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ZARIEL’S CRUSADE

• Zariel’s experiences at Idyllglen refocused her. Although she had served in Heaven’s armies, the conflict had always been somewhat abstract to her; or, at least, an affair of the Outer Planes where the conflict had long been relegated in most realms to a Cold War where the borders between realms had been long-settled. Now she had seen firsthand how the evils of the Abyss seeped out into the wider planes, inflicting untold horrors upon the multiverse.
• Zariel began advocating for a more belligerent military policy. Some called her a warmonger, but Zariel disagreed: The war already existed, whether the angelic legions chose to fight in it or not.
• Others said that it should be left to the Blood War: Let Evil annihilate itself. There was no need for Heaven to spend itself in the conflict. But this, Zariel argued, made Heaven complicit in the system that corrupted mortal souls to fight in that war; and turned a blind eye to the demonic miseries suffered by untold millions. The stalemate of the Blood War did not keep Evil in check; it perpetuated it. And it was Heaven’s duty to end it.

THE SECOND VISIT TO IDYLLGLEN

• Following Zariel’s intercession against Yeenoghu, Idyllglen had erected a shrine honoring the angel who had saved their village. In the early 10^th century DR, Idyllglen’s existence was once again threatened, this time by a marauding band of ogres led by a warlord named Irontusk.
• Zariel answered the prayers of the villagers, journeying to the Material Plane with Lulu to aid them.
• When they arrived, they met a young woman named Yael who had managed to organize the younger villagers into a defensive militia of sorts. Yael gladly yielded command of the militia to Zariel, who taught them much of the arts of war and forged them into a band of steadfast companions. The three of them – Zariel, Lulu, and Yael – became fast friends. With each new challenge they faced, Yael would smile and say, “We just need to dream a little bigger.” Soon Zariel and Lulu were saying it, too.
• In a campaign that lasted for several months – during which the ranks of the militia swelled as it attracted recruits from other nearby settlements south of the Winding Water – Zariel defeated Irontusk’s warbands. Yael herself killed Irontusk in the climactic battle, and the remnants of the warband fled back across the Sunset Mountains and into the Goblin Marches to the east.

DAWN OF THE HELLRIDERS

• Zariel returned to Mount Celestia, but the lust of battle still smoldered in her blood. Having tasted the fleeting, fast-paced passion of the mortals, she became even more frustrated with the glacial pace of change in the celestial realms. Her thoughts turned again and again to Yael and her other comrades in arms. Dream a little bigger.
• One night on the silver, starlit beaches of Mercuria, Zariel and Lulu hatched their plan: They would return to the Material Plane and raise a mortal army. The army would invade the Abyss, creating a second front in the Blood War. Zariel believed that, if she could establish a flanking beachhead, other disaffected angelic warriors from Mount Celestia would rally to their cause. They didn’t have to win. They just had to upset the balance of the Blood War so that it would no longer be a stalemate.
• Yael’s Zarielites: When they returned to the Material Plane, Zariel and Lulu discovered that Yael had turned their militia into a regional peacekeeping force. (The ogres had not returned, but there’d been a spot of trouble with trolls out of the Trollclaws. Mostly they secured travel between the Winding Water settlements.) Known as the Zarielites, they wore a badge with twin suns, representing Zariel and Lulu as their angelic saviors.

Note: This informal heraldry would be forgotten by the later Hellriders, but not by Zariel, who took a grim satisfaction in the irony of having her followers revive it as the heraldry of the Order of the Companion centuries later.

• Yael’s response when she heard Zariel’s plan? Let’s dream a little bigger.
• Olanthius, Lord of Elturel: Word of Zariel’s return spread and recruitment swelled. Yael became an ambassador of sorts, spreading the good word of Zariel’s Crusade. Lulu often accompanied her on these journeys, including arguably the most important of them all, when Yael went south to Elturel. Olanthius was impressed with Yael’s courage and righteousness, and pledged his service to the Crusade. (Olanthius and Yael would later fall in love.)
• The Elturian Crusade: With Olanthius joining the cause, Zariel moved the headquarters of the Crusade south to Elturel.
• Haruman, Lord Knight of the Far Hills: Another major recruit to the Crusade was the Lord Knight of the Far Hills. Haruman had once been known as the Boy Warlord, rising from obscurity as a slave in the Goblin Marches to conquer Farkeep (the citadel which would later become known as Darkhold) at the age of thirteen. Hearing of Zariel’s holy cause, he rode down to Elturel from the Sunset Mountains and pledged all of his knights to her service.
• The Three Generals: Yael, Olanthius, and Haruman became known as the Three Generals, swearing fealty to the holy cause of the Crusade — to crush the evil of the Abyss under the guidance of Zariel.

Note: Jander Sunstar was a knight-banneret in Haruman’s service. He was the one who first learned of the Crusade and converted Haruman to the cause. If you’re looking to place these events in Jander’s personal timeline – as related in Christie Golden’s Vampire of the Mists and various short stories – they occur between the time that Jander leaves the Dalelands and arrives in Waterdeep.

THE CHARGE OF THE HELLRIDERS

While preparations continued to be made for their invasion of the Abyss, the crusaders were not quiescent. They secured the lands around Elturel and undertook a number of goodwill actions. They also went on a number of quests to secure the supplies necessary for waging war against demonic hordes.

YEENOGHU’S GAMBIT

• Yeenoghu learned that Zariel was raising a huge mortal army and planned to invade the Abyss with it.
• In response, Yeenoghu returned to the Material Plane at the head of a small demonic force. Once again recruiting an army of gnolls, he began razing the Winding Water settlements. Zariel responded, as Yeenoghu had known she would, by leading the Three Armies north.

