DragonLance - Spectre Of Sorrows.pdf - DragonLance - R5700

Spectre of Sorrows

Designer : Cam Banks

Additional Design : Christopher Coyle, Sean Macdonald, Clark Valentine

Editing : Christoffer Trossen, Amanda Valentine  Proofreading : Jessica Banks, Margaret Weis

Project Manager : Sean Everette  Typesetter : Jamie Chambers

Art Director : Renae Chambers  Cover Artist : Jeff Easley  Cartography : Sean Macdonald

Interior Artists : Attila Adorjany, Stephen Daniele, Larry Elmore, Emily Fiegenschuh,

Dax Gordine, Eric Kim, David Martin, Ramon Perez

Cover Graphic Designer : Ken Whitman  Interior Graphic Designer : Kevin T. Stein

Special Thanks : Neil Burton, Richard Connery, Jonathan David, Matt Haag, Harry Kaiserian, André La Roche,

Ed LeClear, Joe Mashuga, Tobin Melroy, Luis De Pippo, Trampas Whiteman, UDON Entertainment, Scott Williams

This d20 System® game accessory utilizes mechanics developed for the new Dungeons & Dragons® game by

Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, Richard Baker, and Peter Adkison.

This Wizards of the Coast® Ofﬁcial Licensed Product contains no Open Game Content. No portion of this work

may be reproduced in any form without written permission. To learn more about the Open Gaming License and the

d20 System License, please visit

www.wizards.com/d20.

Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Dungeon Master, Dragonlance, the Dragonlance Logo, d20, the d20 System Logo,

Wizards of the Coast, and the Wizards of the Coast Logo are registered trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a

Additional information and content available at

www.dragonlance.com.

Written & Published by

Sovereign Press, Inc.

253 Center Street #126

Lake Geneva, WI 53147-1982

United States

www.sovpress.com

Table of Contents

Introduction ................................3

Wherein the stage is set and the players are assembled.

Chapter One: Clash of Fire & Darkness .......8

Wherein the heroes learn of the quest of the Tears of Mishakal and ﬂee the Desolation.

Chapter Two: Flotsam & Jetsam ..............28

Wherein the heroes may strike a bargain with Lord Toede in order to acquire valuable

information.

Chapter Three: The Blood Sea ...............46

Wherein the heroes journey north and run afoul of the Goddess of the Storm

and her various minions.

Chapter Four: The Ogre Dirk ...............80

Wherein the heroes must choose sides in a civil war in order to recover another

piece of the puzzle.

Chapter Five: Plague & Redemption ..........110

Wherein a community of wild gnomes offers the heroes a chance to purify the

Tears of Mishakal and redeem a dark heart.

Chapter Six: Ghosts of the Past .............130

Wherein an old foe returns to strike at the heroes, and the path to the Dragons’

Graveyard is laid bare by a fallen champion.

Chapter Seven: The Dragons’ Graveyard ....150

Wherein the heroes undertake a grueling set of tasks in order to restore the last

resting place of the good dragons.

Appendix One: Monsters & Magic ..........166

Wherein new monsters are described, and new magic is uncovered.

Appendix Two: Characters & Creatures .....172

Wherein vital statistics for all the personalities in the adventure are revealed.

S pectre of Sorrows is the second part of a heroic

Introduction

DRAGONLANCE adventure campaign that ranges

across Ansalon. The world is still readjusting to the

death of three Dragon Overlords and the return of the

gods, leaving much of the world in confusion and chaos.

In this chaotic time, the characters are embroiled in events

that will shape the world to come. And it all began with a

tiny, unassuming music box.

Encounter Levels: Spectre of Sorrows is designed for a

party of four characters of 7th-8th level. By the end of the

adventure, the characters will have overcome a number

of major milestones which should be enough to advance

them to approximately 14th level.

Preparation

In order to run this adventure, you will need a copy of

the Player’s Handbook , Dungeon Master’s Guide , Monster

Manual and the DRAGONLANCE Campaign Setting .

These books are all that are absolutely necessary to run

this adventure, although there are a number of other

supplemental books that will aid in ﬂeshing out the

campaign (as described below).

Spectre of Sorrows is the follow-on to the Key of Destiny

adventure, and thus it is assumed the player characters

have taken part in many of the exploits described in that

adventure. If this is not the case, or if you would rather

the characters become embroiled in the events of this

adventure without having them get involved in the events

of Key of Destiny , please refer Getting Started on page 5

for suggestions on how to incorporate this adventure into

your campaign.

