On The Road

My adventurers are finally growing up and leaving town. They're planning a trip that will take them over a month if nothing bad happens, but it's Dungeons and Dragons, so something bad will happen to them.

However, this is still a new situation for me, what do I do? How do they travel? If I let them buy a flock of pegasi, is that actually faster?

Next session is really just going to be a couple weeks of travel. They might get as far as Boarskyr Bridge, depending on what they want to do about the events of Fey Day. My favorite Faerûnian holiday.

Intrigue

Intrigue is hard.

I have a deposed noble, and he is on his way to take back his title.

Pretty sure there's supposed to be heaps of intrigue and talking to people.

But he's been a deposed noble for the past 8 years, the person who deposed him was looking forward to a confrontation that never happened. I'm struggling with what to do when he slides in pretending to be someone else. Especially since the person currently in control of his lands is his identical twin brother. I suspect he will just be recognized even when he puts on his terrible mask.

Dungeoneering

My characters have already met 2 dragons, and they haven't been anywhere near a dungeon yet. So I'm setting up a cool dungeon where some of the Golden Skins of the World Serpent can be found.

I have been reading too much of the forgotten realms wiki. As such I now have some place names that already exist on my map to work with. Ss'thar'tiss'ssun was founded by the same race that created the Skins and was famous for its powerful magic before the city was destroyed by the Netherese, many thousands of years after the city's founders vanished.

And a little over a thousand years before the events of our current story.

After making decisions, I found some more information that says that my plan is not possible, but my plan is cooler and involves a legendary fountain. Supposedly, all that should be left of the temple at this point is the basement, but the rest of it is cooler.

It's a three story temple a little ways underground. There were once more floors, but they were destroyed in the Netherese attack 1400 years ago.

I don't know what goes in all of the rooms yet, other than cool magic stuff, but there is a fountain that existed in previous editions that would be in this temple. I have made it a central feature. It is absurdly magical, and still working thousands of years later.

Clink Manor

This is my first custom map. I tried using some software to make a digital one, but everything I tried is really clunky...
Frankly, including this.

Even if it is still a little weird and unwieldy, this map at least looks prettier than what I could get otherwise, and it's ready for a few sessions from now, when we finally need to get here.

The Ancient Lore of Faerun

I've been reading too much of the forgotten realms wiki this weekend. Everyone is leaving Waterdeep soon, so I need to actually have some cool places for them to go and some really cool stuff to find.

While trying to figure out where Tavin's from I wound up reading a lot about the Netheril Empire. A fascinating use of a couple of hours.

Our game is set in 1495DR, so the Empire is falling to ruins again, 100 years ago the final floating city returned from the Shadowfell and started conquering stuff. They went in there about 2000 years ago to avoid the literal, physical collapse of their civilization. Before their flying cities crashed down from the skies and killed nearly all their inhabitants, the people of Netheril made a number of fantastic inventions and created modern magic as everyone but the elves know it.

Of course they found the magical documents it's based on in the ruins of another, more ancient civilization. They were found by a man named the Finder, read and explained by the great Arcanist, Nether.

Pages of the scrolls are scattered all across the world, and grant the reader amazing magical powers. Zavidua Pabrovund happens to have a single scroll hidden away in her tower, a page of the final chapter, Ars Factum, or Of the Creation of Artifacts. It's a page from the middle of the chapter outlining all of the worst ways of making magical artifacts, like turning Aberrations into small rocks.

So You Want To Build A Wizard?

• Who is the crazy wizard who made the door into the vault at the end of Dragon Heist?
• What madman decided to turn an aboleth into a rock that can tell you where you left your keys? 
• Who decided that to open the door you needed bagpipe music and part of a bugbear?

 Well, they're all the same person, and probably a good person to have a huge stash of weird magic stuff. I want a reason to give my players a huge pile of weird magic stuff. So, he or she has a castle or tower or workshop that the players can hit up later for cool loot.

 Possible names for this crazy wizard: Zurusorn, Xobothung, Pabrovund, Zaviduas

Zaviduas Pabrovund, Administrator of Orogoth. Orogoth seems like a good place, I know nothing about it, but it has a good wizardly sort of a name. Administrator is a strange title, but I've already demonstrated how weird this wizard is. 

Ah, I've accidentally hit on an actual title, currently Orogoth is a wizard college, they probably have administrators...

Zaviduas Pabrovund should not be one of those.

Zaviduas Pabrovund, Wizard of the Northdark Woods. It's a nice small forest near the ancestral home of one of the players, so he will be more likely to deal with his many family problems that I've been planning.

Unfortunately, Zaviduas sounds like a male name to me and all of the other villains I have planned are men. Zavidua Pabrovund sounds much more feminine though.