THE THIRD VISIT TO IDYLLGLEN

• The two forces met at Idyllglen. It seemed fated to the crusaders, but was actually according to Yeenoghu’s design: He wanted to manipulate the emotional connection Yael and Zariel had to the village.
• During the battle, Yeenoghu detached a portion of his force and personally led a raid towards the village. General Yael responded almost immediately, moving her army out of position in pursuit.
• While Zariel, Olanthius, and Haruman sought to rearrange their own lines of battle to account for the chaos that ensued, Yeenoghu’s force abruptly shifted direction. Casting off the illusions that had made them appear to be ordinary gnolls, the demons sliced their way through Yael’s command.
• Neither Yael nor her knights were to be underestimated, however. This was, after all, the fight they had been preparing for. She stymied Yeenoghu’s counterattack.
• Meanwhile, the bulk of the gnoll army – having lost their demonic commanders when Yeenoghu peeled them off – were routed by Zariel, Olanthius, and Haruman.
• As the rest of the crusader army rounded on his flank, Yeenoghu abruptly abandoned pretense and led an assault directly on General Yael’s position. Slicing through her troops and cutting down her banner, Yeenoghu seized Yael, opened a portal, and leapt through it.

THE AVERNIAN AMBUSH

• Zariel, leading her own charge atop Lulu, was only a couple dozen feet away as Yeenoghu vanished. “The demon lord flees before our wrath!” she cried. “And he has taken one of our own! To rescue and to salvation! Charge!”
• The Three Armies plunged through the portal. But rather than emerging in the Abyss as they had expected, the portal led to the fire-blasted plains of Avernus. Worse yet, Yeenoghu had a small demonic army — which had crossed the Styx and penetrated deep into Hell itself — waiting on the other side.
• Zariel arrayed her crusaders for battle, but her rear echelons were still passing through the portal when Yeenoghu’s army moved rapidly to engage.

THE BATTLE OF AVERNUS

• There were a number of glorious deeds that day, among them Yael freeing herself from captivity and fighting her way to Olanthius’ side. Yeenoghu’s army had made retreat impossible, but the crusaders had withstood the initial assault and now the second and third armies had passed through the portal and were marshalling their strength. They vastly outnumbered Yeenoghu’s force, and there was a real chance that the demon lord would be destroyed, dealing the crusade’s first blow against the Abyss.
• That’s when an army of devils, under the command of Terza’reg of the Dark Eight and lured to the area by Yeenoghu’s army, marched over the horizon.
• Jander Sunstar panicked. (“We can’t fight both Hell and the Abyss!”) Under his leadership, a large chunk of the army routed back through the portal… which then slammed shut. (The crusaders who remained in Avernus believed the deserters had sealed it behind them. It’s possible Yeenoghu seized the moment to shut down the portal he had opened. Or perhaps arcanists in the advancing devil army were responsible for closing it.)

Note: Jander’s fate is somewhat beyond the scope of this reference, but worth establishing. He was the highest ranking officer among the crusaders who fled Avernus. The deserters became known as the Hellriders, their acts of infamy instead being told as deeds of glory, and Jander became the first High Rider of Elturel. He changed the Riders’ heraldry from the twin stars of the Zarielite Crusade to a horse rampant in flames. Eventually, sickened by his betrayal of both Zariel and Haruman, he left Elturel and headed to Waterdeep.

BATTLE’S END

• The three-way battle that ensued was pure chaos. The best we can do here is to highlight a few moments.
• Olanthius and Haruman were able to pincer the remnants of Yeenoghu’s army and finish them off, while Zariel and Yael wheeled her command about to meet Terza’reg’s army.
• Yeenoghu escaped triumphant, having tricked Zariel into spending her glorious army fighting devils instead of demons and turning what could have been a disaster for the Abyss into a huge advantage instead.
• Zariel led the flying cavalry squadron (featuring primarily pegasi) into the air to meet the flying devils that swarmed over the battlefield.
• Zariel and Lulu engaged in an aerial duel with Terza’reg, which ended when Terza’reg cut off Zariel’s right hand (still clutching her sword). Zariel leapt off of Lulu and dove after sword and hand, with Terza’reg in hot pursuit. At the last possible moment, Zariel snatched her sword from the air, reversed her flight, and plunged it through Terza’reg’s breast. A huge explosion rocked the battlefield as the devil general died, clouding the affair in a haze of red dust.
• Despite her dreadful injury and the ensuing chaos, after Terza’reg’s death it was possible that Zariel and her generals might have been able to rally. But then a second army under the command of Baalzephon arrived.
• To their credit, the remaining crusaders fought to the last warrior. (Although some, including Olanthius and Haruman, were captured after being struck down in battle.)
• Yael had joined Zariel and Lulu. As Baalzephon tightened the noose around their necks, the three old friends fought side by side. As the devils closed in, Zariel knew what would come and feared her own weakness. She took a shard of her angelic essence – a spark of goodness – and placed it within her sword. She asked Yael to take the sword and make certain it was not captured by the forces of Hell. Yael refused. Zariel smiled sadly. “Look beyond this forsaken day. One last time, I need you to dream a little bigger.”
• With tears in her eyes, Yael accepted.
• Zariel then turned to Lulu, said goodbye to her old friend, and asked her to go with Yael and keep her safe.
• The devils’ aerial forces had been decimated, and so Yael – having concealed the sword within her cloak – was able to escape through their depleted ranks upon Lulu’s back.

Go to Part 6D-C: Lulu’s Memories (Zariel in Hell)

Go to Part 1

NODES & THE CAMPAIGN STATUS DOCUMENT

Campaign status documents are something I discuss in more detail in Part 4 of Smart Prep. The short version is that the campaign status document collects all of your notes on the current, evolving situation of the game. There are a number of cool ways you can use the campaign status document, but the most pertinent one for our discussion here is the scenario updates: Rather than attaching notes like “they killed all the kobolds in Area 3” or “Benny is angry with them” to a bunch of different scenarios, so that they’re scattered hither and yon, you collect all of these notes in the campaign status document for easy reference and upkeep.

