Do you want your players to feel like they are in a zombie movie, struggling against a deadly horde that tries to surround them, overpower them, and bear them down to the ground to be devoured? This is an adventure that can threaten even the stoutest of characters, and is not recommended for parties of levels 12 or below unless they are larger than normal. This module is designed to take 4-8 hours of play and cover a single day, depending on the party’s speed of play and how thoroughly they decide to explore. It includes suggestions and some plot hooks that can be used to tie this easily into a variety of long-running campaigns, or it can be run as an indepdent adventure. The players will come upon a sacked town, figure out what happened, track an item whose theft has ominious implications for the region, and explore a partly-flooded old temple to end the threat. It's primarily combat-focused, but there are a few areas where exploration and route choice makes a difference, as well as traps if the party goes for the optional temple treasury. The antagonists in this module are mostly ghasts and ghouls, but the module title and cover page are deliberately selected to not spoil this. These are greater ghouls and ghasts that can challenge higher-level characters, backed up by mobs of lesser ghouls that can surround, paralyze, and devour the weak and unlucky, led by a Warlord whose aura can drive even the stout-hearted into forgetting their plans in a moment of madness.
The Submerged Spire of Sarpedon the Shaper lies to the west of the Isle of the Dismemberer. On the northwestern shore of this island, crumbling steps spill from the shore directly into the sea. There, a seaweed choked stone path can be glimpsed winding down into the depths. At low tide, a quarter mile along the path, a lone onion dome may be seen poking through the waves. In the twilight of the sorcerer lords, The Submerged Spire was the jewel of the Shattered Isles. Within his submarine redoubt, Sarpedon penetrated ever deeper into the organic mysteries. Now, its for- lorn dome the roost of seagulls, its secrets slumber beneath the waves.
The Sinking of the Mercy is a sandbox style adventure with multiple side treks to give higher level characters a challenge. After recuperating from their last adventure the PCs find themselves at the port city of Covalush. A group of heavy storms have been battering the coastline for a while a few banged up ships have limped into port. The sailors have found the taverns and have been retelling the story of a sunken treasure ship they were travelling with. As the storms start to weaken the possibility of a treasure hunt has intrigued the PCs…
When the characters arrive at the fishing town of Estinn, they find it totally abandoned. Can they solve the grisly mystery of what happened to the town and stop a monstrous threat that lurks in the cold, deep waters of the bay? Born in Blood is a Lovecraftian horror one-shot for four or five 9th-level characters. It takes about 4-6 hours to complete and includes: -A gruesome mystery of betrayal and dark rituals -An underwater dungeon hidden beneath the sea floor -A harrowing battle with a newly born godling! -High-quality digital maps for use with virtual table tops
Dive into a mystery in Lake of Secrets, a darker magic fantasy compatible with any setting. When the sovereign of a war-stricken kingdom goes missing, characters must brave the castle dungeons to find them. Death stalks the dungeon walls and dark deeds come to light as the characters uncover the story of a terrible sacrifice. Designed as a 3-4 hour adventure for 1-6 players of 3rd-5th level, Lake of Secrets is a fresh narrative that explores themes of false promise and isolation, offering characters a choice that will decide the fate of an entire realm.
This solo adventure is designed as an adventure to teach the PC that sometimes you need help in solving tough problems. The adventurer learns that Ortella the Druid is seeking assistance in obtaining spell components to help the local village. It seems that the community has a magical phantasm causing problems in its lake and they need help in the form of Ortella and Ortella needs your help!
Venzor Trench is set for a group of characters hired to deliver a magical item between two warring countries. The sea voyage becomes tumultuous and the ship goes down. With the mission unfilled the players utilize the magic item to survive on the bottom of the sea floor and continue to trek their way towards completing their misson through the legendary Venzor Trench!
After a successful mission for Earl Phenwick you return to receive your accolades. Upon your arrival it is discovered that the earl's child is missing. His daughter was last seen around a mirror of unknown power and an advisor believes that she may have made her way into a different world via the magical portal. Time to put on your hero hats!
