Go to Part 1

PROACTIVE NODES

PROACTIVE 1: HAND ON THE STREET

• Can be seen anywhere (driving by, outside the boarding house, etc.)

PROACTIVE 2: TANIT CULTISTS

• Sent by Barca at any point where PCs have been identified

PROACTIVE 3: WHISKEY DEATH

• Contacted by Fred Watson at any time concerning the death of the one of the cops who had been at the James J. Hill House.

PROACTIVE 1: HAND ON THE STREET

SEEING THE HAND

• Can happen at almost any time that the PCs are walking or driving along the street.
• Shouldn’t be a busy street (the hand doesn’t want to attract a crowd or anything).

TRACKING THE HAND

• Survival: The hand appears to have tracked through some talc powder and telltale traces can be followed back to a nearby apartment (it dropped out of the open window).
• Streetwise: Can find a couple of kids bowling with bicycle rims who, with a little Reassurance, saw the hand drop out of the window.
• Library Use/Simple Search: A day or two later a small item will appear in the Minneapolis Star about a body being found in the area without a left hand.

THE APARTMENT

A single-room apartment with yellowish, nicotine-stained plaster walls.

• A rumpled Murphy’s bed.

Kurt Nordberg lies dead with his head down on a plain wooden table with two chairs that’s shoved up against the wall against a partially open window.

• His left hand is missing.
• A half-empty bottle of Minnesota 13 Whiskey is on the table next to his right hand.

Streetwise: Kurt has a son named Erik. They had a screaming argument two nights ago.

ERIK

• His father was a drunk (that’s what the argument was about).
• His father had been suffering from a muscular dystrophy.
  • GM Note: This is why the full transformation failed and the hand wandered off on its own.
• He knows that his father bought his liquor from a man named Oleg Andersson.

CRAWLING HAND OF TANIT: Athletics 2, Fleeing 6, Scuffling 4, Health 4

Hit Threshold: 4 (tiny, quick moving hand)
Alertness Modifier: +1 (10% eye by volume)
Stealth Modifier: 2 (tiny skittering hand)
Weapons: eye gouge, scratching, unpleasant probing (-3)
Stability Loss: +1

Eye of Tanit: Pupil twists into a curlicue. Stability test (no loss). On failure, establish trance like state. On second failure, can issue a hypnotic compulsion that will last until trance ends. Being controlled has a potential of 4-point Stability loss.

PROACTIVE 2: TANIT CULTISTS

CULTISTS: Dressed in very nice suits.

• Each has an Eye in their left palm.
• They carry Minneapolis Federal Reserve business cards.

TANIT CULTISTS: Athletics 5, Firearms 4, Scuffling 6, Weapons 5, Health 8

Alertness Modifier: +1 (three eyes are better than two)
Stealth Modifier: 0
Weapons: dagger (0), fists (-2), small caliber pistols (-1)
Stability Loss: +0, if seeing the eye

PROACTIVE 3: WHISKEY DEATH

OFFICER OSCAR LUNDSEN: Stole one of the bottles of whiskey from James J. Hill House and then died while drinking it in his small St. Paul flat later. When he didn’t show up for a shift, a patrol car found his body.

• Left hand is missing.
• Prop: Minnesota 13 Whiskey

Go to Pregenerated Characters

Rescuing Lulu From Elturel is the second part of the Descent From Waterdeep series, which is designed to reshape Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Descent Into Avernus into a cohesive campaign.

Don’t bother looking for the other three parts, though, because they haven’t been released yet. And that’s okay, because Rescuing Lulu is quite capable of not only standing on its own, but demanding your attention.

If idea of weaving Dragon Heist and Descent Into Avernus into a single campaign doesn’t sound appealing, you can ignore that bit, too, because Rescuing Lulu can also be used:

• To weave Elturel into a Tyranny of Dragons
• As a pointcrawl supplement detailing Elturel before its Fall.
• As a supplement to the Alexandrian Remix of Descent Into Avernus.

And more!

If anything, I think the default frame of Rescuing Lulu — in which the PCs meet Lulu during the events of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Lulu is kidnapped by Zarielite cultists and taken to Elturel, and the PCs follow — is more a hindrance to this book than anything else. (But more on that later.)

