Erris Dawnforge's Journal

This was written by me shortly after my players finished The Master's Vault. I decided to write out the journal mentioned in the module, and use it as sort of an "escape room" type puzzle to send my players along to the next leg of their adventure. 

The journal came with a strange, magicked map. I told the players that the black lines and names floated just above the map's surface and could be moved. 

If the players took the time to read the journal (they did indeed!) they would learn where each of their teacher's friends hailed from. The line from the journal says "The Eye has been stolen by the Pact of the Lich and hidden away in the library near the place my loved ones' paths cross." So if the players moved the name markers over the corresponding hometown, the lines would cross in one spot. 

I set this up by making an actual map page in Roll20, and then setting the little named tower markers with the lines as tokens on the token layer, and presented them as simply lying on a sidebar. Then I gave all the players permissions on the token so they could move them themselves. It was a little twitchy, specifically because the tokens were big and my players weren't used to grabbing tokens layered over each other, but with a little help from me in grabbing and moving them, they were able to work the puzzle just fine. 

 Erris’s Party:

Erris Dawnforge

Kay Palantir (half elven bard, who incidentally, is still alive in Riverport and who lost part of his memory of this.)

Ingot Stonebottom (a dwarven battle cleric, who is the same dwarf that stumbled dying into the pub in the Tomb of Crossed Swords)

Rufus Setter (a human Lore bard and swordsman, now a lich guarding the Tomb)

*Axellia of Daggerford, a human Wizard.

*Roscoe Stoutfoot, a halfling rogue

*Elahir Oakenheel, an Elven Ranger

Eyenafer of Tyr, a dragonborn Paladin

1441 The Claw of Winter, 15

Axella has determined that the Eye of Death is in the possession of a cult of Vecna known as the Pact of the LIch. The artifact is a Lesser Eye, thank goodness, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less dangerous. We had feared that it was, in fact, the dreaded Eye of Vecna, but that is no longer thought to be the case.

The Eye has been stolen by the Pact of the Lich and hidden away in the library near Gillian’s Hill. What the cult is doing with the library is anyone’s guess. But we knew we had to get it away from them, because we knew great evil would come of allowing such a corrupt sect access to such a powerful artifact.

1441 The Claw of Winter, 16

The library, long a haven for scholars and scribes for centuries, is in ruin, the scrolls and tomes therein ruined by foul magic. I thought Axella and Rufus were going to be sick when they saw the defilement. Such knowledge gone and ruined. For Axella, being a great scholar of Wizardry, and Rufus, of the Bardic College of Lore, it is all too much. It’s here where we make our stand. 

1441 The Claw of Winter, 17

Axellia and Elahir are dead, and Eyenhafer, always the hero even to the end, died trying to shield them. There wasn’t much left of her. May she rest in peace. The Cult took great pleasure in finishing her off. Dear, valiant Elahir made a heroic last stand, even shot with arrows and clearly breathing his last. He made our people proud. His last arrow found its mark in the heart of one of the foul necromancers.

I must get word back to Waterdeep about poor Axellia. She will be missed, and Waterdeep will be bereft of their finest wizard.

1441 The Claw of Winter, 18

Thank Mystra for dear Roscoe’s nimble halfling fingers. Our quest would have been for naught if not for him. It was he who got the Eye out of the library, with Kay shielding him with what magic he had left. It cost them both their lives, alas. I only hope their sacrifices were not in vain. The sight of Kay’s shattered lute, crushed on the blood-stained stones beside their still bodies, broke me. 

1441 The Claw of the Sunsets, 1

I am told that Ingot somehow managed to get back to Gillian’s Hill and died shortly after arriving there. I never imagined that stout Dwarven heart would ever stop beating. I suspect he carried me there as well, as I awoke back in the hamlet, with no knowledge of how I got there, and Ingot dead. My memory of what happened is strangely dim, like bits are missing.

And as for my poor, dear friend Rufus, so proud and reliable. I know he died in the library. I saw his body, torn and pierced beyond all hope. My heart is broken for him. I cannot say what had happened to him before that dreadful end overtook him. He was the rare sort of human one doesn’t mind following into battle. But something about the place got to him. Something about him...I don’t know what.  Some look in his eyes I’d never seen before. Something about him made me afraid. 