The key insight here is that properly organized node-based scenarios make it REALLY easy to assemble and maintain your campaign status document. In the status document for In the Shadow of the Spire, for example, I can just place “NOD6” at the top of a section (remember those alphanumeric codes?) and drop stuff relevant to that scenario into that section. When the PCs go to NOD6, I can just flip to that page in the status document and have it available for easy reference.

We’ve also talked about meta-scenarios. Something I’ll do is pull upcoming or pertinent details from a campaign’s meta-scenarios and drop them into my campaign status document. When the players in my Eternal Lies campaign would go to a new city, for example, I would look at the Act II floating scenes (which operate as a very loose meta-scenario), grab a handful that I thought were likely to be appropriate, and drop a list of them onto the first page of my campaign status document. It gave me a kind of mini-menu that I could quickly consult without trying to process or remember the entirety of the meta-scenario in the middle of a session.

In some cases I’ll also drop “active” revelation lists into the campaign status document to keep track of them, but for these I’ll usually just mark up the master copy in the scenario itself. (That’s what it’s there for after all.)

NODES AREN’T EVERYTHING

With all of this being said, node-based scenario design is not the be-all and end-all of scenario design. Beyond obvious stuff like dungeon crawls and hexcrawls, I’ve already discussed lots of other scenario structures here at the Alexandrian. There are also a lot of tools that will be useful to you as a GM in node-based scenarios which aren’t nodes themselves.

Let’s take another look at my Bangkok prep notes for Eternal Lies and break them down. There’s five nodes in there, but there’s also a bunch of other stuff. What’s it all doing in there?

First, you’ve got the revelation lists and the trigger list for proactive nodes. These are obviously part of node-based scenario design, but they’re also basically the table of contents for the scenario. They show the whole scenario structure and can act as a quick reference for your nodes/tools. So I’ll usually have this in the first couple pages of my prep notes.

And then we come to the tools. One thing to note is that these are usually designed to be picked up in combination with one of the nodes. 95% of the time, this will be stuff that might be used in multiple nodes (like an NPC who could show up in multiple locations).

The other thing to note is that there’s nothing magical about these particular tools. I don’t use them for every scenario I prep and there are a lot of other tools you could potentially include depending on the nature of the scenario and game.

CITY MOOD BEATS: This is a cool tool from the published Eternal Lies campaign. These small beats (e.g., “birdsong drifts out of an open apartment window”) are designed to be dropped into any scene to provide local color/theme.

NPC NAMES: A list of locally appropriate names to be used when improvising NPCs (which could obviously happen almost anywhere in the scenario).

(These two tools usurp the usual place of honor for the revelation lists and are the first page of my prep notes for the city nodes in Eternal Lies. When the PCs went to a city, I would generally grab this sheet out of the binder and place it on the table off to one side for easy use.)

REFERENCE: I use a reference sheet to encode broad background data for the scenario that doesn’t belong to a particular node. In this case, it’s a timeline for the Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities. (This timeline could come up while questioning Daniel Lowman at his townhouse, questioning Savitree at Ko Kruk Island, or while looking at research notes found at the Estate. So it’s really clear how this has cross-node applicability.)

RESEARCH: In Trail of Cthulhu it’s not unusual for the PCs to head to the local library or newspaper morgue and do general research on leads they’ve found. This is material that doesn’t really belong to any of the nodes, so it gets split out.

NPCs: At the back of my prep notes I present major NPCs, including the Universal Roleplaying Template and other key information. Some of these NPCs are treated as nodes (and will be found indexed on the revelation list) while others can be used in multiple nodes, but for practical reasons I’ll usually include any NPC that takes up a lot of space to declutter the individual nodes. I also just generally find that giving each major NPC a full, dedicated sheet is useful. When roleplaying them, I can just grab and focus on the pertinent sheet. If it’s a combat situation, I can also grab the sheets for everyone participating for easier reference.

STAT SHEET FOR BANGKOK: But when a system’s stat blocks are short enough (as in Trail of Cthulhu), I will also drop all the stat blocks for a scenario onto a single sheet to make running combat SUPER EASY (at least when it comes to referencing stats). Some scenarios might require multiple stat sheets, which I will generally organize according to action group or node.

As I say, these tools are not the be-all or end-all of node-enhancing elements you can include in your scenario and campaign design. But they should give you a pretty good sense of the types of tools I’ll develop and use.

Go to Part 5: Naturalistic Node Design

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We’ve previously discussed:

• The continuity errors in Lulu’s backstory.
• The continuity errors in Zariel’s backstory (including seeking vengeance against a Demon Lord of the Abyss by attacking the Nine Hells).
• The failure to pay off the rediscovery of Lulu’s memories after positioning them as THE central mystery of the second half of the campaign.
• That many of the tools given to the DM for managing Lulu’s memories are conceptually great (like a list of memory triggers and a definitive reference for her backstory), but unfortunately flawed and incomplete (i.e., giving a “definitive” reference that has both continuity errors and glaring omissions).

I’ve also briefly talked about my dissatisfaction with placing the Charge of the Hellriders in 1354 DR despite the fact that it was already legendary and of uncertain truth in 1358 DR. (This is definitely a non-essential fix. But, yes, I’ll be fixing it.)

In this installment of the Remix, we’re also going to be looking at Lulu’s dream quest and the other “memory dives” in the campaign.

One of the potential problems with Descent Into Avernus is that the PCs lack any sort of personal relationship with Zariel. She is, at best, a distant antagonist. Despite this, at the end of the campaign, the PCs are assumed to come face-to-face with her for the first time and immediately help her redeem her soul. This makes it really difficult to get the players emotionally invested in Zariel’s ultimate fate.

This is what makes the idea of Lulu’s dream quest so awesome! The PCs can actually experience the Charge of the Hellriders, the fall of Zariel, and all this other cool history the campaign is built around. They may not actually meet Zariel, but they’ll nonetheless get a chance to know her and, therefore, care about her.

