Updated At the Mines of Madness Adventure

For some reason, blogger kept timing out after my last post, so I had to delete it. Again, you can download the pdf and associated stat blocks for At the Mines of Madness here. It’s been reformatted and updated from the original. I couldn’t get it to properly format with the monster stat blocks and maps in the document file, so just put them in folders to make them a bit easier to manage. Lemme know what you like about it, what you hate about it, and if the idea of an aberrant-centric adventure path holds any appeal.

Return to the Mines of Madness

After having fully ran At the Mines of Madness, I’m in the process of making a lot of changes before posting a new pdf file on Box.net for download. Before I do so, I’d like to hear people’s thoughts on it, in particular what you thought of the encounters, pacing, and overall feel of the adventure. Lemme know via email and/or comments so I can make it as good as I can before finalizing it. After that, if there’s enough interest, I’ll move on to formatting and publishing the next adventure, The Shadows Over Greyshore.

At the Mines of Madness Finale

We wrapped up the last session of At the Mines of Madness last week, a session that I’ve forgotten much of the fine details. I do recall that in a fit of characteristic paranoia the party buried their treasure since they were afraid of it turning them into aberrant horrors, which to be fair was apt since the aberrant corruption caused Liz to grow a carapace over her arm, and Beth’s character to grow a gibbering mouth on her side (but since Liz wanted the mouth, they decided to trade). Picking up where we left off, the characters following a trail of dark green slime that lead into the mining quarry, deducing mine 13 to be the source of the problems due to a steady stream of water trickling forth. They figured there was a lot of bad shit inside, but unable to make any worthwhile preparations ventured forth and trounced my skill challenge to avoid getting lost from dimensional warping and psychic static fairly easily. It’s good when you have associated skills.


They located the shrine, which had a heavily damaged earth tumbler sitting just outside the entrance. The damage allowed an elemental to mostly free itself from its Khyber dragonshard prison, meaning that they had to fight it and try to rebind it to the shard so that it would stop escaping and harassing them. Despite only being a level 2 solo, its combined slams allowed it to immediately bloody Randy’s battlemind, to which he proclaimed that it was a good thing he would doing his job proper, as it could have outright dropped or possibly killed anyone else in the party. I wasn’t worried since Liz’s rogue is thoroughly optimized and Beth’s liberal use of Thunder keyword attacks kept it’s Defenses perpetually reduced to brute levels.


Repairing the earth tumbler cost them a Make Whole ritual scroll, but with the net gain of an elemental vehicle I think they’re more than willing to call it a wash. Inside the shrine they found more fell taints, some orc skeletons, and a pool containing some chuul nymphs that they sealed with stone sarcophagi because they were ridiculously paranoid at what might happen if they had to go into the water (and Josh failed numerous skill checks to try and freeze it). They did fish out a dead body before hand that had a time-warping wondrous item, so it wasnt all that bad. Their brief venture into the aberrant shrine ended once they’d found a reality tear, sealed it, and toppled an idol dedicated to Dagon.


On their way out of town, they decided to hit up the inn and discovered the last reality tear, so took precautions that involved burning the entire inn to the ground, detonating ale kegs in the cellar where it was located, and then burying the whole site (just to be sure). The only surviving creature was a lowly flumph that the two female players (Liz and Beth) immediately befriended…and queried as to whether it could wear a snazzy hat. The little guy proved useful when they made camp in town and were attacked by a leveled-up ethereal marauder…or rather he would have, had Liz been able to successfully pantomime to the party that there was a monster outside. Eh, it died quickly regardless of its Elite status, so whatever. Randy can drop it off at a Gatekeeper organization in Zarash’ak to up his reputation.


That was the last session in a nutshell, next Tuesday they’re off to Greyshore so that they can try and find a boat back to Zarash’ak so that they can report what happened. They do know that someone from Greyshore had stopped by Shardpit to try and buy all the golden relics that they buried, but they don’t know why. So…we’ll see what happens next week.

At the Mines of Madness Adventure

Here is the first adventure in the Tendrils of Fate adventure path, At the Mines of Madness. It’s written entirely by me with some maps redone by Victor (aka ThePlaneswalker) and takes place in Eberron (specifically the Shadow Marches). Unfortunately since its not an “official” adventure by WotC the production value is shit and though I did some proofreading I’m sure I missed a lot of things.

Frankly, I’d consider at best to be a heavy outline of information to use as a framework and modify to taste. Also, I don’t think that I can post stat blocks for some of the monsters (even though its not commercial), so you’ll have to have access to either Adventure Tools (recommended) or the Monster Manual books. Don’t worry, it’ll tell you which ones and for what monsters.

