For decades the gang of highwaymen known as the Gallerwood Outlaws were famed and feared for equal measure, melting out of the forest to rob merchants, nobles, even mages, before vanishing back into the trees. Even after their awful deaths at the hand of a bountyhunter some years ago folk still sing of their deeds, and of the secret hideaway in which they stored their ill gotten gains.
Adventure Hooks:
Folk have been saying that the ghosts of the Gallerwood outlaws have been stalking the roads near where their bodies were hanged, still looking for one last haul. The party are tasked with investigating rumours after a fearful carter was set upon by these spectres, losing something precious in the process. This provides the excellent framing for a first adventure as each member of the party can be invested in retrieving something different out of the carter's cargo giving them a reason to work in the same direction.
As they investigate, the party will discover that these ghosts are infact local toughs who have dressed up and painted themselves phosphorescent cave lichen in order to shake down passers by. After giving them a thrashing and a Scooby-Doo unmasking, the party can retrieve the stolen goods and return to the inn for celebratory drinking. In the dead of night one of the party awakens to a shadowy figure looming at the foot of their bed, spectral face illuminated by the ghoul-light that flickers in the bowl of their pipe. Evidently the story of the party's antics has spread, and it appears one of the real ghosts of the Gallerwood wants a word.
Frauds and phantoms aside, entirely possible for the party to stumble across the dungeon while exploring the surrounding swampland, only realizing it served as a bandit hideout after stumbling into the remnants of their camp.
Setup: The ghost introduces himself as the late Cullen Carver, once founding and now final member of the Gallerwood outlaws. Cullen has an offer for the party, and is willing to guide them to the cache kept by his fellow bandits if they will perform for him a last request. As Cullen explains it, neither he nor the other outlaw spirits will be able to rest so long as there is no end to their tale, and there can be no end so long as the mystery of their hidden treasure remains unsolved in the common imagination.
Cullen is in high spirits despite being dead, so the party should expect some gallows humour as the hanged man leads them through the swamp's hazards, eventually arriving at the outlaw's secret base: The Tithing House, a long abandoned temple of Erathis concealed within the depths of the wilderness that's become infested with all sorts of mire creatures since the thieves met their end.
Challenges & Complications:
The Outlaws kept their treasure in the temple's crypts, and to access these the part are going to need to venture through the gauntlet of dark chambers and traps the bandits set up to keep eachother's hands out of the cookie jar. Cullen can help with some of these, but the whole point of the traps was to keep his fellow thieves honest. The only other way into the vault is through a heavily reinforced door, the key to which is currently in the possession of the bountyhunter who hung the Gallerwoods from trees in the firstplace.
While the party has the pick of spoils, Cullen points out a particular chest kept apart from the rest and calls upon them to fulfill their end of the bargain. This chest was Cullen's nestegg, put aside from numerous heists and robberies to be delivered to his wife and children in the event of his death. With no surviving highwaymen to carry out the promise Cullen's REAL unfinished business comes to light. The party can keep their word, or they can snipe the treasure for themselves, earning the spectre's undying enmity and curse to boot.
To get out of the the Tithing House the party will need to face off with a demon of avarice.. but not in the traditional form of bossfight. He'll approach just as they're leaving the dungeon, taking the form of a plump old man with a grandfatherly smile who wears the spotless robes of an Erathian friar despite the flooded cemetery in which they stand. He is all calm words and politeness, congratulating them on making off with such a fine haul and urging them to never mind that silly old ghost and his wishes, banishing Cullen beneath a nearby grave so that they can talk cordially. The Smiling Friar explains that he had a deal with the highwaymen; feeding off the greed of their crimes in exchange for concealing their hideaway and passage through the forest. There's no reason the party couldn't renew the deal, become the new band of legendary thieves, save that they'll have to forsake their ghostly guide and his last act of charity. Should they turn him down the Smiling Friar will call up the dead of the cemetery to slaughter them, clearing the way for the next band of ambitious treasurehunters.
This is how I draw all of epic isometric, Its all in a traditional sketchbook with pencils. join the patreon and download like.. 5 years worth of content.
We have built up a community of isometric map enthusiasts that are all super active. I release 4 sets of icons and maps per month.
“Oh sure, when the snooty elves or the crabby dwarves built a prison to contain a great evil, everyone’s like “yeah, better not go in there” but as soon as goblinkind does the same every idiot with a sword and deathwish thinks “ oh hey, bet they’ve got some gold in there or something”.
I don’t know what to tell ya, our welcome mat is giant screaming face made of stone and a fifteen minute walk up uneven stairs. What part of that says “I better get three to five of my best murderer friends together and stage a B&E“?