… except the dream quest doesn’t actually do that. The dive into Lulu’s “memories” are structured around five “dreams”:

• Dream 1: Explicitly something that didn’t actually happen.
• Dream 2: Didn’t happen and isn’t a memory.
• Dream 3: Actually just part of Dream 2.
• Dream 4: Not a memory.
• Dream 5: Lulu looks through a telescope and sees where the Sword is (except she doesn’t, actually).

This is a huge missed opportunity!

Dream sequences often all flat because they aren’t real and don’t mean anything. But they can be really amazing if they ARE meaningful and have real stakes. Which is absolutely the case with Lulu’s dream quest: Her memories are the central mystery of the campaign, right? And at stake is the location of the Sword of Zariel, which is the key to saving an entire city. Insofar as the players give a crap about this campaign, they will give a crap about what is revealed here.

Which is why it’s so frustrating that literally nothing is revealed.

So we’ll also be looking at how to structure these memory dives to provide a compelling “memory mystery” that delivers meaning and memorable pay-offs (pun intended). In fact, we’ll be adding a couple new memory dives to further enhance this portion of the campaign.

DEFINITIVE HISTORY OF ZARIEL & LULU

This is designed to be a broad, authoritative overview of the back story for Zariel and Lulu. You can assume that any place this reference contradicts the book-as-published that the change is deliberate.

THE AVERNIAD

• Aeons ago, when the cosmos was still young and the Great Wheel had not been fully turned from the primordial planar chaos, Zariel fought in the Legions of Heaven. She served under the command of Ashmedai, a Celestial Marshal who rode a golden, winged lion.
• Ashmedai and his legions were sent to Avernus. At this time, Avernus was a paradisical plane. Elysium and the Seven Heavens both desired to add it to their realms, and so their armies clashed upon its emerald plains.
• The full tale of the Averniad is beyond the scope of our discussion today. (There are some who claim the full complexities of the celestial epic cannot be told in the course of a single mortal lifetime.) The important bit comes at the end: In the Great Betrayal, Ashmedai wrenched Avernus from the grasp of both Mt. Celestia and Elysium, instead claiming it for himself and aligning it with the Eight Hells. Thus Avernus became the Ninth Hell.
• Ashmedai’s legions schismed between those who remained loyal to him and those who remained loyal to Mount Celestia. Ashmedai himself became Asmodeus, and his legion of fallen angels, using Avernus as a staging base, conquered Hell, wresting its crown from the brow of the dark lord Ahriman.
• Zariel’s Long March: During the Fall of Avernus, Zariel’s commander – an angel named Chazaqiel – followed Asmodeus. Zariel and a small band of angels loyal to Heaven broke away and began a long march across Avernus before finally escaping down the River Styx (which in those days followed a very different course).

MEETING LULU: Her experiences during the Fall of Avernus had tainted Zariel’s mind with bitterness and anger. While recuperating within the starry groves of Lunia, Zariel met and befriended Lulu, a hollyphant who called the silvered forests of that plane home. When Zariel’s soul found peace and returned to Heaven’s legions, Lulu accompanied her as both friend and warmount.

THE TRIAL OF ASMODEUS

• Long after the events related in the Averniad, a heavenly strike force penetrated Hell and captured Asmodeus, bringing him back to Mount Celestia to answer for his crimes. (There are some who believe that Asmodeus allowed himself to be captured, knowing what would happen next.)
• Asmodeus claimed rights under the Pact Primeval. Also known as the First Law and quite possibly the first legal code to ever exist, it had been a founding agreement among the first Planes of Law that had emerged out of primordial chaos (and later became the Seven Heavens and Mechanus). Other pacts, such as those between Celestia, Elysium, and Olympus, had been based upon the authority of the Pact Primeval. By the time Asmodeus made his appeal, the Pact had been supplanted by other codes, but most of those codes ultimately still derived their legal standing from the Pact itself. Therefore, Asmodeus’ appeal to the Pact could not be ignored.
• Thus began the Trial of Asmodeus. Primus of the modrons was appointed as a neutral arbiter and judge.
• The alleged crimes of Asmodeus, spanning aeons, were limitless. Even the testimony to their effect was seemingly without end, as an angelic horde bore witness, one after another. At last Primus, having grown weary of the proceedings, called a halt to the testimony: The scope of Asmodeus’ illimitable acts had been well-established and their sheer quantity was irrelevant.
• Zariel, who had not yet had the opportunity to testify to the atrocities she had personally witnessed, was outraged. She violently demanded that she be allowed to speak, and when Primus ordered her to be silenced, the altercation sprawled into a brawl which completely disrupted the proceedings. (Was this the moment that Zariel first came to Asmodeus’ attention? Or had he had his eye upon her from the beginning?)
• Asmodeus’ defense was simple: Although his former comrades interpreted his actions as a betrayal, they had not actually violated the principle of the Law. Indeed, they had upheld the Law by preventing an alliance between Hell and the Abyss which might have swept away all other planar powers. The Blood War fought by his devils now safeguarded Law from the Chaos of the Abyss.
• In the end, Asmodeus prevailed. His acts may have been Evil, but Primus ruled that they were ultimately in accord with the Law, and were thus in accord with the Pact Primeval. The law which had once been the bedrock of Heaven now became Asmodeus’ holy right to test the merit of mortal souls (i.e., tempt them to evil) and claim those souls which were Hell’s due. (However, as part of Primus’ ruling, Asmodeus was also bound to always carry the Ruby Rod of Asmodeus, an artifact that both signified Asmodeus’ divine rights, but also bound him – and, through him, the other devils of Hell – to uphold the bargains they made with mortals.)

THE PURSUIT OF YEENOGHU

An almost incalculable amount of time then passed, during which Zariel and Lulu were living an eternal, angelic existence. Zariel remained of a martial temperament, waging war upon the forces of evil.