Finally, if you dig it and would like to see more, lemme know in the comments. This took quite awhile to cobble together, so if you really like it, donations are appreciated!

At the Mines of Madness, Part 2

Part 1

After camping out in a cramped, blood-soaked, very hot single room “house” (more like a hut) the party continued investigating the mining camp. They decided to hit up the Shardpit garrison, with Moxie (Liz) and Hawkeye (Josh) scouting ahead to see if it was clear. The doors to the garrison were open, and they could see something moving about inside in the morning light. Moxie tried to get closer while Hawkeye went back for the rest of the gang, and on the return trip Randy’s character knocked over some crates, causing one of the warped hounds to investigate. Unfortunately, Moxie was a bit too close and she was the first thing it saw.

The encounter was pretty brutal, with a level 2 elite, some normal level 2’s and a quartet of warped hounds to round it all out (600 XP). Most of the fighting occured in the gate, so there wasn’t a lot of room and Randy ended up getting gang-raped by powerful strikes and dog bites. Though the XP budget was high, this encounter shouldn’t have been as hard as it was since the monsters had Defenses of 15 or less (and the elite had an AC of 14). No, the real culprit here was shitty rolls on both sides of the screen. There was a string of bad luck for me where I didn’t roll anything higher than a 6, and brutes are already suffering for attack bonuses. I threw in the warped hounds hoping that they could teleport into key locations and grant the guards and hunter combat advantage, but the party refused to move out of the gatehouse (to their benefit).

Further investigation of the garrison had them hewing their way through more warped guards, a few warped Tharashk hunters, and even the Tharashk patriarch before discovering a +1 byeshk scimitar. True adventurers, they even scrounged up the leftovers out of the pantry for a few days of rations. In the last wing of the garrison barracks they found out the source of the problem; a planar tear connected to Xoriat (Far Realm) that was bleeding warping energy into the natural world. While Beth’s character tried to seal it using Arcana, various forms of fell taints slipped out and attacked. It took them quite awhile as Beth was only able to succeed when she had her ferret roll for her. I’m not kidding; when Beth rolled she couldn’t get a single 9 on the die, but if she put it in the ferret’s paws and let it drop, it worked every time.

After sealing the rift they rested up in the kitchen since it only had one door and some tables to prop against it, they head over to the House Tharashk enclave. They rummaged through personnel files–which were mostly complaints from miners about various illnesses and symptoms–and found a logbook with entries pertaining to a man named Obed from the small fishing town of Greyshore who’d apparently showed up prior to the incident hoping to purchase any relics found in the mine. Hawkeye had heard of the place, it was poverty-stricken and almost never received visitors because it had nothing to offer anyone except a meager existence.

Further exploration had them face off with a few more hunters, an insane dwarf artificer and his chisel-wielding assistants, and sealing a second planar tear. This was a more lucrative run, as they found hundreds of gold pieces worth of unfinished and finished dragonshards, gemcutting kits in case they wanted to try their hands and improving the value of the small horde, a Khyber dragonshard, and a tangler (which Randy isn’t so sure he trusts). Oh, and they found a dried mucus trail leading down into the mining quarry, which I’m sure will not result in anything bad, no siree.

At the Mines of Madness, Part 1

I’ve finally started off a new campaign after shelving Songs of Erui since the only original character’s was Josh/Shazbot’s, a razorclaw ranger named Greymalkin. I’ve been itching to run something Eberron since it came out last year, and after building up on a one-shot idea I had am glad to be back in Khorvaire, or more accurately the Shadow Marches. For the curious, here’s the party roster (the reason I list the player’s name first is because I only remember the name of Liz and Josh’s characters).

• Liz is playing a changling rogue named Moxie.
• Randy is playing a half-elf battlemind whose name I forget.
• Josh is playing a half-orc seeker named Hawkeye (or rather, Hok’Ai, or some such spelling)
• Beth is playing a kalashtar bard that uses a bow.

I mentioned a long time ago that I was going to start out this adventure with a flashback vignette, in which the players played commoner-type characters running from something in the middle of the night. They didn’t know what it was, just that people in Shardpit started going crazy, killing and eating each other. Naturally they and a bunch of other townsfolk legged it and after many hours were severely dwindled in number and exhausted, which was about the time I started murdering them. It started off shaky, and in the final adventure writeup I’m going to note how I think it would be better initiated, but suffice to say it did a good job of getting the players freaked out and wondering what the fuck was going on.