The adventure is set more than six months following

the return of the gods at the end of the War of Souls

trilogy. Age of Mortals provides in-depth detail on the state

of the world following the return of the gods, as well as

introduces a new core class (the mariner) and new prestige

classes, spells, and magic items of the era. Several NPCs

in this adventure use core classes or prestige classes that

can be found in other books, but all pertinent abilities and

statistics are included within the NPC entries in Appendix

Two .

Text that appears in shaded boxes is information for

the players, which you may read aloud or paraphrase

as appropriate. Any text found in sidebars contains

information pertinent to running the adventure, such as

background information or things for you, the Dungeon

Master, to keep in mind.

Monster and NPC statistics are presented in

abbreviated form in the encounter entries. For

standard monsters, full statistics can be found in the

DRAGONLANCE Campaign Setting or the Monster

Manual . Some monsters have also been taken from the Age

of Mortals and the Bestiary of Krynn sourcebooks, though

all pertinent abilities and statistics for these monsters are

included in Appendix Two , along with any statistics for

unique monsters. Details on new monsters introduced in

this adventure are presented in Appendix One .

Before you start the adventure, you should completely

read through the adventure from beginning to end,

including the Appendices, in order to familiarize yourself

with the book.

Adventure Background

As far as most people believe, it all began with a tiny music

box.

In many ways, they are correct, for the music box

known as the Key of Quinari does play an important part

in the events to come. However, the music box does not

appear until near the end of the story.

During the War of the Lance, the Silvanesti Forest

became twisted by the magic of the dragon orb that

brought the nightmares of the elven Speaker Lorac into

a horrifying reality. Following the War of the Lance,

the Silvanesti elves returned to their homeland to try to

cleanse the forest of the darkness that tainted it. It was

not a task for the faint of heart, or weak of spirit, for even

following Lorac’s death and the disappearance of the

dragon orb , the land still resonated with the foul echo of

Lorac’s unending terror.

One group that traveled through the twisted forest,

working together to try to heal the land, was led by a

powerful member of House Cleric, a priest of Quenesti-

Pah (the name the elves give to Mishakal) known as

Lothian Shadowbrow. Lothian was accompanied by

Kayleigh Starﬁnder, a maiden of House Royal, whose

skill with magic was said to have been surpassed, only by

her beauty. Prior to the War of the Lance, Kayleigh and

Lothian had been betrothed to each other in a prearranged

marriage. At ﬁrst this arrangement was just a simple

formality, an agreement between families, but for Lothian

it was soon to become much more.

For many months, Lothian and Kayleigh worked

together with the kirath warriors to drive away the

nightmare. A friendship swiftly grew between them, a

camaraderie forged in trials and tribulations. However,

something else also began to develop—a growing lust in

Lothian for his noble companion.

It became clear to Lothian that Kayleigh’s feelings were

not the same as his own. He would bring attention to their

relationship, only to hear from her that it was friendship

and companionship, and nothing more. At ﬁrst in denial

about her comments, he started to wonder whether any of

the other male elves in the kirath were the true target of

his beloved’s affections. This suspicion gnawed away at his

soul.

Despite there never being any true vows of love

between himself and Kayleigh, Lothian’s mind ﬁnally

seized upon the notion that his beloved had been seduced

away from him by another. As bitterness and hatred grew

in his heart, his connection to the goddess of healing and

Introduction  3

love began to wane, but the cleric paid little attention to

that for he had other, more pressing matters upon his

mind—how to make Kayleigh his own.

As weeks passed, the group drove deeper into the midst

of the Nightmare, stumbling eventually upon a band of

skeletal warriors led by an elven death knight. Unprepared

and overpowered, the elves fought to escape, but in the

process of protecting her warrior companions from the

death knight’s magic, Kayleigh was struck down. The

kirath went berserk, tearing through the skeletal warriors

while Lothian rushed over to the fallen maiden. Gathering

her up in his arms, Lothian tried to heal her, but Quenesti-

Pah did not answer his prayers. In desperation, Lothian

called out to any god who would answer him—and his call

was answered by an unexpected source.

The death knight felled the other elven warriors with

blow after blow. He approached Lothian last, and made

the grief-stricken elf a bargain—agree to serve Chemosh,

the Lord of the Dead, and Kayleigh would be bound to

Lothian for eternity. Blinded by grief and rage, Lothian

agreed. The death knight called upon his magic to take the

priest, the fallen maiden, and the bodies of the fallen kirath

away from the forest.

His dedication ritual to Chemosh complete, Lothian

was granted the ability to anchor Kayleigh’s spirit to him

forever, tying her to his side through undeath and magic.

