d20 E.N. Publishing War of the Burning Sky - Mission to the Monastery of Two Winds.pdf - E.N. War of the Burning Sky - R5700

War of the Burning Sky

Mission to the Monastery of Two Winds

An Adventure for 9th-Level Characters

By Andrew Kenrick

Edited by Ryan Nock

Cover Art by Rick Hershey

Linda Luksic

Interior Art by Jessica Jones

Leo Lingas

Claudio Pozas

Cartography by Sean MacDonald

Layout by Eric Life-Putnam

Playtested by Theodore A. Brzinski III

Neil D’Cruze

Michael Gallogly

Tom Jones

Judson Stowe

Campaign Director Ryan Nock

Everything in this book, other than the covers,

the title and contents page, the illustrations and

maps, “EN Publishing,” the EN Publishing logo,

character and place names, story elements,

and EN Publishing product titles,

is designated Open Game Content.

Special Thanks to the EN World Creature

Catalogue forums for

contributing monsters,

particularly “freyar” for

suggesting the mantidrake.

EN PUBLISHING

1646 Ridge Road

Vankleek Hill, ON

Canada K0B 1R0

Note on Rules Content: is adventure uses

Open Game Content as well as material that is

in the System Reference Document but is not in

the core rulebooks. All the information you need

to use this material is presented in this adventure,

but if you are interested in learning more, search

for the System Reference Document online,

available through various sources.

EN Publishing is an imprint of EN World.

Please visit http://www.enworld.org

Monastery of Two Winds – Illustration by Rick Hershey and Linda Luksic

Table of Contents

Introduction.......................................................

Background .....................................................................

Adapting the Adventure.............................

Adventure Overview ......................................................

Character Motivations ..................................................

e Monastery of Two Winds ......................................

Psionics in the Adventure .........................

Pilus’s Plan......................................................................

The Burning Sky .............................................

Act One: Journey through Ostalin...............

An Urgent Mission ........................................................

The Spy ................................................................

The Other Party.............................................

Arriving in Ostalin.........................................................

e Half-Breed Warlord (EL ) ............................

Let’s Walk..........................................................

Into the Mountains .......................................................

e Long Arm of Ragesia (EL ) .....................

e Siege (EL ) ..................................................

Act Two: The Calm over Eresh .....................

Eresh ..............................................................................

Balance’s Calm .............................................

e Peak’s Shadow ................................................

About Town ...........................................................

Peak’s Shadow Gather Information

Results .............................................................

e Balance of Power...........................................

Spooky Meeting....................................................

Fractured Calm (EL ) ........................................

Interacting with a Dream ....................................

Restoring Balance (EL ) .................................. !

Variant Timeline ......................................... !

Missing People.......................................................!

Hideaway ...............................................................!

Ascent to the Monastery ..............................................

e Ascent..............................................................!!

Guardians (EL ) ................................................!

Cold Welcome .......................................................!

Breaking and Entering ......................................... !

Act Three: The Ragesian Army .....................

Return of the General ..................................................

e Panic (EL )................................................. !

e Valiant Counter-Attack.................................!

Snatched Away (EL )......................................... !

Victory ................................................................... !

Act Four: The Valley of Storms ...................

e Valley .....................................................................

Defenders of the Sacred Valley (EL +) ......... !

Valley of the Damned (EL ) ............................

e Laboratory..............................................................

e Pit (EL ) .....................................................

Laboratory Entrance .............................................

Pilus’s Study (EL ).............................................

CR ? Isn’t that a Little Much?............

Escaping the Laboratory......................................

Act Five: Audience with Two Winds ...........

Two Masters .................................................................

A Showdown with Pilus (EL n/a)......................

Conclusion ....................................................................

Appendix One: Combat Stats .........................

Allies and Neutral NPCs..............................................

Soul Magic, not Psionics...........................

Ragesian Foes ................................................................

New Item .........................................................

