Dateline – Storm Point

Way back when we started the Storm Point campaign, I threw in a little comment in one of the  background sheets I did, mentioning how the islands in Lake Thunder floated in a complex pattern through the storm that hung perpetually over the middle of the lake. I said that the representatives from the city of Beylis were planning on sending an expedition to one of the islands in order to ride it through the storm and see what was inside. One of the players said, basically, “Wow. I wish we could do that.” I replied, “So why don’t you?”

So the expedition to the floating islands was originally going to be the second adventure in the campaign. But things got sidetracked, what with the whole Jemmy Fish thing, which led to the goblins, which led to the Shadar-kai and their plot and eventually the siege of Storm Point. Now, with all that out of the way, everyone decided to go back to the floating island expedition.

I’ve had the finished scenario for this adventure done for close to a year. The problem, of course, is that now the PCs are level 7, not level 2, so I’ve had to redo all the encounters and treasure packages. Fortunately, that’s not such a big deal with the Monster Builder from Wizards – it allows exporting of stat blocks as both rich text and images, and does wonderful customization for you. The only thing it doesn’t do that I wish it did was apply templates. But, of course, it’s still in development, so that might be coming.

Anyway, it was a pretty quick job to update the adventure. The most time-consuming part was deciding on what new monsters to use – originally, I was using a lot of kobolds, and even leveling them up a fair bit, it started to strain my ideas of what kobolds were good for. So, I shifted to other, higher-level monsters.

I also did up a couple of maps and set things up for a magician’s choice kind of deal: when the party flew out on their hippogriffs to scout the available islands, they saw a number of small islands and two big ones ready to enter the storm. A few of the small islands had ruined structures on them, but none were any bigger than about a hundred yards across. The two larger islands each had a couple of ruined sites, were about five miles across, and were topped with ziggurats ringed by crystal spires. One large island was roughly kidney-shaped, and the other was vaguely heart-shaped.

What I didn’t tell the players was that the only real choice that mattered was whether they were going to a big island or a small island. The encounters on all the small islands were the same, as were the encounters on both the big islands. On the big islands, I had arranged them slightly differently, but that would affect only the order of encounters, really. Still, the set-up gave them a realistic perception of choice without me having to produce twice the number of encounters, half of which wouldn’t get used.

Well, they chose the heart-shaped island, and decided to land at a ruined Arkhosian fortification with a built-in aerial stable.

Now, a little bit of background about the Storm Point area is in order. Storm Point sits on the borders of what used to be Arkhosia and Bael Turath, the ancient dragonborn and tiefling empires that annihilated each other several centuries ago. This lets me litter the area with all sorts of interesting ruins, and explains the interest that other, more powerful nations have in this little backwater city. The floating islands are the shattered remnants of part of the Arkhosian defensive line that once stretched across the region to hold off the Bael Turathian flying fortresses. The Arkhosians used young dragons and large flying drakes as mounts, hence the aerial stable. The final conflict with Bael Turath broke the main islands in Lake Thunder, uprooting them, and casting them adrift in the storm that formed as a result of that last battle.

Okay. So, Arkhosian fort ruins with aerial stable. Good. Of course, it wasn’t undefended – as they were looking from the landing pad down to the parade ground, the arcane ballistae almost took the cleric’s head clean off. The party immediately swooped down to deal with these, and ran afoul of the iron cobras and advanced iron defenders hidden in the rubble and scrub*.

The battle was a little disordered – mainly because the players (myself included) were a little disordered. This was our first session in about a month and a half, and we spent a great deal of time off-topic, socializing, and otherwise not focusing on the game. Still, they managed fairly well against this rather easy encounter. Then, as we were ready to wrap up for the evening, I told them that the doors of the barracks and the stable opened up to let out a crowd of dragonborn ghouls and a zombie-like dragon.

And we called it a night.

Next session starts with the rolling of initiative. That should provide a little focus.

*2 arcane ballistae, 2 iron cobras, 2 advanced iron defenders (6th level) = 1500 xp, a 6th-level encounter for six characters. Back