Racing the Snake - Dungeon Magazine 105

If there's something I enjoy it is challenging terrain, and this adventure delivers. Racing the Snake would make a great vacation outside the confines of Ptolus and the dungeon. 

After restructuring the opening act to work with the setting and city, the overland journey becomes very interesting with time-keeping used to see if the party can stay ahead of their foes.

A war between some merchants is underway and it has reached the point where the less scrupulous of them is hiring assassins to take out his rival and/or his rival's family.

The restructuring: 

The evil merchant is a fellow named Dajoud we can place in the Uraqi city of Rashadar. His targets are in Ptolus. Dajoud has sent a ship with some Uraqi mercenaries to the city to harass and kill employees of Trend and to try to kill Trend's daughter Felicia. Dajoud also tried to have Trend assassinated, but failed and now the target has shifted to Felecia. 

Player characters get involved by stumbling into a group of Dajoud's mercenaries attacking an employee of Trend in North Market. It's possible they might know this bard from some tavern or from the Joden Temple.

Galina, the bard, thanks the party for the rescue (assuming your players aren't the type to ignore obvious plot points), and notices that one of them resembles Felicia. She offers them 500 gold pieces to meet with Trend and hear a proposal from him. The meeting will take place that night at a warehouse he owns in the Docks district (come fully prepared).

Galina informs Trend of the coincidence of a look-alike and has a plan to send the party and the double on a false trail to lure the assassin off of Felicia's actual trail. When the party gets to the warehouse, they are paid up front and then Trend brings them up to speed on the plan and offers them 6,000 gold pieces if they sign on.

They are to leave immediately that night with their party member disguised. They will be travelling north into the Moonsilver Forest and finding their way along a narrow canyon/ravine for part of the trip. There's nothing saying such a thing can't be there since it is a small section and unimportant to the setting. They'll then move into an underground river and eventually come up through smugglers tunnels into Carper's Bay

They are to do everything in their power to string out the deception so the assassin keeps reporting back that he's still on the trail of "Felicia" so that Dajoud won't have reason to detect the ruse and hire more assassins to go after the real Felicia. Under almost no circumstance is "Felicia" to display any martial or magical talent.  

Meanwhile Trend and his daughter will be taking a different route to Carper's Bay to wed Felecia to another merchant's son, cementing their relationship and giving them more trading power to oppose Dajoud.

Trend cannot have Dajoud killed since he is against bloodshed mostly, and because Dajoud is very well connected making trade in Uraq very difficult afterward.

The assassin is a Yuan-ti Abomination that has a handful of Kobolds (3 of them sorcerers) working for him. The assassin will get wind of the party leaving Ptolus on the way to the wedding, and will hasten to follow.

That's when the fun of the journey begins. From there most of the module can be used with minimal adjustments.

As long as the party can maintain the ruse and avoid killing the Yuan-ti, Dajoud will remain ignorant and things will go as Trend and Galina planned. Dajoud is also a sorcerer and keeps in touch with the killer a couple of times each day by a Sending spell. He also knows if his employee is alive or dead thanks to a magic ring each of them wear.

There are plenty of obstacles along the way that smart players can turn against the enemy, and some encounters they might find a way to use to their advantage as well. There are notes in the locations and encounters indicating how the pursuers can be delayed further or catch up sooner depending on choices made.

After completing the scenario the characters may have made two merchant families as strong allies, and even some residents of the Moonsilver Forest. (Maybe the Viridian Lords)

The Sinkhole - Dungeon Magazine 103

What if an inn got sucked into some caverns that were part of the Shadow of Ptolus?

The scenario as written involves an inn falling, mostly intact, through a sinkhole into a cavern infused with the plane of shadow. Instead of a sinkhole, what about a magical translocation? 

Such an event would certainly fit into the lore of the setting. You could develop any number of reasons and make them plot hooks for something bigger.

The translocation of the inn turns it into another location behaving just like Kadmiel the Shade Tower. It doesn't exist in the real world, but occasion ally casts a shadow of itself on bright moonlit nights.

Among the many dangerous encounters are also hazards like pockets of gas, cave-ins, and any number of shadow related afflictions you could invent and apply.

The goal is to get everyone out of the shadow caverns and back to Ptolus proper. The hungry shadow infused monsters have other plans.

The adventure assumes the player characters are staying at the inn when everything starts. They could be there for any number of reasons, meeting a client, seeking information about something else they are investigating, etc. This works as a drop-in (pun intended) concurrent with other plot threads.

Strange effects for spellcasting would be appropriate with anything shadow or illusion related. Light could be dimmed. 

Going back to the Why?:

1) There could be someone at the inn that is a target of someone powerful enough to have the inn and everyone present shunted into the Shadow of Ptolus. Could Renn Sadar be involved somehow? It's unlikely he would be the target or even present since as powerful as he is and as connected to shadow magic, the PCs wouldn't have much work to do (unless he was in a coma the whole time).

2) Maybe a magic item is present that causes the shift.

3) Could a deity be behind it? Maybe Destor pushing his luck?

4) For some unfathomable reason the Soul Riders took control of half a dozen of the mightiest spellcasters in the Inverted Pyramid, including Renn Sadar, to work a ritual that threw the inn and occupants into the Shadow of Ptolus. They'll only vaguely recall bits of their actions and aren't likely to admit lacking control. The Soul Riders may want access to something within the shadow. If one of your players is absent you may want to use them as an NPC under the control of a Soul Rider. Perhaps that character is present when the shift into the Shadow of Ptolus occurs and is there to get whatever the Riders are after.

Escape as written is as simple as finding a certain cave-in and digging out, but for our purposes that would not be in keeping with the Shadow of Ptolus, and much too simple. Alternately you could let them dig out a passage into the second level of Kadmiel, the Tenebrous Abode, but that still isn't a way out. Spells like Plane Shift, Gate, and Etherealness, or items that work similarly could allow exit.