However, this was a pale shadow of what Lothian believed

he deserved. As the years passed, Lothian grew more and

more dissatisﬁed with the bargain he had struck with the

Lord of Bones, yet were he to turn from Chemosh, the god

would take Kayleigh from him.

In the aftermath of the Chaos War, with the absence

of the gods, Lothian exulted. No longer was he as bound

to Chemosh as Kayleigh was bound to him. It was then

that Lothian began to research ancient lore, seeking a way

to return Kayleigh to his side. In the ancient manuscripts

that he uncovered, he found reference to a mysterious

relic called the Shroud of Soul’s Calling. It was said that the

shroud could bring a spirit back from the afterlife. It lay

within Quinari’s Tomb, where it could be used to bring

the ancient queen back from the realms of the dead so she

could serve her people once again.

Delving further and further into his research,

unworried by the passage of decades, Lothian learned

that Quinari’s Tomb was said to lay somewhere within

the Dragons’ Graveyard, the portal to which could only

be opened by the song of a dragon of Light or by the key

given to Quinari during the First Dragon War. For years,

Lothian searched for clues about the whereabouts of the

Key of Quinari , calling upon the powers of mysticism

he had gladly embraced over his lost clerical magics. Yet

no matter what powers he called upon or how hard he

worked, he could ﬁnd no clues to its location. He did not

despair, however, for he knew that if he were patient, the

answer would come to him.

During the War of Souls, only the strength of Lothian’s

magic and the force of his will kept Kayleigh by his side,

preventing her from being lost to the so-called One God.

When the War of Souls ended, however, the true gods

returned and Lothian felt the ﬁrst stirrings of doubt—

Chemosh would want Lothian to obey him once more,

something the dark elf had no desire to do.

Six months after the War of Souls, a tiny music box was

brought from the protective sanctuary of the Silvanesti

Forest, triggering a powerful vision that came to Lothian’s

mind. Finally, he would be able to gain access to the

Dragon Graveyard, retrieve the Shroud of Soul’s Calling ,

and return Kayleigh to life. But if he left the protection of

his fortress, Chemosh would surely strike out at him. So,

greatly daring, Lothian used his beloved’s bound spirit to

ﬁnd a group of hapless individuals who could bring the

Key to where it needed to be, along with a few other items

that could be used against Chemosh and his servants. The

stage was set, the players in place, and Lothian sat back

to watch the play unfold, little realizing his own part in

the unfolding events was yet to come or that his efforts to

locate the Dragons’ Graveyard had not gone unnoticed.

Adventure Synopsis

In Chapter One, the characters escape the Peak of

Malystryx, in the process escorting a group of freed

kender to the relative safety of Port Balifor. Unfortunately,

they ﬁnd themselves caught between a horde of red

dragonspawn from the east and an army of Dark Knights

from the west. Avoiding capture, the PCs are rescued

by a group of phaethons who provide much-needed

assistance. The phaethons reveal that the heroes are still

bound by fate, but that a pair of artifacts known as the

Tears of Mishakal might help them. The phaethons have

one of the Tears , with the second being in the clutches of

the Knights of Neraka at Darkhaven. Parting ways with

the refugee kender, the heroes journey to Darkhaven with

the phaethons’ Tear and attempt to liberate the other one

from the Dark Knight dungeons.

Chapter Two ﬁnds the characters in Flotsam, where

they must investigate the means of ridding one of the

Tears of Mishakal of its corruption. Lord Toede has the

information, but he also has his eyes on the Tears . Armed

with the knowledge provided by Toede, the heroes set out

for Nordmaar, either by ship or by traveling overland along

the Rugged Coast.

In Chapter Three , the heroes confront numerous

hazards and dangers at sea and on land, leading ultimately

to a shipwreck and becoming prisoners of the Dargonesti.

The heroes discover that the sea elves are under the thrall

of an aquatic ogre priest of Zeboim, and must liberate

them before they themselves can escape.

In Chapter Four , the characters must cross the Kern

peninsula, where a war is being waged between the hags

and the ogre titans for control over the ogre nations.

In order to get to Nordmaar, the characters must either

strike a bargain with the hags or titans, or they must risk

being on their own as they cross a land caught in the grip

of a terrible civil war. At the northern coast of Kern, the

characters must unravel the mystery of the Clocktower

of Miremier in order to ﬁnd the Scroll of Stellar Path , an

important key to completing their journey, along the way

potentially making a gnome very happy indeed.

4  Introduction

DragonLance - Spectre Of Sorrows.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: