Campaign Overview

Here is the long campaign overview we are using.

Zimarim the Grim is an evil wizard that has attacked and all but destroyed the town of Willowsdell. He did so by several long-forgotten magical attacks. During these attacks, a hero by the name of Barnabus Longwillow left Willowsdell in search of the one laying siege to the town and a way to undo the magical destruction happening all around him. He happens upon a pool of water in a cave beneath a mountain on the far side of the bay. Thinking that this was the source of the magical attacks on his town, he took out his Great Bow and fired upon the water spirit within. The spirit turned him into a giant rat and laid a spell on him that trapped him in the caves where he found the pool.

Fast Forward.

The Basement O' Rats adventure picks up the story with our heroes needing to save their friend, Roger, from being abducted by giant rats. The adventure includes two changes. The first is that the pool in the "empty room" is the magical pool containing the water spirit that transformed Barnabus. The second is that the heroes are defeated by the Rat King and his rat army (keep adding rats coming out of the hidey holes until they are overwhelmed). When they wake up after being KO'd, they are in a rat prison. Roger lets them out. He takes them to meet with the Rat King who reveals that he is actually Barnabus Longwillow, the great, great, great grandfather of Roger. He was raising a rat army to take revenge on the water spirit when he learned of a magic book that his descendants had obtained that may contain a spell to reverse the transformation. When he ordered the rats (simply regular rats that had been grown by magic and aren't very smart) to get the book from Roger's family, the grabbed Roger by mistake. Everyone goes back to the water spirit where she turns Barnabus back into a young hero and grants a boon to each of the heroes. (She granted the gift of use of all elements to our fire mage, and gave Barnabus' Great Bow to our archer, which is an one-shot kill with the negatives of using up the movement and action of his turn and causing one damage per shot.)

She also sends the heroes on a quest to find 5 pieces of an artifact that will destroy the evil wizard once assembled and used in conjunction with a magic spell. They return to the tavern to find that a magical dome (force field) has appeared over Rivenshore keeping anyone from leaving or entering the town. Also, fires have started appearing all over town.

The Fires of Rivenshore adventure picks up the story. The adventure includes two changes. The first is the addition of an encounter at Precious Penelope's Pets, where after they save the menagerie, Penelope offers them each a pet. This occurs just before the encounter with Bree. The second difference is that at some point during the conversation with Bree, she reveals that when she first began manifesting the fire mage abilities, she ran away and met a man in the woods that taught her to control her talents. He also told her to fight back when she is bullied. She feels remorseful over what happened when she did, and so she was on her way to see if she could leave the dome through a secret passage she had heard about. It is in the Mines of Martek.

The heroes must use the mines to try and leave the dome and find a way to get rid of it or search for the 5 pieces of the artifact.

The Mines of Martek adventure picks up the story here. Instead of mining tools outside the entrance, they find a hidden box (if they are clever enough to find it) sealed with magic. It is opened by placing the sigil of the High Embers into the matching indentation on the top of the box. Otherwise, the adventure can be run as is (slight change in the beginning story part) with the addition of a secret false wall at the end of the mines that leads out into the woods. We replaced the first trapped miner with a goblin alchemy ritual that was transferring power from a cloaked Halfling bound in a pit to some unknown magic spell (turns out to be the dome). The cloaked Halfling turns out to be Eldar D'Ember, the leader of the High Embers, a cult of Fire Druids, and the one that trained Bree. Once released, he disappears in a cloud of orange smoke, laughing maniacally at the heroes. They catch a glimpse of the emblem around his neck, which matches the magical inlay on the box they found (which contains 1 of the pieces of the artifact). It is the key (or one of them).

The second big change we made is within the interior of the mines. There is a puzzle-locked secret entrance to the Maze of the Minotaur in the underground lake into which the river runs. I'll post pictures of how I set up the mines. One of the pieces of the artifact will be in the Minotaur's lair.

The heroes can leave through the secret back entrance of the mines into the woods beyond, or solve the puzzle and gain entrance to the Maze of the Minotaur.

When outside, they encounter a house on legs in which an old woman lives. She is Baba Yaga, the Wood Witch. She is neither good nor evil, mean nor nice. She is as helpful as she wants to be in response to how nice the heroes are to her. She travels around in her house providing help and information to the heroes as necessary.

From here, they can either go to Glade of the Unicorn, or Curse of the Shadow Walkers. The unicorn has a piece of the artifact.

The fourth piece of the artifact is in the Tomb of the Lost King, and the fifth was stolen by pirates. The heroes will acquire that in the Escape from the Ghost Pirates adventure. The pirates stole the artifact from the wise woman's hut in the Curse of the Shadow Walkers adventure.

I will include the leveling scheme in another post.