THE WEAVE

The first thing I love about Rescuing Lulu is how Hunter Stardust weaves together material from a multitude of sources, particularly other DM’s Guild books. This is something I’ve seen a few other DM’s Guild authors attempt, but it’s often awkward. Stardust, on the other hand, pulls it off smoothly and effortlessly, and Rescuing Lulu could be an exemplar for others interested in doing the same.

The reason I love this is that, when done well, it can very easily elevate the value of all the integrated works into something greater than the sum of its parts. If you’re familiar with how my Avernus Remix approached the Avernian Hexcrawl, then you’ve seen similar praxis.

On that note, one of the sources Stardust uses is, in fact, the Alexandrian remixes of both Dragon Heist and Descent Into Avernus. Rescuing Lulu is specifically designed to be integrated with the remixes, although options are given for those using strictly the published versions of the campaigns.

Other sources include:

• Blue Alley
• Hellturel
• The Hellriders Keep
• Baldur’s Gate: Fall of Elturel
• Encounters in Avernus

(If you’re unfamiliar with these supplements, I’ve previously done reviews of most of them, which you can check out here.)

While juggling and integrating all of this material, Stardust is also constantly offering options: Using Blue Alley in Chapter 2 of Dragon Heist? Here’s how you can use it to introduce Lulu. Not doing that? Here are three other options.

Stardust is meticulous with his cross-referencing and his notes are smart, thoughtful, and flexible. The only possible improvement here would be hyperlinks.

THE MAP

The second thing I love about Rescuing Lulu is the map of pre-Fall Elturel. Created by Meshon Cantrill, this map is absolutely stunning:

It is an absolutely perfect companion piece to Jared Blando’s post-Fall map of the city in Descent Into Avernus, which is no mean feat.

Frankly, even if you used absolutely nothing else from Rescuing Lulu, the book would be worth buying just for the multiple, high-resolution versions of the city map.

THE POINTCRAWL

Within its many variations, Rescuing Lulu is built around an investigation spine:

• The PCs meet Lulu.
• Lulu is kidnapped by Zarielite cultists, who take her to Elturel to be sacrificed as part of a ritual.
• The PCs track Lulu to Elturel.
• The PCs explore Elturel, which is described using a pointcrawl.
• While exploring the city, they discover clues indicating that Lulu can be found at a ritual masquerading as a wedding ceremony.
• The PCs perform a heist at the wedding ceremony, rescuing Lulu and hopefully disrupting the ritual.
• The cultists all shrug and invite the PCs to have some cake. (Hmm… We’ll come back to that.)

The real heart of Rescuing Lulu, therefore, is the Elturian pointcrawl. (This also takes up roughly half of the book’s 65 pages, with another ten pages being given over to the final heist scenario and the rest mostly fleshing out the preliminary investigation and epilogue.)

This pre-Fall ‘crawl of the city is a nice companion piece to the post-Fall ‘crawl of Hellturel found in the Avernus Remix. Every location is richly detailed and ready-for-play, being sourced and adapted from a variety of sources including Volo’s Guide to the Sword Coast, Forgotten Realm Adventures, and the Alexandrian Remix itself. It sets up the structure of urban pointcrawling for groups unfamiliar with it, and also gives the players an intimate familiarity with the city which will makes its post-apocalyptic incarnation in Descent Into Avernus all the more shocking.

RESERVATIONS

So there’s clearly a lot of like about Rescuing Lulu From Elturel, and I’ve already told you that I think you should buy the book if you’re planning to do anything with pre-Fall Elturel in your campaign. But I do have some reservations that you should be aware of before snagging your copy.

First, the book could really benefit from some rigorous proofreading. There are a lot of typos strewn across the text, most of them of minor significance but a few which seem to create significant errors.

Second, there’s some material that I find to be quite awkward in its execution. For example, there are several instances where encounter checks are made by having the DM roll a die and then having the players guess a number: if the number matches, the encounter happens. It’s difficult for me to imagine doing that at the actual gaming table. Perhaps the intention is to engage the players in some way? For me, it doesn’t work.

Third, if you are planning to use Rescuing Lulu in conjunction with the Alexandrian Remix of Descent Into Avernus, you should be aware that there are some significant changes to continuity, most of which are not clearly indicated. You’ll need to keep on your toes to make sure everything lines up.