Monastery Foes ............................................................

New Item ..........................................................

Appendix Two: New Feats ...............................

General Feats.................................................................

Monastery of Two Winds Feats..................................

Appendix Three: New Items ........................... !

Mundane Items.............................................................

Magic Items...................................................................

Appendix Four: New Spells ............................

Open Game License Version .a ..................

Mission to the Monastery of Two Winds

I NTRODUCTION

Welcome to the ﬁ fth adventure in the War of the

Burning Sky campaign saga. Since the start of the

war, the heroes have carried mysterious war secrets

from the neutral city of Gate Pass, through a living

forest ﬁ re controlled by a dreamborn monster, to

the town of Seaquen, a safe haven for refugee mages,

and a beacon of hope for those who want to bring

the war to an end. In Seaquen, the heroes achieved

fame by thwarting a plan by the Ragesian Empire

to destroy the resistance with a magical hurricane,

but mysteries remained, for it seemed the Ragesians

were aided by a third party.

In this installment, the heroes are dispatched to

the distant Monastery of Two Winds, where they

will have to defeat an occupying army and traitorous

wind mages to earn the support of the monastery’s

masters. A spooky calm has overtaken the village near

the monastery, and as that calm slowly fractures the

heroes will have two revelations, and they will learn

that the war is far more dangerous than previously

expected. If they are brave and daring enough to

survive the tempestuous onslaught of their enemies,

the heroes just might come out a step ahead of the

vengeful Ragesian army.

A DAPTING THE A DVENTURE

If you are running this episode as a one-

shot or as part of your own campaign, you may

want to change some of the encounters, since

several of them are designed to hint at events

that take place later in the saga. In particular

the machinations of Pilus may seem a little

out of place or lead to an unsatisfactory

conclusion.

As a solution, you can either remove Pilus

completely, and have Caela be performing

these experiments on her own without the

knowledge of her masters, or you might simply

use Caela’s stats to represent Pilus for a ﬁ nal

battle, and have Caela herself use the stats

of a typical east wind monk. Either way, it is

best to excise all references to the airship The

Tempest , unless you plan to work a mile-long

living airship into your own campaign later.

it is becoming clear that if the Ragesians claim the

Torch ﬁ rst, it will render all their work pointless.

When Coaltongue died, the land for miles in

every direction was covered by a ﬁ restorm which

has lasted for months, keeping anyone from getting

in to ﬁ nd out the Torch’s fate. e remnants of

Coaltongue’s army scattered in the face of this

mysterious storm, but now a contingent of them has

descended on the Monastery of Two Winds, which

lies in the mountains on the border of the long-time

rival nations Ostalin and Sindaire. Divinations have

hinted that the heads of the monastery, masters of

wind magic named Longinus and Pilus, have the

power to hold the ﬁ restorm at bay.

Led by Second General Signus, the soldiers

laid siege, but they did not count on the tenacity of

the monks, the cunning of the monastery’s leaders,

or the presence of a strange soothing magic that

has stymied all attempts to assault the monastery

and its neighboring village of Eresh. In frustration,

Signus has left a garrison and departed to seek

reinforcements.

Background

It is now four months or more since the start

of the war, and though the spring thaw should

have begun, the entire region is still gripped by a

ﬁ erce chill. Favorable weather only seems to ﬁ nd

the Ragesian army, and it marches steadfastly

against many foes. Wise and experienced warriors

recognize that Ragesia is not trying to conquer –

they are simply spread too thin – but rather are

scouring the region, searching for the Torch of the

Burning Sky, the artifact which let the Ragesian

Empire rise to power.

e heroes return to the port of Seaquen, having

secured the aid of Dassen in holding back the ird

Ragesian Army (or having left the nation in such

chaos and disarray that the Ragesians will have a few

months of slogging before they get anywhere near

Seaquen).

ough Seaquen has had some successes,

Mission to the Monastery of Two Winds Introduction

Seeing a window of opportunity, the leaders

of Seaquen dispatch the heroes to help the monks

repel the Ragesian army and gain their assistance in

acquiring the Torch. But the heroes are not the ﬁ rst

adventurers dispatched by Seaquen. A previous group

was already sent, following clues that pointed to a

link between the monastery and the magical tempest

that struck Seaquen a month ago. ose agents have

stopped reporting, their last message being a strangely

calm statement that nothing at all was going on.

