d20 E.N. Publishing War of the Burning Sky - O, Wintry Song of Agony.pdf - E.N. War of the Burning Sky - R5700

War of the Burning Sky

O, Wintry Song of Agony

An Adventure for 1 5 th Level Characters

By Jeremy Anderson and Ryan Nock

Edited by Ryan Nock

Cover Art by Tim Divar

Interior Art by Claudio Pozas

Cartography by Sean MacDonald

Layout by Eric Life-Putnam

Playtested by Theodore A. Brzinski III

Neil D’Cruze

Laura Kertz

Tom Jones

Hamid Raoof

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.

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

1646 Ridge Road

Vankleek Hill, ON

Canada K0B 1R0

EN Publishing is an imprint of EN World.

Please visit http://www.enworld.org

O, Wintry Song of Agony – Illustration by Tim Divar

Table of Contents

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

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

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

Adapting the Adventure, cont’d .....................

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

Using the Obelisk ..................................................

Developments .................................................................

Kreven Lore .............................................................

Dream Magic, not Psionics.................................

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

The Consequences of Failure ............................

Act One: A Hanging Sword .......................

e Second War Council ...............................................

Mission Planning (EL ) ..............................................

Without Pilus .......................................................

It’s Okay, Really..............................................................

A Friendly Game...........................................................

Conquest .................................................................

Act Two: The Needle’s Eye........................

e Great Mission ........................................................

Mission Stages ...............................................................

Glossing Over the Minutiae...........................

e Scourge Valley ........................................................

Frost Needle’s Eye .........................................................

Surface Defenses (EL ) .............................................

Blinding the Eye (EL ) ..............................................

Nullifiers................................................................!

Velkiss (EL )...............................................................

Velkiss’s Prices ......................................................

e Frozen Wasteland..................................................

Act Three: The Halls of Pain..................

e Scourge Fortress.....................................................

Area Descriptions ..........................................................

Horde Zombies ......................................................

e Halls of Pain ..........................................................

Too Clever For Their Own Good...................

Mad Greetings ...............................................................

Take Us to Your Leader.................................................

Guthwulf (EL )..........................................................

e Great Escape ...........................................................

e Song of Agony (EL $)..........................................

Final Stage ......................................................................!

Battle at the Obelisk.....................................................

Using the Koren Obelisk ..................................

Using the Koren Obelisk, cont’d ...................

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

Appendix One: Enemies and Allies.........

Allied Forces..................................................................

Standard Ragesian Forces.............................................

Cavalry ............................................................................

Inﬁ ltrators.......................................................................!

Inquisitors .......................................................................

Soldiers ...........................................................................

Act One Encounters ......................................................

Act Two Encounters .....................................................

Act ree Encounters ...................................................

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

Appendix Three: New Magic ....................

New Items......................................................................

New Spells .....................................................................

New Bardic Music Ability............................................

Appendix Four: The Grand Finale? ........

e Assault ...................................................................

Supreme Inquisitor Leska............................................

Lord Shaaladel of the Shahalesti .................................

Loose Ends.....................................................................

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

e Grim Stalwart (EL ) ..........................................

e Scourge Entrance ...................................................

Why Doesn’t Pilus Do This Himself?............

O, Wintry Song of Agony

I NTRODUCTION

e saga of e War of the Burning Sky continues

in its eighth episode, and the stakes continue to

rise. e heroes have so far assisted the liberation

of nations, overcome the challenges of multiple

terrifying dream monsters, and continually done

battle with the forces of the tyrannical empire of

Ragesia. With help and information from the wind-

wielding brothers Longinus and Pilus, the heroes

have fought their way through a fortress where the

artifact known as the Torch of the Burning Sky ﬁ rst

fell from the dead ﬁ ngers of the former Ragesian

emperor. ere they found clues which led them to

the present location of the Torch, a den of assassins

in the haunted forest of Ycengled. After confronting

the killers, they reclaimed the Torch and endured an

ancient trial in order to restore the artifact’s faded

power. ough victorious, they emerged with the

Torch only partially restored; more importantly,

however, the trial revealed visions of the past and

secrets of the present.

Most pressing among those secrets is the existence

of a new weapon being created by Leska, the current

leader of Ragesia. Known to the heroes only as “ e

Scourge,” the nature of this threat is unclear, but it

seems it will be ready within the month.

e Scourge is the Ragesian code name for e

Koren Obelisk, a magical focus of immense power,

that, when complete, would dwarf the power of

the Torch itself. While the Torch of the Burning

Sky permitted the previous Ragesian emperor

to transport his armies anywhere he wished, the

Obelisk would give Leska the power to wield her

magic directly across any distance. Coupled with her

formidable personal spellcasting arsenal, the Obelisk

might plunge the entire world into eternal despotic

rule under Leska’s thumb.

A DAPTING THE A DVENTURE

O, Wintry Song of Agony works easily as a

stand-alone high-level adventure, or as part of

a larger campaign. The nature of the fortress

works excellently for a villain’s stronghold that

only the bravest heroes would dare attack.