Stopping an undersea war wasn't in your contract. The seas will boil with war, and you're going to be right in the middle of it. Pgs. 34-47
Provost Faurious has procured an Aethervane, an astrolabe-like instrument tied to Kythri that's used to navigate manifest zones. Unfortunately for the Provost, the Riedran ship that was carrying the Aethervane across the Sea of Rage to deliver it to their agent in Regalport fell victim to piracy. The player characters are dispatched to Regalport to meet up with the Provost’s agent there and petition High Prince Rygar for more information about the stolen cargo. When the characters dock in Regalport, they meet the Provost’s contact and are ushered into a meeting with High Prince Rygar. Wishing to show his intolerance for piracy, Rygar charters one of his own ships for the party’s use as they investigate the stolen cargo. Upon arriving at the crash site of the stolen cargo, the party is set upon by a fleet of pirates known as the Wind Whisperers. When things turn sour, a new surprise reveals itself as an unnatural storm rolls in, a stolen airship at its heart. The Wind Whisperers have found a way to convert the Aethervane to serve their own purposes. Seeking aid from Rygar and House Lyrandar, the heroes chase after the pirates by sail and airship. As they do, they are bedeviled by the Chaos Fleet—strange ships sailed by an even stranger crew that are drawn to the Aethervane and the chaos it brings. In a final airborne confrontation, the party boards the rogue airship and retrieves the sought-after artifact, with a chance to salvage or sink the stolen vessel in the process…
The colony of Farshore has survived on its own for years, a secluded and struggling hamlet perched on the western shore of the tiny island of Temute. An island dwarfed by the savage landscape across the narrow channel to the north, a landscape of rugged mountains, tangled jungles, and trackless swamps. This is the Isle of Dread, and its resources and hidden treasures are matched only by its peril. Yet for all these dangers, what may bring doom to Farshore is not an invasion of inhuman monsters from the mainland, but an invasion of all-too-human monsters from across the sea. "Tides of Dread" is the fifth chapter of the Savage Tides Adventure Path, a complete campaign consisting of 12 adventures appearing in Dungeon magazine. For additional aid in running this campaign, check out Dragon magazine's monthly "Savage Tidings" articles, a series that helps players and DMs prepare for and expand upon the campaign. Issue #352 of Dragon magazine features rumors of Farshore, a helpful list of improvements the PCs can make to the colony, and other features to help get PCs oriented in their new home on the Isle of Dread. The destruction of a pirate ship signals the beginning of a Crimson Fleet invasion. The PCs must race against time to prepare for the onslaught before an old enemy can release another savage tide. Pgs. 28-59 Also see Pgs. 60-71 Backdrop: Farshore City of Hope.
Important: The adventure is 1e but it has monster conversion notes for D&D 4th edition The town of Highport, once a human community overlooking Wooly Bay from its perch on the northern coast of the Pomarj, fell prey to hordes of humanoids swarming out of the jungle-covered hills surrounding the settlement. Though the orcs, goblins, kobolds, ogres, and gnolls razed much of the place in their ferocious rampages, the smoldering ruins they left behind soon became a new kind of community, a place of trade between the humanoid “locals” and the unsavory human traders who have no compunction about doing business with them. Slaves are a commodity in ready supply in Highport’s market, since many pirates raid up and down the coast of the bay, putting fishing villages to the torch and filling their holds with captured refugees. Slavery has become a thriving business in the town, and rumors abound of a cartel of Slave Lords who run things from behind the scenes, filling their coffers in secret from the buying and selling of human chattel. The trade has become so prolific that the good folk to the north have grown tired of these depredations and decided to fight back. Forces of righteousness and honor have recently descended upon Highport, some openly and others in secret, in various attempts to destroy the machinations of the Slave Lords and abolish the abominable enterprise that has taken far too many loved ones from home and hearth. One such doughty servant of goodness is Mikaro Valasteen, a cleric of Trithereon. Mikaro slipped unnoticed past the crumbling walls of Highport with a single mission: to rescue and transport as many slaves to their freedom as possible. Mikaro and a handful of faithful assistants located a number of escaped slaves—as well as rescued a few more not sufficiently restrained and guarded—and shepherded them through the gates and beyond the reach of their humanoid tormentors, returning them to their lands and homes. This covert freedom brigade enjoyed remarkable success early on, since the servants of the Slave Lords were often lax in their vigilance and sloppy in their efforts to prevent loss of the “merchandise.” After one too many shipments never made its destination, the humanoids stepped up their security and the normal channels of escape from Highport closed to Mikaro and his team. He cannot risk exposure by smuggling the freed slaves through the gates as merchandise any longer, since shipments of goods are now regularly stopped and checked. No longer able to free the slaves in that manner, Mikaro began hiding his charges in an abandoned villa in a particularly rundown part of the town. Although they are safe for the moment, their numbers have grown unmanageable, and the priest fears it is only a matter of time before someone slips up and brings slavers to their doorstep. Ever more desperate to find a new means of escape from Highport, Mikaro has started work on a plan that is both daring and dangerous. He intends to use a series of old sewers coupled with natural caverns running beneath the town as an escape route to the sea beyond the walls. But he needs someone to clear out the creatures and pitfalls he knows lie within. Pgs. 2-27
After your ship crashed onto a small island you and a few other survivors quickly discover you're not entirely alone. There are creatures slithering in a nearby cave, taking everything they can from the wreckage as they hunt for something. With no other way out, you'll have to trek through the Sahuagin camp, rescue any other survivors and find other means of escaping the island before all is lost.