-Grackle Twotooth, hobgoblin guard
The Legends of Mozok Maulhead are famous among goblinkind, a warlord who ruled the timberlands with an iron first and ate demons to bolster his power. Sadly, many elements of these legends failed to bridge the culture gap, such as the fact that Mozok was so awful he was cast down by his own lieutenants and imprisoned deep beneath the earth so that his wickedness could not escape. Instead, those non-goblin communities who also suffered under Mozok’s rule remain fairly unclear on the warlord’s ultimate fate, hearing only the “buried warlord” bit and imagining caches of pilfered wealth that it implies.
Hooks:
Taken by curiosity and the stories he’d heard all his life, an apprentice woodsman decided to sneak off from his chores and take a peak inside the Mouth, only to get captured and grilled by the goblin garrison over his trespassing. The woodsman’s master, responsible for the youth and looking to save his own skin, has already returned to town spinning wild stories about being attacked by hobs and barely escaping with his life as the boy was carried off. Not swept up in the hysteria, one of the town elders tasks the party with reaching the Mouth before the woodsman manages to whip up a mob, to see of the party can avert violence by negotiating the boy’s safe return.
Having accomplished much and proven themselves heroes, a mid level party is approached by a hobgoblin emissary with an urgent request. A band of foolhardy young adventurers have blitzed past her garrison and have gotten themselves lost in the in the caverns below the Mouth. Normally they’d be a writeoff, but this particular band of idiots has proven tenacious and by the time she left three of the eight locks on the Warlord’s gate had been opened. It’s a race against time before the final seal is broken, but perhaps the party can help these would-be treasurehunters see reason where the hobs cannot.
When the gate finally is breached ( whether by the party themselves, a group of daredevils, an angry mob looking for loot, or a young woodsman that’s managed to slip past his captors) Mozok Maulhead will be released from his tomb. A desiccated corpse in rusted armour puppeted by all the fiends and other evils he swallowed, the warlord will fight free of his prison and then work in secret to reclaim his sylvan empire, first by making allies with the other evils of the wood, then by summoning the dark fey Maglubiyet to make him an army out of the very goblins that kept him captive.
“Miles of razor peaks and poisoned lakes, all under the shadow of a beast older than even the greatest of the lowlander empires. Now THIS is a warrior’s kingdom.”
Setup: Chain spanned expanses and valleys of acid-etched bone mark this mountainrange, remnants of an animalistic titan held captive here by the gods themselves. This is a land of monsters, of scavengers still drawn by the stench of death after millennia, and those wild-things too dangerous to live in more civilized lands and so pushed to this cruel periphery.
Poison is the defining factor for this region, potent enough to scar on touch it accumulates in marshy depressions between the peaks, or rains down from the omnipresent haze of clouds. This blight is said is said to be the blood of a great serpent, the one who’s remains define the length of the strand, miles and mile of arching rib and twisted vertebra scattered over the land in an impossible, writing trail.
Though the Strand holds sacred or profane significance for many cultures from neighboring regions, most tend to avoid the region at all costs, with exile or pilgrimage being one of the few reasons one might willingly chose to climb the marrow-stained rises. Still, a few Survivalist enclaves and cultic sects manage to flourish around the few springs and aquafers NOT tainted by the titan’s poisoned blood, constructing enclaves for themselves in the hollows of mountains, reclaiming divine metal and blasphemous ivory as their building materials of choice.
Adventure Hooks:
Of late the raiders that live in the foothills of the ‘Strand have been more organized, striking out not merely for supplies and plunder, but deliberately targeting fortifications and other strongholds in the lowlands. Those with a tactical eye would see this as the prelude to some kind of invasion, but the thought of marching an army though the poison-saturated mountains has up until now been an impossibility. The Players are confronted with this reality when a village they’re visiting or a caravan they’re traveling with is overwhelmed by these raiders, who demand they hand over their wealth in the name of the “Queen of Serpents” , though who exactly that might be, no one knows
While chasing a fleeing villain through the bone-marked trails of the Titanstrand, the party finally corner their quarry only to have them snatched up at the last minute by a particularly foul group of harpies. These avian wretches claim “finders keepers” on the villain, but say that the party will be able to get him back, should they visit the hall of their master and come willing to trade. When the party arrive at this fortress, they’ll discover the harpies’ master is an Abhorrent Overlord demon, one who is very interested in leveraging the party’s need for justice to indulge its own greed.
A flickering form has been observed in the haze above the titanstrand, one that drifts weightlessly like smoke but always seems to keep its long, serpentine shape. Snakes aren’t exactly a unique motif for the region, but as the sightings increase and the form seems to take on more solidity, its size and fearful presence mark it as the spirit of the titan itself, visible even miles away as some omen of unknown doom.
