Dungeon 157.pdf

Contents

4 siege of

Bordrin’s WatCh

By Robert J. Schwalb

A Scales of War Adventure

Path adventure. The new

Dungeon Adventure Path

continues as the PCs, along

with other heroes of Elsir Vale, are

summoned to the dwarven city of

Overlook to help stem the threat of an

orc horde massing in the mountains. An

adventure for 3rd-level PCs.

82 M a ssaCr e at

fort dolor

By Shawn Merwin

The outpost of Fort Dolor has

experienced an unprecedented

stretch of peace in recent times. Then

nearly the entire garrison disappears

on a supposed routine patrol, and

the town—still on the frontier—is

left nearly defenseless. Can the

adventurers dig to the bottom of the

mystery at Fort Dolor before they,

too, disappear? An adventure for

8th-level PCs

on the Cover

Illustration by Dave Allsop

3 editorial

129 dungeonCraft

By James Wyatt

104 the dark he art

of Mithrendain

By Greg Marks

When the PCs stumble

into the Feywild, they

find themselves in the

middle of Mithrendain—

a glorious eladrin city of

grace and beauty. But as

the heroes find themselves

the target of mysterious

attacks, they begin to

discover that something

rotten lurks in the city’s

heart. An adventure for

10th-level PCs.

56 in the depths

of avariCe

By Tim Hitchcock

The mine has been known as

Tessount’s Folly for years, due

to it producing nothing of value.

Now Valmour, the youngest

son of the mine’s late owner,

has inherited the mine . . . and

found something he should have left

buried. An adventure for 13th-level PCs.

134 save My gaMe

By Stephen Radney-MacFarland

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This material is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use

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FATA LIT Y!

EDiTOriAl

157

Dungeon

August 2008

Editor-in-Chief

Chris Youngs

in my regular Wednesday office game, i decided to start running my group through the new Scales of

War Adventure Path. Unfortunately, we’d begun Keep on the Shadowfell before i had “rescue at riven-

roar” in hand, so we picked up the Scales of War campaign with this month’s installment,

“The Siege of Bordrin’s Watch.” We were on our second session of the adventure a couple weeks back,

and i sprang a random encounter on my group. Some assassins jumped them in a shady part of town.

Combat ensued, and the fight was, eventually, won by the PCs. But not before we had our first

campaign death.

Senior Art Director

Stacy Longstreet

Web Production

Bart Carroll, Steve Winter

Graphic Design

Scott Okumura, Chris Hanis,

Shauna Wolf Narciso

Contributing Authors

Tim Hitchcock, Greg Marks,

Shawn Merwin, Stephen

were following the 4th Edition encounter design

philosophy—using monsters, traps, and terrain all

together in a wonderful stew—before 4th Edition was

even a glimmer in anyone’s eye. Kudos to those authors!

Alas, poor Atticus, we knew you well.

Radney-MacFarland, Robert J.

Schwalb, James Wyatt

The poor half ling died ignobly, skewered by a halberd,

then shanked again with a coup de grace, then, when

that didn’t kill him, kicked off the top of a 20-foot roof.

i mean, it all made sense in the context of the adventure.

really.

Developers

Mike Mearls, Stephen Radney-

MacFarland, Peter Schaefer,

Stephen Schubert

Many other 3E encounters didn’t follow this philosophy.

Sure, they featured the occasional bit of interesting

terrain or a cool trap, but encounters weren’t often

designed with all three game elements in mind. Now,

encounters integrate these elements as the rule, not

the exception.

Editors

Greg Bilsland, Scott Fitzgerald

Gray, Miranda Horner

Cover Artist

Dave Allsop

So why does this matter? i mean, PCs die all the time,

right?

Contributing Artists

Dave Allsop, Stephen Crowe,

Wayne England, Raven

Here’s the deal. Way back last year, when we first started

talking about the new Adventure Path, i pointed out that

back in the day, Shackled City ( Dungeon ’s first Adven-

ture Path) was something of a meat grinder. Apparently,

many a group ended up a stain on the dungeon f loor

running through one of those adventures. The interest-

ing thing is that, for the most part, the encounters in

the Shackled City Adventure Path weren’t particularly

beyond the scope of a normal 3E encounter, at least in

terms of XP gained for the level of the characters.

Mimura, Jim Nelson, William

So back to that meeting. We decided to make the Scales

of War a middle-of-the-4th-Edition road campaign.

it wouldn’t be any harder or easier than the baseline.

So when Atticus fell to his ultimate death, the first

thought that popped into my brain was, “Oh, crap. What

have i done?”

O’Connor, Efrem Palacios,

Anne Stokes

Cartographers

Kyle S. Hunter, Sean Macdonald,

Mike Schley, Jeremy Simmons

Web Development

Mark A. Jindra

D&D Creative Manager

Christopher Perkins

i mean, the fight was tough. There weren’t any traps,

but terrain certainly had an impact (excuse the pun).

But looking at the encounter now, i can see that this was

a good thing. it shows me that 4th Edition characters

are not invulnerable. A clever combination of monsters,

traps, and terrain can put the fear in any D&D party, as

well as spawn countless tales of ill-fated character deaths

that players will remember for years.