Zavidua Pabrovund, Wizard of the Northdark Woods is going to leave some advertising on the back of the doors in to the vault. She's not dumb, she knows adventurers are going to end up inside of the vault, but adventurers appreciate a good and tricky magic door. Maybe they will want her services.

Fool's Errands

One of my players couldn't make the last session of our game, meaning a further delay of the dungeon and the dragon waiting at the end of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist.

So, while everyone else went on all these fun little sidequests, Niv-Mizzet went after his idea of the third vault key, which he decided to needlessly over-complicate. The party needs a beardless dwarf to open the vault; Niv has decided that rather than getting a dwarf to shave or hiring a female dwarf to come with them, what he really needs is the skeleton of a dwarf.

If he had actually been there for the session, getting a dwarven skeleton would have been quite simple, but instead Niv now has a "skeleton guy" whom he contacted many times over the course of the five days that happened during the session.

Luckily for me, the first bit of filler was a female dwarf asking to stay with the party. For most of the time that Niv has been looking for a beardless dwarf, there has been one staying in his house.

Thank goodness for the Zhentarim.

The Life and Crimes of Pulvi Lutum

(From the Notes of Barnibus Blastwind, Criminal Investigator for the Watchful Order of Magists and Protectors)

The morning after the Feast of the Moon (Nightal 1), Clerebold Biznorel found the body of his master, Lammakh Heirlarpost, in a cupboard in their shared residence after searching for the man for over an hour to serve him his breakfast.

Experienced healers estimate that Mr. Heirlarpost had been dead for three days at the time of his discovery. Unfortunately, he had also been seen by not only his staff, but by many other acquaintances during this period. Most notable is the speech he presented at the Cassalanter Estate during their gala celebrating the Feast of the Moon the night before. It is currently uncertain whether or not he was alive during any of these events, or if some sort of inter-planar effect may have altered the flow of time in this circumstance.

Unfortunately, by the time this discrepancy was noticed the body had already had Gentle Repose cast upon it, outshining any other spells that may have been cast upon it. Our attempts to interrogate Mr. Heirlarpost were not particularly productive, demonstrating only three things: he had indeed been dead during those three days, he had been thoroughly interrogated, and that the man responsible for his death was an Earth Genasi by the name of Pulvi Lutum.

We attempted several methods of divination to locate this Pulvi Lutum, none of them successful, eventually leading to the conclusion that he had acquired an Amulet of Proof Against Location and Detection. The case has been passed to the talents of bounty hunters.

Inspiration

I've been collating a Pinterest board with exciting magic items, monsters, maps, and the occasional architectural diagram. You can view it here.

 I am definitely not using everything in this campaign, and other people definitely created all of the magic items. I have already given the party the Boots Made for Walking, which were promptly given to Elephant Joe, who is now very speedy.

Welcome to the Party: Zelifarn

So, the party had a really nice chat with Zelifarn the bronze dragon, and suggested to the dragon that she should try adventuring.

She has taken their advice, and is getting ready to start adventuring, either with them or by herself. Zelifarn is going to show up, even if the party doesn't want her to join them, because she is too cool to leave behind.

I like working on paper, even though our entire campaign is going on online. I gave Zelifarn one trait for Adult Dragons so that she can be a more effective adventurer.

A Large sized creature would have some serious trouble getting into most dungeons with enough treasure that she would like to explore them.

The Next Challenger 1

This is the official nemesis of Tavin. When the party gets out of the module, one of their first stops is going to be his ancestral homeland, and eventually they will fight this person.

There are some story details that I still need to figure out about him, but he has a still-secret name.

Dropping a Drow

The party was stealthily making its way through the Dock Ward of Waterdeep, following Tavin who was disguised as a drunken elf.
[This was not necessary based on the module, they just decided to play dress-up.]
It was their third night of hunting for a serial killer. In the past few weeks, four drunken elves or half-elves had been beheaded in the Dock Ward. Pearl had been asked to look into the matter by the Zhentarim, and invited the party to help her with it. Everyone else just agreed that stopping serial killers is a good thing for adventurers to do.

Eventually, Tavin walked down a street, passing a half-elf named Heldar, and the rest of the party walked behind him, passing a small alley where Joe and Pearl noticed something.

There was totally a drow standing back there with his sword drawn, waiting for the party to pass and Heldar to reach the alley.

Elephant Joe quickly ran up behind the drow, tapped him on the head, and "Hey, I don't think you should do that."
[I gave him advantage on an Intimidation check for that.]
The 400lb. 8 foot tall elephant mysteriously appeared behind him, and put a heavy elephant hand on his head. The drow did the obvious thing, and dropped his sword, completely surrendering to the party. They had someone call up the City Watch, and Heldar the Half-Elf gave them each 50 gold.
[This is far too much money for anyone but player characters to be carrying around. Who are you Heldar? Why do you have over 200 gold? Why are you alone at night in a bad part of town? You should rethink some of your life choices Heldar.]