Impossible Experiments is a series of adventures, each spanning 1-2 levels. Each volume can be run individually or combined into an ongoing series. This volume establishes the premise of this series… When the wizard-king Nex retreated into his Refuge over 4,000 years ago, speculation ran rampant as to what he would do in this space. At first, many assumed that he was restrategizing for the war with Geb, but as the decades and centuries ground on, wilder hypotheses were offered. One explanation claimed that Nex was experimenting to develop a new generation of magical warriors, spies, and minions whose presence would overwhelmingly tip the scales of war against Geb, and likely other nations to follow. In recent years, the gates to the Refuge of Nex have opened, and strange creatures have emerged. Indeed, these creatures are prototypes that Nex is evaluating. Near the iruxi-founded town of Gitna, one of Nex’s first prototypes has emerged and begun to claim victims. The guard has been raised in Gitna, and the heroes are now called to fulfill their oath to defend the town by helping one of its behir guardians, recently injured in his own fight... This adventure includes two archetypes, a versatile heritage, backgrounds, and items you can offer to your players to make this adventure your own!
When a harsh winter turns uneasy neighbors into bitter rivals, or worse, Granny Grimsicle sees an opportunity to spread her unique brand of horror in Hrokstead. Short on food themselves and exhausted from their adventures, our heroes arrive in the frontier settlement to find that something is very wrong. Can they get to the bottom of the threat, and make it out alive? This title stands as a one-shot, but also plants seeds for the ongoing Hags of Hoarfrost anthology. It works great as a supplement to Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, or placed into your own homebrew setting, or run as a standalone adventure. This module includes a detailed battle map and a monster token for use on Virtual Tabletops, and player handouts presented as standalone images for easy distribution to your online players.
This adventure was not meant to be a serious campaign addition but could with some tweaking. Instead, we present this as more of a seasonal classic based on a popular movie. The scenario is a solo PC attempting to locate a runaway during the holidays. With a gypsy, a runaway, and an old “abandoned” house what could possibly go wrong?
"Ambush at Boxcar Rocks" is a two hour adventure for character level 1-3 (3-6 players) but is easily adapted to challenge higher level PCs by adjusting the spawn rate and the spawn limit. It features one hand-drawn, color map. It can be run as a brutal oneshot gauntlet or a quick side quest to pad the players purses. Deep within the labyrinth of massive, glacier deposited rocks there is a natural cave once used for interring the dead. Now the bones of the pit within stir because of a foolish neophyte. A listless, blood thirsty horde tramples toward daylight and nothing will remain in their wake...
A green dragon called the Dawn fancies herself a deity and has attracted reptilian followers that raid elven settlements. The PCs must find her temple in the woods and end the threat. Pgs. 78-83
The annual Winterflower Festival & Dance is just around the corner! What originally started as a festival to honor the rare Winterflower has grown into an annual gathering for families, soldiers, and hunters to eat, drink, and dance the night away. The festival is named after the rarest flower in the world. It thrives in a cold mountainous region and has a reputation for growing on sheer mountain peaks and cliffs. It is the only flower known to grow through layers of snow in order to reach the sunlight. When carefully transplanted near the village the Winterflower is considered a blessing which protects the village from harm. It is customary for the men of the village to ask the women to the dance by presenting them with rare, difficult to obtain gifts. A woman will usually select from the men based on the rarity of the gift with which she was presented. This year, a beautiful maiden by the name of Gwendolyn has come of age and many men vie for her attention. Three such men are Nicoli Vrodle, Alem Dulgra, and Vladimir Pelchonal- all of which are willing to go to great lengths to attend the Winterflower Festival & Dance with the maiden Gwendolyn on their arm. Each of the three men hire the PCs to retrieve the rarest gifts in the land. The catch? The Winterflower Festival starts in just 5 days so the PCs must hurry!
Need to teach a newbie how to play? A young village shepherd has been telling a tale of an opening in the ground near where his flock roams. Timby Poster thinks he has found something of great importance. He has been telling everyone that there are stone stairs leading into the depths. He was going to investigate but his flock was set upon by vile humanoids that have been raiding the area more frequently. As Timby is prone to tell “tales” of monsters and his flock came back intact this may be a hoax thought up by the young boy. This adventure was designed for a beginning character with little RPG experience. Created for one player and one DM this allows a new player to understand basic concepts.
A beloved priest has gone missing, and sinister trouble stirs beneath the Church of St. Terragnis. Can the heroes rescue the victims of an age-old evil before it claims more innocent lives?
Once every 10 years, the cosmopolitan city of Goka on the western coastline of Tian Xia hosts the Ruby Phoenix Tournament on an island off the coast. Infamous for its strange spectacles and exciting mix of fighting styles, the contest draws combatants and spectators from all over the world. The tournament’s winner gets his choice of a single item from the legendary treasury of an ancient spellcaster and earns a reputation beyond imagining. But this year, not all who have come to compete do so out of respect for the traditions of battle or even out of greed for the reward. They seek instead nothing so much as red revenge and political domination!
Are your player's moving out of Velkenvelve? Enjoying a stroll along the shores of the Darklake? On a day trip from Gracklstugh to Neverlight Grove? Sightseeing near Blingdenstone? Then Journey Through the Center of the Underdark is for you. Journey Through the Center of the Underdark contains several detailed encounters ideal for fleshing out traveling days between locations in Out of the Abyss. Furthermore, these encounters could be readily inserted into any 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Underdark oriented Forgotten Realms or home campaign setting. Designed for a party of 4-6 fourth through sixth level characters, with easy notes for adjusting encounter difficulties for lower or higher level groups, Journey Through the Center of the Underdark should provide 8-10 hours of exciting in game adventure. Written for your Rage of Demons Out of the Abyss campaign, Journey Through the Center of the Underdark is ideal for any descent into the depths your characters might take. Enjoy!
