Army of the Damned: Free lvl 1-5 adventure set in Magic: the Gathering's Innistrad

[Dralnu]

I finally finished it: check it out! (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1pdYIcfHauwdEVBYUhrdGdZaW8/view?usp=sharing)

The adventure takes place in Innistrad, a world steeped in european gothic horror themes and tropes. Though it certainly helps if you're a fan of the setting, the module can hopefully be enjoyed without knowledge of the setting and I think there's plenty of non-setting specific material to salvage. I hear Ravenloft is comparable in terms of setting.

A redditor named Nihilates drew the maps, and he also made a sweet PDF of Variant Humans (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_XLU6DrsM9QzRNUTZHSjNTSk0/view) if people want to run the game with no non-humans.

Edit: I also made an NPC Delandel, the Undead Paladin (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1pdYIcfHauwR2VPdUlLZWhwRms/view?usp=sharing). He was created as a possible hook to continue the adventure beyond its end, but I wrote him open-ended to be inserted into any adventure.

So yeah. Wanted to share!

[Easy_Lee]

Wow, this is really impressive. As always with your PDFs, the art is integrated seamlessly and it all looks professional. You even included milestones, which save a lot of time and help with new people joining. Well done.

[MOLOKH]

Most of my group are Magic players and we've often entertained the thought of playing in one of the Multiverse's worlds, though the one time I tried running such a campaign it ended rather disastrously.

If I ever try it again, I'd probably choose Zendikar as the setting. Even in MtG that block was basically D&D, with creatures that leveled up, tons of equipment, treasure maps, quests, the Allies, which were like adventuring parties, and so forth. I remebmer it was rather hard to homebrew setting-specific races for that plane in 3.5, and it will probably be even harder in 5e.

I'm writing this having only skimmed the document, but what I believe might immediately spring up as a problem is how imbalanced Clerics and Paladins would be in such an undead-heavy setting, not to mention all the other monsters that have various resistances and immunities. Casters would do fine, but mundanes might find it hard to deal with the threats of the world without heavy investment in equipment, especially at lower levels. If this is adressed in the module, please ignore this paragraph.

[Dralnu]

Wow, this is really impressive. As always with your PDFs, the art is integrated seamlessly and it all looks professional. You even included milestones, which save a lot of time and help with new people joining. Well done.

Thanks! The art is easy since it all comes from one source (Magic's Innistrad setting).


Most of my group are Magic players and we've often entertained the thought of playing in one of the Multiverse's worlds, though the one time I tried running such a campaign it ended rather disastrously.

If I ever try it again, I'd probably choose Zendikar as the setting. Even in MtG that block was basically D&D, with creatures that leveled up, tons of equipment, treasure maps, quests, the Allies, which were like adventuring parties, and so forth. I remebmer it was rather hard to homebrew setting-specific races for that plane in 3.5, and it will probably be even harder in 5e.

I'm writing this having only skimmed the document, but what I believe might immediately spring up as a problem is how imbalanced Clerics and Paladins would be in such an undead-heavy setting, not to mention all the other monsters that have various resistances and immunities. Casters would do fine, but mundanes might find it hard to deal with the threats of the world without heavy investment in equipment, especially at lower levels. If this is adressed in the module, please ignore this paragraph.

I love Zendikar! It's a terrific choice because it's Magic's D&D setting.

It's indeed undead-heavy, so Clerics and Paladins are a bit stronger than usual, but I don't think mundanes would struggle. Most of the creatures don't have resistances/immunities to mundane attacks and there's a high amount of blessed silver weapons to pick up to bypass the more common resistances that do crop up.

[Ziegander]

This is one of the most high-quality adventures I've ever seen. I like it a lot more than even some of WotCs celebrated adventures. It's well-written and so well laid out I get the impression I could DM it with no prep time at all, just reading along as the night goes on. Most adventures tend to be incomprehensible messes to interpret, but this is a gem. You should consider writing your own original adventures and selling them. If you could recreate the quality, I know I'd buy them.

[Dralnu]

This is one of the most high-quality adventures I've ever seen. I like it a lot more than even some of WotCs celebrated adventures. It's well-written and so well laid out I get the impression I could DM it with no prep time at all, just reading along as the night goes on. Most adventures tend to be incomprehensible messes to interpret, but this is a gem. You should consider writing your own original adventures and selling them. If you could recreate the quality, I know I'd buy them.

That's high praise indeed! Thank you. The next few things will continue to be free, but I'll consider putting up some "pay what you want" stuff some time in the future.

I also made an NPC Delandel, the Undead Paladin (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1pdYIcfHauwR2VPdUlLZWhwRms/view?usp=sharing). He was created as a possible hook to continue the adventure beyond its end, but I wrote him open-ended to be inserted into any adventure. Swap out "Pelor" and "Orcus" and it's setting-neutral.

[charlesk]

Dunno if I would ever play it myself but that is one impressive piece of work.

[PoeticDwarf]

This sounds all very cool.

But The Thing is very strong. I think the strongest NPC needs some more options than just attack.

[Dralnu]

The Monster is just a refluffed T-Rex. I kept it intentionally simple for the DM's sake, because you already need to do paperwork with Siegfried being a wizard. So the rest of the monsters in the battle are more basic.

[mr_odd]

This is really professional... Wow...

[FatherLiir]

I'm gonna read through this, and this is fantastic! Thank you so much! :)

[Stan]

Damn. This is excellent all around. It looks great and would be easy to run. I don't play Magic but I'm going to use this. The undead paladin and variant humans are cool too.

[Mr.Moron]

Great Adventure. I really liked the Innistrad setting too, at least as they presented it in the first set.

[Dralnu]

I'm glad this adventure is well received! I'm working on my next projects now, including an adventure set in Zendikar.

[Rhaegar14]

I'm glad this adventure is well received! I'm working on my next projects now, including an adventure set in Zendikar.

What might be really cool is if you used this as a jump-off point to write a campaign with the players as Planeswalkers, jumping between various settings from different Magic blocks. I don't think it would be too much of a stretch to run the Planeswalker spark as every player having the ability to cast Plane Shift, targeting only themselves, once per day with a modified/removed material component.

[Dralnu]

What might be really cool is if you used this as a jump-off point to write a campaign with the players as Planeswalkers, jumping between various settings from different Magic blocks. I don't think it would be too much of a stretch to run the Planeswalker spark as every player having the ability to cast Plane Shift, targeting only themselves, once per day with a modified/removed material component.

I agree with the planeswalker ability, it's easy to do it in D&D as a self-cast plane shift.

As for a campaign planes hopping, I've actually been writing adventures that deal with that, but it's a generic D&D setting (hopping between the Outer Planes) that I plan to release as pay what you want.

My Zendikar adventure will be the last Magic thing I do for a while, then Ravnica -- though that could involve planes hopping now that I think about it.

[Chadamantium]

Aww yeah. I can't wait for your Ravnica campaign. I'm hoping it'll geared towards inter-guild politics.

[Ziegander]

I'm glad this adventure is well received! I'm working on my next projects now, including an adventure set in Zendikar.

I can't wait to see what you do with Zendikar.


As for a campaign planes hopping, I've actually been writing adventures that deal with that, but it's a generic D&D setting (hopping between the Outer Planes) that I plan to release as pay what you want.

Sick.

[Dralnu]

Aww yeah. I can't wait for your Ravnica campaign. I'm hoping it'll geared towards inter-guild politics.

The feedback I've gotten so far indicates that a Ravnica setting is most desired, so I hope my attempt will be satisfying.

I have a title: "Rise of the Guildless."

I have a story, the antagonist's motivations/personality, and a rough outline of places/events I want to visit. The PCs will be guild representatives. The task at hand is a threat to all guilds and as such requires each guild to have an active member in the group.

The adventure itself will be more sandboxy, where you have a home base and you discover mission hooks and choose which ones to do. You only have X amount of days, so doing everything is impossible. The home base can be upgraded over time by recruiting NPCs to work there (bruisers to guard, alchemist to brew potions over time, other professionals to "unlock" things) and will play a role in one of the last events. The missions will involve a mix of social intrigue, infiltration, and some dungeon crawl, dealing with all the guilds and the guildless movement.

It's ambitious but as I gain more experience with these things it should be doable.

[Citan]

I finally finished it: check it out! (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1pdYIcfHauwdEVBYUhrdGdZaW8/view?usp=sharing)

The adventure takes place in Innistrad, a world steeped in european gothic horror themes and tropes. Though it certainly helps if you're a fan of the setting, the module can hopefully be enjoyed without knowledge of the setting and I think there's plenty of non-setting specific material to salvage. I hear Ravenloft is comparable in terms of setting.

A redditor named Nihilates drew the maps, and he also made a sweet PDF of Variant Humans (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_XLU6DrsM9QzRNUTZHSjNTSk0/view) if people want to run the game with no non-humans.

Edit: I also made an NPC Delandel, the Undead Paladin (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1pdYIcfHauwR2VPdUlLZWhwRms/view?usp=sharing). He was created as a possible hook to continue the adventure beyond its end, but I wrote him open-ended to be inserted into any adventure.

So yeah. Wanted to share!
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Mate...
It's frigging AWESOME!!
Even if you're used to print software, I cannot imagine the time sink this must have been. I began designing my own campaign a few days ago and the amount of work just to get the essentials is huge. So, writing detailed setting, finding appropried art and assembling everything with quality standards on par with official D&d books... Hat down to you.

I may indeed be using part (or maybe all) of your campaign in my oncoming game (if I can find a way to link it with my own premises... :))

Sincerely thank you!

[Safety Sword]

Dralnu, this adventure is awesome.

Just reading the encounters and seeing how they all tie in and lead the characters forward into the story makes me want to DM it!

Fantastic!

Please know that the time you have put into it will be appreciated by many. Well done.

[MarkTriumphant]

This looks excellent, and I'm going to be trying it out on my group this weekend. The map of Shadowgrange and that of the area are a bit grainy in the PDF - is there a higher res version available? To be honest, I'd happily pay for the adventure as it is, but adding that would make it pretty much perfect, especially for an inexperienced DM like me.

[Dralnu]

I'm glad to hear people are using it! That's the ultimate compliment to me :smallsmile:

As for grainy maps, I had to shrink them in Photoshop so they'd fit the page. Clicking the map in the PDF should open the regular sized version. You can also find the maps here on my blog (http://acommoncausemtg.blogspot.ca/2015/07/army-of-damned-complete.html).

[MarkTriumphant]

Excellent. Thanks. And now I have a new blog to read...

[Herr Doktor]

Am adapting the adventure to my current campaign (Pathfinder's Carrion Crown using D&D 5E), and it looks like I can fit it in almost seamlessly into the Ustalav setting.

Well done, sir, well done.

[Kadarai]

I am currently running the adventure with some friends and loving every bit of it. Just a question though that came up and was unsure how to answer:
The warlock of the party used detect magic on the saint's sealing dagger in the chapel and figured out it was stolen and swapped out with a replica. But the original dagger was warded, alarmed and trapped with divine magic, yet, a pair of lowly cultists managed to steal it under Flora's nose. How? And why didn't the priestess take notice of it earlier?

[Dralnu]

I am currently running the adventure with some friends and loving every bit of it. Just a question though that came up and was unsure how to answer:
The warlock of the party used detect magic on the saint's sealing dagger in the chapel and figured out it was stolen and swapped out with a replica. But the original dagger was warded, alarmed and trapped with divine magic, yet, a pair of lowly cultists managed to steal it under Flora's nose. How? And why didn't the priestess take notice of it earlier?

I'm glad you're all enjoying it!

I imagine the cultists patiently waited to swap the daggers when the magical wards were temporarily down, either because Flora was out of town and couldn't replenish them for a day or they cooked up a plan, maybe even dispelled it themselves. The dagger has been sitting in the church for years, maybe decades without incident, and it may be that Flora grew lax about securing it over the years. It could also be that the divine wards protecting the dagger lost too much power with Avacyn's disappearance so the wards were "up" according to Flora but the cultists were lucky that they didn't trigger anything when they stole it.

As to why Flora never noticed: the fake dagger is a near-perfect replica so she never noticed, and she never considered to randomly detect magic on it after the swap, if she even has access to that spell.

Hope that helps!

[Tesla_pasta]

Just wanted to chime in, since my DM just ran this adventure from start to finish (we wrapped up last saturday). I'm glad I didn't stumble upon it here until afterwards, since I'd hate to have ruined the story for myself!

We had a great time playing this- our group was a few veterans, a few newbies, and a relatively new DM (almost all of us played magic during innistrad), and the whole thing ran smoothly and logically. The farbog was cool and thematic, and interacting with the vampires was an fun roleplaying challenge, since characters of various moral codes had different ideas of how trusting/aggressive we should be towards them.

The tower is a very-well constructed dungeon. I really liked the imp/dryad mini-objectives that rewarded you for approaching the tower tactically, as well as the gargoyles outside to present a challenge to players that attempted to fly/spider climb the tower. The invisibility bonus made the last encounter a little bit easy since we had high single-target damage between the assassin character and the wand of missiles you can loot, but the dungeon as a whole is excellent.

Overall, great job! It was linear enough for the new members to handle, and had plenty of fluff for the roleplayers to dive into. The highlight of the adventure for me was the shopkeepers who gave us elbrus the binding blade in disguise! The mystery of the magic weapon was a constant concern for myself and the party wizard, and the distrust of the shopkeepers escalated over the course of several sessions to the point of espionage and assassinations.

[Dralnu]

Just wanted to chime in, since my DM just ran this adventure from start to finish (we wrapped up last saturday). I'm glad I didn't stumble upon it here until afterwards, since I'd hate to have ruined the story for myself!

We had a great time playing this- our group was a few veterans, a few newbies, and a relatively new DM (almost all of us played magic during innistrad), and the whole thing ran smoothly and logically. The farbog was cool and thematic, and interacting with the vampires was an fun roleplaying challenge, since characters of various moral codes had different ideas of how trusting/aggressive we should be towards them.

The tower is a very-well constructed dungeon. I really liked the imp/dryad mini-objectives that rewarded you for approaching the tower tactically, as well as the gargoyles outside to present a challenge to players that attempted to fly/spider climb the tower. The invisibility bonus made the last encounter a little bit easy since we had high single-target damage between the assassin character and the wand of missiles you can loot, but the dungeon as a whole is excellent.

Overall, great job! It was linear enough for the new members to handle, and had plenty of fluff for the roleplayers to dive into. The highlight of the adventure for me was the shopkeepers who gave us elbrus the binding blade in disguise! The mystery of the magic weapon was a constant concern for myself and the party wizard, and the distrust of the shopkeepers escalated over the course of several sessions to the point of espionage and assassinations.

I'm glad the roleplaying encounters ended up working well. This is the first time I've heard of a group assassinating the shopkeepers, well done :smallbiggrin:

A full group invisibility may make the final encounter a bit anti-climatic, something I hadn't considered. I don't want to make getting the jump impossible, but I'll go back and change the reward from invisibility to something else so it's not as easy. Siegfried has the very best defensive spells prepared (including Shield to block the magic missiles), but unfortunately they mean nothing if you catch him surprised.

[MarkTriumphant]

I'd like to add my appreciation - I'm an experienced player, but very new DM, and I've been running AoD over a good few sessions. It is easy to manage for me, and has lots of opportunity for both the role players and the "kill them" crowd. Plus a few hooks for the future.

Thanks.

[Tesla_pasta]

I'm glad the roleplaying encounters ended up working well. This is the first time I've heard of a group assassinating the shopkeepers, well done :smallbiggrin:

A full group invisibility may make the final encounter a bit anti-climatic, something I hadn't considered. I don't want to make getting the jump impossible, but I'll go back and change the reward from invisibility to something else so it's not as easy. Siegfried has the very best defensive spells prepared (including Shield to block the magic missiles), but unfortunately they mean nothing if you catch him surprised.

Worth noting that the other group our DM ran this for got TPKd. They charged in the front door and got worn down by the traps and guard armors pretty hard, and when they got to Siegfried they got #REKT by the experiment one death throes. Maybe a more balanced buff would be resistance to lightning or something?

[Dralnu]

I'd like to add my appreciation - I'm an experienced player, but very new DM, and I've been running AoD over a good few sessions. It is easy to manage for me, and has lots of opportunity for both the role players and the "kill them" crowd. Plus a few hooks for the future.

Thanks.

I'm happy that you ended up running it! I'm also sad looking back at this old thread, I got so excited to write more stuff and then work / school / laziness I produced nothing more. Well, that's changing now.


Worth noting that the other group our DM ran this for got TPKd. They charged in the front door and got worn down by the traps and guard armors pretty hard, and when they got to Siegfried they got #REKT by the experiment one death throes. Maybe a more balanced buff would be resistance to lightning or something?

I'm very interested in combat feedback, something I never get to hear. There's so many variables in D&D encounters (party size and composition, who goes first, how much resources do they have etc) that when I make the encounters I just hope it pans out roughly the same way as my own group did. Worse, I never got to test out the final encounters on my own; my group fizzled out right after taking down the barlgura + hands. So the Siegfried fight was never tuned and it's by far the most complex fight in the entire adventure so it's the one that needs the most tuning.

I'll need to look over the fight again. It may be too hard. If you just run the CR it's super duper deadly, but that doesn't factor Siegfried using his action in the first 3+ rounds of combat doing nothing but flipping switches, and the experiment ones + flesh golem coming at later rounds. Hmmm. Maybe I'll give the experiment ones immunity to lightning so they can't chain together death throes, that may be too mean.

I remember now why the devils gave invisibility: it's so you can bypass fighting the barlgura. Otherwise you cook this meal and then immediately kill the thing you were cooking for. Instead of a buff, I'll change it so that the devils offer to spike the meal with a sleeping potion, so Ugbug takes a deep nap after eating.