Fourth, Rescuing Lulu is whimsical and kinda wacky. For example, there’s Morrale the Beerholder — an alcoholic beholder who serves drinks at a tavern and uses random eyebeam attacks to assault PCs who don’t tip him. This tone is not really my jam, particularly for a Descent Into Avernus campaign. It’s significant enough that I, personally, wouldn’t use this book as written. But I know that for many people this is exactly the tone they’re looking for, and if that’s the case for you, then you’ll love this!

The biggest reservation I have when it comes to Rescuing Lulu, unfortunately, is the adventure itself. There’s so much cool material and so many varied tools packed into its pages that could be useful in so many ways… but which is instead made subservient to a specific conceit.

For example, it feels like there’s an alternate version of this book which is just called ELTUREL and features a pointcrawl sourcebook for the city along with additional material (like a Rescuing Lulu adventure) that can be used in conjunction with the pointcrawl sourcebook. And that version of the book is a lot more useful to a lot more people.

As written, however, the pointcrawl becomes subservient to the adventure, which greatly limits its potential utility. It also becomes quite heavy-handed in its foreshadowing of the Fall, which ties into some of the continuity issues I mentioned before. As depicted here, everyone in the city seems ready for the Fall to happen, and are often giving the PCs a nudge-and-a-wink about it, and there are so many Zarielite cultists cavorting in the street that everyone who isn’t a cultist is like, “Man, have you seen all the cultists around town?”

So as you’re considering whether to add Rescuing Lulu From Elturel to your own library, you should keep these reservations in mind. But, as I’ve already said, this is a supplement which, despite my reservations, I recommend.

GRADE: B-

Buy now!

This review was requested and sponsored by a patron of the Alexandrian.

Go to Part 1

EXTERIOR

Architecture: The Minneapolis Federal Reserve is designed in neo-classical style, with pilasters and a colonnade supporting an upper frieze. The Corinthian composite capitals are topped with volutes decorated with acanthus leaves.

• There’s an upper parapet, from which the upper windows (requiring Locksmith, but leading to the Executive Offices and Office Floor) could be accessed.

Occult / Art History: Acanthus leaves are a symbol of immortality and resurrection in Greco-Phoenician art. Curiously, in Christian symbolism its meaning is inverted, representing sin, punishment, and death.

ENTRANCES

MAIN ENTRANCE: The main entrance is up a short flight of stairs. The doors are embossed metal, over a dozen feet high, and weigh nine tons. (They’re counterweighted so that a person can open them. They’re kept open during the day. At night they’re barred from the inside.)

This entrance leads through a doubly-barred foyer and, from there, into the Entrance Lobby.

Day & Night: 2 Fed Security Officers

DELIVERY ENTRANCE: The construction crews working on finishing the interior of the building are using the delivery area to stage their work. At night, the heavy steel security doors are locked and there’s a Fed Security Officer on duty.

The Delivery Entrance provides access to the Counting Rooms & Archives.

INTERIOR

CONSTRUCTION ZONES: There are still numerous areas of the Federal Reserve Building that are under construction. During the day, construction crews are active throughout these areas.

ELEVATOR LOBBIES: Each level of the Federal Reserve Building has an elevator lobby with six elevators. They provide immediate access to the Main Lobby, Banking Room, Archives, and Office Floor. They do NOT go to the Vault or Counting Rooms.

• Director’s Private Elevator: One elevator goes to Barca’s office, although this requires the use of a special security key. (Carried by Barca and also the security shift leader.) This elevator shaft also provides access to the Tophet (but this can only be activated from Barca’s office, see below).

ENTRANCE LOBBY

ENTRANCE LOBBY: A breathtaking chamber tiled in white marble with a bronze ceiling. A grand marble staircase with a massive and intricately cast bronze railing curls up to the Banking Room on the second level. A set of double mahogany doors leads to the elevator lobby.

BANKING LOBBY

A gargantuan chamber; the ceiling supported by huge marble pillars. The floor is polished terrazzo. There are imposing marble desks around the perimeter, including a security station. The center of the room is filled with bankers doing business from within steel-barred cages. Red carpets run

• Day: 4 Fed Security Officers
• Occult: The red carpets are arranged
• Vault Access: The banking cages contain access to the Counting Rooms on the lower level (and, from there, to the Vault).
• Elevator Lobby: At one end of the Banking Room.
• Grand Stairs: To Entrance Lobby.
• Stairs: To Archives & Office Floor.