THE FIRST VISIT TO IDYLLGLEN

• Several centuries ago (we could perhaps say the 8^th or 9^th century in Dale Reckoning, during the internecine conflicts which resulted in the Fields of the Dead becoming the Fields of the Dead), Zariel became aware that the demonic lord Yeenoghu had invaded the Material Plane and was personally leading a gnoll army that was sacking settlements north of the River Chionthar.
• Zariel and a band of angels journeyed to the Material Plane to put an end to Yeenoghu’s depredations. They caught up with the demon lord in the village of Idyllglen.

THE DAUGHTER OF ASMODEUS

• Zariel’s task force weren’t the only ones hunting Yeenoghu, however. A strike team from Avernus lead by Glasya, daughter of Asmodeus, had also been tracking Yeenoghu. They arrived during the battle and helped rout the demon lord.
• Yeenoghu escaped, but his army was decimated and scattered to the winds. After the battle, there was tension between the celestial and infernal hosts, but Zariel and Glasya spoke for a short while and – having briefly been strange allies in the Blood War against the Abyss – agreed to go their separate ways.

Go to Part 6D-B: Lulu’s Memories (Zariel’s Crusade)

Mark writes:

In your Dragon Heist Remix, you have changed events so that there’s some more breathing room between Chapter 1 [when the PCs investigate the disappearance of Floon and discover the real kidnap victim was Renaer Neverember] and Chapter 3 [when someone is assassinated on the PCs’ front doorstep].

As far as I can see, it’s assumed that the players will be doing faction missions, other character-related content, and fixing up Trollskull Manor.

I’m worried that the group will feel disconnected from the overarching plot and the moving parts of the factions in the Grand Game [i.e., the factions in Waterdeep that are all pursuing the half million gold pieces that were embezzled by Dagult Neverember].

What would you suggest to keep the players invested in the Grand Game in that interim period?

To start with, the expected experience is that the players/PCs won’t really know that there’s a Grand Game going on at the end of Chapter 1. What they’ll have is an introductory scenario that has been successfully wrapped up and a large, neon sign saying, “GO TO TROLLSKULL MANOR.” At best, they’ll have a cluster of loose threads:

• There’s a Zhentarim/Xanatharian gang war.
• The Zhentarim and Xanatharians are both interested in the gold embezzled by Dagult Neverember.
• There was something inside Renaer Neverember’s locket.

There’s not really a defined way for the PCs to immediately pull at these threads. They’re deliberately enigmatical elements that are meant to sort of hang around until they get paid off later in the campaign.

So if the PCs choose to pull at these threads, it’ll be through some clever angle that the players creatively think up on their own initiative. That’s great! You just need to figure out how to roll with it. The Remix almost certainly gives you all the tools you need to do this. You’ll also probably want to try to breathe a little air into it, weaving the events of their investigation into the wider tapestry of Chapter 2.

(To a certain extent, the players are likely to breathe that air into it themselves: Once you can get a bunch of balls up in the air in your campaign – e.g., the investigation, renovating Trollskull, faction missions, the orphans, the business rival trying to sabotage them – the players will be forced to start juggling their priorities. If you aren’t hearing stuff like, “We can’t do that tonight, we have to meet with the distillery!” or “Meliandre can guard the tavern in case the dire rats come back, Bassario and Francesca will run that mission for the Harpers, and I’ll head back up to the Yawning Portal to see if I can find Yagra,” then just add more balls.)

For example, my group made the intuitive leap that Renaer’s mourning locket must be connected to his mother’s tomb. So after checking out their new digs at Trollskull Manor, they headed straight to the Brandath Crypts… well, mostly straight. They had to request a meeting with Renaer. Then they arranged a time when he could take them to the Crypts (“it can’t be tomorrow, because we’ve got that… thing we’re doing”). Once at the Crypts I was actually fascinated to see if they would discover the Vault where the embezzled gold was hidden early and sort of “short-circuit” the entire structure of the campaign, but they ended up missing their Wisdom (Perception) check. Regardless, the investigation had forged a closer relationship with Renaer (who ended up marrying one of the PCs), kept the players puzzling about the Grand Game, and offered a huge pay-off when the whole campaign circled back to the Crypts at the end. (“We were right here! Oh my god!”)

A more likely alternative is for the PCs to start poking around the Zhentarim and/or Xanatharians. That more or less leads straight into the core structure of the campaign: They’re investigating a faction, so you should point them at a faction outpost. (Once again, weaving these investigations into the broader scope of everything else happening in Chapter 2.) This activity might preempt some of the “later” revelations about the Grand game, but that’s just fine. (The idea of them being “later” revelations is really just a conceptual holdover from the heavily railroaded design of the published adventure. And we’re not doing that, right?)

The most likely outcome is that the group will have a little bit of a head start in the Eye Heists that follow the events of Chapter 3. We might imagine the players patting themselves on the back for getting ahead of things, but they probably won’t think of it like that. (The structure of the campaign is obfuscated from them. They don’t see how your notes are arranged and don’t know that this was “supposed” to happen later.)

BUT WHAT IF THEY DON’T?

Other groups, though, won’t pull at those threads from Chapter 1 — either because they can’t figure out how to do it or because they just don’t care enough to do it. That’s OK. It just means that the players’ focus is somewhere else. The events of Chapter 1 are still important. They’ll either foreshadow what comes later (“If only we’d paid attention to the clues in front of our face!”) or they’ll be a mystery that eats at the back of their brains. Anticipation heightens the eventual pay-off. (“Oh my god! It’s all connected!”)

Keep in mind, too, that the Chapter 2 material isn’t completely disconnected from the Grand Game: Virtually all of the initial faction missions, for example, either involve one of the factions from the Grand Game, are directly aimed at the events of the Grand Game, or result in revelations about the same. (The exception is the Emerald Enclave, which is probably one of the reasons why I never prioritized getting that faction involved in my Dragon Heist run.)

