October Online: Base of Operations, Hysharr

Okay, so we're finishing up October with five online additions. Two of them are adventures, so I'm going to split them between tonight and tomorrow. Two are shorter additions, and one is a bonus Halloween Map-o-Week which I'll cover tomorrow.

So, up first is this month's online adventure, Base of Operations. This is a short adventure, seven pages long, written for 5th-level characters. It's set in an abandoned castle named Brightstone Keep, which has come under new management, specifically an orc cleric/necromancer with some troll friends.

The adventure starts when characters come to the town of Marikest, which is a large border town that has recently been stripped of its 100-man army. Unfortunately, the people of Marikest are pretty sure that they are going to need that army due to the threat of banditry, especially since the best men in Marikest went with that army. But Brightstone Keep is rumored to have some old treasure to be found, so of course enterprising PCs are going to head for it.

Inside the keep, there are orcs. Quite a few of them, in fact. There are also two trolls with rings of minor fire resistance to make them just a wee bit tougher. The trolls have a 'pet' winter wolf that doesn't like them but fights with them to ensure they feed it. However, they can negotiate with the winter wolf if the wolf thinks the party can set it free.

The head baddie in this one is Kurgan Sawtooth, a 6th-level orc cleric of Gruumsh who has been raising some undead to keep him company. He's a tough fight, but the party should be able to handle him. The ancient treasure is actually some uncut gemstones; Brightstone Keep was named for the gems that were being mined there long, long ago. There's more to the mine that isn't discussed here, so it's an opportunity for the DM to expand the adventure that way. Alternatively, the PCs can take over Brightstone Keep as a home base if they want to raid the frontier and take on humanoids in the region. The mine can then be restored and provide a steady income as well.

So, not a bad little adventure for some mid-level characters to go in different directions after it's all over. Good stuff, and I would recommend it.

The next online offering is Hysharr, the Wyrm of the Lake. Part of the NPC Closeup section, this takes us away from the 'sample characters' that we've been given so far and gives us an actual fleshed-out NPC, in this case the young green dragon Hysharr. He's a CR 10 green dragon who lives at the bottom of a lake and whose exhalations down there have been slowly poisoning the lake over the past few years. Well, green dragons do breathe chlorine, so I guess the lake is pretty safe to swim in, right? But the fish aren't liking it, washing up on shore dead, and the lake isn't really drinkable anymore. If you look carefully, you can see the green tinge in the water overtop of where the dragon's lair is, about 150 feet down.

We are told that the dragon is treasure-poor and treasure-hungry, and will negotiate with adventurers' lives, bargaining their treasure in exchange for freedom, although he's perfectly willing to eat passers-by who aren't dripping in wealth, too. There is an entire section on combat tactics for Hysharr, which is very useful to get a feel for how dragons can be run in this edition. He'll focus on casters and use his daze cantrip on rogues trying to flank him, and isn't above using his Snatch attack to drag armored casters underwater to drown them, hopefully drawing their friends in for an ill-fated rescue attempt.

I think Hysharr would work well as a threat in the Journey map, putting him in that lake. I'll think about it a bit more, but it seems like an excellent place to put a dragon and give the region a long-term threat to deal with.

And that's it for tonight; I'll finish off the October entries tomorrow, and then it's right into November.