COUNTING ROOMS

On the lower level, there are multiple rooms dedicated to counting cash (both outgoing and incoming). The machinery for automatically counting coins has recently been installed, along with tallying calculators. There are also large supplies of canvas sacks and currency straps, but no actual cash.

• Leaving: There are stairs leading up from the Counting Room to the Banking Floor. A large corridor leads to the Delivery Entrance.
• Vault Access: You have to pass through the Counting Rooms to reach the Vault.

VAULT

The Vault is a vast, multi-chambered space in its own right. Although the heavy vault door is locked, the Vault itself is empty.

Tophet Entrance: The floor of the innermost chamber of the Vault is decorated with a giant Eye of Horus. This pupil of the Eye can be rotated and then slid to the side, revealing a staircase leading down to the Tophet.

ARCHIVES

The Archives of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve have begun to be transferred from the New York Life Building, but they have not yet begun to be unpacked. So there are empty shelves and filing cabinets, along with a lot of crates neatly stacked here and ready for move-in day.

Mail Room: Mail is also sorted in this area, potentially allowing investigators to figure out which offices in the building are currently occupied.

• Elevator Lobby: Can be accessed here.
• Stairs: Lead up to the Office Floor / Executive Offices.

OFFICE FLOOR / EXECUTIVE OFFICES

These occupy the upper floors of the Federal Reserve Building. Desks and other furniture have been moved in, but only the Executive Offices are occupied (by cultists).

• Elevator Lobby: Accessible here.
• Stairs: Lead down to Archives and the Banking Floor.
• Barca’s Office: Barca’s office is located among the Executive Offices.

BARCA’S OFFICE

The luxurious office you’d expect from the Director of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve. Lush, blood-colored carpet. A huge desk of dark oak.

Architecture / Bureaucracy: Barca has the true plans of the Vault, including the Tophet chamber, in his desk. This includes both the Vault access (fully detailed) and the Private Elevator can access the Tophet (though not exactly how) and broad details of facility (although not the brass pressure chamber, which was constructed separately). Physics notes that there’s some truly bizarre equipment installed in the walls of the globular chamber, although its ultimate purpose is not clear from the blueprints.

Private Elevator: A short back hallway leads from Barca’s office to his private elevator. Calling the elevator requires a special key, which is carried by Barca and also the security shift leader, or Lockpicking.

Secret Elevator: A secret panel next to the elevator contains a switch. If flipped, the private elevator will descend directly to the Tophet.

THE TOPHET

Entry: Both the stairs from the Vault and the secret elevator from Barca’s Office descend into a small entry chamber. A large brass incense bowl depends from the ceiling on thick ropes of silk. (It’s not currently lit unless a ritual is planned for this same night.)

Cell: A small cell is built into the wall of the Entry. (The children are transferred here shortly before the ritual.)

• There’s a stack of neatly folded children’s clothes (used) in the corner of the cell.

Laboratory: A door out of the entry chamber leads to a small chemistry laboratory. This is where the Tophet serum is prepared (see “The Ritual,” below). The investigators can find vials, etc. consistent with the Tophet serum they’ve encountered elsewhere.

Gantry: Another exit leads to a short gantry ending in a pressurized door leading into the Tophet Chamber. The door can only be opened from this side (uh-oh) and a set of controls at the end of the gantry will allow it to be extended out into the Tophet Chamber (providing access to the pressure vessel in the center of the chamber, see below).

THE TOPHET CHAMBER

The Tophet Chamber is a huge, spherical chamber. The inner walls are minutely etched with strange geometric patterns and runes. In the center of the chamber is a Brass Sphere, which appears to simply float in place.

• Physics: The sphere would appear to be held in place by some form of powerful electromagnetic field projected from the walls… which is odd, though, because brass isn’t magnetic. So there must be something more complicated going on with the Sphere.
• Runes – Archaeology / Occult: These appear to be Phoenician runes.

The Brass Sphere: The sphere is a pressure vessel made from brass. Its surface is minutely etched (in a fashion similar to an electrical board; although the PCs won’t be able to draw that comparison). On the top of the sphere is a pressure hatch that seals seamlessly with the brass.