Note: Also look at Part 1C: Player Character Factions. The Grand Games of Waterdeep usually involve ALL of the byzantine factions of the city becoming collectively fixated on something. That includes the player character factions. Even if the faction play in Chapter 2 wasn’t connected to the Grand Game, it would BECOME connected by virtue of the PCs being connected to it.

One thing I would have liked to have designed for Dragon Heist would have been a series of detailed background events detailing the evolving gang war between Zhents and Xanatharians. I didn’t get that done for my campaign, but background events like these can also be a good way to keep elements of the campaign “in the mix” even when the PCs’ immediate attention is turned somewhere else.

BUSINESS AS USUAL

One last thing to keep in mind is that this whole approach doesn’t really stop when you hit the end of Chapter 2: The faction missions continue. Now that the tavern is open, you can use A Night in Trollskull Manor to provide a constant level of activity. The PCs are going to continue pulling at threads and having to deal with blowback from their actions.

In fact, once Chapter 3 starts off with a bang (pun intended), the only thing that’s likely to happen is that you’ll be tossing MORE balls into the air for the PCs to juggle.

If you have any questions for future columns, let me know in the comments! In Ask the Alexandrian, instead of looking at general methodology, theorycraft, or prep, I try to solve specific situations from actual play by asking myself, “If I were the GM in this situation, what would I do?”

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #1 – Ask the Alexandrian #3

Go to Part 1

In Chapter 4 of Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, as the PCs are climbing the mountain outside his fortress, the duergar tyrant Xardorok Sunblight releases a chardalyn dragon and sends it flying to ravage the ten towns of Ten-Towns.

The PCs are faced with a difficult decision: Continue their assault on Xardorok’s fortress or race back to Ten-Towns to stop the dragon’s rampage?

After posting Icewind Dale: Travel Times, I had multiple DMs and patrons ask me if I was also planning to look at this section of the book.

DRAGON’S FLIGHT

The chardalyn dragon flies from Xardorok’s fortress, which is named Sunblight, and targets each town in turn, flying from one to the next and razing it before continuing. On p. 188-9 of the book there is both a map of the route and this table:

The table, unfortunately, is not terribly helpful because it omits the time that the dragon spends destroying each town before leaving for the next. So let’s start with a replacement table, measured in hours from when the dragon leaves Sunblight:

BLIZZARD: A blizzard starts shortly after the dragon leaves Termalaine. (See Icewind Dale, p. 11.)

CHASING THE DRAGON

Now we’re going to look at how and how long it takes the PCs to catch up with the dragon. (An important first step in stopping it). There are a couple things to know before we jump in here.

First, no matter where you’re going, it turns out that it’s always faster to go straight from Sunblight to Dougan’s Hole and then follow the roads from there. This would be true even if you could ride in a straight line (which your usually can’t due the lakes). So we’ll be using that as our baseline assumption when looking at travel times.

Straight line measurements as the crow flies to other settlements (although most of these routes are impractical on land and, as noted, wouldn’t be faster anyway):

• Dougan’s Hole: 10.5 miles
• Good Mead: 12 miles (you need to cross Redwaters Lake and it’s not frozen over)
• Easthaven: 14 miles (you need to cross the river, but it might be frozen over)
• Caer-Dineval: 21 miles (Redwaters and Lac Dinneshere are in the way)
• Caer-Konig: 25.5 miles (Lac Dinneshere is in the way)
• Bryn Shander: 17 miles
• Targos: 20.5 miles
• Bremen: 22.5 miles
• Termalaine: 24.5 miles (you need to cross Redwaters Lake)
• Lonelywood: 25.5 miles (you need to cross the northern end of Maer Dualdon, which is not frozen over)

Although the amount of mountain travel differs slightly, in practice you can assume that each of the values above include 4.5 miles of mountain travel.

Second, even though the book features a scenario predicated on precisely timed overland travel, the travel times in the book are both inconsistent and imprecise. The first part of Icewind Dale: Travel Times sought to correct these problems, but I recognize that some people will still be using the values found in the book. So we’ll take the time to look at both scenarios.

BY THE BOOK

We’re going to assume that the PCs are traveling by dogsled, because the adventure contrives to make this true. In doing so, however, we immediately run into a problem: While the book gives a value for dogsled travel in the wilderness (1 mile per hour; ½ mile per hour in mountains), it doesn’t give a value for dogsled travel along roads. Instead, it inconsistently says “mounts and dogsleds can shorten these times by as much as 50 percent.”

For our purposes, we’re simply going to assume that dogsleds reduce these times by exactly 50 percent. And they do it along all roads.

Furthermore, for the sake of simplicity, we will also be assuming that the PCs make all necessary navigation checks (while traveling through mountains or in a blizzard).

Note: We’re still using the “by the book” times on the Travel Time Map from Part 1, which is still slightly modified to remove other inconsistencies in the book-given travel times.

ROUTE TO DOUGAN’S HOLE: If you go straight from Sunblight to Dougan’s Hole (see map above), there’s 4.5 miles of mountain travel (9 hours) followed by 6.5 miles of overland travel (6.5 hours), for a total travel time of 15.5 hours.

But if you take this route:

Then there’s 3.5 miles of mountain travel (7 hours) and 7.5 miles of overland travel (7.5 hours), for a total travel time of 14.5 hours.