[Dralnu]

I made an update to the adventure based on feedback. I've also launched the modest beginnings of a website, though I may need to think up a name because "criticalkits .com" is being squatted on and would cost me hundreds of dollars.

Army of the Damned (https://criticalkits.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/army-of-the-damned-updated/)

Changelog:


Added Bookmarks to the PDFs, which makes navigating through much easier
All new monsters have proper stat blocks in the Appendix
Tweaked the siege combat encounters in Chapter 3 to be a bit more difficult
Added a Monster/NPC index divided by chapters for folks looking to prepare monster tokens/stats in advance for sites like Roll20
Changed the reward from “Iron Chef” in Chapter 5; the charmbreakers no longer grant invisibility, but instead spike the food with a sleeping potion to put Ugbug to sleep
Added missing read-aloud descriptions to Chapter 1 encounters

[JohanOfKitten]

I was well inspired to come back to this subject, seeking some feedbacks on it, to discover that you edit a new version.

A few weeks ago, I read all this and I found the scenario so great I immediatly made few calls to run it, and we play tomorrow the first session.

It's just a two players game, so I will give them a small hook adventure to bring them lvl2 before (They're Kessigers, and they will investigate a bit an observatory where the uncle of katarina was last seen. Her letter in the office will confirm some informations they heard and press them to go to Shadowgrange). I will happily bring some feedbacks afterwards if you want.

Anyway, I wanted to thank you for this nice adventure and congratulat you for the quality of your work. It's amazing and my players, seeing the file about human variants, didn't believe me when I say it was not an official setting.

[Dralnu]

Glad to hear you're running it. Any feedback is definitely welcomed. I'll keep updating the adventure as needed.

[Donestebanes]

Greetings, thank you very much for this great module, because to the images and layout my players loved it. Human races have seemed especially good; I even use the races on npc archetypes to create detailed local inhabitants. I´m sure this not be the only adventure of innistrad we want to play.

The first session was very satisfactory. After a short voyage from Nephalia and Gavony, the players had to face the passage of Kruin. There had to kowtow (reluctantly) to vampire clan Markov. They managed to reach the nearby Cathar stronghold, And then, they went to the needle passage ... without noticing if they were not bothered for demons, was because that one of the players is a warlock with infernal patron, who want the group be successful finding the tuning fork, and the magic sword that will set free the demon...

[Michael7123]

I want to say thank you for making this. I'm strongly considering using it as my first shot at DM'ing a game. It probably won't start for a while, but I'll make sure to give you some feedback if it happens.

[JackPhoenix]

I'm not saying I want to kill the characters in my game, but either that or finishing the campaign (which will take a looooong time) are the only ways I could get to play (or run) this adventure. I can't wait.

[Azreal]

I started running this with a few friends who are all magic fans especially the Innistrad block and we only did chapter 1 so far but we all love it.
I can't wait to see their adventures through the rest of the module.

If they so choose we were talking about potentially expanding it into a full campaign in which case a certain Vampire is going to charge them with seeking out Avacyn.. Or else.

[DiceDiceBaby]

As a Magic player and fledgling DM, I find this work exceptional. :smallbiggrin:

I shall surely be saving it to use at a later date! Magnificent work, Dralnu! :smallwink:

[Dralnu]

I appreciate the feedback guys! Thank you.

I have one question: if I did write a (shorter!) sequel to this adventure, would people prefer it to take place during the original timeline, or would you rather have the timeline move forward to Shadows over Innistrad?

[Lord Il Palazzo]

Hey Dralnu! I've been running Army of the Damned about once a month for the past 4(ish) months (we just finished chapter 3) so I've got some feedback to share.

Intro: I started the game at third level (personal preference with 5e; letting everyone start with their archetype makes characters feel more unique) so I've been scaling combat encounters up a bit from what you wrote (though I didn't give them a level-up at the end of chapter 1 so now they're just one level above what you suggested).
For a little extra flavor (and to help with a couple encounters I was worried might be too hard) I gave my party a handful of custom magic items starting out. The only ones that have seen any use were a Blessed Silver Dagger, a 3.5-style Everburning Torch and a couple healing potions.

Several of my players chose cards from Innistrad block (out of a group I had picked beforehand) as starting points for their character builds.
Gavoner Paladin 2/Fighter 1, leveling in Paladin (built as a two weapon fighting tank, based on the art of Champion of the Parish)
Nephalian Monk1/Cleric of Light 2, leveling in Cleric
Nephalian Battle Master Fighter 3 (two-weapon fighting, based on the art of Elite Inquisitor)
Kessiger Hunter Ranger 3 (based on the art of Daybreak Ranger)

Chapter 1: The first session was a great start and a good mix of elements to get things started and introduce the setting. I used the Fiendish Hecklers, Ominous Bridge, Wolf at the Door and Explosive Summons events.
Fiendish Hecklers: I ran this pretty much as-printed and it was great. The imps stayed with the party past Ominous Bridge and it was a lot of fun cackling at my players with every failed roll (firing a crossbow with disadvantage into the fog didn't work very well). Eventually an imp got foolish and decided to "return" a crossbow bolt, which got it spotted and attacked by the fighter who critted it. The other imps fled after that, but I'm not convinced they won't be back later.

Ominous Bridge: I used two giant spiders and a pair of spider swarms. The players were smart and managed to spot the webs before going onto the bridge and tossed a torch ahead of them to burn off the webs. The fight wasn't too tough after that. The players never considered going down the ravine and never found the treasure in the cocoons under it.

Wolf at the Door: This played out mostly as a roleplaying encounter. The ranger's favored enemies are lycanthropes (I gave the player a custom list to pick from to be setting appropriate and make it more likely to come into play) and she was able to catch on relatively quickly, and the party was able to tackle Anton and, er, give him the Blessed Sleep before he could get away or transform. Had Anton transformed, it would have been a brutal fight because they only had the blessed dagger and the cleric's spells that could actually damage him. (Immunity to non-magic, non-silver weapons! Eek!) Between this and Fiendish Hecklers, I appreciated having some less combat-focused options since the roleplaying gave my players a good chance to get a feel for their characters and the world.

Explosive Summoning: I used two hellriders and buffed their hounds a little bit, but otherwise ran it just as written. The fight still wasn't super hard (a critical smite from the paladin did a lot of the work). I liked the foreshadowing of cult activity in Shadowgrange (though I wish there was a little more guidance for running it once the players reach town besides trying to sell/give the party Elbrus) and it gave the party something to seek out Shadowgrange's authorities to talk about once they got to town.

Chapter 2: Looking around town, the players visited most of the point of interest you included. The cleric's player was out for the first half of the chapter so we said that he had agreed to help Marcus with the blessed silver and got the ranger some blessed silver arrowheads. The paladin prayed at the Shrine of Saint Traft and received the Moonsilver Spear (he uses it because it was a divine gift even though it doesn't work with his two-weapon fighting style; he's taking the Dual Wielder feat ASAP to be able to use it with a second weapon.) Between the paladin and the fighter (and a little hen-pecking from Magda) they managed to "convince" Otto to sell them "the bone blade" for an absurdly low price of almost every copper piece the party had (somewhere near 50 GP) and the fighter took to wielding it. I've been describing every creature killed with Elbrus as crumbling to dust, their faces contorted with agony and a chill running through the fighter's sword hand; it took way longer than I'd expected for the party to start thinking this might not be a good thing the fighter still isn't convinced. ("It's my best weapon!")

I don't remember the mix of blights I used in Sigfried's shop but the fight was pretty good. The party deciphered the letter and the paladin player (who is the only one who plays Magic besides me) was excited/scared to see the connection to Geralf come into play. The party couldn't come up with any decent use for the Alchemy Jug so they basically rented it to the innkeeper for a cut of the wine/beer sale he got from the jug.

The mansion geist-hunt took a little too long but I don't feel like it was the adventure's fault. The cleric's light domain gives him access to Faerie Fire, which would have helped pin down the (otherwise) invisible geist. (I buffed the poltergeist's stats slightly to make up for the extra level and it mostly retreated to other rooms once it took a couple solid hits.) The party spent a lot of time getting pushed down stairs, thrown out second floor windows and getting armoires dropped on them and were getting pretty frustrated by the time they noticed Faerie Fire on the Cleric's spell list. Honestly, they'd gotten the geist to single-digit HP by that point but it still helped them feel like they'd outwitted the encounter instead of just brute-forcing it.

Chapter 3: This was awesome and was originally a big part of why I wanted to run the adventure. The party started off toward the Maurer Estate the morning after clearing out the mansion, but ran into the Mordov refugees. I gave them the rest of that day and most of the next to prepare for the attack. The fighter and ranger rode out to scout the horde and took a couple pot shots at one of the goliaths. The players had some pretty good ideas like getting jugs of oil and flaming arrows ready to light the attackers at the gate and sheltering some civilians in Sigfried's hidden basement. They won at the gate and at the breach but I had Rinelda arrive at the wall just behind the goliath while Shadowgrange's defenders were preparing to reinforce the breach rather than trying to scale wall. It was a really tough battle and the party was completely out of almost every resource they had by the time it was over, but they won in epic fashion.

It was in the fight with Rinelda that Elbrus hit 10 kills and had its enhancement bonus increase. This was finally enough to convince the fighter that the sword was bad news and get him to sheath it for the first time, which made for a great moment when he killed Rinelda and realized he was holding the cursed blade again.

Moving forward, I'm going to diverge from the written adventure a bit to cover the party trying to figure out what's going on with the fighter's cursed sword. They saw "Elbrus" in the shrine when they arrived in Shadowgrange so they're not sure if the fighter somehow has the real one or if it's a different (maybe related) cursed blade. I haven't run the victory celebration yet and am thinking of changing it up too; I'm planning to have a Falkenrath vampire make an appearance to thank the PCs for protecting Shadowgrange and their "livestock" who live there to keep with the Gothic-Horror/humanity-barely-hanging-on themes and remind them that with as hard-fought as their victory was, it's only prolonged the inevitable. Heading into the Farbog, I'm hoping to insert an encounter or two of my own to tie into one of my PCs' backstories (trying to find a missing person who was last seen in Shadowgrange, but left heading north toward Mordov and the Farbog) but I'm still probably going to run the Deadly Lotus and Corpse Wagon encounters you wrote.

Overall, I'm really, really impressed with Army of the Damned. The conversion of Innistrad into D&D is well done, the encounters are interesting and varied and the layout and production value of the PDF are very professional. The "random encounter" style of chapters 1 and 4 give some much appreciated freedom to tweak the tone of the game to fit a particular table without sacrificing the feel of the world and again, chapter 3 was excellent. (Seriously, I'm getting ready to run it alone as a one-shot for a different group.) My only complaint is probably that the PCs feel too empowered/powerful sometimes. Part of this probably comes from my giving them an extra level (two extra in level 1) but I feel like magic weapons in chapter 2 (Elbrus and the Moonsilver Spear) make the PCs like badasses who could take whatever came at them and less like protagonists in a horror setting/story. (The revelation that Elbrus is cursed has helped that somewhat, but I'm holding back a bit on magic loot moving forward. I'm changing the +1 weapon at the end of chapter 3 into a magic arrow-duplicating quiver and a quest hook to go find a +1 arrow to use with it instead of giving them a +1 bow outright.)


I have one question: if I did write a (shorter!) sequel to this adventure, would people prefer it to take place during the original timeline, or would you rather have the timeline move forward to Shadows over Innistrad?I'd personally prefer that it be close to the original timeline. Most of my players actually don't play Magic which means that fast-forwarding to Shadows over Innistrad would mean that they'd need to get caught up on the setting's changes as opposed to being able to just pick up where they left off.

Wow. I ended up writing a lot more than I'd planned to. Sorry if I went into too much detail in some places. Please let me know if you have any questions.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

TLDR of my above post: I've run a group up to the end of chapter 3 and am loving this adventure. Excellent work. Let me know if you have any specific questions and/or don't want to wade through my longer reply.

[DiceDiceBaby]

I appreciate the feedback guys! Thank you.

I have one question: if I did write a (shorter!) sequel to this adventure, would people prefer it to take place during the original timeline, or would you rather have the timeline move forward to Shadows over Innistrad?

I really love the adventure, and this month I will be playtesting it with my wife as a solo campaign (I made a team of three Good aligned NPCs of below average powers to assist her). Will let you know how this goes!

If you ever make a sequel, I suggest you follow the trail of the artifact and its role in the ultimate return of Avacyn (even if it means tweaking the lore a bit). Though a time skip would be good for other purposes. :smallwink:

[Dralnu]

Lord Il Palazzo: Thank you for the writeup! No such thing as too much detail; I read and appreciate all of it.

I've been noticing with your feedback and others that the roleplay encounters are well received. Going forward I'll strive to keep encounters 50/50 for combat/RP with options to choose more/less depending on preference.

Regarding the magic weapons, I did keep the loot and power significantly lower than both Lost Mines of Phandelver and Hoard of the Dragon Queen. I'm happy with Elbrus and the loot in general but I'll think about toning down or removing the Moonsilver Spear; maybe granting it to the PCs at a later time. 5e is a system of heroic fantasy though so it's hard not for your PCs to look like badasses if they're fighting appropriate challenges. For scarier encounters keep beefing up the fights as you do.

You may also want to skip leveling up the party before the final chapter, as level 5 is a huge power spike for characters and Extra Attack on your Fighter and Ranger may make things unexpectedly easy for them in the mansion (also 3rd lvl spells weren't accounted for, if your group gains a straight spellcaster).


DiceDiceBaby: Continuing the story does make sense. I envisioned the artifact as the tool Thalia uses to unlock the Helvault, as the official lore is vague as to how she actually does it.The trail would go through at least one other province before returning the PCs to Gavony to take part in the Siege of Thraben and the finale with freeing Avacyn. If I did write all of it, at least :P

[SouthpawSoldier]

I've been sharing your work all over Reddit and Facebook, as I continuously run into fans of both MtG and D&D. Especially with the new Ravenloft Adventure League release; why play Ravenloft when Innistrad is available?

A few times people have brought up other MtG settings, specifically Ravnica. Any luck working on the other settings and projects?

[Lord Il Palazzo]

.Regarding the magic weapons, I did keep the loot and power significantly lower than both Lost Mines of Phandelver and Hoard of the Dragon Queen. I'm happy with Elbrus and the loot in general but I'll think about toning down or removing the Moonsilver Spear; maybe granting it to the PCs at a later time. 5e is a system of heroic fantasy though so it's hard not for your PCs to look like badasses if they're fighting appropriate challenges. For scarier encounters keep beefing up the fights as you do.

You may also want to skip leveling up the party before the final chapter, as level 5 is a huge power spike for characters and Extra Attack on your Fighter and Ranger may make things unexpectedly easy for them in the mansion (also 3rd lvl spells weren't accounted for, if your group gains a straight spellcaster).Fair points all. The one thought I had about loot was that shifting the Moonsilver Spear a little later could have helped. I gave it to the Paladin before either of the combat encounters in chapter 2 but making him fight without it might have gotten the tone I wanted a little better and made the Spear feel more like he'd earned it rather than Saint Ready just deciding to play Santa Claus. I think realizing that the bone blade is cursed and may be leading to bigger problems may have taken some of the wind out of their badass-sails: I'm planning on telling them that Flora isn't a high enough level caster to cast Remove Curse for them to force the Fighter to keep the weapon and manage the curse until the party's Cleric gains 3rd level spells. (It won't be too long, after all, so the probably won't end the world as long as they're a little careful.)

I had thought about how tough adjusting the last chapter for level 5 is going to be, but alas, my party hit level 5 at the end of chapter 3 before I'd remembered what a power spike it is. It'll definitely take some playtesting to get the power level right for the encounters in the mansion but playing once a month, I have plenty of time to figure it out. (And yeah, I'm kind of grateful to my Cleric for multiclassing; it keeps me from having to worry about 3rd level spells.)

[MarkTriumphant]

I would prefer an immediate follow-up, rather than something set in the future. In fact, the more immediate the better, as I have finished, and will have to resort to running my own adventure for the weekend after next :smallsmile:.

More seriously, it has given a really good start to my role as DM, and I feel capable of using the hooks that you provided to expand the story - the undead paladin is going to be fun (or really dead, but either way, still fun).

[Azreal]

I appreciate the feedback guys! Thank you.

I have one question: if I did write a (shorter!) sequel to this adventure, would people prefer it to take place during the original timeline, or would you rather have the timeline move forward to Shadows over Innistrad?

Personally if you wanted to make a sequel make it lead up to Avacyn's release at the Helvault, that way when we have more information on Shadows Over Innistrad you can do a more complete picture. At least in my opinion that seems a better way to go about it.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

Fair points all. The one thought I had about loot was that shifting the Moonsilver Spear a little later could have helped. I gave it to the Paladin before either of the combat encounters in chapter 2 but making him fight without it might have gotten the tone I wanted a little better and made the Spear feel more like he'd earned it rather than Saint Ready just deciding to play Santa Claus.Should have read "Saint Traft" of course. My phone apparently has some weird auto-corrects.

[DiceDiceBaby]

So, I've had time to test this out with my wife as a solo campaign and it was amazing so far. She started off at level 2, and I made a party of three below-average level 1 NPCs (all stats at 10, with CON at 14 and a dump stat at 16; intelligent Paladin, charismatic Cleric, strong Monk, etc.) to accompany her male Fighter-Soldier Cathar. Each of the three had one of the pre-made bonds and she interacted with them accordingly.