The Ragesian army can be any enemy force,

and the Obelisk itself can be any stationary

doomsday device. What matters most is this:

• The heroes learn that the villains have built

a device of terrifying power and dominance,

and that it is near completion. They know

where the device is, and have obtained

plans for it. Their ﬁ rst course of action is to

prepare for an assault, though the enemy

is proactive in hindering them, making use

of the doomsday weapon.

• The heroes can only travel extra-

dimensionally to the edge of the enemy

zone, and from there they must travel in a

more linear manner. The fortress could be

in a demiplane, a magically-resilient tunnel

network in deep recesses underground,

or – as in the adventure – just be a heavily

warded area with nigh-impassable natural

boundaries. Once they arrive, the heroes

must ﬁ ght or sneak past the enemy forces.

• The heroes must then descend into the

heart of the vile prison-machine providing

the doomsday weapon with its power, and

slay or free its living power source.

Coincidentally, these three important issues

are summaries of the three acts of this

adventure.

Background

e heroes have just learned that the second

in command of the Ragesian inquisitors, an

infamous man named Kreven, has nearly completed

a doomsday device, a magical focus known as the

Scourge. Spies and captured military plans reveal

that the Scourge facility is located in a valley in

the frozen northern reaches of Ragesia, and that

a massive divination shield wards the entire area.

Even though the wayfarer guildmistress could

potentially power through even anti-teleportation

O, Wintry Song of Agony Introduction

wards, teleportation beacons – which divert planar

travel – lie scattered around the edge of the valley,

so the heroes cannot teleport too close, lest they risk

being trapped. e valley’s walls are too steep for a

conventional army to traverse except via one route,

through a pass called Frost Needle’s Eye.

e valley has long been a strategic fallback

point for the Ragesians, but only in the past year has

it been converted to its present purpose. Incredible

amounts of resources were funneled here, though

always done discreetly. It is suspected that not even

Emperor Coaltongue himself knew about it, and

those in charge of the Resistance now suspect Leska

arranged his assassination so she could complete her

doomsday weapon.

e Resistance had been using scrying to track to

this location hundreds of mages who were captured in

the early stages of Leska’s bid for power, though their

fate now is hidden by the shield. What the Resistance

does not know is that the “Scourge” weapon is

imprisoned mages. Beneath the Scourge fortress is

a prison designed to be impregnable to magic-users,

with two vitally important prisoners.

e ﬁ rst prisoner is Agony, one of the trillith –

nightmare spirits from the underdark who have allied

with Leska for their own ends. Agony was not loyal

to his brothers, and so was given to Leska for use

as her power source. Magically compelled to wield

his powers against his fellow prisoners, Agony daily

wracks the captured mages with waves of pain. e

Koren Obelisk captures this suﬀ ering and harnesses

it as a power source, and if the heroes can kill or free

Agony they will render the Scourge powerless.

e second prisoner is one with a unique

relationship with Leska herself. Four decades ago,

the forest of Innenotdar, located near the city of Gate

Pass, was set alight, killing most of its inhabitants

except for a clan of fey known as the Seela, who

survived only because of the magical Song of Forms.

Trapped in an endlessly burning forest of ﬂ ame,

the Seela sent their strongest, Etiniﬁ , on a quest to

ﬁ nd release for them. Etiniﬁ managed to escape the

ﬂ ames, and roamed the world, looking for a way to

heal his homeland.

A DAPTING THE A DVENTURE , CONT ’ D

Starting the Campaign Here

O, Wintry Song of Agony makes a perfect

starting point for a short, high-level campaign.

More advice on how to retool the following

adventures is included in the free Game

Master’s Guide , but the focus of this mini-

campaign is Leska’s use of the power of the

trillith, a strange dream-spawned menace,

which she wields in an attempt to conquer

the world or, if stymied, to destroy it.

In this version of the campaign, the

heroes start as great heroes, called upon by

the nations opposed to Ragesia to undertake

a strike mission into the Scourge facility. The

Koren Obelisk in this version is itself powered

by the Torch of the Burning Sky, allowing

the heroes to possess it for the rest of the

campaign, though its power has been drained

to create the obelisk. (The Torch, in the normal

version of the campaign, is at reduced power

now, and will be until the heroes encounter

the Mother of Dreams in adventure ten, Sleep,

Ye Cursed Child .)

Ending the Campaign Here

If you are not interested in running

adventures for near-epic levels, you can

retool the campaign to make this adventure

the ﬁ nal mission. In this case, Leska herself is

at the Scourge fortress to personally oversee

the completion of the Koren Obelisk. Lower-

powered versions of Leska and Shahalesti

ruler Shaaladel appear in Appendix Four.

We encourage you to mine Return of the

Jedi for ideas of how to run this ﬁ nal conﬂ ict,

with different forces ﬁ ghting simultaneous

battles. Perhaps the Shahalesti wish to claim

the Torch from the heroes while simultaneously

defeating Leska, leading to a three-way battle

in the Obelisk room, while the two armies

outside defeat the Ragesians and then turn

on each other.

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