1441 The Claw of the Sunsets 10

Alas, my attempts to retrieve the bodies of my beloved companions have been for naught. The only one of us I was able to honor with a civilized burial is dear Ingot. My one comfort is that I was able to return his body to his dwarven brethren. I fear Roscoe and Kay were defiled by scavengers, and as for those who met their end inside the library, all that was left was their blood staining the stones. Clearly, they were dragged off by whatever fell beings still inhabit that cursed place. 

1481 The Feast of Midsummer

What a delightful festival this year. I admit, the presence of students to attend it with me has been a wonderful reprieve from my loneliness. While I would never admit to favorites, I will confess to myself that this summer’s students have pleased me beyond all others. They very much remind me of my own lost chosen family. 

1489 Summertide 1

I have been contacted by one Brother Connor, a priest of Deneir, about the library. I have mixed feelings about it. I have long wanted to cleanse it.  The Pact of the LIch has abandoned the place, but their defilement remains. It certainly follows that a Deneirian Brother should have a vested interest in recovering the library. I would like that, too. It would honor the blood of my fallen brethren. I shall endeavor to get a party of trustworthy comrades in order. Truth be told, it’s all I have thought about of late. I could rest easy if I could accomplish this last goal. 

1489 Summertide 5

I fear that the Pact of LIch has tracked me to the Vale in search of the Eye. I will have to be on my guard. I have very few allies here, and that is by design. The fewer people know the truth of my identity, the better. However, they are determined, and the possibility that they will catch up to me must be considered. 

1489 Highsun 20

Damn, but it’s hot. The summer heat shimmers on the water like a fever-dream.

I have scouted out what will likely be one of my final adventures, and while doing so have hidden that which must remain hidden in the very wake of the Enemy’s passage.  We have come full circle, it seems, as I doubt they will check their own pockets.  The Guardian will keep close watch, as it has always done.  And the Pact will come here to the Vale, looking for me.

The thought gives me a great deal of perverse pleasure. 

1490 The Feast of the Moon

They come. 

I am ready. 

  

1. The Master's Vault (contains spoilers)

 The Master's Vault by James Introcaso is a really fun little module that is excellent for teaching people how to play D&D. It's also excellent for learning how to run a D&D game as a dungeon master. I've been running games since I was 15, but there's never an end to learning, and I was still fairly new to running games entirely on Roll20. Still, it was a great start to our campaign. 

The premise is that the player characters are alumni of a great teacher, Elaria Feywing.

The first part of the module is sort of a final exam sort of situation, where the players have to go into Elaria's basement and kill some Rodents of Unusual Size. The second part is when they come back together after a time for her funeral. In this campaign, were her last and favorite group of summer students, in the year 1481, Dale Reckoning.

I was planning to run this module as sort of a one-off for teaching purposes and then launch into our normal campaign, but my players really embraced the idea that they were ex-classmates. As it turned out, this unassuming little module turned out to be the basis of our entire campaign. I find the idea that the players are all ex-classmates and have come together for a common goal to be a whole lot less contrived than a bunch of random dungeons and dragons characters meeting in a tavern. 

So anyway, our four player characters, Macterah Danorae (a copper Dragonborn druid), Ivar Greenleaf (a half-elven ex-sailor rogue from Saltmarsh)), Atalaya Loravaris (a half-elven ranger from the High Forest), and Tifinin ("Just Tifinin"), a halfling bard, find themselves in the lake town of Parabor for their teacher's funeral. 

Of course, this wouldn't be a Dungeons and Dragons game if we didn't discover that their beloved mentor had been murdered. She leaves them her house and some cryptic notes that lets them know that they must embark on a series of small side quests that will take them to different areas of the valley. They must collect nine tiles and bring them back to the house.