I made her go through all of the encounters in Chapter 1. She was able to figure out that Anton was a werewolf and led him to safety, arriving at Shadowgrange just before the full moon (and hearing a howl in the distance as the moon rose and she successfully ended Chapter 1), and overcame all the obstacles by guessing what was waiting for her there, so she wasn't lured onto the spider bridge, but she enjoyed the whole trip.

Chapter 2 was fun, and she actually went to the alchemist's lab first and picked up Elbrus last. She would proceed to never use it to kill anything that wasn't undead or a construct before solving the mystery, and return the blade to the case by the statue of Saint Traft at the end of Chapter 3.

She also dominated Chapter 3 by successfully assassinating Rinelda before she even made it to Shadowgrange, and none of the scenarios of things getting worse even happened.

This adventure is amazing in that it seems you literally thought of everything. As in, crazy prepared everything. Great work! :smallwink:

That said, I think that, as a solo adventure, I may have been making things too easy, but I realistically see any solo player (even a Wizard, I think) who starts off the adventure at level 3 (and still levels up with each milestone, ending the adventure at level 7 or 8) as potentially soloing the adventure without a team of NPCs as accompaniment, on principle. Part of the fun (and scaling difficulty) I can see happening is making a group argue about the best way to defend the town or debate concerning the true nature of blade, or even try to find out who the cultists are. As a solo adventure, however, as long as someone remains calm, they should be able to manage.

One suggestion I would make to make it a bit simpler when it comes to Chapter 3 would be to have a group of 10 Zombies represented as a "Swarm of Zombies" (think "Swarm of Rats", like in the player handbook), to prevent additional bookkeeping as a DM on individual ones. Would make running the siege a lot easier, I think.

We're still waiting for a good time to do Chapter 4, but she'll probably be able to finish that smoothly as well, given her track record. :smallsmile:

If you ever make a Ravnica one, I'll be on the long list of people who would be eager to run it and give feedback. :smallbiggrin:

[Dralnu]

I'm subscribed to this thread, my email is correct, and yet I still don't get notifications. So weird. Sorry for the late responses!



I've been sharing your work all over Reddit and Facebook, as I continuously run into fans of both MtG and D&D. Especially with the new Ravenloft Adventure League release; why play Ravenloft when Innistrad is available?

A few times people have brought up other MtG settings, specifically Ravnica. Any luck working on the other settings and projects?

I appreciate the shares, thank you!

I'm currently gearing up to launch adventures that conform to the OGL so I can sell them via kickstarter and stuff. I want to see if this can be a viable during this summer before I enter graduate school (and during). The first adventure is done, just waiting for the maps to be done, which are made by the amazingly talented 2-Minute Table Top (http://2minutetabletop.com/). I'm very eager to share that!

I did run a group through a Kessig storyline and it turned out great, but it would have to be as long as Army of the Damned and that's a big time commitment. I do get a ton of messages for more MtG stuff though so it's still on my mind. I may work on it slowly as a side thing to drum up interest in my website but it's not my current priority.


Fair points all. The one thought I had about loot was that shifting the Moonsilver Spear a little later could have helped. I gave it to the Paladin before either of the combat encounters in chapter 2 but making him fight without it might have gotten the tone I wanted a little better and made the Spear feel more like he'd earned it rather than Saint Ready just deciding to play Santa Claus. I think realizing that the bone blade is cursed and may be leading to bigger problems may have taken some of the wind out of their badass-sails: I'm planning on telling them that Flora isn't a high enough level caster to cast Remove Curse for them to force the Fighter to keep the weapon and manage the curse until the party's Cleric gains 3rd level spells. (It won't be too long, after all, so the probably won't end the world as long as they're a little careful.)

I had thought about how tough adjusting the last chapter for level 5 is going to be, but alas, my party hit level 5 at the end of chapter 3 before I'd remembered what a power spike it is. It'll definitely take some playtesting to get the power level right for the encounters in the mansion but playing once a month, I have plenty of time to figure it out. (And yeah, I'm kind of grateful to my Cleric for multiclassing; it keeps me from having to worry about 3rd level spells.)

Good point. I updated the PDF to suggest Saint Traft gifting them the spear after the battle of Chapter 3.

Hopefully the last Chapters worked out well for you!



That said, I think that, as a solo adventure, I may have been making things too easy, but I realistically see any solo player (even a Wizard, I think) who starts off the adventure at level 3 (and still levels up with each milestone, ending the adventure at level 7 or 8) as potentially soloing the adventure without a team of NPCs as accompaniment, on principle. Part of the fun (and scaling difficulty) I can see happening is making a group argue about the best way to defend the town or debate concerning the true nature of blade, or even try to find out who the cultists are. As a solo adventure, however, as long as someone remains calm, they should be able to manage.

One suggestion I would make to make it a bit simpler when it comes to Chapter 3 would be to have a group of 10 Zombies represented as a "Swarm of Zombies" (think "Swarm of Rats", like in the player handbook), to prevent additional bookkeeping as a DM on individual ones. Would make running the siege a lot easier, I think.

We're still waiting for a good time to do Chapter 4, but she'll probably be able to finish that smoothly as well, given her track record. :smallsmile:

If you ever make a Ravnica one, I'll be on the long list of people who would be eager to run it and give feedback. :smallbiggrin:

I haven't gotten too much input in terms of adventure difficulty so I appreciate that. It does sound to me that your experience has been much easier than intended, though I'm not sure why. You're right that a full group is going to run across more difficulties than a solo. But even so, taking out Rinelda in a straight up battle before the siege should be nigh-impossible; the PCs would've had to come up with a very creative method to accomplish that. Was there a crazy scheme that worked for that?

As for swarm stats, maybe. The only time it comes up is if the PCs ride out to attack the undead horde before the siege, which should be very difficult as mentioned. All other times you're only fighting ~3 zombies in an encounter, including the siege.

[JohanOfKitten]

So, As I said before, I used your module to start a campaign with my wife and a friend and here is my review :

(It may be a bit to much exhaustive, so I apology in advance if it's boring. I will try to make some spoilers forms to make it easy to read. I put in quote text when it's about the changes on the adventure I could have done on the way.)

First, I need to expose the situation:
The two players are kessigers, brother and sister both rogue. Dismas is a crossbow expert, member of some spy network of people trying to do some good in Innistrad (mistrust issues to authorities due to infiltrated cultists in Avacyn’s church, to aristocrats abusing their power instead of protecting folks…) and will multiclass in ranger specialized in forest and werewolves. Gaïe is a sweet girl who fight gently with an axe when needed, following the step of her father by being a jeweler in an artisan guild called the Civil Hand. She’s completely obsessed with silver, due to the great power of protection against evil it can offer. Therefore, she’s specialized in silver jewelry and her father taught her the rituals to bless silver. Their mother died in a werewolf attack long ago and both of them want to help people and fight as they can.

During the character creation, I was afraid of how lethal adventure could be for a party of 2, especially with no magic abilities and no healing. So I’ve been a bit generous, making the pool point for creation 30 instead of 27 and giving them blessed silver weapons (the axe for Gaïe and 10 ammunitions for Dismas). After a few evening of play, I think I may have been too generous, but it’s also the style of their group: They hit hard and quick or they take many damages and are in trouble, no more no less than expected from a group only of rogues.


Before the campaign, I build a small scenario to make them go up a level and take a hook to start the adventure. By the spy network, they have heard about the fact that some high clerics in Traben were worried about having no news of Katarina Reinhart, and some rumors was about her having a secret task to accomplished. The church is too careful about it because of cultists and doesn’t want to draw too much attention on it, so they do nothing for now. It could have been just a rumor without interest, but Dismas got the opportunity to talk to a guy who went in Stensia few months ago and who knew Katarina: he’s a traveler and his work is to deliver messages, quickly and safely, even when roads are dangerous. She paid him well to come to Shadowgrange and deliver few letters in Kessig in several places where her uncle is known to live, 5 months ago. The delivery guy says to Dismas that he doesn’t know what was in the letter, but she seems to be very concerned about the letters to arrive and he let them to closed doors for most of them, but one, at a secluded observatory, which was taken by a servant saying his master was away but will come back soon.

The siblings decide to go to this observatory to know more about what Katarina wanted to ask to her uncle. It’s closely on their way to go to Stensia, so they can continue their trip if the letter confirms that something important is going on in Shadowgrange.

On the way, they heard a girl’s scream. They save her of the worgs who kill her little bro, but they have some back-up in the area and the group need to run for their lifes. Follows a chase hard and dangerous, but they managed it well (crit on perception to watch if there is other wolves in the area, giving them 100 feet lead. One take the girl in her arm and start to run, the other unleashed their mule, attached to a tree not very far, to give it a chance to live. Sometimes, they didn’t dash during one turn to make some attacks, avoiding being surrounded. They did well with the obstacles and the ground. The mule outruns Dismas and arrive near Gaïe, so she try and succeed to take the leash to have it near her, drop the girl on the back of the mule. At the end of a 660 feet chase in which they got separated, they arrived to a ward surrounding the observatory, with lot of exhaustion and few HPs. The worgs, being wolves twisted by the dark energy from behind the moon, aren’t able to come through the ward. The alpha male, last one alive, started to withdraw, but the group didn’t let him try.

After that encounter, they knock at the door and a small robot (a monodron) comes to open it. It tells to them that the master is away, “taking a purifying bath”, and they have to come back later. The siblings find this weird and investigate. By the window, they find that the kitchen is perfectly clean; except there are rotten fruits in a basket and some hung salt meat starts to turn green. With some climbing, they see that there is three monodrons cleaning an office and the bedrooms look empty. Something is fishy, and after a rest, no sign of the astronomer. They decide to break in the observatory. They pick the lock easily, but the house as some magical way of defense against intruders who don’t know how to avoid it. The tail of a dragon statue (flying sword) and two homunculus start a fight, quickly dismissed by the adventurers. Nothing on the first floor. They explore carefully and spy the monodrons. They didn’t learn much, but the monodrons act aggressively so they have to defend themselves. They knock out two of them and lock them up in a chest. They spy the attic where there is the workshop and the astronomic telescope. A monodron and a tridron seems to work to repair broken robots. In the office, they had found some diaries of Hans, talking about his creations and how he was beginning to fear them. He had made some purification machinery to purge them once a while, but it was coming out of hand. So the siblings knew that the tridron was up to nothing good. They fought quickly and well, but the multiple eyes of the tridron make him detect the discreet rogues (that and a crit on perception check). Before dying, he has the time to hide behind a glass cistern full of some black liquid a linked to a lot of pipes, cables and machinery. The tridron has started to cut ropes and pipes, so the cistern was unbalanced and started to fall. The adventurers have good reflexes and stop the fall, put the cistern verticaly and block it to avoid it to fall again, but they saw that something was trying to go out. They decided to fight it, instead of letting it a chance to escape when they’re not noticing. The quickest of both opened the lid of the cistern and run on the other side of the room. Some monstrous ooze climbs out and rushes to them. With their strategy, they were able to kill it without being too much hurt and the animated corpse in the cistern, the astronomer throw in it by his twisted servants and burnt by the acid of the ooze in creation, could go out to help the ooze, so they could kill it after easily.

In the office, the siblings have found Katarina’s letter and learn from it that she has a powerful artefact, from the Lunarch, and she needed help to find out how to make it work. She begged her uncle to come and help her with his knowledge on moon influence on silver and on magic. After cleaning the place of the monsters, they escort the girl to her house in the woods, help her to nurse her parents (she was far from home because she needed elderberry leaves to make a tea that reduce fever to save her ill parents). The father, a woodcutter, thanks them by giving them the blooming stake, a stake of an elder oak with the spirit of a nymph in it, so it is an everlasting living wood stake. (with power that help to kill a vampire, but the stake is consumed in the killing).

In short, they goes there, save a little girl on the way, discover that some constructs have gone mad and killed Hans, clean the area and learn from Katarina’s letter that she receives from the Lunarch an artefact important and she needs her uncle knowledge on moon influence on silver and magic to understand it. Enough to drive the players to Shadowgrange and to make them gain enough xp to be lvl2.

After this little adventure, they went to the road of Shadowgrange.


As they’re kessigers, they arrived by another road than the one expected (road at the south of Falkenrath manor, leading to Jezca before arriving to Shadowgrange). So I made some changes : 4 days of travel, a bit more possibilities of encounters (finally, they got 4). I didn’t want them to lost to much time by staying in Jezca, dealing with people there, and I wanted to give the idea that Stensia was a ruined place and Shadowgrange was barely standing, last “safe” place of the direct area. So I decided that, 5 months ago, Falkenrath vampires went to Jezca to feed, but the villagers fought back, sick of the constant threat. Furious with that rebellion, the vampire decided to give humans a lesson and wipe out the village of the map, by burning it to the ground. So Jezca is just a field of burnt ruins. That would help to explain to the players the despair of the locals and how the inhabitants of Shadowgrange could have let happen the capture of Katarina and the murder of Ralph one month later without blink.
First day, Wolf at the door: the siblings find out quickly what’s going on with the guy. They’re not the type of adventurers who kill anyone easily because it’s simpler, but it’s clear to their minds that a werewolf, even a good guy who don’t want to hurt anybody, is a threat that can be very dangerous at a point or another. So they didn’t let him a lot of time. Gaïe talk to him to make him understand that it’s not how he can protect his loved ones and Dismas take advantage of the situation to back stab the guy before he could understand it. They tried to be anything but cruel and they pray Avacyn for the poor guy soul. After that, they burn his body in a pious way (Before the campaign, we decided that the funeral custom in Innistrad was cremation in the current century, to avoid the body to be used by necromancers. At least, in places like Kessig or Stensia, where you can’t have a safe and holy ground that can protect bodies from evil.).

Day 2 : Ominous Bridge and Ancient devoutees: They saw the webs on the bridge, then made extra careful actions (burning the web with flamed arrows to be distant, going on the edge of the ravine far enough from the bridge to try to see under it with a safe distance, throwing meat on the bridge to lure the spiders.). They were able to hurt the spiders a bit before the big fight starts, so they deal with it quite right. A chance that Gaïe loves to make natural 20 on saving throws against poison (she already did that once with the homunculus), or she would have been in bad shape here. After that, the fight with the skeletons in the ruins was a bit awkward. They killed 2 of them in the first round easily, but it was harder with the last one and this cathar skeleton really knows how to swing a rusted sword, leaving Gaïe bleeding on the ground and Dismas at least than 5 HPs (for lvl2 characters) before falling.

Day 3 : no encounters, the dice surely wanted them to rest a bit. They arrive at Jezca, astonished to see the ruins. They investigate a bit, but nothing can be really relevant. They try to find a cellar for shelter for the night, but the one they found was full of bats. (I throw a dice for night encounter) They go quickly out and close the door. Encounter avoided.

Day 4 : Cloud of Teeth (bad luck, the destiny wanted them to fight swarms).
This encounter was a bit hard for them. A player wanted to run, but the speed and the lack of shelter where the encounter happens made the chase impossible to win. The other tried to do something clever in roleplay (take a torch and swing it in the swarm), but the D&D 5E rules about swarms don’t take account of things like that and mathematically, she was better with a rapier with damages divided by 2 than with the torch doing bludgeoning damages. Maybe I should have come with some houserule here. Anyway, with 3 swarms and two characters, the swarms couldn’t all attack the players. The poor mule, which has so bravely run for its life against the worgs, was caught in the battle too. For the record, it fought quite well, dealing 15 damages to a swarm and avoiding falling to 0HP (a mule isn’t aggressive by nature, by it can defend itself by kicking around when attack by a lot of small animals). I reward it for this battle. The mule has earned 50 XPs (it has its share of the XPs pool). The siblings have decided to craft a barding for it and say that they have an enraged mule!


After that risky road, they discover Shadowgrange. The place is well described, so it was really a piece of cake to have nice roleplay moments. They went see Flora shortly after their arrival, because they asked about Katarina and people avoided the subject and leading them to the priestess. Because of their knowledge about the existence of the artefact, they could ask her a lot. They offer to the chapel the arm of the faithful (the loot on the werewolf guy), so it helps to prove to Flora that they’re good people. They want to investigate the mayor house before knowing that it’s haunted, so that quest hook went pretty smoothly. For the end of the day, they went through the different stores, selling their own stuff (spices, fur and woodcraft objects from Kessig), and they spend some time in the inn to learn news and rumors from different people.


I choose to grow a bit the village idiot, Martin. I decided that he was a guy who started to be involved in the spy network. One day, he takes a rough hit on the head and was a bit delirious for a week or two. When he was better, he understands that it could be the perfect cover: in a small town like that, with few travelers and news spreading quickly, it was risky to play the spy. Staying “idiot”, he could easily be where he shouldn’t; saying things that make no sense for most people, hearing interesting stuff because the villagers think that he’s not important/ a threat. Fun roleplay with him!

When I prepare the encounters of mayor house and Siegfried shop, I found out something I think is a bit strange: the vampires attacked, going through the city directly toward the mayor house. They entered, torture Ralph and kidnap Katarina. Katarina, during the attack, instead of helping in the fight, knew it was too late and go upstairs to hide the strionic resonator, but not before breaking it to give a piece to Siegfried and making annotations on music sheets, then got the piece to Siegfried before being taken. But where the hell was Siegfried and how did she give him the piece unnoticed by the vampires? I thought that the things were a bit blurry, so I decided that Siegfried was in his underground lab during the attack and couldn’t intervene before it’s too late because he only heard the racket after few minutes. He arrived too late, seeing the vampires fleeing with Katarina and his spells wasn’t enough to stop them. For Katarina, she tried to defend with her father, but saw quickly it was a lost cause, so Ralph defended the stairs while she went up. She broke the strionic resonator, wrote her clues and used a trick to give indirectly the last piece to Siegfried: she used Magic Hand to hang the piece wrapped in a scarf in the top of the hawthorn tree, through the roof. They used to do that to exchange love billets sometimes and she knew that Siegfried would see the scarf and could take it by his own Magic Hand. After she used her spell, in the hall of the second floor, she broke a branch of the tree to use it as a stake against the vampires who were coming upstairs. As I decided that, I had clues to the adventurers: a teared scarf with a note “Protect this” in Siegfried’s Lab and small piece of silk of the color of the scarf stuck on a thorn of the tree near the roof of mayor house. I may be overthinking this though, but I found the clue nice.