Can you save Timsgiving (not Christmas) when Tim (not Santa) goes missing just days before the holiday? With only a few days until the annual winter gift-giving festival of Timsgiving, Tim the toy maker has gone missing without a word. Something mischievious is afoot. Can the party save the town of Spining from missing a holiday? Dragon in a Toy Shop is a 3-6 hour adventure for a 4th to 5th level party. It is set near the town of Spining, which can be dropped into any campaign setting, but can also be run alongside another settlement or even in the middle of the wilderness!
The Blackstaff has discovered an oddity in the Weave that surrounds Waterdeep. The enigma may have been there all along or it might be new and the Blackstaff intends to figure it out using an ancient artifact from the reign of Emperor Shoon III. Part One of the Folded Time Trilogy. A Two-Hour Adventure for Tier 1 Characters (Bonus objectives are provided to stretch to 4 hours). Optimized for APL 3.
Manthrak's Malicious Steamroller After an experiment with a teapot goes wrong, a wizard's tower rolls through the forest, crushing all beneath it. Its owner, Manthrak the Meticulous wants it back. It's up to you and your companions to stop the tower's rampage before something even worse happens. Manthrak’s Malicious Steamroller is a short, high-octane one-shot adventure module for a party of four or five 4th level characters. With no setting specific details, it can be easily dropped into any campaign, or run on by itself for an action-packed escapade. Included: Full-color 13-page PDF Virtual tabletop maps - Gridded & Non-gridded Accessible & print-friendly PDF A fun, unforgettable experience
It was supposed to be a simple job... A strange merchant offers you a simple job – pick up and deliver cargo. You have three days to get it a mere fourteen miles through the city. How hard could it be? A Simple Job is a journey through the city of Anduria, a cascading series of events that takes the heroes to explore strange locales and bargain with even stranger creatures. What secrets does the city hold, buried away for countless centuries?
A flameskull lord that calls itself the Bright Lord of Everburning Fire has taken control of a primordial node deep within the Elemental Chaos. It long ago shrugged off the control of its original creator and now follows its own plans and desires. Top among these is the desire to tap into the power of a fire primordial and increase its own status from undead creature to demigod. Pgs. 156-161
After basking in the glory of your accomplishments, you learn of a problem with a caravan attack. A group of possibly Goblins have brazenly attacked the Hamlet of Kako, burning it to the ground. The information comes from a local farmer that witnessed the carnage. Pack your gear…time to go back to work in the Principality of Lockerbie!
The wedding was meant to unite poweful families from Everlund and Silverymoon. "Til death do us part" comes sooner for some couples than others when undead hordes and a feral demilich are uninvited guests. The Dead Wedding is a short, 3 to 5 hour adventure for characters level 14 to 16. The adventure contains maps for Moonshadow Keep and the crypt of the demilichess Regetta Arch Therm, deadly traps, and RP hooks that enable players to use high-level non-combat abilities.
Kobolds. To some, that name means “a tiny creature that dies easily”. To others, that name invokes fear and dread of a relentless, diabolical nightmare. This adventure introduces you to the latter. If your party is unlucky enough to enter the kobold-infested mountain, they will wish they hadn’t after triggering traps around every corner. And if that doesn’t discourage them, the red dragon surely will.
Jarl Aelfric Whitehand of Jotunspine, one of the Moonshae Isles, is not happy. His ward, Cordin Wainthrower, has disappeared. Clues imply that Cordin has headed for a ruined keep deep in the Giantspine Mountains. The characters are tasked by the jarl to track down Cordin and bring him back to safety – the Giantspines are filled with many dangers including the legendary Winter King, a fey of great power. Will the characters force Cordin to return to the keep or help him in his quest to restore a family heirloom? If they help him, they must face the chilling depths of the crypt of Icegate Keep. Icegate Keep is an adventure for the first tier, levels 1 to 4. The adventure includes full scaling recommendations for each level, as well as four pre-generated PCs at each of the four levels. The adventure is designed to be tough for the pre-gen PCs, who have little magic to brave the icy mountains. It is estimated to take 4-6 hours to play. The adventure has several new monsters including Ice Wights, Ice Zombies, Frostsnakes, and the infamous Winter King. New magic items are also included such as the greatsword Frostreaver, the ancient Snowbane dagger, the Horn of the Howling Wolf, and the Throne of the Winter King. There is a player handout outlining the legend of the Winter King and three battlemaps showing separate levels of the small keep.
A gnomish settlement is plagued by inexplicable earthquakes, the wrath of an Earth Elemental. Can the heroes save the gnomes? Do the greedy gnomes deserve to be saved? "Valanche's Eye" was inspired by a desire to write an adventure which blurs the line of who the bad guy actually is, or indeed whether or not there's a really tangible villain. It takes the "patron hires adventurers to clear dungeon" trope and twists it – the patron turns out to be a pretty rotten bastard, and the monsters in the dungeon are just trying to live their lives. It starts when gnome gem-miners strike the mother lode of emeralds and sapphires, only to find themselves run off their claim. First they accidentally broke through to the Elemental Planes of Earth and Fire, and mephits burst out to annoy them. When they were just about done dealing with the mephits, they disturbed an earth elemental who just wants to be left alone, and emeralds are its favorite snack. The mine boss hires the adventurers to come kill all the elementals. But should they?