Using the faster route, if the PCs immediately leave Sunblight to chase the dragon, here are the travel times to various settlements (assuming they go directly to that settlement):

• Dougan’s Hole: 14.5 hours
• Good Mead: 16.5 hours
• Easthaven: 18.5 hours
• Caer-Dineval: 20.5 hours
• Caer-Konig: 21.5 hours
• Bryn Shander: 19.5 hours
• Targos: 20.5 hours
• Bremen: 21.5 hours
• Termalaine: 22.5 hours
• Lonelywood: 23.5 hours

FORCED MARCH & EXHAUSTION: The other thing to keep in mind here is that, assuming they left from Dougan’s Hole, the PCs already traveled 14.5 hours to get to Sunblight. If you assume they traveled 8 hours yesterday, rested, and then traveled another 6.5 hours today… well, after just 1.5 hours they’ll hit their 8 hour daily limit for travel and have to start a Forced March. The dogs will need to make Constitution saving throws at the end of each hour (DC 10 + 1 per hour past 8 hours) or suffer a level of exhaustion. After just two failed saves, their speed will be halved and after five failed saves their speed will drop 0.

However, the rules state that, “Sled dogs must take a short rest after pulling a sled for 1 hour; otherwise, they gain one level of exhaustion.” We could interpret this to replace the normal rules for forced marches, representing the legendary stamina of sled dogs. (This matches real world practices on the Iditarod Trail, so it’s not a huge reach.) This rest time is already calculated into the travel times listed above, so this largely solves the problem for us.

You’ll still want to give some thought to the effects this travel has on the PCs. 5th Edition doesn’t really have mechanics for being short on sleep and the relationship between the forced march rules and traveling in a vehicle are… vague. You might simplify this down to:

• 1 level of exhaustion for each missed night of sleep.
• A DC 10 Constitution check per 8 hours of dogsled travel, with 1 level of exhaustion on a failure.

SWAPPING DOGS: Once the PCs get back to the remnants of civilization, they might be able to periodically swap their dogs out for fresh dogs. Under ideal circumstances, this would allow them to run the dogs without a rest, effectively doubling their speed. The trick is that after two hours, they’ll gain two levels of exhaustion and their speed will be halved again. After five hours, the dogs can’t go any further.

Let’s assume that they can switch to fresh dogs in every town. (This isn’t a great assumption because some of the towns they go through will have been wiped out by the dragon. Plus, negotiating for dogs probably chews up some of the time saved. But for the sake of simplicity, let’s go with it.) We can re-calculate our travel times (these all assume they swap dogs in Dougan’s Hole; if no dogs survived there or if the town has already been abandoned in your judgement the numbers will have to shift):

• Dougan’s Hole: 14.5 hours
• Good Mead: 15.5 hours
• Easthaven: 16.5 hours
• Caer-Dineval: 17.5 hours (switch in Good Mead)
• Caer-Konig: 18 hours (switch in Good Mead, Caer-Dineval)
• Bryn Shander: 17 hours (switch in Good Mead)
• Targos: 17.5 hours (switch in Good Mead, Bryn Shander)
• Bremen: 18 hours (switch in Good Mead, Bryn Shander)
• Termalaine: 18.5 hours (switch in Good Mead, Bryn Shander)
• Lonelywood: 19 hours (switch in Good Mead, Bryn Shander)

BY THE BOOK – SCENARIOS

BEST CASE SCENARIO: By comparing the PCs’ best time (with dog-swapping) to the dragon’s arrival and departure times, we can look at a few likely scenarios.

The first thing to note is that it’s impossible to save Dougan’s Hole, Good Mead, Easthaven, Caer-Dineval, or Caer-Konig. The PCs literally can’t get to any of them fast enough. So the absolute best case scenario is that they head for Termalaine and get there about ninety minutes before the dragon does.

More generally, if the PCs choose any of the other five towns and head straight there, they’ll be able to get there before the dragon.

WILD GOOSE CHASE: The problem is that the PCs don’t know that. In order to accurately calculate where they can intercept the dragon they need to know:

• its route;
• how fast it’s going; and
• how long it will spend destroying each town

Although they might be able to learn or intuit the first two, there’s no way for them to do anything but guess at the third.

This can easily lead to a disaster if they try to chase the dragon from one town to the next: Leaving Good Mead they know it was heading to Easthaven, so they head there only to find that the dragon has destroyed the town and moved on. So they race north along the road, hoping to catch it at Caer-Dineval or Caer-Konig… but they can’t. And now they’ve wasted so much time that they arrive in Termalaine too late.

WORST CASE SCENARIOS: If the PCs go to Dougan’s Hole, travel by road, and are reasonably accurate in anticipating the dragon’s flight path (by questioning survivors, etc.) most of the scenarios broadly look like the above: They catch up to it in either Termalaine or Lonelywood.

Worst case scenarios start rolling out if they deviate from this approach. Obviously, it’s possible for them to unnecessarily write off cities that could have been saved (“Let’s bunker up in Bryn Shander!”). But they might also do something like:

• Ride to Bryn Shander to warn the largest city in Ten-Towns of the devastation. (They arrive at 17 hours, then spend an hour there.)
• Having warned the leaders in Bryn Shander, they decide to ride to Easthaven to try to stop the dragon there! (They arrive at 20 hours.)
• They ride north to Caer-Dineval and then Caer-Konig hoping to catch up! (They arrive at Caer-Konig at 23 hours.)
• Oh no! Let’s go save Termalaine. (They arrive at 29.5 hours.)
• Too late! To Lonelywood! (They arrive at 30 hours.)
• Too late! They ride back to Targos (arrive at 31.5 hours), but don’t stop because the dragon must be attacking Bremen!
• But they don’t get to Bremen until 32 hours, arriving just in time to watch the dragon fly over their heads back to Targos!

Most of these worst case scenarios seem to end up with them confronting the dragon in Targos. (The dragon spends 8 hours in Targos. That soaks a large margin of error at an intersection.)

IRRELEVANT CHOICE: One interesting conclusion from running these numbers is that the decision to attack or not attack Sunblight before riding back to Ten-Towns turns out to probably be irrelevant to the outcome as long as the PCs can clear the fortress without taking a short rest (which is likely).

RECOMMENDED TRAVEL TIMES

If you’re using the recommended travel rules from Part 1, there are two key differences to account for:

• Dogsleds move at 4 miles per hour on roads (instead of 2 miles per hour).
• You can also use the rules for fast pace travel from the DMG.