On the different quests:
- Tempered bull : Gaïe is the perfect adventurer to help the blacksmith with the bless silver. She did the ritual with Markus and they ordered armors and other smalls stuff linked to their artisan guild.
- Fleeting Fox : they deal wolf fur against leatherwork tools (They wanted those tools from the beginning and asked in every room or loot if there was any !!!). They noted the quest of the lotus in the farbog, but waited to finish things in the city before leaving. They asked a lot of data about the farbog and bought a lot of things to go in there (a pole to check the ground in front of them, herbs to drive away mosquitoes, waders to walk in the water without being soaked…).
- Otto and Magda : They haven’t found anything odd about them for now. They tried to negotiate the price for a scroll they want to sell, so the cultists jumped on the occasion to place the curse weapon in the deal. The siblings are pretty amazed by the magic weapon, and they finally buy it. But Dismas then go to the chapel to visit the St Traft Memorial. Flora told him about the entire story behind Elbrus and he gets curious. He asks if he can test his wand of detect magic (a treasure they got in the first adventure, with the gem in it glowing in different colors when close to some magic, according to its school). The glass chest makes it glow blue (for the abjuration of the alarm), but when Flora dismissed it, there was no more glowing from the wand. They linked the magic weapon they bought with the missing cursed dagger but have no way to confirm it. They investigate a bit (spying the cultists at night, asking people about them, but also about Siegfried, for they didn’t want to forget a possibility and they found his fled strange.)Finally, the next morning, Flora casts Locate Object in front of them and confirms their suspicion. She asks to keep it quiet to let the guards watch the suspects and discover what they were up to. Dismas put Martin too on surveillance duty. Then Martin said that he really needed to have a wooly hat, with silver string in it to protect him from the flying demons who come at night to enter into the head of people, and that he would go to the shop for it, even if he had to wait all day long that Magda knit it. :)
- The alchemist shop: They’re intrigued by the dying tree, questioned people about the possibility of a fungus or mold killing it. They went there after having authorization from Flora and Captain Levi to enter. Gaïe searched directly in the fireplace (to see if he burnt letters or something, but she went directly stick her eyes where they should find the footprints and the lever!) and they went down prudently. The stitching corpse was so interesting that the blight were able to attack them quite directly. The battle was hard but fun. Dismas, with his low strength, was trapped by the vine and didn’t even try to go out of it, thinking it was a better use of his actions to attack, even with disadvantage. I was worried about the encoded letter, because we are French and it could be difficult to decipher something in another language that your native one, but it goes pretty smoothly.
- Mayor House: They get the key from Flora easily and Martin gave them some intelligence about it when asked (he tried to sneak in, doesn’t think that’s a con, the darkness are deep in there). They were very careful about it and scared to go there. And they were right! First attempt, they wandered in the house, pissing off the ghost with their actions (like touching his daughter’s clothes) and it attacked them from time to time. They tried things but were not deeply inspired and they finished badly hurt so they fled (Being pushed against a corpse nailed on the wall, while trying to pin him down, and taking 17 damages at the same time could be the final straw) and asked Flora for help. She couldn’t do a lot, but healed them a blessed them. They return and tried to discuss talk to the ghost a bit more and manage to find the right words to calm it down. They wash his body respectfully and organized a procession in the city at evening to let inhabitants show their respects to him and deal with their grief, so they can, I quote my player, “show themselves worthy of their mayor”. It’s a nice idea, especially when we know what’s coming and how it could be helpful to galvanize the spirits before the attack of the undead army. I must say that this encounter give me some hard time to deal with. The idea is nice, we could have made some very interesting roleplay in it (we even dim the light of the room when they entered the haunted house, each detail made them thrill, …), but the fight part was undoable: the poltergeist is invisible, can pass through walls, attacks with telekinetic powers at range… For low levels groups, it’s almost always an impossible fight (except solutions like fleeing or calm down the ghost).They couldn’t know where it were. All the poltergeist has to do is attack repeatedly on anyone in his house, waiting for them to fall or leave the place. The characters hadn’t a lot of options. They could hit spots at random hoping it’s the good place. I think some characters can do something (like a cleric can use channel divinity, but it’s unsure to work and the ghost can hide in the opposite of the house for 1minute. It could give a spot it although), but I think only magic users having faerie fire could really made this encounter doable (expecting the ghost miss his saving throw and the fey-lock or wizard can keep his concentration during all the fight). Maybe I did it the wrong way or didn’t manage it correctly, but I think it might be a useful feedback.

The chapter at Shadowgrange was really interesting. 3 evenings to play it through. Not a lot of fights, but a lot of roleplay and nice NPCs to deal with. They really enjoyed that part and built something from it. Having town “dungeons” was nice and change from the usual dungeon in wilderness and they instinctively acted differently here : asking permission from authorities to go there and investigate, making reports about what they did and not automatically sack the places: they did their part of taking goods, but not always everything : they went to see Flora and Captain Levi after the mayor House, give them the violin (because they don’t play music and think it can be useful to protect the city, with Silvia playing it) and the armors. They asked Flora if they could keep the artefact to deal with it and continue what Katarina started and hand them the Ralph treasure, making the request (but not the demand) to have it to pay their armors and be well equipped to deal with the danger of the farbog to find Siegfried and do other things for the community.
The black spot for me is Ralph's ghost that is reaaly difficult to deal with if there isn't something against invisibility or something.

Ok, my post is really long and i don't know if there is a limit to a post. The rest in the next post :smallwink:

[JohanOfKitten]

And then...


They take their time before leaving town. They did some crafting and researches before going for a day and an half, but they included an interesting action: Gaïe, jeweler, made a clay mold of the strionic resonator, cook it and use it to make a false tuning fork that they gave to Flora to put it safe in the Saint Traft memorial, not on a big ceremony, but being able to be seen if someone is investigating on it (They told her secretly before it’s a fake and it’s a lure in case someone with bad intentions wants to steal it). They knock up a missing teeth with silver to make the artefact look full and buy a flute to make believe they just have a tuning fork to play music.

After that, they leave town, heading to the farbog. When they meet the refugees on the road, they went in bulldozer mode! They scouted ahead, saw the horde and count the enemies. They were on a stroll of luck and were unseen. Despite all the warnings about how big the swarm was and all the danger, they came pretty close, enough to try a shot of poisoned bolt from the sharpshooter player. He hit and almost got her, but she hid and they got to run back because of zombies going toward them. They deal with few zombies, using distance weapons and being careful to always stay far from the monsters. After that, Dismas, due to his expertise to shoot from far, kept the best high range weapon and stayed to play hit and run with all the bolts they’d got. During this time, Gaïe went back to town, like a fury, to give the details they gathered and asked supplies (long bow for better range and A LOT of arrows!). She was very pressing, so she got the bows and a hundred arrows, but the council didn’t want to send cathars and too much weaponry out there, feeling it was highly dangerous and they needed all forces to protect the city.

So Dismas was killing zombies as he could. I put him in danger for an encounter, so he can measure how it could be deadly if he failed strategic position. But alone, on his rock, he managed it well, dealing with 2 waves (the second arrived 3 rounds after the first one) and he ran when he sees the third one). When he ran out of bolts, he took the south road and met his sister coming north. They rested a bit and planned few ambushes for the rest of daylight time. Their first concern was to try to see again the girl in the middle of the horde and to kill her, hoping it would end the undead attack. They managed to find a high spot where they waited the horde, hidden, to have a clear see and shot to the middle of it. Rinelda healed herself since, but they got a shot that hit her unaware again. The second shot in the row missed, so I hoped that she could do something. But they got the initiative then and even if she could have seen coming the attacks, she could only use once a zombie to protect herself and she took another shot. They couldn’t be sure she was dead, but she fell and they didn’t see her after. I rolled her death saving rolls: 2 successes, but 3 failures. Too bad for you Rinelda.

By making that daring attempt, they put themselves in a dangerous situation. They’re on the edge of some cliff, with a lot of zombies down there, and waves coming by the soft slope from the other side. And it’s not easy to run away because the head of the horde had passed the area with the cliff. Cornered, they dealt with 4 waves. They did well and have one round or two before the 4th wave to arrive, so they started to make an escape manoeuver and dealt with this wave while running away. They lure some of the zombies to walk on caltrops, so some of them are slowed by it and, even if not destroyed, they would be too late for the city’s attack.

At the end of the day, the undead army was only constituted of 278 zombies, 10 skeletons and 2 skaabs. Between the guerilla tactics and the death of Rinelda, the horde is really weakened.

I will mention the toughest zombie of the day, who died after 39 damages and survive twice to deadly hits. A the beginning, he lost one arm with a 15 damages bolt and when he get a 17 damages bolt after surviving once at 0HP, and surviving again with a 19 on his Con saving throw, I roleplay that the bolt exploded his head and there was only left the base of the skull and a dandling jaw, but it kept moving forward to try to hit the livings.

Next day, they prepared the siege. Gaïe woke up at dawn to help Flora and other priests to enchant the walls, they dealt with the council for the strategic points, with some nice ideas: they organized the implantation of an emergency nursery, to tend the wounds, at the guards ground, due to its strategic location, asked for every horns and trumpets of the town to make a fastest way to give alerts, with a code they build up (3 blows are “things are bad”, 2 blows are “breach in the defense”, 1 blow is “we’re over here”), they prepared lighting of the outside to see the army coming before they’re too close and organized traps for the enemies, with pikes sticked in the moat and the bottom of the walls and a “fire path”, big line of wood, covered with a lot of straw and soaked with all the oil they can find, put in a way the army will have to go through it.

Their previous day was exhausting, (1 level of exhaustion for Gaïe, 2 for Dismas), so Dismas rest a very long time, but they wanted to put another trip in countryside to shoot some zombies before night, but shorter than the day before to avoid exhaustion. Some hunters came with them to multiply the killing, but an unlucky one was caught by surprised by some zombies and devoured.

In the evening, they tried to raise morale with a big speech. They had prepared it during lunch, choosing their words and all, so I give them advantage to the charisma throw. Unluckily, it wasn’t enough and people were having difficulties to be confident with the horde coming. I felt like I was re-reading War & Xps with Elan speech all over again! :)
Then comes the battle!


I fear the “hold the doors” being a bit light with DPR of my players, so I added few things: the zombies could broke the door open, only more slowly than the skaabs: with one skaab down, two zombies could hit the gate and add the equivalent of “a quarter of a hit”. Not much, but with time, they would finished to destroy the weak point of fortification and enter in the city. I organized a battle then, with a number of zombies that can enter each round, the possibility to barricade the gate to limit this number, and use influence dice to make the battle epic. Zombie influence dice grows with their number, Shadowgrange influence dice were associated with folks (a die for Captain Levi, a die for the cathars, as long as they’re more than 10, two dice for civils, 1 by group of 20, and 1 die for priest. The 1 and 2 one the dice meant people (or zombies) killed/fleeing and the players could be in the melee, taking more hits but able to avoid one “2” on an ally die, or being on the fringe of the battle to be less involved. I had also a challenge for the bowers on the walls: After the arrival of the horde near the walls, there was one chance on 12 each turn that a shriekgeist arrive to kill people. It could divide the players’ actions, make all the bowers dead or fled. The whole encounter was a mess, a bit hard to play for me, but really fun.

My fear of a really easy encounter was founded. With all the preparations they add before the fight, it was as if the skaabs were not a threat. Even with the skaabs running, in the middle of an horde already there, they took much damages and one of the two skaabs could only hit the door once. The other one hit twice… (At least, they put people attention on them and the defenders fired max on them to be safe). After that, they could shoot the lasts skeletons and some zombies, lightening the horde number a lot before the gate broke. The shriekgeist arrived two rounds before that, but they killed it so quickly it has only the time to kill one man, and Gaïe had the time to leave the wall and go in front of the gate to help the cathars for the zombie rush. The fight was entertaining. They did well at the beginning, keeping the flow at bay and barricading as they can, but there was an abrupt change: Zombies got lucky and destroyed all the barricades, allies made mistakes and lose people. At a moment, there were more zombies inside than human fighters and it was bad, but they managed to change the situation, even with the ally influence dice growing fewer than before. But in the middle of the mess, a horn rang out, saying there was a breach. Gaïe broke out of the fight, running to help and Dismas stayed a few rounds to assure than the remains of the group could deal with the zombies.

I must say about this fight that, due to dice and descriptions, my players started to wonder if Captain Levi wasn’t a bit suicidal. He did a lot of awesome actions with high risks and lost HPs almost every round. The priests healed him at least three times.


The second fight, at the breach, was really nice too. I made it a tenser, making waves arriving on the fifth and ninth rounds. As they couldn’t have a skaab in the third wave (due to killing it before) and they couldn’t have the final fight with Rinelda (due to killing her before too!), I choose to stuff a bit the third wave : 6 zombies, 2 skeletons and 1 ghoul. The ghoul is Rinelda corpse, animated by a last glimpse of her ghoulcaller bell. It could be a nice final fight.
The battle was tough, especially for Gaïe who fight alone the first two rounds and who was the only one in melee for the first two waves. They did well and avoid falling in battle by few hit points at a moment.

After the siege, they were relieved and continue their good deeds. They bolster the inhabitants’ moral, help to clean the city streets, to burn the corpses, and push to make a big party (funerals first, then people enjoying to be alive and to manage to save their city with very few casualties). Despite all the seriousness and sobriety of the characters, they sheered up a bit and hooked up with some NPCs! After that, they gave away the gold chest to help the city rebuilding and offered to escort the Mordov’s refugees to come back home safely and be sure no zombie wandered in their area.



The adventurers escorted the Mordov’s refugees to their home with some cathars and prepared their trip in the farbog. They detailed a lot their preparation, so I roll with it. They seek data about olds villages in the swamp, about where in the swamp they could find the lotus, the best way to travel in it, the time to travel through it. Initially, to avoid being in the swamp at night, they went to bed early in Mordov, to wake up before dawn, walk until they reached the beginning of the swamp during the end of the night and make their journey all the day through and arrive at Mauer Estate before dusk. Well, it didn’t go that way finally, but a good idea.


As they prepared themselves for the trip, I changed a bit the “random” part of the encounters: they wanted to follow the road to an old village in the farbog, where it is know that the shrine was still there, so they will have the encounter with the ghosts at a time or another. And they located the part of the farbog where the lotus could grow, using indications about geography, the best conditions for the plant to grow, where it has been seen previous years… And they planned to go there on the way back, so the flowers can be fresh when they return at Shadowgrange. So no Deadly Lotus in the random encounters, at least for now.

They made first the Whisper of Hope and Doom. They distrusted the wisp immediately and a pretty damn good insight roll confirmed it (23 VS a 18 in deception) and started to run in straight line (well, as straight as they can) to leave the red mist. They were caught up by the grell, but Dismas see it coming at last moment and the fight was rough. Luckily for him, he was hit, but used his parade to negate the damages, avoiding at the same time the paralyzing poison. They got hurt, but end it quickly. The wisp arrived too late, went insane and tried to hurt them. I was so bad with rolls, it was like an angry kid waving his teddy bear against bodyguards. But it was fun, as it got hurt and it used his dying master to consume its life: an action that surprised the players and made good roleplay scene. They lost a lot of silver bolts against him, doing poorly themselves, so they decided to rest outside the red mist, then looking for the bolts in the mud when the mist disappeared.

After that first encounter, they got the Hounds of Baskerville. I must say that it didn’t go very well: the fact it was a hallucination made the things worst and it would have been easier for them to just kill the hounds straight. Gaie saw directly that something was wrong, but she lost two actions to make the second roll and see the monster disappeared. But after that, Dismas was alone against one hound and missed all the rolls to dismiss the hallucination. At the end, it took so many damages he managed to see through only when bitten so hard he was knock out at 0HP. The concept of the encounter is really fun, but something (number of players? bad rolls? Else?) made it not great for us. Too bad.

With Dismas badly hurt, they seek shelter nearby and wanted to rest, even if they had to spend the night in the swamp. They arrived at the old ruined village, so I put the little girl plea encounter, but played it nicely to avoid being heavy on them when they just want to rest (as long as they don’t do anything stupid). They met the girl, were careful, but talked to her. They see the graves, but didn’t follow the footprints (“we will investigate to help your parents, but we need to rest first”). They found the shrine and met Bran there. It was easy to find out the truth and they took back the jewels. Gaïe went to the graves with them (after asking the girl, and bringing them in a way that show respect, not just having them hidden in a bag). She put back the jewels and asked the girl if it was all, if anything was missing. With this good idea to ask about that, she discovered that a ring was still missing (I will say nothing about things she said at that moment about Bran ;) ), she returned to the shrine. She found her brother on the way back (as he wanted to be near to protect her if needed, even if he was badly hurt). When they got back to the shrine, they saw Bran trying to flee on Marguerite (their mule), but Marguerite didn’t want to go further. He tried to run when he saw them, but they threatened him heavily enough to make him stop right away. Long story short, they get the ring, appeased the ghosts, tied up the guy for the night, lectured him heavily, but gave him a silver piece to help him when he returns in his village and a blessed silvered pearl with celestial rune on it (the kind of pearls Gaïe crafts when she has time to lose, and that she like to give to people for protection) to protect him on his way back through the farbog.

