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A Dungeons & Dragons campaign

Climate

Spring brings torrential rains. Summer is the only season with no frost at night, cool evenings, warm days. Winter is bitterly cold.

Description

Classic heroic fantasy role playing campaign using D20, DnD3.5 and Forgotten Realms gaming resources.

Korinn Archipelago

The Korinn Archipelago is a peaceful trading and fishing area, a string of islands in the western sea. The Archipelago contains hundreds of islands, some of them enormous, some are quite small. There is no central government, instead, there are small island governments.

This campaign starts on a larger island, in the village of Stillmound, located on the northern shores of Toluca Lake.

From the GM perspective, this is an excellent backdrop. Your characters are not likely to take off in a strange direction and miss your plot elements. You can develop additional islands as you need them, allowing you to concentrate on one area at a time. The map can grow as needed.

Naturally, once the players get ahold of a boat, your ability to move the players becomes less pronounced, but a sudden calm, a stong wind or a nasty storm can keep the players from wandering too far into undeveloped territory.

I also incorporated several Ravenloft-like elements that had the unintended consequence of further restricting the players.The teleport (or plane shift) that moved the players to the islands was one-way. Apparently, nothing can teleport (or plane shift) off the islands. The players currently believe that they are not in the actual Korinn Archipelago, but rather a demiplane that mirrors that area.

As an additional quirk, summoned creatures cannot return. In one case, this resulted in a permanent addition to the party, but luckily, there has not been any attempt to abuse this mechanic. The simple solution to abuse, should it become a problem, is that summoned creatures that are intentionally stranded from their homes would be rather angry about their new circumstances, and naturally no longer under player control once the duration of the summon comes to an end.

The possiblity of teleporting from island to island has not been eliminated, although they have been introduced to the results of a new form of teleportation mishap... They encountered the remains of another adventuring party that seemed to be horribly clawed while teleporting. At this point there is no way to tell of this was a one-time incident, or something that occurs every time.

Located

Mistrealm Campaign List

Notable Characters

Manny Badgers
Melisandra Ventris
Mikhial Courdeleon
Lemonhead Stark
Tarakone Praxidice
Toya Pcrescent

Notable Landmarks and Destinations

Darkpool Port
Stillmound Village
Toluca Lake

Plot Elements

Plot Elements

Short Description

A DnD 3e campaign started September 2010.

Steal This Plot Hook

Ship off with Black John the Red. I thought it was a decent hook, but the group did not bite. Feel free to adapt it for your campaign.

Time

The campaign is assumed to have started in the local equivalent of September. Traditionally, DnD time moves Very Slowly in comparison to real world time, so a week of campaign time can take several sessions to complete. As of January 3, 2011, we have managed to move forward to day 13.

As of April 6, 2012, we are probably somewhere around month 3 in campaign time.

Campaign Update

Weyland is an Elven Druid found in the Dark Forest. He warns the party about Stillmound, "not all enemies of man are obvious." He claims to be trapped in the forest (introduction to the idea that each major area might have an NPC trapped in the center of it.) He is known for a nice healing salve that he used to save Manny Badgers.

The party was wandering in the Dark Forest, when they encountered a knot of web choked trees, and decided to clear the blockage by setting the webs on fire. This triggered a major forest fire that troubled the party for most of a month of game time (nearly forever in real time). Many areas that were previously available were cut off by burning embers, and the smell of burning followed the party everywhere. This is where the first Mephits were spotted, except maybe the darkness spotted in earlier in Manny's Shadow...

The fire triggered the death of Weyland the Druid, as Ilvilkithar the Drow Priestess was miffed about some dead spiders. The adventurers tried to take her down, but she teleported away, right after summoned a massive spider. The party decided to depart the area rapidly, having suddenly recalled an urgent appointment elsewhere. Or perhaps they were just running for their lives...

With Weyland's death, the Dark Forest vanished. Not just the trees, mind you, but also the ground that the trees were on. Many overland routes were much shorter, bringing together several factions that turned out not to be good neighbors.

The party resolved to bring Weyland back, and after some adventuring, they achieved their goal. They brought his body to the Chapel of Tymora in Stillmound. On Weylands return to life, trees suddenly started springing up everywhere, pushing the Chapel of Tymora a short distance into the newly reformed Dark Forest.

The layout of the new Dark Forest was different from the old one, and was initially pathless.

Campaign Update

In Bursden, a farming community (populated by orcs following Luthic, the orc goddess of fertility, medicine, females and servitude), the party learned from Luthilda (orc village elder, crazy cat lady, and inveterate rock collector) that she thought Stillmound was actually run by vampires. In future visits, she lost some credibility by repeating this theory about a whole series of unlikely candidates.

Meanwhile, the party was tasked by the barkeep of the Tea Room Tavern (in the center of Stillmound) to deliver a lead-covered scarab to Miller Tavern in Darkpool. Caletha the barkeep was standing in sunlight at the time, so it seemed that perhaps the rumor about vampires did not apply to her.

The party delivered the scarab, and they received a puzzle box in return, with instructions to return the box to Stillmound. Naturally, the party opened it instead. They found magic gloves (Dex +6). Mikheil claimed them for his own, and the party resolved to avoid returning to Stillmound any time soon.

After a time, Mikheil has terrible dreams of his hands being cut off, followed by a terrible itching.

After that, Mikheil's least favorite orphan waif, Joe Oliver came to visit. He claimed he was sent to ask that the item be delivered.

Some time after that, the party was hunting a group of gypsies that had taken their silver, and stumbled into (a) A white barghest, and two rounds into that combat (b) 10 gypsies "with strangely protruding canine teeth." These Vampire Spawn managed to bring half the party down (con drainage) when Caletha arrived to finish the job with mental domination. It turns out that she was a vampire after all.

So the party all picked up the Vampire template, and an overwhelming obedience to their new vampiric mistress... And so far, Mikheil has managed to keep his gloves.

d20 entry for vampires
Vampire traits in folklore and fiction