaign, and ends with three full-length adventures -- each with 3-5 encounters -- that showcase many of the new monsters, rules, magic items, and so on that appeared in earlier chapters. Each of these adventures comes with an encounter map meant to act as inspiration for hag lairs, and they include useful mechanical ideas for terrain effects and descriptive keywords listed directly on the map for added inspiration and easy customization! Designed by Tim Bannock. Written by Matt Butler, JVC Parry, Janek Sielicki, and Tim Bannock. Edited by Matthew Gravelyn and Tim Bannock. Cover Art by Elena Naylor. Cartography by Tim Bannock using Inkwell Ideas' Dungeonographer (Dungeonographer is copyright Inkwell Ideas). Layout & Graphic Elements by Elena Naylor with Tim Bannock. Interior Art by Arcana Games, Bruno Balixa, David Lewis Johnson, Dean Spencer, Earl Geier, Filip Gutowski, Jacob E. Blackmon, Joyce Maureira, Petr Kratochvil, Jayaraj Paul, Brian Brinlee, and Wizards of the Coast.
"Can you solve the Labyrinth within 13 hours and get back what was stolen from you?" A 4-Hour Adventure for Tier 1 characters optimized for APL 3 taking place in the Feywild Domain of Delight, Labyrinth, where everything seems possible and nothing is what it seems. This adventure takes place when the characters have been abruptly teleported into the Feywild Domain of Delight, Labyrinth. The Kobold King has given the characters thirteen hours to solve the labyrinth, or they will lose what he stole from them forever. "It's only forever, not long at all..." Pillars of Play: Skill challenges and exploration. Minimal/optional combat. Content warning: Non-consensual theft Adventure Inspiration: Jim Henson's Labyrinth (1986)
The Knights of Sum have guarded the western frontier of the Duchy of Starryshade for nearly two centuries. Wingfield Fortress has been the focal point of their power and a safe haven for travelers willing to cross the Plains of Aegoth. As you venture west to further your careers you have received word that the mighty keep has fallen! Are you and your compatriots ready to help the legendary knights?
Last Gasp is an adventure set in a desert setting, exploring the cursed tomb of an ancient king of great magical power, a magical river, and includes both deadly combats and mysteries to confound tomb-robbers. Seek out the riches of a king, and may fortune favor you!
Buried in fire, but hardly dead. Only the Keep survived the destruction of Koralgesh, but few adventurers will survive the terrors that now stalk the lost Keep's halls. Players hear rumours of the Keep at Koralgesh and then traverse it to acquire the treasure within. Pgs. 45-64
It should have been the end. When the bloodthirsty adventurers burst into his throne room and mercilessly cut him down, the tale of Merlokrep, last king of the ill-fated Truescale Tribe, should have ended. But the fates weren’t yet finished with the Kobold King, and now a dark power has brought him back from the dark beyond to wreak his vengeance upon those foolish adventurers who destroyed his tribe.
A malignant cult has taken root in the mystical and magical realm of Jalmeray. Known and feared throughout distant Vudra, the cult of Dhalavei has expertly destroyed organizations and societies from within for millennia. Now a new sect of the sinister Cult of the Ebon Destroyers has its sights set on Thakur Kharswan of Jalmeray, and the magistrates and bureaucrats behind the throne must hunt down and eliminate the cult before the unthinkable happens. If only there were someone they could trust to behead Dhalavei's cult before the assassins do the same to their beloved ruler…