Of course, I did forget to mention that some of them had golden treasures of various sorts, but I added them in later when the party looted their digested corpses.

The adventure opened up with the party guiding a caravan through the Shadow Marches, along with a few minion soldiers to try and even up the odds with the 938 XP encounter that they ran into. It had bullywugs and frogs, which they laughed at until they realized that the croakers hit pretty hard and that if they burn healing surges then they get weakened for a turn. Yeeep, that shut ’em up.

After losing half the guards and chasing off the last remaining bullywug, they found some fish-themed treasures, half-digested corpses, and one without a head (their characters from the vignette). They didn’t laugh at that, but it did start getting them to ask questions (and Beth accusing frogs of being the BBEG). Realizing that they were getting closer to whatever it was they killed them before (but unable to act on out-of-character knowledge, heh heh), they proceeded to loot their previous characters–something that hasn’t happened since OD&D–they trekked on and arrived at Shardpit.

The gates were open, but finding everything abandoned looted the everburning torches and proceeded. They found a blood-spattered stone, and a stable with lots of dead horses. As they stood around arguing for a bit until crazy-eyed people started emerging from their houses. When a crazed human horde arrived, Liz described it as a very, “Left 4 Dead moment,” which I guess is apt.

And then a girl packing a hammer came rushing out of the stable, except that she had a shark mouth in her stomach. Actually, that’s still pretty similar to Left 4 Dead.

Okay, she wasn’t that ugly. Blegh.

They barely scraped by this fight with a few healing surges left, but still kept going until they got ambushed by dog-crab things that could teleport and the guards with tentacles for arms. I had the guards on top of the houses, hoping to grab characters and strangle them while the dogs distracted the rest of the party, but Josh fucked that plan by lighting the buildings on fire with his elemental spirits power. This attracted more of the crazed horde who upon seeing the warped guards and dogs didn’t stick around long.

At this point the party has abandoned the caravan wagons and lost two out of three merchants. The general prediction is that they will all die, which probably won’t happen because I’ve got at least five more adventures planned out. We’ll see who makes it through the next session.

Janow, Gnome Illusionist

Another pregen, this one is a natural fit and pretty optimized. 

Janow d’Sivis, level 1

Gnome, Wizard

Arcane Implement Mastery: Orb of Deception

Background: Zilargo (+2 to Insight)

FINAL ABILITY SCORES

Str 8, Con 11, Dex 10, Int 18, Wis 13, Cha 18.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES

Str 8, Con 11, Dex 10, Int 16, Wis 13, Cha 16.

AC: 14 Fort: 10 Reflex: 14 Will: 16

HP: 21 Surges: 6 Surge Value: 5

TRAINED SKILLS

Arcana +11, History +9, Insight +8, Diplomacy +11

UNTRAINED SKILLS

Acrobatics, Bluff +4, Dungeoneering +1, Endurance, Heal +1, Intimidate +4, Nature +1, Perception +1, Religion +4, Stealth +2, Streetwise +4, Thievery, Athletics -1

FEATS

Wizard: Ritual Caster

Level 1: Mark of Scribing

POWERS

Wizard at-will 1: Illusory Ambush

Wizard at-will 1: Phantom Bolt

Wizard encounter 1: Grasping Shadows

Wizard daily 1: Horrid Whispers

Wizard daily 1 Spellbook: Sleep

ITEMS

Spellbook, Adventurer’s Kit, Cloth Armor (Basic Clothing), Dagger, Orb Implement, Identification Papers with Portrait, Woodwind, Camouflaged Clothing

RITUALS

Comprehend Language, Glib Limerick, Secret Page

Thok, Half-Orc Artificer

One of the pregen characters for my Eberron adventure-path, I envision Thok as more or less like a Warhammer 40k orc, having a knack for building and manipulating magical gizmos. Just, you know, without the insane bloodlust and stupidity…so maybe not much like one at all…? Mostly I was going for a half-orc out in the backwater region of the Shadow Marches having to make due with what he’s got, and when that fails, he can hit it with his axe.

Now, I did cheat a bit and give him seven extra gps so that he could afford the war axe. A completely legit option is to take Crossbow Caster so that he can use his repeating crossbow as an implement (which I would take anyway), Arcane Fury (when he gets an AoE attack), Furious Concoction (“makin’ it orcy”), and Mark of Finding. Were I to play this character, I would definitely take them all, as it fits the theme.

From an optimization stance, this works better with a dwarf (or really anything that gets an Int and/or Con bonus) and taking static shock syncs better with his high Constitution. I was trying to stick with all Weapon-keyword powers.

