Bale's Outfitting Outpost can easily be placed in any campaign setting, but it feels right at home in the Forgotten Realms, especially somewhere within The Savage Frontier. The included adventure could also be broken up into several random encounters to be used in your Storm King's Thunder campaign.
The air is moist. The moisture mixes with your sweat — the heat is relentless. The drone of insects gives you headaches, and the fever from the infected wounds has left you delirious. Your raft is damaged, and there are spirits in the trees. You’ve only been here for three days. Fever Swamp is a hex-crawl sandbox adventure compatible with Lamentations of the Flame Princess and most other Dungeons & Dragons clones.
The abandoned Tower of Ulvarum Orvernus stands atop an asteroid nearly a quarter mile in diameter, located roughly 5 million miles from the planet’s surface. The asteroid maintains Earth-like gravity and a breathable atmosphere, with habitable temperatures. This is all sustained through the harnessed power of a bound Air Elemental and Earth Elemental. If either of these Elementals are freed, the asteroid’s environment will quickly become inhospitable. The PCs may find themselves drawn to the asteroid through a forgotten portal, seeking a way to return home. Alternatively, they might be lured there by rumors of a powerful item or hidden knowledge within the tower’s extensive libraries. A multi-level tower filled with traps and strange encounters including animated armor, alien plant life, giant spiders, and a doppelganger.
In this level 6 adventure for 4-6 players the party comes across a man named Johann Dhomm who was transporting animals in cages to his private island where he has a menagerie (a kind of zoo) that he eventually wants to open to the public. But the animals have escaped and he asks the party to try and catch them alive for him. However, the animals are actually quite dangerous and range from Gazers to a Wyvern.
Your party approaches a barrow at the base of the mountain. A raging storm brews overhead, and as you approach, a bolt of lightning strikes down on the peak of the mound, lighting up the world all around you. A thunderclap momentarily deafens you, and as your eyes adjust to the resuming grey of the dark day, you see a flicker of firelight emerging from the two gaping holes built into the side of the hill. You’ve found the pirates camping within the Barrow of the Raging Storm. As I delivered it to my players, the premise of this Midnight Sun adventure is that some pirates have been attacking ships returning from raids. They have been stealing the loot and the corpses of any slain Nords. Among their victims, a ship from Valthis returns to tell them that the pirates sailed upriver (to hex 506), where I placed the Barrow in my Shadowdark RPG campaign. The adventurers started from there and explored the dungeon thoroughly. The adventure was created using the tools described in the Shadowdark RPG core rules. I created it in about 6 hours between 2024-03-08 and 2024-03-09 and ran it for my group on the 9th. It took about 2.25 hours to play to completion. The party consisted of two level 1 characters and one level 2 character. I had so much fun making and running this that I will continue creating more Midnight Sun Adventures, so stay tuned!
Tales of Lady Sepha Lekore are known throughout the lands. Now she’s gone missing and her father Lord Lekore is offering a reward to anyone that can find her. With promises of a tidy sum, the adventuring party can investigate the last place she was seen to try and locate her. What they find will take them into the Underdark lair of a drow noblewoman with her eloped love, the young Lady Lekore.
A cave-in at the dwarven mine exposed a passage into the eerie, alien world that lies deep below the surface. Monsters poured out of the darkness and killed many before the surviving miners made it back into the light. Now they seek brave adventurers to face the dangers down in the dark depths. As a one shot or the first adventure of a new campaign, The Eyeless in the Dark carries new and experienced players away from the light of the ordinary surface world and down into the fantastical dark depths where here there be monsters. Chock full of adventure, as well as design notes for Dungeon Masters that will help novice and veteran DMs provide their players with an exciting and memorable game night, and leave them eager for the next session. Use this adventure in combination with the Integrated Hill Encounters and/or the Forest and Grasslands to create an open world sandbox of adventures that can fill many sessions of a campaign.
You hear rumours of an unclaimed wizard's tower, a worthy prize for any practitioner of the arcane arts! Do you have what it takes to face its challenges and claim it as your own? This is a one-to-one adventure designed for one player of the wizard class and one DM.