The module contains three side adventures that the players can choose to do in any order before heading back to the house for the final challenge. They are, in no particular order:

The Staircase Cliffs

The goal of this adventure is to get the players to learn how to climb up an obstacle, in this case cliffs that look like giant stairs. There are holes in the cliffs where flying serpents will come out and bite the players, forcing them to fight from a precarious foothold.

If you are running this module, you might want to tweak this part of it simply because the players are first-level squishies at this point. And, as written, the mechanics for getting up the cliff are a bit dry. So use your judgment on how to run this part of it. 

At the top is a Dragonborn hermit named Alcaeus. He will take care of the players' injuries, feed them, and send them on their way with three of the tiles.

Vixthra's Lair

This is a hidden cave behind a waterfall full of kobolds, and of course, traps. This is probably my favorite of the three side adventures.

One of the reasons I really like running on Roll20 is because Roll20 allows you to set up traps on different layers and spring them on your players as they stumble into them. You don't have to roll to see if your player falls into the trap because it's right there hidden on the map. If your player moves into that square, boom. Player in a trap! It kind of gives you a more realistic, real-time feel.

But anyway, the traps make the fight with the kobolds a heck of a lot more interesting. There is a curtain in the back of the cave, behind which is a kobold shaman and a giant descending spider.

Very interesting low-level combat.

Here's another cool thing that I've noticed about Roll20: If you use Dynamic Lighting and you allow your players the use of working torches, your players will very quickly learn to throw the torches to illuminate areas before they enter them. I love this. This adds a whole other level of immersion and strategy to your game.

Three more tiles glow from the cobwebs in the ceiling.

Dolor Forest

This leg of the journey is to teach the players about rolling for abilities and role-playing. They will battle their way through wolves and oppressive gloom to reach a remote gravesite in the forest, the final resting place of Helene, The Elaria's late friend. She will ask the players a series of questions and they will have to role-play their way through convincing her and proving their worth. She has the final three tiles.

The Master's Vault

The player characters now make their way home and use the tiles to unlock a  mysterious door in the backyard. What's cool about this on Roll20 is that the module gives you a really nice puzzle page that the players will actually have to work in real-time. They will use the blue tiles and place them on a board in the correct order and when they get it right a word will pop up and the door will open. 

Inside is an elaborately tiled vault with a dias in the back containing artifacts on pedestals. A magical message is triggered and their teacher appears, confessing that she had become embroiled in a plot involving an artifact of power called the Eye of Death, and keeping it out of the hands of an evil cult.

When the players enter, the big bad villain, an evil necromancer who was responsible for the demise of their teacher, presents himself. He is accompanied by a team of skeletons, ready to battle the now second-level player characters. 

What makes this battle particularly fun and interesting is that there are columns in the room that shoot damaging radiant beams at random creatures. The radiant beams are triggered by the presence of undead. As long as the skeletons are still animated, the beams will keep shooting every round. And everyone in the room, regardless of what team they're on, is a potential target.

I actually set up my map so that it had beam trigger tokens on the map itself* (You do not need a subscription to pull this off). All I had to do was click on them and it would trigger an animation and a series of rolls that would tell me if it hit anybody and how much damage it did. So every round, one of these suckers would light up and target somebody.

It certainly added a layer of chaos to the fight, especially when the players figured out it was indiscriminately targeting everyone in the room! "Great, thanks Teach!" 

My players did really well. They emerged victorious and inherited Elaria's magical sword, a bag of cash, a few minor magic items, a map, and their teacher's journal.

Here ends the module.

Now, there are a lot of questions that the module doesn't answer. What's in the journal? What's the story with this cult trying to get their hands on the Eye of Death? Where is the Eye of Death now? What are we supposed to do at this point??

I thought it was a great premise for a campaign, so I answered those questions by writing out the pertinent parts of the journal. I also turned the map they found into an escape room-type puzzle to send them to the next leg of their journey. More on this in another post.

* The code for the macro is {{Radient Damage5=[[2d4]]}} {{Saving Throw=DC13vsDEX}} /fx beam-magic @{target|Caster|token_id} @{target|Foe|token_id}

It's inelegant, but it works. Like I said, you don't need a subscription to use this simple macro.