The day after, the road was easier and they arrived at the grove of Mauer Estate without other complications, ready for the final act.



The encounter with the dryad was fun. They talked about their past, the death of their mother, their purposes. As the histories of the two players were tied all along, I didn’t push the “secret even your friends here don’t know” part. As usual, they started to prepare the future, telling Eudora they will try to repopulate the grove with nice people etc…

They went through the secret passage and met the devilish cookers. They help to cook something decent and use this alliance to try and get a maximum of data. When Ugbug started to sleep, they went in the room and killed him in his sleep but they wanted to be sure that the charmbreaker devils will looking to find their way and go back in hell, without killing humans. (“If you meet zombies, vampire or werewolves, you can have fun with them, but not humans.” “What werewolves be?” “Hrrr, it’s like human but with much more fur” “Ok, us kill only humans with hair”). The devils tried to run, Gaie grabbed one and a fight start. In one round, two were killed, the other ran away after that.

They continued to explore and meet Lambert. Unfortunately for him, they were quiet at first and Dismas looked in the key hole before they made enough noise to let the vampire know they’re here. He tried the illusion, but they heard him whispering in strange language and when he called and they opened the door, he was looking different (at least, different clothes, from noble clothes to farmer clothes. Dismas saw his back through the key hole, so he couldn’t notice the skin variation and other details.). They confronted him and he dropped the illusion and started talking about negotiation.

They accepted to have one of them going in to discuss (but with the second one ready to fire living wood bolts if needed). They talked a lot, but they didn’t know if they will make the deal in the end. They had scruples to free a vampire, for it’s an abomination, which mistreat and kill humans. They let Lambert there for now, telling him they have to deal with Siegfried and the danger he represents first, then will come back to seal the deal (or kill him). But at this stage, they got in the negotiation several things: no aggression from Lambert for them, zero interference of Falkenrath family in the rehabilitation of Mauer Estate as human basement (He said ok, warning them he could only give the word for his family, not others), no implication of vampires with the Siegfried problem (they want to deal that themselves, not knowing yet if it’s a lost cause to kill or someone they could imprison. He said yes, as long as his foul projects are dismissed). The part that made more trouble was safety of Stensians. Dismas and Gaïe wanted that the vampires leave human alone, only feeding lightly on the weirdos who like that. Lambert laughed and propose one year of protection for one village. Dismas and Gaïe proposed eternal protection for Shadowgrange (knowing that other estates will be more severly used by vampires, so they didn’t even like their own proposition), Lambert agreed to one year free for Shadowgrange (bigger than a village)… At this point, it’s hard to tell if they will kill him or not. It would not grant a lot of good with that deal, but it may be better than nothing. On the other hand, having a vampire on the loose is awful. If they killed him, that’s one monster less in this world.

They decided to go in the tower then, and went up the stairs. They noticed that things where fishy with the grease, but they didn’t think to look for traps (after all, the only traps they know and ever see where hunting traps in the wood). They managed it well. After activate it, they climbed on the central pillar. Gaïe fell, but used her shield as a luge, so she went down faster and suffered less of the fire. The giant boulder rock was on her trail, but she managed to tumble and jump on the side when she arrived on the floor, so she dodged the rock.

They were very undamaged before the final encounter (few hit points lost, regained by Eudora goodberries and a healing potion), so they’re ready to meet Siegfried, and really pissed by him!

The big fight didn’t go really well. I didn’t nerf the encounter, thinking that being lvl5 was enough to deal with it. But Siegfried could be really dangerous and the action economy of two adventurers against 4 schelzmanns + 1 golem + 1 mage + 1 quasit +1 homunculus was bad. I should have adapted it more. Things were really bad for them. Even if they put down Siegfried through cheer luck (A crit to shot him, around his mirror images that didn’t do the trick), but both of them reached 0HPs at some point. A Benny Hill chase allowed Dismas to revive Gaïe with a potion and then they climbed up a platform to shelter from the golem. This one destroy a good part of the lab and the platform, put Dismas to 0HP, but Gaïe could manage to put him down with time (in a non-epic way).

So, I didn’t put the fight well, but the roleplay around it was really interesting. The two characters argued a lot about Siegfried’s whereabouts (he rolled well his death throws), between killing him, put him to justice in Shadowgrange, free him so he can use his powers and knowledge to protect people. They managed to calm him down a bit, with long talks, but his future is still uncertain. I used Ser Delandel and they liked the character, found him interesting and wanted to help him with his quest (and asked if he could help to protect the world with them). I intend to make some dungeon under the catacombs of Mauer Estate, like with the evilish artefact Delandel want to destroy, and make this artefact to be the origin of the destruction of the forest and the creation of the north farbog.



I remove the devils in the cellar, as they explore it later and it was something more interesting if they were prisoners. I just felt at the time that it was not useful in the story as it went. Not that it was a poor encounter, but because it wasn't fitting well in the order my players did things.
After some cleaning the manor by burning the dead, they managed Siegfried by making him doing a guilty trip: they forced him to help for the cleaning of the manor, carrying the corpse of people dead because of him. He had still under the sleeve Misty Step, but he knew (helped by heavy and clear threats) that trying to escape was a good way to have his throat sliced before he has time to run 3 rounds. At the same time, they dealt with Lambert, making him believe they will free him and then shooting him straight with 4 living wood stakes. As he misses his insight check, he was surprised and badly hurt. He didn’t last long… Easy fight against a vampire, really… (poor Lambert, I liked him :smalleek: )

They investigate the manor, finding the font of Bennu, getting visions about Avacyn, and a history book of the manor linking it to the Delandel quest. In the basement, they found the place in the wall where it was once a door but now walled and decided to deal with it later to help Delandel in his mission, but with preparation to do it right.

Through the farbog, they went through the zone where the sanguine lotus grows, so they did the encounter about it… or nearly did it. They were careful and used a pool to test the ground, finding the quicksand. As they knew about Siegfried’s mage hand spell, they asked him to lift the flowers to them. When he pulled a flower of the water, they shot the stem with arrows to free it. A safe way to avoid the hidden monster without even knowing it!

At Mordov, where survivors didn’t know Siegfried’s face, they slept at the inn, and the presence of the people upset the mage a lot, as he had to deal with the pain, the suffering and the anger he produced. Dismas and Gaïe didn’t lightened him, and when dismas starting to do his tale-time with everyone around him to listened how they defeated the monsters in farbog and how the wizard was mad and needed to be stop (describing the horrors he was producing. Siegfried went to bed and Gaïe went with him, to watch on him, but also to speak a bit. They always tried to make him realized how wrong he was on his road to power, but by telling him also how he could make things right, how to help people fighting rather than using them as cannon fodder, how his smartness can be useful without all the necro-alchemy (the electric recombolutor, for example, is a great magic device !). They pushed him to express his grief and sorrow about Katarina too, for this is the starting point of his madness, but also the most human part remained in him.

When they arrived near Shadowgrange, Siegfried was really low, but followed, a bit hopeless. He asked nonetheless his wand to cast armor mage in case and invisiblity to enter the city without being seen by everyone. The sieblings wanted to make a fair trial and avoiding do deal with an angry mob was definitively in the top list of the points to do it. Siegfried could have flown here, but they showed him a spark of light and hope and he hung to that. It could have been well, but some guards learnt about it. Even if people like Flora and Captain Levi could deal with it and do things right, it was not the same for every cathar, as they see good fellows died in the siege. The word spread and when the adventurers went out of Flora’s house to go back to the prison, the found a wild crowd in front of it. They tried to calm them down, with mixed results. The night will be hard…

In the wait of the trial, they didn’t forget the things unfinished in town: the Botlers were still under watch and they wanted to know if something was up. They learned by Martin that something was wrong with the baker’s wife, as she went several times to the shop with a music box, asking for repairs every few days.


So that’s the end of the module, but the background and the material (NPCs, hooks for adventures, intrigues, places…) are so heavy that I have plenty of ideas to continue for an epic campaign until they reached level 15 I think. I want to play a great trial about Siegfried, something with the cultists and the Botlers trying to corrupt Siegfried to help them (before and during the trial, so it’s more fun!). I have Ser Delandel waiting for them for a raid in an underground dungeon and some red line to find how to use the strionic resonator and free Avacyn. The players have projects to build a guild, the sentinels, people trying to protect humans against evil.

Thank you for that wonderful module. It was really well done and very interesting. It gives us good time and great roleplay moments.

[Dralnu]

Thanks for the write up! I'm glad you guys enjoyed the adventure and appreciate the feedback.

It sounds like you were very well prepared to run this and made some clever additions to make sure things run smoothly. Also your players were creative and cautious, which benefited them (as it should).

You're right, fighting Ralph will be very difficult due to his mobility and invisibility. I updated the PDF so that he does not attack the PCs directly, but still shakes furniture and do spooky stuff.

How Katarina cut the strionic resonator into pieces and snuck half of it to Siegfried isn't well explained. I think back when I wrote it, I pictured the vampires took their time breaking through Shadowgrange's entrance, maybe killing the guards, giving Katarina a bit of time to break the artifact and hand a piece to Siegfried. Siegfried could've been in the house when the vampires attacked and spared by them for whatever reason. Your fix works as well.

I think it's okay if the siege was a bit anti-climatic once they assassinated Rinelda. I imagined doing so would be quite difficult, as she's at the center of hundreds of zombies, including skeletons with bows. If the PCs manage to kill her despite this, then they should be rewarded. You handled it well.

For the Hounds of Baskerville, the intent was that the hellhounds can still be "killed" normally, just that they have an alternative way of getting around the encounter (it's more difficult than normal). The saving throw to dispel the hallucination is way too high though. I'm lowering it to DC 10 after they recognize it's an illusion.

Thanks again for the feedback!

[JohanOfKitten]

Despite the small difficulties we had sometimes, the module went really well. I must say that it's better than a lot of official modules in sell in the commerce.


We played last night and we did Siegfried's trial. It was mess up by the actions of the skirdags (the group of Botler's cult) that try to get data from the necro-alchemist, then threaten him to cheat the trial so he's sure to be hung if he doesn't want to join them. But the ultimate plan was to learn what the artefact was and have a good diversion to steal it (the trial take place in the chapel and the Botler thought the artefact was in St Traft Memorial with the false dagger, but didn't knew that the artefact was false too !)

Next time, the adventurers will spy a skirsdag secret meeting they heard of and finish once and for all the threat it is to the city... :smallamused:

[Laereth]

Hey Dralnu !

Just to pitch in, I'll be using your module as the starting point in my next campaign. I'll be starting the adventure at level 3, as I want my characters to be professionals rather than apprentices, and adjusting encounters until the end of chapter 3 (so that they get 4th level after the zombies as per your adventure, so that they have the proper level for the manor).

As for future adventures I think it would be interesting if you keep your timeline where it is and explore some of the breadcrumbs you left at the end of the module.

Thanks again for the great module !

[Lord Il Palazzo]

I did run a group through a Kessig storyline and it turned out great, but it would have to be as long as Army of the Damned and that's a big time commitment. I do get a ton of messages for more MtG stuff though so it's still on my mind. I may work on it slowly as a side thing to drum up interest in my website but it's not my current priority.I overlooked this when you first posted it somehow. Is there any chance you could at least post a quick summary of the Kessig storyline when you have a chance? I'm toying with taking my party into Kessig after things wrap up in Stensia, following some hooks from my Kessiger Ranger's backstory.

My party's run into some scheduling trouble since last time so I don't really have any more input on your material. We've had one session since my giganto-post which was mainly the party investigating Elbrus and uncovering Otto and Magda's cult connections. They took the couple down relatively easily (rolling some darned lucky saves in the process) and are going to head for the farbog next time we play. I'm planning on using the Corpse Wagon encounter along with some content I'm designing myself to connect to one of my PCs' backstories though I'm keeping Deadly Lotus and A Little Girl's Plea in my back pocket just in case.

[Dralnu]

Apologies for the late reply, again the subscription thing isn't notifying me.

I'm working on the next part of the adventure now. I've decided to keep with the original timeline. It takes place in Kessig and hopefully will be shorter.

This is my rough idea for the adventure for those just looking for ideas to build something yourself:

Summary.

- PCs come across a dozen corpses in the Ulvenwald. If they investigate, they find a message addressed to Captain Raf Gyel of the Quiver of Kessig, about the possible whereabouts of a druid sect. Werewolves attack with more on the way. The PCs have an opportunity to flee or fight a dangerous combat.
- The closest settlement is Gatstaf. PCs learn of a blessed silver shortage, the "curfew of silver," resentment at the church, fear and paranoia (mostly justified) of werewolves, kessiger values, and that Hanns Reinhart (Katarina's uncle, lunarmage) passed through here months ago on the way to Ereschtag. There will be plenty of sidequests here: a demon-possessed child that needs an exorcism, a townsfolk who worries that demons/werewolves are attacking his (flock?) but really it's a jealous townsman's doing, a chance to participate in a werewolf hunt led by Elder Kolman, and anything else I can think of.
- PCs can go to the nearby holy grotto where the Quiver of Kessig reside. Captain Raf Gyel tries to enlist the PCs in secret to make contact with the druids. With Avacyn gone and the wards failing, he simply does not have the manpower to protect the settlements from the increasingly bold werewolf attacks. He's looking towards old druidic sources of magic for protection. He sends the PCs to the village X to inquire about "Mother Autumn."
- Village X is an isolated village with little to no protection, yet they lead happy lives, claiming Mother Autumn protects them. I want Mother Autumn to be a hag that protects the village for the price of child sacrifice, but I feel like your average dnd group will see it a mile away and murder her right on the spot. I honestly don't know how to deceive players convincingly here. I may make her actually a good fey spirit just to be anti-meta.
- Mother Autumn does have knowledge of a secret druid sect and the PCs can be pointed in the right direction.
- If the PCs find the druids, the druids are reluctant to help, as they claim to have been persecuted by the Church. They want something as a show of good faith: there's an item (not sure what) inside a nearby mansion they want. Unfortunately, a necromancer recently took residence there. Good luck!
- The necromancer ends up being Liliana. She can crush the PCs but find them amusing. She'll hand over the item as she doesn't need it, but in return, she wants information on the whereabouts of Griselbrand. She gives the item upfront, but tells the PCs to go to the Demon Pit and interrogate a certain imp for information while she investigates elsewhere. The PCs have a week to do this -- otherwise she'll find them, and she won't be happy.
- After fighting their way through fiends in the Demon Pit, they can locate the Imp Qarr, who knows that Griselbrand was last seen flying to Thraben to confront Avacyn personally. If he died, he would've reformed back here, so he didn't die -- he might have been imprisoned.
- With the item delivered to the druids, they agree to contact Raf Gyel and give the PCs some parting gifts.
- If the PCs go to Ereschteg, they can find Hanns Reinhart. It turns out the parish is a not-so-secret werewolf sanctuary where repentant werewolves cage themselves and seek out a cure. This is led by Elder Rimheit, partially because her daughter was killed under suspicion of being a werewolf. Hanns can repair the strionic resonator, but he'll need tools that he left in Avabruck (now Hollowhenge). Once the PCs retrieve it, he fixes the resonator, which restores some of its magical properties, and points them towards Jenrik in Nephalia to figure out more about the artifact. At Hollowhenge, they can also find out that the defenders' silvered weapons were counterfeit.
- Wanton werewolves know what's going on at Ereschteg and see it as an affront to the wild freedom of lycanthropy. One night while the PCs rest there, two wanton spies infiltrate the catacombs under the cathedral where the werewolves cage themselves and release them, devastating the town. Rumors of this spreads like wildfire.
- Elder Kolman of Gatstaf whips up the people to a frenzy. A mob forms and they march to Ereschteg to destroy the entire parish harboring werewolves.
- Gatstaf has its own problems as well. The Mondronen Howlpack, responsible for the destruction of Avabruck, is ready to test their blood magic once more. They attack at the opportune moment.


Here's more info if you want it. These are rough notes and you can see it's incomplete:

Factions. The adventure has five main factions:

1) Sigarda. With Avacyn missing, Kessig is the province most in peril, with the howlpacks looking to take out every last human settlement. Sigarda and her flight are hopelessly outmatched. Without Avacyn's divine magic to bolster the humans, Sigarda has secretly turned her interest to druidism, which was once the dominant religion and source of power for Kessigers before Avacyn abolished it. She knows of a druid circle still existing in secret and wishes to cooperate with them in hopes of saving the land. However, she also knows that this decision would cause a divide in humans, as many would view the act as heresy and Sigarda as a traitor to the faith.

Sigarda sees the PCs as a convenient way to do her bidding without drawing attention to herself. They aren't of her flight, they're a small group that won't draw too much attention, and they're powerful enough to get the job done. Find the druids and learn about forgotten sources of power.

2) Elder Rimheit (Ereschteg). She's mentioned in the "Cursed Blade" story. She's an elder in Ereschteg, and there's a popular rumor that she's offering sanctuary to werewolves in her parish. Her son was hanged for lycanthropy. I think her daughter is Reika from "the cursed blade," eventually gets killed too. I have to reread it.

I'm not actually sure what to do with the elder herself. My PCs never were interested in her. Hanns Reinhart, a prominent lunar scholar and Katarina's uncle, was afflicted by lycanthropy and now seeks refuge here. He can mend the artifact, "the strionic resonator," which restores some of its magical properties, but he'll need tools that were lost in the site now called Hollowhenge.

3) Elder Kolman (Gatstaf). The dude hates werewolves. He leads werewolf hunts and whips up the townsfolk into a frenzy against them. Often is overzealous in his methods. Sometimes kills humans that were never cursed, or accused of conspiring with werewolves (families of them usually).