The Claret Wellspring is an adventure for four 4th-5th level PCs. "The first spell cast has not yet finished its work." Strange lights in the desert lead the PCs to a long-forgotten oasis. Travelling towards the lights, the PCs are threatened by magic so old, it defies categorization. Arriving at the withered shore of a blood-colored pool, the PCs discover an ancient dial and three tooth-like columns rising from the ground. Turning the dial results in the water being magically siphoned into the column's hollow cavities. If the pool is emptied, a small door is revealed in the crimson-stained much. They must defeat a blood-infused water elemental before proceeding. Once inside, the PCs share a room with a dark ritual running since the origin of the world. The keeper of the place, an immortal fey inside a powerful suit of armor, offers little explanation as to the nature of the ritual, and he seeks to ensure they tell no one of the Claret Wellspring.
The PCs intervene in an attempted murder and are hired to find out what made a guy go mad. This leads them to search for Yenejg Togan's tower/a strange merchant in the nearby forest, where they discover that bugbears have moved in. After exploring the tower, finding the "merchant", and dealing with the bugbears and the lamia that caused the incident in the first place, they were still unable to get into Yenejg's inner sanctum without a key. The PCs return with the key and figure out how to use it to enter Yenejg's sanctum. They then explore it, dealing mostly with traps, and finally discover the resting place of the treasure Yenejg stole from the town. This adventure begins with a skill-based roof-top chase and can include some complex non-combat interactions with potentially hostile NPCs. It includes some semi-interesting traps as well as some nifty puzzles. No villain to speak of. Fool-hardy adventurers can get themselves killed, but some caution will result in only one extremely hard fight, and even that can be avoided if action is taken quickly. Pgs. 74-107
Terrible Trouble at Tragidore is a 16 page tournament module for 5th to 8th level characters. Notorious for being one of the worst modules of all time, with implausible background and encounters and a railroad of a plot.
“Come! Sit! Be my guests. You will find that dinner is up to the highest standards, and I’ve even provided a show.” When the adventurers entered the manor of the old mayor they did not expect to fall into another plane of existence. It seems Archmage Lonore was ready for their arrival, and had arranged the finest entertainment... for herself. Can the adventurers survive Lonore’s death trap and capture the mad mage once and for all? This one-shot adventure is designed for characters of 6th level, and contains plenty of traps, encounters and misdirection. Adventure Synopsis Chasing the bounty on a murderous archmage, the characters find themselves plunged into an arcane deathtrap. Their quarry was prepared for their arrival, and had devised entertaining challenges (for herself) in this magnificent mansion demiplane. The characters will fight through various arcane hazards on their path to the inner sanctum of Archmage Lonore. As they get deeper and near the sanctum, the characters will meet the mage and her mother, possibly learn a bit about the relationship between them. This encounter leads to the final showdown in the archmage’s sanctum, where the orb of reality is located. The adventure includes a map for every encounter! (Print & VTT versions) Published by Beyond the Screen
Just beyond the fields of Orleans a small hole in the earth hides treasure and monsters. The townsfolk are far too scared to delve inside the abandoned cave, but the marquis needs its silver, and right quick. Just a couple of miles away from the town of Orleans, between rolling hills and well maintained forests, a small mine, long abandoned, lies in wait. Once a lucrative silver mine the “little cave” is now shunned by both the miners and its owners, the marquis of Orleans. Local whispers say that a few decades ago its miners stumbled upon something evil that lurked beneath the earth which killed the marquis’s son and twenty miners. Old people tell of a curse that lay on the mine which if reopened would cast doom upon the town. A few even tell of tiny demons, not taller than a housecat, that live in the mine and torment the smiths of the city. True or not these stories have all one thing in common: they have kept people from using the mine and extracting its precious silver ore. This that has plagued the marquises for three generations already and so the last heir of the family, Touvel of Orleans, is looking for brave adventurers, knights, sorcerers and all able bodied folk that wish to brave the mines and secure them from whatever evil may lurk inside them.