Thok, level 1

Half-Orc, Artificer
Background: Tharashk Prospector (+2 to Dungeoneering)

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 12, Con 16, Dex 13, Int 16, Wis 13, Cha 8.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 16, Dex 11, Int 16, Wis 13, Cha 8.

AC: 15 Fort: 14 Reflex: 13 Will: 12
HP: 28 Surges: 9 Surge Value: 7

TRAINED SKILLS
Arcana +8, Perception +6, Heal +6, Dungeoneering +8, Thievery +6

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +1, Bluff -1, Diplomacy -1, Endurance +5, History +3, Insight +1, Intimidate +1, Nature +1, Religion +3, Stealth +1, Streetwise -1, Athletics +1

FEATS
Artificer: Ritual Caster
Level 1: Weapon Proficiency (Waraxe)

POWERS
Artificer at-will 1: Magic Weapon
Artificer at-will 1: Aggravating Force
Healing Infusion: Healing Infusion: Resistive Formula
Artificer encounter 1: Burning Weapons
Artificer daily 1: Flameburst Armor

ITEMS
Ritual Book, Leather Armor, Repeating crossbow, Adventurer’s Kit, Magazine, Crossbow Bolts (20), Waraxe
RITUALS
Brew Potion, Disenchant Magic Item, Enchant Magic Item, Make Whole

Swamp Ambush Map

I’m a fan of doing the random encounter bit while players are going from plot-pertinent area A to plot-pertinent area B, or at least making my players think that its random. I’m not really a fan of actually random encounters because all too often they are not relevant to the plot at all, and when the players know that it seems like so much padding and pointless grindage. Since 4E isnt a fan of throwing out ludicrous amounts of treasure, in most cases you can’t even throw them a +1 enchanted bone to tickle their fancy.

The first encounter in At The Mines Of Madness appears to be a random encounter, but is in actuality carefully planned. Well, its not “carefully” planned, but I at least but enough forethought into it to draw up a map and populate the encounter ahead of time.

The caravan that the party is on gets ambushed by bullywugs and their trained battle-frogs (Monster Manual 3). The caravan is being guarded by more than just them (since the party might not all be hired to protect the caravan), so I decided to make it pretty damned hard.

Swamp Ambush (858 XP)

• 8 bullywug croakers (level 3 minion brute)
• 3 bullywug muckers (level 1 brute)
• 2 murklord frogs (level 2 skirmisher)

Treasure: crude gold bracelet (20 gp), crude gold necklace (15 gp), 3 gp, 20 sp. The jewelry is graven with an abstract fish motif (these were taken from the characters killed during the prologue).

The bullywugs will leg it if reduced to half their number or less. The frogs will also book it if they are bloodied and no bullywugs are within 3 squares of them. Depending on the player’s character, I will have the players control some or all of the guards (minion soldiers) and just give them the stat blocks to make it easier on me (in particular characters with a history of making caravan runs, Shadow Marches guides, or leader-types).

Lets talk about terrain features.

• Shallow Water: Difficult terrain for anyone without a swim speed. It also grants an attack bonus to creatures with the Aquatic keyword (ie, bullywugs and frogs). Characters taking ongoing fire damage can fall prone to immediately end the effect.
• Deep Water: Characters in deep water need to make Athletics checks to swim, and it still grants the aforementioned attack bonus. Creatures in deep water gain resist 5 fire, and ongoing fire damage automatically ends at the end of their turn.
• Trees: The large black dots are big trees that fill the entire square. Characters can climb them, and particularly devastating attacks might destroy them or knock them over. They also grant cover. The small dots are smaller trees that count as difficult terrain for everyone, and can also be destroyed.
• Bridge: Its mostly level with the ground. Characters pushed off of it make a save to avoid falling prone, but dont take damage if they fall in the water. It could be lit on fire, I suppose.

Shardpit Inn Map

Simple three-story inn.

• Bottles: Bottles can be wielded or thrown as an improvised weapon that deal 1d4 damage on a hit. If they are full, the next fire attack that hits the target deals 2 extra damage. Finally, characters can use them to prep molotov cocktails (minor action to prep, 1d6 fire damage on a hit).
• Chairs: Can be pushed into a monster (Strength versus Reflex), dealing no damage but knocking them prone on a hit. They also grant a +2 bonus on Athletics checks made to jump.
• Tables/Bar: Difficult terrain. Characters can stand on one without making any kind of check. They can be flipped over to gain cover.