• Chemistry: The etching seems similar to acid-etching, but isn’t. It’s too minutely detailed.
• Chemistry 1 / Physics 1: Examining the sphere with any kind of magnification (or a point spend) reveals a fractal nature (although the character lacks the terminology for this) — a never-ending, spiraling pattern in which the edges of the etching are also marked by even more detailed etching.
• Hatch: Can only be opened from the outside (uh-oh).

Inside the Sphere: The inside of the Sphere is similarly etched, just like the outside.

The Ritual:

• The gantry is extended and a child is placed naked inside the Sphere.
• The Sphere is sealed, the gantry withdrawn, and the pressure door sealed, isolating the chamber.
• The Sphere is electrically powered, reducing sacrificial victims to alchemically charged ash. (This ash could be described as Tanit “spores,” although the analogy only goes so far.)
• The cultists immediately process the ash into active Tophet serum using the facility onsite. (This is time sensitive, as the “spores” can’t survive long without being preserved within the serum.)

---

STAFF & SECURITY

FED STAFF MEMBERS: Athletics 3, Credit Rating 3, Driving 2, Fleeing 4, Health 2, Scuffling 2, Weapons 2

Weapons: -2 (fists), -1 (improvised weapon)

FED SECURITY OFFICER: Athletics 5, Health 6, Scuffling 6, Sense Trouble 6, Weapons 3

Alertness Modifier: +1
Weapons: -1 (truncheon), +1 (pistol), -2 (fists) 

TANIT CULTISTS: Athletics 5, Firearms 4, Scuffling 6, Weapons 5, Health 8

Alertness Modifier: +1 (three eyes are better than two)
Stealth Modifier: 0
Weapons: dagger (0), fists (-2), small caliber pistols (-1)
Stability Loss: +0, if seeing the eye

---

JOHN BARCA

APPEARANCE

• Prop: Photo of John Barca

ROLEPLAYING NOTES

• Behind a thin veneer of sanity is an obsessed lunatic under the thrall of Tanit.
• Convinced he’s doing the best thing for all.
• Obsessive, confident, dismissive.

BACKGROUND

• Barca is a Yale graduate (and member of Skull & Bones). (It’s an open question whether or not he was infected at Yale or at some later date. If at Yale, it seems likely that all of Skull & Bones is Tanit-infested.)
• He was appointed by President Warren Harding to serve on the Federal Reserve Board in Washington in May 1921.
• In May 1923, he resigned to return briefly to private business in St. Paul. Within a few months, however, he was appointed to a joint leadership role at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve.
• He’s the second chairman of the Mineapolis Federal Reserve, advancing into the position after the death of John Rich last year.

CLUES

• Following Barca: Will lead them to the Minneapolis Federal Reserve.
• Library Use – Barca: Easily reveals Barca’s position as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
• Prop: Minneapolis Federal Reserve Business Cards

JOHN BARCA: Athletics 6, Driving 6, Firearms 7, Sense Trouble 10, Fleeing 4, Scuffling 5, Weapons 8, Health 10

Alertness Modifier: +2 (paranoid)
Stealth Modifier: +1 (sneaky)
Weapons: Dagger (+0), Pistol (+0), Fists (-2)
Stability Loss: +0, if seeing the eye
Hypnosis of the Hand: Pupil twists and distorts into a curlicue. Stability test (difficulty 4, no loss): On failure, hand has established a hypnotic state. On second failure, they can issue a hypnotic command that must be followed.

Go to Proactive Nodes

As many of you know, but some of you perhaps do not, I have a book coming out!

So You Want To Be a Game Master will be released October 31st from Macmillan and Page Street Publishing. In this Twitch stream we took a deep dive into the book, exploring the full Table of Contents and chatting about some of the hidden treasures you’ll find within.

You can find the video here if the embedded player doesn’t work for you.

PREORDER NOW!

Has the Candela Obscura Quickstart convinced me to run the game? And will it convince you? Should you take the time to check out this new roleplaying game from Critical Role and Darrington Press? Why is Candela Obscura a game afraid of its own shadow? ENnie Award-winning designer Justin Alexander dives into the controversy.

Download the Quickstart

Subscribe Now!