Background: At some point during the dawn age, when the gods were first laying the foundations for their work upon this world, a titanic serpent fell from the heavens and was impaled on the crenulations of a newly formed mountain range. Its blood was poison, and all it seemed to be able to do was scream and writhe, so for fear of this intruder tainting their newborn realm, the gods laid great chains into the mountainside, securing the miles upon miles of serpentflesh to the goring stone. Their intent seemed to be to bleed the beast, but the effort took centuries, and forever scarred the landscape.
In addition to the physical bonds they wove through the landscape, the gods also created a purifying barrier that holds the titan’s corruptive influence from spreading out across the land, though a few scant traces manage to creep through. “The Serpent’s Mark” is a blight that persisted for generations in the lowlands surrounding the strand, manifesting as a child or youth developing scales and an increasingly reptilian nature. While sometimes evident from birth, the blight most often manifests during growth, as the child transforms inevitably into a yuan-ti. Political marriages have been called off when it’s discovered that one of the betrothed is hiding scales beneath their garments, thinking that the titan’s influence will poison the alliance just as it poisoned the mountains. The Marked lived as an underclass, most often shunned by their communities and former family, with many forced to beg or turn to crime. These freeborn yuan-ti often find their way to the Titanstrand itself, immune to the poisons that saturate the land welcome by others who have shared their hardships.
Further Adventures:
Lady Moriversa was born to be queen, and she will have her birthright even if she has to break the world to do it. Twenty years ago Moriversa was the eldest daughter of a royal family, groomed for rulership and betrothed to a handsome prince. Their match would have unified their kingdoms into an even greater one and made the young lovers into the heads of a dynasty, but that was before her scales started to grow in. Any hope for the alliance was shattered, and in shame Moriversa was disinherited and banished from the kingdom. In the years since, the would-be queen has made herself into a bandit chieftain, and now into a warlord, leading an army of fellow exiles, raiders, and serpentine zealots that see her ascension as the titan’s resurrection. Her goals are manifold, but all end in gaining enough strength to besiege two kingdoms and revenge herself against her own family and that of her former suiter. To do this she will seek all manner of wicked allies, and seek to use her agents to bring the two kingdoms into war with one another.
The purifying barrier surrounding the chain of mountains is tremendously convenient for keeping pervasive evils at bay, a fact that scholars and other masters of the unseen mysteries have taken advantage of over the years to make the Titanstrand into a dumping ground for cursed objects, malevolent spirits, and other supernatural trash that was too bothersome or stubborn to actually bother destroying. A dragon known as Deisidelius has begun hoarding these bits of cursed jetsam, thinking them tribute from unseen petitioners too fearful to approach his mighty being. Players passing through the region may be able to earn the dragon’s protection by pretending to be these reverent givers, but will notice in their time in the dragon’s keeping that the great wyrm is being driven slowly mad by curses that have begun to weigh on him like a miasma.
Hi! Just wondered if you might have some input on something that's cropped up in my campaign: my party is crossing a forest, and have been warned that a powerful fungal queen rules the heart of it. She was not supposed to be an encounter, just a sort of urban legend to give some flavour to the place, and they would run into her minions as they were making their way through it, but now they've made it their quest to find her and rid the forest of her. I'm torn between making the her lair inpenetrable to keep the myth alive, or making her a hard, but not impossible encounter to give them a big challenge, and maybe a big win. They're lvl 4, so I'm a bit wary of having a sort of big boss battle. Any thoughts?
Ok, off the top of my head, Don't make the fungus queen an actual encounter. She sounds like a fey being, or a ravenloft style dark-lord, something phantasmal that doesn't actually need stats because she's more a part of the story then she is the game, if that makes sense?
Do some wilderness encounters, and have them discover a hidden fungus filled dungeon in the middle of the forest ( their reward for exploring the map, yay!). Do the usual dungeon things: combat encounters, puzzles, treasure, all that jazz..... then when they get to what would be the traditional "boss chamber"? ..... nothing, just a mushroom covered statue of an ancient woman that's waiting for them. They're level 4 after all and the fungus queen is an idea... they're nowhere near ready to fight IDEAS just yet. Just so they're not sour about it, have the statue be part of an altar that people have left some offerings at, so they get a
Now if you REALLY wanted to twist the knife, have them roll constitution saves at various points in the lower levels of the dungeon... then have them start getting sick. Trespassing in the fungal queen's lair has gotten them sick with a magical illness that'll force them to seek out a healer (it's own questline, don't just let them pay for it in town) or it'll slowly start growing mushrooms in their lungs.
Inspiring paranoia and confusion is the point: Detail the sickness as them getting feverish and having strange dreams of the queen at night. Someone rolls a natural 1 in public? have them break down coughing up spores, and a superstitious onlooker proclaims that it's the queen's wrath.
Then, waaaaay later in the campaign, have them visited by the Fungal Queen, who makes a point of saying that the players couldn't find her before because they didn't truly believe in her, not in the way that you're supposed to believe in a legend.