Strange catches have long plagued fishermen's nets -- but none so strange as rotting fish that twitch and gasp for days after they are taken from the water, or a gilled githyanki's severed head found in a shark's belly. Do these briny omens lend credence to rumors of a sunken githyanki city caught in a necromantic civil war? This is a sequel to "The Death of Lashimire" (Dungeon Magazine #116). This adventure makes use of rules and options from "Stormwrack" and the "Expanded Psionics Handbook". Pgs. 60-82
With the dawning of the Age of Lost Omens, a supernatural hurricane known as the Eye of Abendego brought ruin to the nation of Lirgen. Today, what was once a powerful nation exists as a flooded swampland, its fallen cities immersed under the endless flood of a perpetual storm. In Hyrantam, the ruined capital of Lirgen, a few stubborn survivors have managed to eke out a living for themselves, but now, strange new patterns in the storm that constantly looms on the horizon have swept local predators into violent frenzies. Worse, a new sect of strange seers known as the Stormreaders has come to the area, and its demands on the people of Hyrantam have grown increasingly dire. What link might the Stormreaders have to these new squalls, and what vile plots might they be hatching from their new seat of power deep in the drowned city’s ruins? Seers of the Drowned City is an adventure for 6th-level characters and features a poster map of the ruins of Hyrantam. The author of this adventure, Nicholas Wasko, was the Season 9 winner of the RPG Superstar contest, in which hundreds of unpublished authors compete for the chance to write a Pathfinder Module. In addition, this book contains a host of new monsters and magic items designed by the contest’s talented runners-up. Seers of the Drowned City is designed for four characters and uses the medium XP track. The characters will reach 8th level by the end of the adventure.
Deep beneath the surface of a lake flourishing with aquatic life is the Temple of Pure Water. Within its walls your players will encounter dangerous aquatic flora, a deadly submerged temple, a sea dragon statue with power lurking within, and even a rapid downhill boat ride with sharks. Water in small doses is an elixir of life, but it large enough quantities your players may be left in over their heads as they make their way through this underwater adventure.
In these lands of eldritch goo, it's a fine line between victory and a sticky situation Tzork, the sentient globe of glass, wasn’t exactly born from a grand spell—it was more of a cosmic "oops". After a backstabbing disciple named Theridus offed his master and snagged the relic, he promised his followers unimaginable power. But instead of turning them into terrifying demons, Tzork turned them into puddles of goo. Now, the once "glorious" cult's mansion is less a temple and more a swamp of melted, failed adventurers, attracting only the most reckless of treasure hunters. 'Morass of the Melting Men' is an adventure for Knave 2e, suitable for low-level PCs. The adventure revolves around an extremely powerful sentient magical item that has gone out of control, melting all the nearby people and turning what was once an evil temple into a swamp of slime, filled with bones and eyeballs. In Morass of the Melting Men, players enter a location flooded with a magical liquid exuding chaotic energy. The longer the PCs remain within the swamp, the more they suffer the unexpected effects of this alien magic. Step inside this morass if you dare — goo and treasure awaits... but mostly goo What you'll find here: A complete 40-page adventure A 20 room dungeon map Several new (and bizarre) magic items such as the magnificent Tray of Force and the powerful Theridus' Head. Several wild random tables of weird and gooey outcomes
The shipping lanes south of Candlekeep have been disrupted. Unknown to anyone, an incredible alliance between a terran and a waterfolk tribe has caused the lamp at Gloomhaze Point lamptower to be extinguished. Merchant ships are being wrecked and plundered. The story unfolds in the nation of Amn. Adventurers will face a formidable kobold tribe that knows how to maximize its tactics, its smaller-than-human size tunnels, and an abundance of unique traps. The bloodthirsty sahaugin won’t be defeated without the adventurers taking a dive.
"Yea I knows of a job for the likes of you" the bartender says as he wipes off the table. "This wizard who lives near the shore about two or three days ride lost somethin' he was expected on the ship The Intrepid. I hear he wants the cargo back and is willing to pay good coin for it to any who'd chance going into the Lake of Chaos." A grizzled old man in the corner gasps and says “any would want to go into that sea gots to be crazy. Aye, that wizard is lookin' for some crazy people. That waters haunted by dead sailors". "Oh come on” Telkall the bartender continues "you know that’s just an old story to keep kids away from the water. I'm sure it’s going to be an easy job for the likes you. You all appear to be quite able to take care of yourself. Go down the coast road for about two days if yer on horses and you'll see a stone tower. Ask for Kresellus ... he's the one you'll be lookin' for. Oh, and tell him Wolfgar sent ya ... if you could." Well things were getting boring at the Dead Orc Inn anyway.
The exciting artifact series concludes with AS3 – Peregrination. With a pair of control rods in hand you are guided to an ultimate prize, a Gnomish flying vessel! The rods have directed you to a crashed ship buried in the sandy beach. A check of the debris sheds light on the mystery of the artifact and a description of how to repair the intricate machine. Apparently finding the vessel is just the start!