A Giant Ransom is a short adventure for four 11th-level characters. There are opportunities for diplomacy, stealth, and combat, based on the choices the PCs make, so any mix of classes is appropriate. The adventure can be set in any campaign world, in a frontier region near glacier-covered mountains. The newly appointed Duke Castaril Ambrinigan has recently relocated to a modest, newly constructed keep near the frontier town of Ormanlak. He and his family arrived safely, but a caravan containing family heirlooms was waylaid by a band of frost giant raiders. Most of the items were of no consequence to the Duke, with the exception of one: a three-foot tall golden statue of a lion. The Duke, wanting to avoid a war, sent an emissary to the frost giants. He offered gems totaling 10,000 gold pieces in value as ransom for the lion. The giants accepted, and a time and place was set for the exchange. But there is more. A white dragon named Whildenstrank lives in the midst of a nearby glacier, and has maintained a network of winter wolf spies, including some in the frost giants' camp. Through these spies, Whildenstrank learned of the capture of the golden lion, and the upcoming trade. Thinking that the lion would make a fine addition to his frozen treasure hoard, Whildenstrank has prepared to strike.
The enemy you hunt may not be the enemy you find. A midnight encounter with a halfling guerilla and a vengeful magic-user. Pgs. 33-38
The Merfolk Queen asks adventurers to help retrieve merfolk roe (eggs) from a sahuagin raiding party lead by a sahuagin priestess, with custom water-based magic items as reward. The adventure is for three to four 5th level adventurers at a hard difficulty. Pgs. 137-145
The Temple of Tesh-Yatra is a setting-neutral dungeon delve for a party of 6th level adventurers, inspired by the classic funhouse dungeons of yesteryear. The dungeon takes 6-10 hours to fully explore. It features a high proportion of non-combat encounters: puzzles, exploration, and the occasional deadly centrifuge. The ungodly fusion of a mad scientist’s lab and a planar temple, the dungeon includes an encounter that can launch your players into the Nine Hells – for a price... The Temple of Tesh-Yatra includes two new constructs to use in your game: the sinister Maimers, and the enigmatic Skorverra; as well as a new magic item: the Amulet of Tesh-Yatra, an artisan’s dream! The Temple of Tesh-Yatra also comes with a VTT battlemap (transparent PNG format). The Temple of Tesh-Yatra was originally set in the Outlands, as an extraplanar dungeon. But given its self-contained nature and the Temple's age, it is well-suited to any wildnerness, and would work equally well seeding a hex crawl.
The lands that lie west, across the great sea, are uncharted. The West March Company has spent a fortune on an expedition to loot and tame it. You are part of that expedition. You are the desperate, the outcast, the destitute. This new world is weird and dangerous. Rumours abound of a city of tombs. A cursed dwarven fortress in the mountain. Mist-covered swamps that howl in the night. Pass that treasure map around the table. Drink deeply from your cups and imagine what awaits in the wilderness: gold, glory, death. Inside West Marches Company: A Grim Promise you'll find: Twelve new monsters to surprise and terrify your players. A cult of worms, a city of tombs, centaur khans and a twenty-page dwarven fortress dungeon crawl with over forty rooms. Loaded with art, evocative descriptions, weird NPC's and 2 new magic items. High resolution maps of both dungeons: Kazad Mor The Cursed Dwarfhome and Tunnels Beneath Fort Bramble This module can be run as a standalone adventure or as a west marches style game.
By a well-trodden road lies the estate of the Eryx family. At some point the estate was converted into a roadside inn. The merchant Robert E. Wardlove has received an urgent letter from his daughter Derleth. She begs of her father to arrive in haste to the faraway inn and take her back home safely for the Evening of Still Streets draws near... Enigma of the Eryx Estate is a break from the usual dungeon crawls of the Shadowdark RPG system recommended for characters of lvls 1-3. During this adventure players get to solve a murder and the mysteries that surround it. Exploration and intrigue are emphasized as player characters gain XP for uncovering secrets. Combat is in a more minor role during this adventure, but if the players don't figure out the mystery by midnight, they might be in a fight for their lives. The adventure is designed for ease of running with punctual room and character descriptions.
Trouble always comes in threes. For years the mansion has hidden its secrets and its sorrows, but now it has returned to dreadful life. The Ghost of Mistmoor is an investigative adventure where the PCs are tasked with finding the entrance to a secret vault in a haunted mansion. There are ghosts to be had, but unbeknownst to the characters also a cunning thief and her sidekick took residence here. It does not contain many combat encounters but has a rich list of spooky events, some from the ghosts, some staged by the thief. Pgs. 52-70