Never got far enough in my game to introduce him. I wanted to make him somewhat sympathetic. Eventually he leads a mob against Ereshteg and Rimheit to kill the werewolves there once he gets proof of what's happening there.

4) Mondronen Howlpack (Tovolar). Werewolves with blood magic. Blew up Avabruck in a mysterious ritual, the site is now called Hollowhenge. Tovolar and his pack are looking to do the same thing to Gatstaf.

5) Druids of the Perfect Circle. Never got to this part either. Their main base is in the Shimmering Grotto near Gatstaf. I'm making up lore here so let me know if it contradicts anything we know. It also might change when eldritch moon comes out.

The druids used to be the dominant faction in Kessig and their power was how humanity fended off the evils of the land. They were skilled shapeshifters, the kessig ones in particular able to take wolf form. When Avacyn appeared, she opposed them because of some of their less savory practices (probably human sacrifice or something), but also because she needed humanity united in worshiping her so she'd have the power to protect the entire land, and Kessigers were reluctant to put their faith in her because they already had means of protection. But then something terrible happened to the druids: their shapeshifting became tainted and turned into the form of lycanthropy known today. Humans turned against the druids and welcomed Avacyn to protect them from the werewolves.

Few druids still remain. The largest gathering of them, druids of the perfect circle, have managed to hold on to the old ways. I never fleshed them out enough to figure out what role they'd play, but my idea was half benevolent, half "sacrifice your children to power our magics" type stuff.


That's the core of the adventure. I haven't worked out the details. There will also be a wide array of random encounters that the DM can spring on the PCs as they journey between the main sites. Garruk and Liliana will show up in two of those encounters.

[JohanOfKitten]

Your second adventure seems really interesting.
As I have continued the story by myself, I won't play it as it comes, but I will definitively read it to be inspired for paths in my scenario.

From what you show, the different factions can lead to some interesting choices to make for the players. I really like the druids with the dark side.
For the random encounters or side quests, I suggest you hags. A covent can be really interesting. The CRs are fine with the group level after Army of the Damned and their motives can lead very deep roleplay encounters.

It's nice that you had planeswalkers. They may be a bit overpowered, but they can push the adventure in the tracks of Innistrad major events and if the story goes far, the players will like to see them again and be able to face them or fight by their side.



Here's my sequel of the Army of the Damned. I detailed it in case you might find something useful in it.

At the end of Army of the Damned, there was some things that put the story in a certain direction :
- the adventurers worked hard (and still do) to redeem Siegfried. The trial put them in charge of him, so he can be useful to protect Stensia. It's now an NPC ally, that goes with them sometimes and searches new alchemical ways to fight vampire. I nerf him a bit (ripping a part of his spellbook and stopping the use of dark ways to perform magic explaining the lost of power) and he can be a good sidekick for them. And for downtime, he does researchs : this days, he studies the properties of troll blood (some random encounter in the south of Stensia) to see if he can copy its regenerative property to use it on living wood, without creating monsters like before.
- the adventurers appropriate themselves the Mauer Estate and have enough money to start their project : building a guild, "the Sentinels", with the purpose to protect the lands. They start that here, but want to cover all Innistrad.
- The visions of the Bennu's well were a good way to foreshadow things. They saw things about the disappearance of Avacyn (even if not knowing yet) and the break of the Helvault that will happen later. The clues are light for now, but with time and adventures, all the pieces will merge together for a big final.
- I kept Sir Delandel and the adventurers promised to him to help him soon in his mission. That will lead to a catacomb dungeon under Mauer Estate. The evil relic that Sir Delandel wants to destroy is the cause of the farbog around here. This dungeon will be a good way for the adventurers to discover things about the past, the "before-Avacyn" time, the old gods etc... (and it will lead to safer and saner place around Mauer Estate, their main Guild Estate.

The adventurers started a tour of all Stensia to recruit people in their guild. Soldiers, idealists, but also a cook, a smith, some workers to rebuild the place etc... They had few side-quests on the way (including some hags in the forest of Corvalis, using the fear of people to make them do horrible stuff). They nearly have finished that tour.
After that, they're will be the Delandel Dungeon and some downtime (even maybe a year or two) so their guild can start to fleurish, before having a big adventure hook (like a letter to Siegfried from his cousin about the imminent attack of Traben).

My idea is to make them having adventures that will continue to put them on the way of the big story about the Helvault and all, so it can finished really big !

A few things :
- I play that the Moontouched sisters are Half-elves. It's mainly a human world, but it can be interesting to have a few (very few) special races. With their white hair, the natural youth despite of age and uncanny grace, I think it fits well. I intend to put some other rare elves on the way, with a msytical link to nature (maybe with the druidic circles in Kessig). An ermit elfe who lived a thousand year could be an interesting encounter to learn stuff.

- I've made Sorin Markov do an appearance. Really dangerous, but oddly ok with the adventurer's goal. he shows cruelty and some kind of rational way to handle the balance between humans and vampires. This encounter is a start for the adventurers to know more about Avacyn's origin. I intend to push more about it later.


I'm eager to read more about your scenario.:smallsmile:

[Gwendol]

Sweet! Such a well-done adventure. Itching to try it out!

[Dralnu]

For the random encounters or side quests, I suggest you hags. A covent can be really interesting. The CRs are fine with the group level after Army of the Damned and their motives can lead very deep roleplay encounters.

Absolutely will be including hags! They either will play a major role in the story or be in a random encounter (probably the former). The only annoyance is that I would love to set them up as seemingly benevolent guardians of the forest and then reveal them as hags, but I don't think I could fool your average group of paranoid murder hobos.


It's nice that you had planeswalkers. They may be a bit overpowered, but they can push the adventure in the tracks of Innistrad major events and if the story goes far, the players will like to see them again and be able to face them or fight by their side.

It will certainly be emphasis on roleplay when encountering them. I plan of having Cursed Garruk (not embracing black magic yet) at around CR 10-13, Liliana around CR 17-18 and with the Chain Veil CR 23, and Sorin around CR 23. They are some of the most powerful individuals in MtG's lore and should be approached with caution.



I like what you've done with your adventure. I don't have immediate plans for exploring Stensia again but those are some cool ideas. And yes, I definitely had in mind that the Moontouched Sisters are half-elves! Elves were once on Innistrad, but were at some point driven to extinction. That's a tasty hook from the lore that we can play with.

[Fable Wright]

Absolutely will be including hags! They either will play a major role in the story or be in a random encounter (probably the former). The only annoyance is that I would love to set them up as seemingly benevolent guardians of the forest and then reveal them as hags, but I don't think I could fool your average group of paranoid murder hobos.

Sure you can! If they offer the PCs a non-cursed gift, send them on their way, and pretend like they just tend wards that dissuade things like werewolves from entering the forest rather than pretend like they actually do something active, they can send a fairly strong trusted ally vibe to the players. If they're good enough at it, the players might still work with them even after it's revealed their evil; loot and being a lesser evil can get many murderhobos to overlook a lot.

[Dralnu]

Sure you can! If they offer the PCs a non-cursed gift, send them on their way, and pretend like they just tend wards that dissuade things like werewolves from entering the forest rather than pretend like they actually do something active, they can send a fairly strong trusted ally vibe to the players. If they're good enough at it, the players might still work with them even after it's revealed their evil; loot and being a lesser evil can get many murderhobos to overlook a lot.

That could work! So next is to figure out why they'd genuinely want to help the PCs. Perhaps the werewolf threat is something they want stopped as well, so helping the PCs is mutually beneficial.

[Fable Wright]

That could work! So next is to figure out why they'd genuinely want to help the PCs. Perhaps the werewolf threat is something they want stopped as well, so helping the PCs is mutually beneficial.

Sure! They could easily give gifts of wolfbane and similar and win trust that way. It's also possible that the Druids are important to them in some way. Perhaps the hags' powers grow with the worship of the old ways, or perhaps they can't survive without the Druidic Faith. Perhaps the hag used to be part of a coven, before Avacyn's bans on Druidic practices killed the hag's two sisters, either from them unable to eat druidic sacrifices, their lack of sustenance from the faith in the woods, or just getting killed by Avacyn's agents.

Also, to add another layer to the child sacrifice thing—what if the townsfolk sacrifice only their sickly children that are unlikely to recover, or sacrifice a twin that a household is unable to feed? Child mortality was pretty high during medieval times, and the hag could make use of that for some mutually beneficial arrangements.

[JohanOfKitten]

Absolutely will be including hags! They either will play a major role in the story or be in a random encounter (probably the former). The only annoyance is that I would love to set them up as seemingly benevolent guardians of the forest and then reveal them as hags, but I don't think I could fool your average group of paranoid murder hobos.
It's hard to have the group being fooled, I agree. Hopefully, they're sometimes not murder hobos and you can have some tension and the story can wrapped around it.

My players have just dealt yesterday with the hag-part of my scenario. They suspect the right lady nearly at theit arrival in the city. But you can't just go around killing people when you think they're hiding things. My hag had taken the place of the mayor and guard captain. The adventurers meet her only on dinners. It was complicated to go wild and agressive.

Here's their Hag Hunting :

My adventurers were on the end of their Stensia Tour to recruit guild members and arrived at Corsiva.
In town, people are suspicious, grim. At the gate, the guard told them about the Epidemic. Soon, they meet Godric Hissmann, the mayor and guard captain. After dealing with some prisonners they made on the way (some thief groups should improve their Folklore knwoledge before attacking local heroes :smallamused: ), Godric invited them to his home for hospitality and discuss more with them about the Epidemic. At the dinner, they meet Lorelei, his wife, and Alda, their maid.
They learnt that for two and a half months, the town had to deal with some strange and dangerous sickness. It caused fever, nightmares, temper, sometimes madness. And for some, they die in their bad sleep. They don't know how, neither why. The city is clueless and hopeless. Sure, the rumors about the Banshee haunting the forest are going wild, but that's just that : rumors. The local chief priest, Father Esteban, is quite rigorist and is preaching to fight the sins running the city, to purge everyone, so purity and faith can save their souls from the evil sickness. On the other side, some folks are losing hope. They've started to believe that the evil banshee want paiements and that sacrifices (animal, but also human), can appease her.
And it's not just that : the sick ones, with their temper and madness, can make terrible actions. Just before the arrival of the heroes, a young noble was judge for killing his friend, for a jealousy mobile (some love triangle that went wrong). The sickness might have push him, but he show no remorse and will be executed at dawn.
Just a few hours in Corsiva show the adventurers that the things are turning really bad.

What happened ? A Night Hag was freed and is harvesting the city to collect evil souls and power.
3 months ago, a miner, Olter, take his shortcut in the forest to go back home in a hamlet near Corsiva. He does so when he finish late and want to be home before night. But the path in the wood isn't well drawn and he derived a bit from his way. He arrived at a clearing with an Avacyn Chapel. There are some in the forest, but they're abandonned, not use for a very long time. A tree grew too close of the shrine and the roots deformed the paved floor. But this paved floor was the seal warding against an old forest being, a night hag. The seal disturbed, it broke, tearing the ground in two, but the hag was too weak to escape completely. When Olter went by the place, she used him, feeding on him, whispering bad intentions. Olter started to come see the shrine more often. Finally, she grew strong enough to follow him, ethearally, to his home. She killed his wife and shapechange in her (and use her body to craft her soulbag. She continued to push Olter on the dark side and convince him to make the other miners pay hard for really little misdeeds (like not being polite every day). As he was in charge of surveying the struts in the mine and be sure of the stability, he became sloppy about it and, one day, he sabotage some wood beams. A tunnel collapsed, killing a dozen of miners.

This evil act was what the hag was wainting. She used her nightmare power to weakened him and finally rip his soul. She cleaned her tracks, making people believing the couple left, unable to deal with the grief and the guilt of the "mine accident". She continued to use their barn as her lair to do her filthy magic, but was strong enough to aim bigger : Corsiva. She lured Lorelei, the mayor's wife, in the forest and killed her. She did it near the shrine, to desacrate it and made it an insult to Avacyn. Then, she usurped her identity and begin to spray her "Epidemic" in the city. She weakened a lot of different people and manipulate some to push everyone towards evil actions. She encouraged human sacrifice to the banshee, with some nightmare and "clues" about it to some. She encouraged Father Esteban in the idea of pure soul and the need to clear the soul against the evil (it could be working against her, but it creates opposition, tensions and it can lead to extremist actions and points of view). She enjoyed herself in that mess and harvest the souls when they're dark enough for her.

During this time, the real Lorelei, with her odious murder, become a banshee and start haunting the forest, like the legends told for centuries before. Melina Hill, an ermit hunter living in the woods, left the forest and return living in the city. As it coincided with the start of the Epidemic in Corsiva, people are really suspicious toward her and some are telling it's her fault. In fact, she's strange, sleep very little, lived in the haunted forest...
As she's half-elf (like-the moontouched sisters) and she hasn't normal sleep, she's immune to the hag ability and Lorelei didn't miss the opportunity to report the rumors to the adventurers at the first dinner, to give a false lead and have the immune one gone.



Going back to the adventurers :
The first night has few more events : Amelia, the victim fiancee, came to ask Godrick to bypass the judgement of Erich, the one who kill her fiance. Later, when everyone was to bed, the player alarm spell ring and when the wizard (Sigfried) awake the others, one has been visited and suffer of taunting nightmares.
They were quickly paranoid and suspect everyone. Insight skill checks gave them clues, but the whole people were all messed up in some way that, even if Lorelei had some suspicious behaviour, others too. Why Alda seems getting very determining ? Why the girl engaged to the killed guy came to the mayor house to plea for mercy for the man who killed her loved one ? Is Lorelei concerned about the fact some creature attack under her roof or because the adventurers detect it ?

The day after, they investigate. Dismas went to interrogate Erich (they managed to make the mayor delay the execution the time of the investigation), father Esteban and other people in the street, bars... Sigfried searched about ghost and creatures able to be in different planes (like the Ether). Gaie met Melina and were hunting with her to talk. First, Melina thought it was a trap and confront her with an armed bow when outside the town, but finally got convince of her good will. Gaie and Melina went to the zone where Melina have seen feminine shape in the fog several times. They saw in the surroundings the chapel and investigate there. In celeste, the front of the chapel has a scribble : "Beyond the air, may the angels protect against the evil that lay on thoses lands". The scribble is ambiguous and could mean only that the chapel is shelter for losts people in dark woods, but can suggest more. Not a lot of clues here, but something strange : some dust and gravel between the paved stones, looking like raw iron ore. After that, they investigate a bit about that and discover the mine accident. They interviewed a survivor who tell them he thinks that Olter is behind it, but he has no proof and noone believe him.

At night, the dinner at mayor's house was peaceful. Gaie, who gave a silver necklace to Lorelei the day before, see that their host didn't where it and continue to wear her other necklace (the heartstone) She inquires a bit on it, see it's peculiar. Lorelei is a bit stressed, but manage to look not too much tensed and she stay evasive about what it is. When the night came, they're disturbed by a torchs&forks crowd, leaded by Father Esteban. A little bird told him (you can imagine who, but using a third party to deliver the news) that the wizard that came with the Shadowgrange heroes is a foul and evilish necro-alchemist ! They don't want that awful evil seed in the town. Dismas and Gaïe stand by Sigfried, defending him. Pissed of, they claimed to leave to, letting Corsiva people dealing with their Epidemic by themselves !
It could have been players leaving the table and saying f*** to the scenario, but it was the better way for them to continue : still having Sigfried by their side,, leaving town, but still investigating. They just avoid the confrontation with the crowd and continue outside the city.

After that, they found shelter for the night in a small hamlet near Corsiva (about which the mayor told them before they leave). During the night, the hag visit them again : Sigfried is a good target for her since she discovered truth about him.
In morning, they're anxious about how the creature attacked them again. On one side, they find it weird that they were attacked at first night and that the creature knew where to find them next night, but they didn't know enough about the creature to jump to the conclusion that it must be someone close as Godrick or Lorelei and who knows where they were.
They went to Olter village, but didn't learn a lot : he left with his wife, he was a nice guy, but stressed by work lately... As they have a lot to do, they don't lose too much time here and don't investigate the house or the barn.
They went then, with Melina as a guide, in the forest to go to the mine thourgh the forest instead of by the road. Melina told them on the way that Erich died of his fever on his cell. At some point, they found a forest path leading to the mine. At the mine, they didn't learn much, except that the path was a way Olter often used. back on their way, they went to the chapel, that was not far from the path and investigate once more there. They're attacked then by the banshee. Sigfried almost died, but crit on his death saving throw after and Melina was saved by him after that, and Gaie and Dismas fought hard the banshee. When they finished her, she started dissolving in the fog, but her hideous traits revealed her real face before fading away : it was Lorelei, and she say "the hag..." when they asked her what's wrong here.

They went back to town to see if Lorelei was changing in banshee from time to time or if something else take her place (Dismas entered, saying Gaie and Sigfried went to Silbern to investigate on Olter, and Gaie using her stealth skill to come too without being seen). Dismas asked the mayor for hospitality once again and Godrick accepted, too happy to have the hero back to help him. Lorelei was at home, like nothing happened, and Dismas knew at that moment that it was nomore Lorelei and something has taken her place. He alert stealthly Gaie and they went to talk to Godrick discreetly. They questionned him about the necklace and his answers confirmed that something is wrong with this. They explained to him but he don't want to believe them. They proposed to confront her so he can have proof of that and he finally agreed, wanting to know and having them swear not to be harmful to her until they have absolute proof.