Executive Producer,

D&D Insider

Ken Troop

Director of RPG R&D

Bill Slavicsek

Nope, what made many of those ultra-deadly encounters

tough was that each author felt obliged to come up with

unique, compelling, and integrated encounters. They felt

that, to do the campaign justice, they needed to make

the most of their encounters, using a combination of

monsters working together with terrain in an elegant,

symbiotic, and often fatal, dance. in many ways, they

Special Thanks

Richard Baker, Greg Bilsland, Logan Bonner, Michele Carter,

Jennifer Clarke Wilkes, Andy Collins, Bruce R. Cordell, Jeremy

Crawford, Rob Heinsoo, Peter Lee, Julia Martin, Mike Mearls,

Kim Mohan, David Noonan, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Peter

Schaefer, Stephen Schubert, Chris Sims, Rodney Thompson,

Rob Watkins, James Wyatt

SIEGE OF BORDRIN'S WATCH

BORDRIN’S

WATCH

by Robert J. Schwalb

illustrations by William O'Connor and David Griffith ✦ cartography by Mike Schley

How can we forget the suffering of our kin during the Age of Chains? How can we

set aside those ancient grudges when the risk of slavery is now greater than ever?

Fellow warriors, the orcs are upon us, marching once more to the beat of the giants’

drum. It falls to us to stop them—to hold fast no matter their numbers. If we falter,

we give into fear. It’s not just ourselves and our way of life that will suffer; all people

of the Elsir Vale will perish as well. War is upon us. Now is the time for men and

women of courage to stand up and defend those who cannot defend themselves.

August 2008 | Dungeon 157

SIEGE OF

SIEGE OF BORDRIN'S WATCH

WHAT’S AN

ADVENTURE PATH?

Scales of War is the fourth Adventure Path to

appear in the pages of Dungeon Magazine . But

what, you ask, is an Adventure Path? Quite simply,

it is a series of related adventures intended to

form a complete D&D campaign that takes your

players from 1st level all the way to, in the case

of Scales of War, 30th level.

Previous Adventure Paths, presented with the

3rd Edition D&D rules, took characters from 1st

to 20th level. But with all three tiers in the new

edition ripe and ready to explore, we’re push-

ing the limit with Scales of War. Each tier takes

roughly six adventures to traverse, which means

we’ll finish off this Adventure Path in about

eighteen issues. Each adventure advances char-

acters from between one and a half to two levels

of experience. We recognize that not everyone

will meet every encounter or complete every

quest, however, so periodically, we’ll point you

to a supplemental Side Trek or short adventure

to keep your PCs on pace. Plus, roughly every few

months, Dragon will feature new support content

for Scales of War.

Finally, this Adventure Path is intended to

function as a complete D&D campaign. That

means we’ll be making some assumptions about

the history of the world as we move along, just

as you would in any campaign you run. We’ll be

borrowing heavily from the D&D mythology of

4th Edition, as well as all the great ideas that have

cropped up in other products over the years—

including the pages of past issues of Dungeon !

Enjoy your stay in Scales of War, and keep an

eye out for next month’s installment.

“Siege of Bordrin’s Watch” is an adventure for five

3rd-level characters. By the end of the adventure,

the characters should be halfway through 4th-level.

You can run this adventure as the sequel to “Rescue

at Rivenroar,” continuing the unfolding story of

the Scales of War campaign, or run it as part of a

campaign of your own design. This adventure

features exploration, roleplaying opportunities, and

combats in dynamic environments, making it a

perfect addition to any campaign.

In this adventure, a new threat looms to the west:

A vast horde of orcs and their despicable kin emerge

from the barren lands bent on plunder and conquest.

While the Elsir Vale and other lands mobilize their

meager forces to respond to the danger, a call has

gone out to those heroes of the Vale to join forces and

help to push back this new evil before it’s too late.

the orcs have emerged, they now have a leader who

can keep them together long enough to win.

The orc leader is an overlarge warrior and chief-

tain named Tusk. Not a true orc, he has the blood of

ogres in his veins, which makes him larger, tougher,

and eminently more dangerous. Having slaughtered

half a dozen orc chieftains, he drew together the

unruly tribes to mount an offensive against Bordrin’s

Watch to lay claim to the soft lands beyond its walls.

Tusk knows the history of the Stonehome Mountains

well, knowing that unless he can find some way to

bypass the fortress in the mountains, it won’t matter

how many warriors he commands since he would fail.

What Tusk needs is a way around the fortress.

Ever resourceful and with numerous contacts and

allies, Tusk turned to his occasional lover and advisor,

a shadar-kai witch named Myrissa. He sent her back

to the Shadowfell to recruit allies to help his cause,

and a short time later she returned with a small army

of dark ones, led by a mysterious and sinister dark

creeper, known as the emissary. This leader offered

to assist Tusk in exchange for an exclusive arrange-

ment in which they would supply Tusk’s armies with

weaponry for whatever price the dark creeper and

his fellows asked, and in exchange, the dark creepers

would find a way through the mountains. Tusk read-

ily agreed and paid the exorbitant price, gaining a

fine arsenal, and also, he hoped, the key to victory.

Not long after, the dark creepers returned and

revealed a number of tunnels burrowed beneath the

mountain. They showed the chieftain the locations of

each, explaining how the passages connected one side

of the mountains to the other. No tunnel was large

enough to accommodate his entire army, so, Tusk

gave his horde their marching orders, sending them

to climb the mountain slopes, while his scouts moved

BACKGROUND

The lands west of the Stonehome Mountains have

been a festering mire of want and suffering. This

parched and barren landscape is suited only for orcs,

goblinoids, and other fell creatures. From time to

time, a warlord gathers a small army and tumbles

out of these badlands to test their strength and arms

against the stalwart dwarf defenders, but never have

they crossed the mountains because straddling its

single pass is an ancient dwarven stronghold named

Bordrin’s Watch. No matter how many orcs muster,

they die upon its walls, painting the sturdy stone

with their black blood. So the rumors of a new host

in these forlorn bogs and dead woods seemed a small

threat—nothing the guardians could not handle. This

army, though, is different. Unlike all the many times

August 2008 | Dungeon 157

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