Saturday, December 10, 2022

Grotto of the Queen - Dungeon Magazine 64

If the characters need to escape the city for a vacation of sorts, here's an adventure that can take them across the Bay of Ptolus.

Written for the Forgotten Realms setting and using the evil goddess Umberlee, it involves a missing magically imbued ship, and a planned ambush of the party by the evil clerics. Maybe they're not evil, they could be clerics of Juranis, chaotic neutral. (The high priestess is definitely evil and uses undead as guards.)

Do your delvers have a nemesis that's been looking for an opportunity to have them killed? The scenario opens up that possibility with someone spying on them and letting the priests know the party is on the way to recover the stolen ship.

Maybe the ship isn't magical, but transporting magical cargo that belongs to the Balacazar Crime Family. Those responsible for capturing the ship are some unwise pirates backed up by the church. 

Menon Balacazar deals in black magics, drugs, slaves, and especially enslaving powerful other-worldly beings. Maybe the cargo on the ship is a being he trapped, one that is associated with the church.

Under normal circumstances Balacazar could enlist the aid of his Sahuagin allies to help in the matter, but this time the church is one dealing with the sea, so the sahuagin are kept out of things. That's when the nemesis of the party recommends hiring them for the recovery job, and will alert the church of their plans if they agree to take it. You probably want to hide the identity of their real employer from them at the start.

Meanwhile, having been pressured about this latest act of piracy, the City Council hires another team of adventurers to go after the culprits. These folks walk into the ambush planned for the player characters.

In the small town near the temple, are some Ennin slavers with a small enclosure holding 25 captives. This might be an additional task the PCs might take it upon themselves to tackle.

The tavern of the town is full of na'er'do'wells and there's plenty of chances for a bar fight to happen. A fair number of patrons here are humanoids, orcs, gnolls, ogres, etc.

Once the party reaches town they are on the clock. There is an included table detailing what happens if they delay taking on the temple by various amounts of time. The longer they wait, the worse things get, while acting quickly will reduce the amount of fight the temple can mount against them.

There are survivors from the other group of delvers that are in need of rescue.

The temple and defenses can be run as they are without much if any modification aside from updating them to your preferred system. 

As for what's in the hold of the ship, maybe it's a second Tribute Gatherer. It could be any kind of powerful creature, or artifact.





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