They tricked her and Gaie, hidden, jumped on her to take the necklace by force. Lorelei went mad at her and Gaie pretended to swallow the necklace so Lorelei can't have it back. The bluff was aweful (4 on the dice, 10 with the skill) but the insight of the hag was worse (natural 1). The hag went mad, jumped on Gaie (natural 20) and put her prone, shaking her and swaering at her. Dismas is shaken and aimed at her with his crossbow, but didn't shoot, because evidences were not cristal clear.
Then Lorelei insulted them with curses, giving away her cover and disappeared (plane-shift). She fleed, seeing that she needed a new cover and hoping to get Sigfried in her collection on the way, to try and get back her necklace. She haunted Sigfried (the players made him stay at the hamlet where she attacked him the night before. So it was easy for her to get him) during the time they spent on wandering arround the mayor house and in the city.

Finally, they get back to sigfried, who is in bad shape but still alive and started to wonder where she can be. Kessigian legends about old witches living in the wood talked a lot about their lair, how they always have a place to go and do their black magic. A caban, a cave or a living house walking... They asked about locations in the forest to Melina and she told them she knew no place like that in this part of the forest. Finally, they decided to inspect Olter's house just in case.
They found Lorelei in the barn, doing some ritual. Big Fight. The hag invokes 3 shadows and 1 scarcrow. It's some of the evil souls she stole. As they took her necklace and she used her plane shifts, she has few possibilities and was killed quickly. When they killed the shadows, they saw the souls being freed of their enslavement and could discern their faces : they recognized Erich among them. The scarecrow was Olter's body parts and soul, wicked, stitched together and stuff with straw.


note : I buffed a bit the hag. I made her great with usurpation and I put her 1/day ability to 2/day, so she can touch the group and continue to weakened Erich. And if she was interrupted when using it (the personn been waken up before the hour is completed, I put half of the effect.



What was good in this scenario :
- Not only the hag can be bad and people reactions can worsen things. It puts off some light of the hag and give more interactions.
- A hag with a big plan can be really dangerous. With a good investigation, adventurers can weakened her and make the final encounter easier.
- A hag is a witch. It goes with legends, superstitions. It goes also with transversal magic. It's not the same that the wizard or priest magic. It's darker, weird, wicked. I found ood that the manual said that night hag can still an evil soul in her bag, but didn't say what she could do with it. As it's opened, I was able to add minions from the tortured souls, empowerment of the hag...
- I was lucky to have players that went on some good tracks for me : for example, the necklace. It's difficult to describe Lorelei with a necklace with a great black stone on it, without hanging a sign "Very Important Item. Beware, there's something about that character!" or without describe with the same precision all of her outfits and the same for other characters. But then Gaie gave her a silver necklace. That put some spotlight on that by player action not DM description. And then, I was able to focus Gaie on it, not because I was showing the players a clue, but because her character would notice if the personn wore her gift or not. :smallsmile:


What was not that great :
- The barn was a bit hard to find. The adventurers could have completely missed it and it would have been a mess. Some false leads could dangerous to keep the story on tracks : Dismas almost left town to go to Silbern (two days travel) to find Olter because it's where he's supposed to went.
- The HPmax reduction given by the hag is a bit powerfull : during the story, that's fine, it increase the sensation of dreadfulness. But it takes a Greater Restoration to be healed. You need a lvl9 cleric for that. I fear the reaction of my player when they will learn that (and I don't think they will see a lvl9 cleric that soon).
- The banshee is a monster with a Save or Die ability. It's dangerous. It went well for us, with the 2 NPCs down and 1 player hurt but standing up, but if the group (or everyone except one) goes down with that,the banshee has a free buffet.


I think there is more to do with hags though, it can be a big thing, but I wanted to keep it short, with a 2 evenings adventure.
If some elements sounds interesting for you in your writing, feel free to pick it ;)

[Michael7123]

So.... I did a thing.

I'm currently in the process of making my preparations to run this campaign in a few weeks. In the middle of my preparation, I realized there was something about the story that slightly bothered me: "Why don't the PC's ever go through Mordov". After all, they likely would go through Mordov on their way to the Farbog and the Mauer Estate, or potentially pass through it sometime afterwards.

So, I decided to make a oneshot adventure to cover it. Mordov, the Ghost Town (https://www.dropbox.com/s/jpp7g37gl21o22m/Mordov%2C%20The%20Ghost%20Town.pdf?dl=0) It's currently designed for PC's of level 5- but I'm honestly fairly sure that I gave the main antagonist of the oneshot a bit too high of a CR, so PC's of level four should probably be okay.

Dralnu, thank you for inspiring me to make this.

EDIT: [Here's a link to the one shot on google drive if you prefer that source](https://drive.google.com/a/udallas.edu/file/d/0B6eVj6tRykJzcFFnQ0NBcG1UUUk/view?ths=true)

[miner3203]

Funny--I've been running a self-created MtG-Innistrad adventure with my group that's entitled "Army of the Damned" for the purposes of my campaign log, but I read through this one just now and the plot has absolutely no similarity to this one here. (Well, it has a zombie army and a creepy swamp. But that's about it.) I have no idea where past me got the name idea from--maybe I saw this thread title and it buried itself in my unconscious? I do wish I had read this thread first, though, because the Innistrad races document would've been really nice for more than two variants of human.

Anyway, I apologize for title-stealing (intentionally, subconsciously, or completely randomly--I don't know which), and congratulate you on an amazing adventure! If DMs' Guild ever opens up its setting restrictions, this looks fun and professional enough that I'm sure you could make a lot of money off of it.

[SouthpawSoldier]

Funny--I've been running a self-created MtG-Innistrad adventure with my group that's entitled "Army of the Damned" for the purposes of my campaign log, but I read through this one just now and the plot has absolutely no similarity to this one here. (Well, it has a zombie army and a creepy swamp. But that's about it.) I have no idea where past me got the name idea from--maybe I saw this thread title and it buried itself in my unconscious? I do wish I had read this thread first, though, because the Innistrad races document would've been really nice for more than two variants of human.

Anyway, I apologize for title-stealing (intentionally, subconsciously, or completely randomly--I don't know which), and congratulate you on an amazing adventure! If DMs' Guild ever opens up its setting restrictions, this looks fun and professional enough that I'm sure you could make a lot of money off of it.

Quite likely, because it's a card from the MtG game?

Card info link. (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=229968)

[miner3203]

Quite likely, because it's a card from the MtG game?

Card info link. (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=229968)

Hmm...that must be it--now that you mention it, I believe that might have been my name inspiration. Thank you!

[Dralnu]

So.... I did a thing.

I'm currently in the process of making my preparations to run this campaign in a few weeks. In the middle of my preparation, I realized there was something about the story that slightly bothered me: "Why don't the PC's ever go through Mordov". After all, they likely would go through Mordov on their way to the Farbog and the Mauer Estate, or potentially pass through it sometime afterwards.

So, I decided to make a oneshot adventure to cover it. Mordov, the Ghost Town (https://www.dropbox.com/s/jpp7g37gl21o22m/Mordov%2C%20The%20Ghost%20Town.pdf?dl=0) It's currently designed for PC's of level 5- but I'm honestly fairly sure that I gave the main antagonist of the oneshot a bit too high of a CR, so PC's of level four should probably be okay.

Dralnu, thank you for inspiring me to make this.

EDIT: [Here's a link to the one shot on google drive if you prefer that source](https://drive.google.com/a/udallas.edu/file/d/0B6eVj6tRykJzcFFnQ0NBcG1UUUk/view?ths=true)

Wow, that's amazing! I didn't calculate the CR or anything but I like the story, the options given, and the geist binder's tome. Flavorful stuff! Would you mind if I added a link to it to the main adventure, with credits to you?

@miner3203: Yep, I got the name from the card, so it's very possible that you did as well.

[Michael7123]

Wow, that's amazing! I didn't calculate the CR or anything but I like the story, the options given, and the geist binder's tome. Flavorful stuff! Would you mind if I added a link to it to the main adventure, with credits to you?



I would love to have that! However- I would potentially hold off on adding it until I let my players actually run through it. If everything goes according to plan, they should have that done in 4-5 weeks from now.

I've started this campaign- I'll probably post about how it's going over the weekend. I'd do it now, but I've got a lot of schoolwork to do for tomorrow.

[Dralnu]

I would love to have that! However- I would potentially hold off on adding it until I let my players actually run through it. If everything goes according to plan, they should have that done in 4-5 weeks from now.

I've started this campaign- I'll probably post about how it's going over the weekend. I'd do it now, but I've got a lot of schoolwork to do for tomorrow.

Yeah that works. No rush! Let me know how it goes.

[Levistej]

Greetings!
After reading through this lovely adventure and all the comments here I decided to give it a go and will be running it for a group of friends that are new to this edition of DnD. Their party will consist of a cleric, blood hunter, rogue and ranger.
Are there any pitfalls you could warn me of or any ideas you implemented that turned out great?
Also, what to do after lv5? The Ulvenwald storyline seems nice but I'm really unexperianced dm and am therefore not quite comfortable with making up stories.

[kenposan]

hmmm, let's take stock.

1) It's now October
2) I'm looking to start a new game with my kids
3) We just binged Stranger Things
4) I wanted to incorporate some horror and create my own "upside down".

I think you did that for me. :-)

[Levistej]

As I said I've been dm-ing this module for some time now, and the party just reache the end of the farbog and almost got annihilated by the vampires cause Odric, the ever grumpy wiser than thou bloodhunter decided to shoot a crossbow bolt at one of the vamps....and he crit...

Basically, we've been having a blast and the adventure is really nicely writen with lots of flavour and interesting characters. My players loved Otto and Magda and couldnt believe them to be traitors. They still didn't realize they are in the possession of the cursed blade and I cant wait for them to come to the realisation.

Also, they were quite suspicous of the 3 sisters running fleeting fox provisions cause metagaming lead them to believe that they were hags or witches.

They loved being seen as the heroes of shadowgrange, were thrilled with the coded letter and music sheets and the whole "hounted house" chapter was really memorable.

The next session will be focused on storming siegfried castle where I hope to reintroduce Anton the Werewolf because they very clumsily let him go. Also, I am torn on how and where to take this campaign further. THe only player to have played Magic is the one currently playing a Stensian bloodhunter which is great as he acts a sort of lore generating machine so that I as the DM dont have to tell them about many different aspects and details of Stensian everyday life - they have their own tourgide.

This is my first time dm-ing and I suck at making cohesive stories, if anyone has had any experiance at expanding this adventure I would be thrilled by the input. I was thinking of maybe getting them to Kessig as that is where Katrinas last letter to her uncle was adressed. Further than that, I am clueless.

P.S.
I've read through all the topics discussing this adventure both here and on reddit and have got a few ideas but I'm really missing a cohesive factor - plot hooks, subplots, good side quests....

[Dralnu]

I had planned to continue this adventure in the province of Kessig, following the hook of Katarina's uncle maybe knowing how to use the strionic resonator. Unfortunately, I've been saying I'd continue it for almost a year now, and I still don't know when I'll get around to it. Apologies for those waiting!

I can, at least, tell you my rough outline for the next adventure, and maybe that will help you with your own ones. This was an email I sent to a friend a while back about my intents in Kessig. I started running the adventure for my own group but it fizzled out not too far in:


The adventure has five main factions:

1) Sigarda. With Avacyn missing, Kessig is the province most in peril, with the howlpacks looking to take out every last human settlement. Sigarda and her flight are hopelessly outmatched. Without Avacyn's divine magic to bolster the humans, Sigarda has secretly turned her interest to druidism, which was once the dominant religion and source of power for Kessigers before Avacyn abolished it. She knows of a druid circle still existing in secret and wishes to cooperate with them in hopes of saving the land (though she has had no luck finding them). However, she also knows that this decision would cause a divide in humans, as many would view the act as heresy and Sigarda as a traitor to the faith.

Sigarda sees the PCs as a convenient way to do her bidding without drawing attention to herself. They aren't of her flight, they're a small group that won't draw too much attention, and they're powerful enough to get the job done. Find the druids and learn about forgotten sources of power.

2) Elder Rimheit (Ereschteg). She's mentioned in the "Cursed Blade" story. She's an elder in Ereschteg, and there's a popular rumor that she's offering sanctuary to werewolves in her parish. Her son was hanged for lycanthropy. I think her daughter is Reika from "the cursed blade," eventually gets killed too. I have to reread it.

Hanns Reinhart, a prominent lunar scholar and Katarina's uncle, was afflicted by lycanthropy and now seeks refuge here. He can mend the artifact, "the strionic resonator," which restores some of its magical properties, but he'll need tools that were lost in the site now called Hollowhenge.

The rumors of a werewolf sanctuary are true! But despite Elder Rimheit’s devotion, they are far from finding a cure. Nevertheless, penitent werewolves from across Innistrad have taken refuge in the catacombs beneath the chapel, where they bind themselves each night in order to contain their primal curse. However… the existence of this sanctuary is no secret to a howlpack composed of wantons, werewolves who revel in their bestial gifts. What’s more, they view such a place as an affront to the very idea of wild freedom. These rebel werewolves have plans to sabotage the werewolf sanctuary, and turn the villagers of Ereschteg against Elder Rimheit.

There were two spies among the repentant werewolves and during the full moon they broke into the catacombs and let all the werewolves loose. The result was a slaughter the PCs had to deal with. News spread, particularly to Gatstaf, which pushed anti-werewolf sentiments to an all-time high.

3) Elder Kolman (Gatstaf). The dude hates werewolves. He leads werewolf hunts and whips up the townsfolk into a frenzy against them. Often is overzealous in his methods. Sometimes kills humans that were never cursed, or accused of conspiring with werewolves (families of them usually).

Never got far enough in my game to introduce him. I wanted to make him somewhat sympathetic. Eventually he leads a mob against Ereshteg and Rimheit to kill the werewolves there once he gets proof of what's happening there.

4) Mondronen Howlpack (Tovolar). Werewolves with blood magic. Blew up Avabruck in a mysterious ritual, the site is now called Hollowhenge. Tovolar and his pack are looking to do the same thing to Gatstaf.

5) Druids of the Perfect Circle. Never got to this part either. Their main base is in the Shimmering Grotto near Gatstaf. I'm making up lore here so let me know if it contradicts anything we know. It also might change when eldritch moon comes out.

The druids used to be the dominant faction in Kessig and their power was how humanity fended off the evils of the land. They were skilled shapeshifters, the kessig ones in particular able to take wolf form. When Avacyn appeared, she opposed them because of some of their less savory practices (probably human sacrifice or something), but also because she needed humanity united in worshiping her so she'd have the power to protect the entire land, and Kessigers were reluctant to put their faith in her because they already had means of protection. But then something terrible happened to the druids: their shapeshifting became tainted and turned into the form of lycanthropy known today. Humans turned against the druids and welcomed Avacyn to protect them from the werewolves.

Few druids still remain. The largest gathering of them, druids of the perfect circle, have managed to hold on to the old ways. I never fleshed them out enough to figure out what role they'd play, but my idea was half benevolent, half "sacrifice your children to power our magics" type stuff.


So summary of adventure: PCs help trackers/cathars somewhere in the Ulvenwald fighting off werewolves. Find out that they were delivering a message to Sigarda. Pop into Gatstaf, sidequests, learn stuff. If they go to Sigarda, she sends them looking for druids. If they go to Ereschteg they meet Hanns, who sends them to Hollowhenge.

Like in Army of the Damned with the zombie siege, there's a looming threat of the howlpack attack on the town. Spies in Ereshtag that open the werewolf cages at night. Resulting mayhem and rumors spread, Gatstaf catches wind of it, mobilizes, humans vs human violence, not united and thus more vulnerable to attack. The spies also replace silver weapons with counterfeits, which aren't effective against werewolves. Can the PCs unite the humans? Can they uncover the spies? Can they rally the defenses?

There will be cameos of Liliana and Garruk as well. Liliana wants to trade with the PCs (where's Griselbrand?) and Garruk just want to hunt Lily. Possibly Sorin if it's fitting.

It's rambly but hopefully that helps!

[Wessex]

awesome adventure, going to run it for some MtG guys at my store for sure. Just out of curiosity, what program did you use to build the document? I have a ton of campaign ideas but no idea where I would start producing something that looked as professional as this.

[Dralnu]

awesome adventure, going to run it for some MtG guys at my store for sure. Just out of curiosity, what program did you use to build the document? I have a ton of campaign ideas but no idea where I would start producing something that looked as professional as this.

I used Adobe Photoshop to modify the artwork and the page background. Adobe InDesign for writing / templating.

[SouthpawSoldier]

This is going over great with both my local group, and my virtual group. I did have a few of questions/notes for you.

#1: Links for Planeswalker's Guide resulted in 404 errors with Updated version of the adventure. Thankfully, I had the original PDF on hand; those links still functioned. Not savvy enough to crack them open and find the difference.

#2 Should I provide my players with the Wolf at the Door encounter, how are they supposed to navigate it? I had one group kill him outright, before the curse took hold (not sure I ran it right, but I went with the players' desires). Since then, I've avoided using it, because I'm not sure what else players can do with it. If they encounter him on the first night of travels, and agree to escort him, he'll change the next night; a werewolf will slaughter a first level party. Convincing him through social skill checks that he can't reach Shadowgrange doesn't solve his issue; just makes him more hopeless/despondent. It really seems that Blessed Sleep before he turns is their only way players can resolve his encounter.

#3 Comparing the Regional Humans you offered from another Reddit user, and the options from the "official" Planeshift: Innistrad document, I'm having a tough time deciding which I should offer.

[Dralnu]

This is going over great with both my local group, and my virtual group. I did have a few of questions/notes for you.

#1: Links for Planeswalker's Guide resulted in 404 errors with Updated version of the adventure. Thankfully, I had the original PDF on hand; those links still functioned. Not savvy enough to crack them open and find the difference.