These benefits are offset to some extent if you’re using the optional rules for deteriorating roads, but I won’t be attempting to factor these into the calculations below.

Perhaps the most significant advantage is that by maintaining a fast pace, the PCs can get to Dougan’s Hole six hours earlier. These numbers assume that they maintain their fast pace on the roads and do not rest their dogs:

• Dougan’s Hole: 8.5 hours
• Good Mead: 9 hours
• Easthaven: 10 hours
• Caer-Dineval: 10.5 hours
• Caer-Konig: 12 hours
• Bryn Shander: 11 hours
• Targos: 12 hours
• Bremen: 12.5 hours
• Termalaine: 14 hours
• Lonelywood: 14.5 hours

RECOMMENDED TRAVEL TIMES – SCENARIOS

BEST CASE SCENARIO: We can see that Dougan’s Hole and Good Mead are still lost no matter what the PCs do, but it’s now quite possible for them to reach Easthaven while the dragon is only halfway through its destruction of the town.

DRAGON CHASE: The book actually recommends that the dragon leaves a town after it take 30 points of damage. Because the PCs are only slightly slower than the dragon under these rules, this arguably becomes a more interesting scenario (with the PCs able to readily catch up if they can intuit where the dragon is going next).

This also gives the players a reasonable chance to pull back, recuperate, and still be able to bring the fight back to the dragon.

POTENTIAL DRAWBACKS: These travel times make it significantly more likely that the PCs will be able to spare the bulk of Ten-Towns from disaster. Whether that’s a feature or not is probably in the eye of the beholder.

Personally, I like the idea that if Ten-Towns falls the PCs will feel responsible for it, rather than feeling that it was inevitable. On the other hand, maybe you’ve got some solid ideas for what post-apocalyptic Icewind Dale looks like and you want to put your thumb on the scales a bit for that.

AXEBEAKS

Axebeaks can match dogsled speeds on the tundra, but they don’t have the dogsled stamina we invoked above. Assuming the PCs use normal pace to ride to Sunblight, they ride 8 hours the first day and then 6.5 the next day.

This leaves them with only 1.5 hours of travel left on the day when the dragon heads for Ten-Town. They can take a fast pace back to Dougan’s Hole, but the axebeaks will need a long rest on the way. This means it takes 18.5 hours to get back (the dragon is heading for Termalaine):

• Dougan’s Hole: 18.5 hours
• Good Mead: 20 hours
• Easthaven: 23 hours
• Caer-Dineval: 24 hours
• Caer-Konig: 25.5 hours
• Bryn Shander: 24.5 hours
• Targos: 25.5 hours
• Bremen: 26 hours
• Termalaine: 28.5 hours
• Lonelywood: 29 hours

WAITING UNTIL MORNING: If they wait for morning before heading for Sunblight and triggering the dragon’s release, things get better: The axebeaks can get back to Dougan’s Hole with only a manageable forced march and no long rest:

• Dougan’s Hole: 10.5 hours
• Good Mead: 12 hours
• Easthaven: 15 hours
• Caer-Dineval: 16 hours
• Caer-Konig: 17.5 hours
• Bryn Shander: 16.5 hours
• Targors: 17.5 hours
• Bremen: 18 hours
• Termalaine: 20.5 hours
• Lonelywood: 21 hours

Swapping axebeaks (galloping them hard for 6 miles before they become exhausted and their speed halves) can improve these times somewhat. Swapping to a dogsled works better.

ON FOOT

What if the PCs go Sunblight on foot and can’t get Vellynne’s dogsleds there? If you’re just using the base travel rates from Rime of the Frostmaiden:

• It takes them 29 hours to get back to Dougan’s Hole.
• By that point, the dragon has destroyed Dougan’s Hole, Good Mead, Easthaven, Caer-Dineval, Caer-Konig, Termalaine, and Lonelywood.
• It takes them a total of 41 hours to reach Targos, which is too late to save either Bremen or Targos. So those towns are also automatically destroyed.

Basically, the ONLY thing they can do is go to Bryn Shander, arriving shortly before the dragon does. If they don’t realize how bad things are and go to Easthaven and then Caer-Dineval first before backtracking to Bryn Shander, they’re entirely too late and the dragon has already flown back to Sunblight.

(Reality check, though: None of those calculations include forced march exhaustion or the need for sleep. So, basically, if they’re on foot, Ten-Towns is automatically razed. This is why the necromancer ex machina is waiting for them at the bottom of the mountain to drive them back to civilization.)

RECOMMENDED TRAVEL TIMES: Things look a little bit better if you can set a fast pace and travel roads at speed.

• Dougan’s Hole: 14.5 hours
• Gold Mead: 16 hours
• Easthaven: 19 hours
• Caer-Dineval: 20 hours
• Caer-Konig: 21.5 hours
• Bryn Shander: 20.5 hours
• Targos: 21.5 hours
• Bremen: 22 hours
• Termalaine: 24.5 hours
• Lonelywood: 25 hours

These numbers, though, still don’t factor in rest. A particular problem is that the PCs are likely to have arrived at Sunblight late in the day (having traveled 8 hours one day and then 6.5 hours the next). Let’s assume that they do a few hours of forced march the first night and a few more the next day, allowing them to arrive at Dougan’s Hole at just 22.5 hours. (At this point the dragon is already in Termalaine.)

The problem is they now need another long rest before traveling again. By the time they get up, the dragon is in Bremen (30.5 hours). With perfect information, they can reach Targos while the dragon is still there.

SWITCHING TO DOGSLEDS: But wait! What if they switch to dogsleds in Dougan’s Hole? With perfect information, they could get to Lonelywood just in time to see the dragon flying away. But in this scenario, saving Bremen becomes plausible.

Moral of the story? Walking is for chumps.