Two main mysteries surround the monastery.

First, a trillith named Balance had taken up residence

in the village of Eresh, and has been using her power

to keep the Ragesians and the monks from ﬁ ghting.

Balance has used her power too much, and now many

on both sides are degenerating into waking comas,

uninterested in anything. Balance is growing weak

from holding back so much violence, and if she dies

the long held-back aggression will be unleashed.

Second, one of the monastery’s two leaders, Pilus,

was secretly responsible for the attack on Seaquen

a month ago, which he used as a test ground for

new oﬀ ensive magic he plans to unleash in the war.

His apprentice, a half-elf woman named Caela, has

been taking advantage of the strange lull in combat

to abduct people, the raw materials necessary for

creating the biomantic monsters Pilus is so proud

of. Unknown to his brother Longinus, Pilus has

allied with the ruler of Ostalin, and intends to enter

the war in the coming months, as soon as his latest

monster is fully grown.

trails up the mountains, running across a Ragesian

ambush intended to keep anyone from coming to

the aid of the monks of the monastery. Additionally,

several companies of Ragesian forces have lain siege

to the town of Eresh at the foot of the monastery,

forcing the heroes to sneak past the soldiers to reach

the town.

When the heroes enter Eresh they ﬁ nd out that

something is wrong. Soldiers are living peacefully

next to the townsfolk, tempers unnaturally calm, to

the point that some people have simply sat down,

uninterested in even eating. e few who have

managed to keep some sense about themselves

can explain that people are going missing, though

no one is motivated enough to investigate. e

disappearances are at the direction of Pilus, whose

apprentice Caela is using invisible stalkers to abduct

townsfolk as fuel for biomantic experiments.

As the heroes climb the mountain to the

monastery they are attacked by air elementals which

are tasked with holding back all foreigners. When

they do reach the top, Caela refuses them entrance to

the monastery until the Ragesians are gone and the

village of Eresh is free from its strange curse. Even

the cunning Pilus does not know what causes the

calm over Eresh, and it worries him. He has a pair

of invisible stalkers follow the heroes and observe

their activities.

e heroes investigate the disappearances and

the unnatural stillness in the town, locating both

the trillith Balance and one survivor of the original

expedition from Seaquen. Balance is growing

weak, and soon will no longer be able to hold back

the Ragesians. Meanwhile, the survivor, a ranger

named Eril, explains that his group found damning

evidence that whoever attacked Seaquen has a base

in the nearby Valley of Storms, but soon thereafter

his companions vanished, and he hid. e heroes

have to decide which threat to address ﬁ rst.

For the Ragesian threat, Second General

Signus returns to town at an untimely juncture,

and his arrival with a hundred hostile soldiers

proves too much, breaking Balance’s calm, and

killing her unless the heroes can help. Released

from her power, the soldiers take out their anger

Adventure Overview

e central goal of Mission to the Monastery of

Two Winds is to persuade the heads of the monastery,

a pair of monks named Longinus and Pilus, to help

the heroes acquire the Torch of the Burning Sky.

With their aid, a path will be opened for the heroes

to reach the location where Coaltongue was slain,

which forms the basis of the next adventure, Te a r s

of the Burning Sky .

With the aid of a wayfarer, the heroes teleport

into Ostalin, arriving in the city of Yen-Ching, a

hundred miles from the monastery itself. After a

brief stint in Ostalin, they climb the perilous wintry

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