Thanks for running the adventure and for the feedback! I'll answer as best I can.

I'll update the current version with the working url.


#2 Should I provide my players with the Wolf at the Door encounter, how are they supposed to navigate it? I had one group kill him outright, before the curse took hold (not sure I ran it right, but I went with the players' desires). Since then, I've avoided using it, because I'm not sure what else players can do with it. If they encounter him on the first night of travels, and agree to escort him, he'll change the next night; a werewolf will slaughter a first level party. Convincing him through social skill checks that he can't reach Shadowgrange doesn't solve his issue; just makes him more hopeless/despondent. It really seems that Blessed Sleep before he turns is their only way players can resolve his encounter.

A lot of people told me they ended up killing Anton outright so that's not unusual. There's no easy solution here: Anton has lycanthropy, there is no known cure, and his life is forever altered because of it. The PCs can try to help him find somewhere remote, or maybe restrain him until after the full moon, kill him, or just leave him be. No wrong answer.

If he does turn into a werewolf on their watch, I would recommend it not be an instant change. Most classic werewolf movies show the transformation as a loud, horrible, and prolonged process. Anton would probably be screaming in pain and horror for a good 30 seconds (5 rounds) before he was fully transformed and lose all control. That gives the PCs plenty of time to react and possibly flee.


#3 Comparing the Regional Humans you offered from another Reddit user, and the options from the "official" Planeshift: Innistrad document, I'm having a tough time deciding which I should offer.

I'm biased but I prefer the humans offered in my adventure made by my friend. I saw the Planeshift version and it's basically just Human Variant with your Bonus Feat chosen for you. I think /u/Nihilates did a better job adding something new but still balanced.

Alternatively, offer both and let the players choose what crunch they like more.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

I'd basically agree with what Dralnu said above. I wasn't impressed by the regional humans from the official Planeshift write-up because they have so much less flavor than the ones included with Army of the Damned and are, basically the same variant humans you could play in any other game. (That and the Gavoner's Wanderer's Ward feature has saved my party from more than one near death experience.)

My players killed Anton before he transformed in Wolf at the Door too. My ranger took werewolves as a favored enemy off of a customized list I offered and recognized the warning signs early enough and I had let the players start with a blessed silver dagger which they used to dispatch him before he could change. If he had, it would have been a very difficult fight since nobody had any other magic or silver weapons so only the cleric and whoever got the dagger could have dealt damage. Drawing out the transformation would be a great way to give the players a chance while also building horror. I wish I'd thought of that and/or gotten the chance to do it.

Dralnu: The party I was running through the adventure finished up a while ago, though they're still following some extra plot threads I worked in. I'll give you some feedback on the last chapter or two in the next couple days. Your Kessig stuff looks cool. I'm probably not going to get to spend more than a session or two there; my party already has a pretty clear goal for their trip to Kessig and is getting kind of anxious to roll up some new characters and start a new campaign. Sadly.

[Byke]

I just wanted to add it is a great adventure I used everything. I modified the backstory as the intro for Curse of Stradh. I'll try to keep it short :)

Two things bothered me with CoS.

1) Stradh: His entire back story is of a conqueror, who basically sold his soul for immortality and got stuck in a demi-plane. Someone with Stradh power and drive wouldn't just sit around moping about his lost love and wait around for someone to kill him. He would find a way to break out or enlarge his domain.
2) The third gem from with Wizard of Wines .

I introduced the third gem as a mechanism for expanding Stradh domain. He sent a contingent of Vampire spawn/WW to accompany a circle of the corrupted druids to create another Gulias (sp?) tree, which would plunge Shadowgrange and the surrounding area into Stradhs's domain.

Siegfried, Ralph and Katarina and many of others received a vision from St.Traft of the impending danger and banded together with surrounding communities to defeat the contingent. They then took the third gem to study and Stradh sent more minion to retrieve it and complete the ceremony. Siegfried survives, goes mad and uses the gem to give life to The Thing and his undead army.

The Maurer Estates warding and Undead army kept Stradh's contingent at bay, The player who encountered them at the corpse wagon, bargained for safe passage through the swamp and their departure from Shadowgrange if they returned the gem. After Siegfried's death the players pieced together the story from his journal....betrayed Stradh's minions and used the gem to help guide them through the mists to sneak into Barovia to slay Stradh. (The incomplete ritual left a doorway of mist that the players used.)

I can say backstory aside, I didn't change any of the encounters and my player loved it.

The player were complete enamored with the magic items as well the recombobulator and the chimes being their favorites.

I did modify the chimes slightly, I gave it the benign transposition ability once per day with the undead created by the bell.

[Cl0001]

I finally finished it
Oh my god! This is amazingly well written, illustrated and thought out. How long did this take you?

[JohanOfKitten]

About the werewolf encounter :
I think it's not a problem if Anthon is killed straight away. That encounter isn't much about setting a fight, possibly very threatening if the players mess this up ; it's more about choices and convictions.

The character are placed in a situation of mere horror, with a no win choice. Sparing the life of a potential killer or killing an innocent to protect more innocents? Sure, the players can choose quickly and all in the same way, making the encounter short and "easily" solved, but that helps describ the horror in this world : evil lurks and infest people. There are no miracle, no easy solution.

If the players have qualms, unsureness or different views, it can lead to some interesting roleplay moment in the discussions about what to do. And if it's not the case, it's alright. It push the players to define their characters' personnalities and that's some tough (and maybe remorseless) adventurers that arrive at Shadowgrange. That can build up some roleplay.



When I DMed it, my players didn't blink and shoot Anthon straight away: they were kessigians sieblings, werewolf hunters (one was a ranger specialised in werewolf) and with their mother, in a local milicia, killed defending the village by a werewolf attack.
For them, it was an hopeless situation and Anthon was a timebomb, wherever he go, even in a lost swamp. They dealt with the body (cremation), prayed for his soul, and went back to their journey.
Interesting and quick encounter, a good exposition of the horror and cruelty of this universe (and an opportunity for the player to solve a (really)short mystery using their background and skills).

I thought that was all of it, but it had unseen echo at the end of the campaign :
When the players've defeated Siegfried, they wondered if they should kill him, arrest him to bring him to Shadowgrange autorities or try to bring him back to the right path. One player was thinking he could redeem himself, that he has potential with his work and invention to help people. The other was fearing that he was a lost cause, too much tainted by evil to come back.
In their debates, Anthon's case came back : "Anthon was a good man, but he was dangerous due to evil and we didn't hesitate, because there was nothing to do."
"But he was cursed by lycanthropy. Siegfried, on the other hand, is mad by love grief and righteous wrath. He can be healed. It's a mind problem, it's curable."
"So someone has the better intentions in the world, but we can't help so we killed him, even if he tried to make it so he hurt noone. And someone else choose the evil way, killed hundred of people, and it's okay?"
"I didn't say that. He has to pay and he has to face the consequences of his acts. But he can be useful to repay his deeds. He can be a tool to lead Stensia out of vampire grasp."
and so on...
Anthon encounter gave material to this debate and to the way the character dealt with it. It pushs one in a very pragmatic view and the other in a more empathic view (or it confirms those latent views).

[Hippie_Viking]

So I just finished the second session of this for my group, and meet Anton. They figured out he had been bitten but botched a roll and thought it was still a while until the full moon, so after a lot of discussion and role play they let him travel with them for now...

So he of course transforms that night, I gave them a few rounds to act while he transformed, but still wearwolf at level 1! But they actually managed to kill him with fire, som magic and a silver symbol of avacyn from the chapel ruins used as a bludgetoning weapon.

Still the barbarian from kessing got bitten, so now i got to figure out were to go with that, I might save it until the end of the adventure for possible continuation with just some small things in the meantime if I can't think of another idea. I might make it connected to her rage somehow... hmm...

Anyway awesome adventure and we are really enjoying it so far!

[Fable Wright]

So I just finished the second session of this for my group, and meet Anton. They figured out he had been bitten but botched a roll and thought it was still a while until the full moon, so after a lot of discussion and role play they let him travel with them for now...

So he of course transforms that night, I gave them a few rounds to act while he transformed, but still wearwolf at level 1! But they actually managed to kill him with fire, som magic and a silver symbol of avacyn from the chapel ruins used as a bludgetoning weapon.

Still the barbarian from kessing got bitten, so now i got to figure out were to go with that, I might save it until the end of the adventure for possible continuation with just some small things in the meantime if I can't think of another idea. I might make it connected to her rage somehow... hmm...

Anyway awesome adventure and we are really enjoying it so far!

Werewolves in Innistrad do not transfer infection on a bite; you're either born as someone who can change, or not. I would recommend dropping the bite, as a PC who has the power to become immune to non-Silver weaponry is going to seriously mess with building and balancing encounters for the party.

[Hippie_Viking]

Werewolves in Innistrad do not transfer infection on a bite; you're either born as someone who can change, or not. I would recommend dropping the bite, as a PC who has the power to become immune to non-Silver weaponry is going to seriously mess with building and balancing encounters for the party.

They actually transfer like normal with a bite, there is some flavour about there ALSO be possible to born a wearwolf, but nothing confirmed.

I am not planing to let him transform directly and control it. I'm probably waiting a month in game for the next full moon so they will have time to grow in power before it happens so it will be easier to balance. Might make it a quest to cure/control.

[Garfunion]

They actually transfer like normal with a bite, there is some flavour about there ALSO be possible to born a wearwolf, but nothing confirmed.

I am not planing to let him transform directly and control it. I'm probably waiting a month in game for the next full moon so they will have time to grow in power before it happens so it will be easier to balance. Might make it a quest to cure/control.

If you google and download Plane Shift: Innistrad(it contains 5th edition rules to help make an Innistrad world). There is a section about transmitting the curse(say nothing about bite). However it is your game. You could have the Howlpack that was trying to turn Anton into a werewolf seek out the barbarian instead.

[Hippie_Viking]

If you google and download Plane Shift: Innistrad(it contains 5th edition rules to help make an Innistrad world). There is a section about transmitting the curse(say nothing about bite). However it is your game. You could have the Howlpack that was trying to turn Anton into a werewolf seek out the barbarian instead.

True there don't say anything about it in that document and both there and most other sources is kind of short on information on spreading the curse. I don't know if it says it definitely anywhere But Mtg cards like wolfbitten captive definitely implies it. And I'm playing from the advenrure that says it directly :p

I will probably let it go for now with just small comments like her liking red meat more. Then later I might work it into her rage or make it into a quest to remove.

My players really seems to like it so I will keep it, but I apreciate the ideas :)

[Dralnu]

Planeswalker's Guide to Kessig (http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/savor-flavor/planeswalkers-guide-innistrad-kessig-and-werewolves-2011-10-05) has this to say about being cursed with lycanthropy:


The Cause and Nature of Lycanthropy

There are many theories of how lycanthropy is caused or spread. Most sects of the Church of Avacyn hold that lycanthropy is a kind of demonic possession, but ritual exorcisms have not successfully purged the affliction. Most afflicted humans appear to become werewolves at some point in their lives rather than being born so, although there are sporadic (and chilling) tales of child werewolves in remote areas. Many alchemists and wolfhunters believe that werewolves are sterile, and only reproduce by cursing humans with lycanthropy; however, many commoners fear that they might be able to interbreed with humans or give birth to their own kind.


Transmitting the Curse: The Call and the First Hunt

The curse of lycanthropy overtakes a person over a period of one night. One or more werewolves howl in the night, calling out to the victim. Soon after, the victim finds himself in the wilderness, under the silvery moon, surrounded by eyes glowing in the night. The victim's will is compromised already, the wild essence entering him and doing battle with his human conscience. The victim and the werewolves crash through the woods together, and over the course of the night, they hunt and kill their prey—usually woodland game, but other humans or even another lycanthrope is not unheard of.

The called victim begins to express wolf characteristics throughout the night, and as he sinks his teeth into bloody flesh, the curse perceptibly takes hold, and he transforms fully into canid form for the first time. There is a bone-chilling chorus of howls, and the First Hunt is complete. Later, the new lycanthrope usually staggers back into civilization, half-naked, barely recognizable through the blood and offal and wilderness debris, and nearly mad from fear and shameful memories. Thereafter, the werewolf must remain vigilant with prayer and caution, lest the wolf essence manifest again.

It seems to imply that werewolves curse victims with lycanthropy by doing a ritual at night, not with a bite. But then there is also wolfbitten captive (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=wolfbitten+captive) which implies it can be transmitted with a bite too.

Ultimately it's the DM's call on how you want lycanthropy spread in your game. Cursing a player with lycanthropy could add great roleplay opportunities but it can also cause issues. I'll add a warning about it.

[ThurlRavenscrof]

Thanks! The art is easy since it all comes from one source (Magic's Innistrad setting).



I love Zendikar! It's a terrific choice because it's Magic's D&D setting.

It's indeed undead-heavy, so Clerics and Paladins are a bit stronger than usual, but I don't think mundanes would struggle. Most of the creatures don't have resistances/immunities to mundane attacks and there's a high amount of blessed silver weapons to pick up to bypass the more common resistances that do crop up.

All you need to do to nerf clerics and paladins with undead is to have the always come in waves. Total buzzkill for turn undead...
Also, wow! This setting is so well done! I just ran a campaign based on Innistrad that I was really proud of but this knocks it out if the park

[Dralnu]

Okay, it's been almost two years (ouch), but I am working on the sequel now. Thank you to everyone who emails / PMs me and drops feedback in this thread; you're all the reason why I finally got off my lazy butt to write more.

Here is step 1: Innistrad's Werewolves (http://imgur.com/a/MpJ4F)! New werewolf stats for the adventure. Compared to the 5E werewolf from MM, the CR is bumped up from 3 to 4 and I lowered the damage immunity to damage resistance. I'm baffled that damage immunity and damage resistance has the same effect on CR for levels 1-4 according to the DMG but whatever. I've also added regeneration, which is a fairly common werewolf trope but neither 5E or Innistrad werewolves have. I may end up cutting regeneration and/or changing damage resistance to immunity again.

The Innistrad lore implies that only blessed silver, not regular silver, is particularly effective against werewolves (aka overcomes DR). My current intention is to make silver overcome DR and blessed silver gets added bonus (+1 to hit and +1d6 radiant damage vs. werewolves). Mostly because I'm afraid most groups will just assume that regular silver works like it does in all other settings. I may change this so that only blessed silver overcomes the DR to be more lore-accurate.

Also statted up two howlpack alphas: Ulrich and Tovolar. Ulrich is a straightforward big ol' werewolf. I may give him a "pack leader" trait where allies have advantage against creatures that he is adjacent to, representing his +4/+4 trigger on his card, but I'm not sure how that would affect his CR.

Tovolar is a lot weirder. We don't have much official lore on him, no card, and just one or two sentences about him. He and the Mondronen howlpack will play big roles in the adventure so I'm expanding his lore. Mechanically he's a mash-up of werewolf, rakshasa, and druid. Lore-wise I plan on explaining the origins of lycanthropy (officially there's no explanation) and Tovolar is one of the original lycanthropes and has certain unique traits.

[Vasporos]

Hello,

I'm going to start my first DM session ever using this campaign.

I was curious as to what is told to the players about the situation they are entering by others running this campaign. The introduction to innistrad and then that they meet at thraben all journeying to shadowgrange? Is it up to me to figure that out as a DM? This is in no way a criticism, just ignorance on my part and curiosity. Thanks :)

[LordBeardsly]

Ran Army of the Damned a while back and after looking at what you did with the werewolves I am very excited to return to Innistrad.



Also statted up two howlpack alphas: Ulrich and Tovolar. Ulrich is a straightforward big ol' werewolf. I may give him a "pack leader" trait where allies have advantage against creatures that he is adjacent to, representing his +4/+4 trigger on his card, but I'm not sure how that would affect his CR.

Tovolar is a lot weirder. We don't have much official lore on him, no card, and just one or two sentences about him. He and the Mondronen howlpack will play big roles in the adventure so I'm expanding his lore. Mechanically he's a mash-up of werewolf, rakshasa, and druid. Lore-wise I plan on explaining the origins of lycanthropy (officially there's no explanation) and Tovolar is one of the original lycanthropes and has certain unique traits.

Having a legendary action where Ulrich lets an ally within X feet make a melee attack using its reaction might be a good way to show the "pack leader" trait. And I really like where you went with Tovolar- having a caster enemy and werewolves with different abilities (perhaps based on what howlpack they are from?) will mix up combat and make the groups distinct.

Good work! I will be keeping my eye out for more!

[ZorroGames]

Just found this thread and read army of the damned - which sadly won't save to dropbox. Have not read all the entries in this thread yet.

Wow! Look forward to reading all of ths thread and any links.

Wow! Just Wow!

[Veldrenor]

I just finished running this adventure for a group and they loved it. The unique items, the townsfolk (especially Otto and Magda), the siege, Mauer Estate, it was all fantastic. The final fight was brilliant: figuring that the storm put them on a timetable, they went into it with most of their resources depleted and barely survived (cleric and monk unconscious, fighter/sorcerer dead but reincarnated thanks to a wild magic surge earlier in the fight, Wizard finishing off turned schmelzmen, and the druid hiding as the Thing rampaged off into the night). They were sorry to hear that we'd reached the end, but we're all eagerly looking forward to the next chapter.

[JohanOfKitten]

Dralnu : Is your Kessig scenario completed?


I would be really interested to read it and to use it as inspiration. (In my current game, I can't use it straight away, as my campaign deviate from yours after the end of Army of the Damned, but some elements that you evoked in your last messages seem really interesting to add, at any moment.)


If you're interested, I can share my storyline with you, if you want to see other directions this campaign can take. :smallsmile: