DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 27A: The Midnight Meeting

“By coming here, you have already joined this Brotherhood,” Dilar continued. “Over the next few weeks you will be contacted. For many of you there will be training. You will be asked to do things. Many of these things will seem simple or even unimportant, but you should never doubt that in even the smallest service you are aiding the Brotherhood and all that we are attempting to accomplish.”

If you’re a long-time reader of the Alexandrian, you’re probably familiar with the Three Clue Rule: In a mystery scenario, for any conclusion that you want the PCs to make, you should include at least three clues.

This redundancy makes mystery scenarios robust, so that they don’t break down during play and leave either you scrabbling frantically, your players frustrated, or both. In my experience, the process of fleshing out a scenario to support the Three Clue Rule also usually results in a more dynamic and interesting scenario.

When I’m prepping a module, therefore, I make it a point to check each revelation and make sure that the Three Clue Rule is being observed. For published adventures, unfortunately, this often isn’t the case, and I’ll need to add clues. Session 27 of In the Shadow of the Spire is a good example of this.

Many of the events detailed in this session — the secret meeting and project site — are from Monte Cook’s Night of Dissolution mini-campaign. A key revelation is, in fact, the location of the project site. From the secret meeting, the published adventure includes one clue pointing to that revelation:

Dilar has a number of papers and notebooks with him. […] Among other things, the papers show the location of the Brothers of Venom’s secret project: an apartment build in Oldtown off Crossing Street. The documents refer to the building only as the “secret project” or the “joint project,” however. (The address can lead them to the Temple of Deep Chaos, found in Chapter 4.) The pages also discuss the cult’s new allies, the Ebon Hand cult, and mention that cult’s leader, Malleck, and their activities involving kidnapping young people and transforming them.

(You can also see here a secondary revelation — the alliance with the Ebon Hand — which is non-essential.)

Seeing this, the first thing I did was prep Dilar’s papers as a physical handout that I could give to the PCs.

You can see that this is not particularly elaborate, being a fairly simplistic example of the lore books technique we’ve discussed previously. The primary goal here is just to let the players “shuffle through the papers,” rather than listening to me narrate them. The map here also neatly correlates to the map of the city hanging on the wall during our sessions, so the players would’ve been able to take this handout over to the map and literally figure out where they needed to go.

As it turned out, however, the players never actually got this handout. Which is why the next thing I did was so essential: Adding additional clues to support the revelation.

To the adventure’s credit, it does discuss multiple paths by which the PCs might come into possession of Dilar’s papers: They might, for example, kill him and loot them. Or they might bloodlessly infiltrate the meeting, take the opportunity to surreptitiously peek at his papers, and then get out without the cult being any the wiser.

But these routes still all go through Dilar’s papers, creating a chokepoint that makes the scenario fragile. You can see that in actual play here: Because of how events played out, only one PC infiltrated the meeting, making the “kill all the cultists and loot their stuff” outcome basically impossible. Tee was also well aware of how vulnerable she was, meaning that she didn’t want to take any risky actions that might expose her (e.g., looking at papers she shouldn’t be looking at). If I’d run the adventure as written, it would have broken here.

What I needed to do was create additional vectors leading from the secret meeting to the project site. (Alternatively, I could have gone for a node-based approach, adding clues to the secret meeting pointing to cult-stuff other than the project site, and then seeded additional clues to the project site in those other nodes.) My thought process went something like this:

• Well… what is the actual purpose of this meeting?
• What if it’s to brief cult members on the project site? That would also explain why Dilar is bringing notes detailing the project site to the meeting.
• We know that this meeting includes new recruits. They’re not going to be fully read in on the project. (Which is convenient logic, because otherwise all of the scenario’s revelations would get frontloaded into this single scene instead of being slowly peeled back by the PCs over the course of their investigation.)
• What would the cult be asking new recruits to do that might be related to the project?
• They could be assigned as external security/lookouts!

This immediately gives me two new clues:

• The PCs can infiltrate the meeting and get briefed on the contents of Dilar’s notes.
• The PCs could question Iltumar about what he learned at the meeting.

And then, by having the cult members taken directly from the meeting to the project site, I can add another clue:

• Following cult members leaving the meeting will lead PCs to the project site.

While this took a little bit of thought, one thing to note here is how little prep was actually required. This is often the case. In my experience, it takes virtually no effort and a truly minuscule amount of time to add basic clues to a scenario. That’s because clues are just indicators. The meat of the scenario — the stuff you’ll spend the bulk of your prep time on — is what the clues point at.

(The most common exception to this is when you design a handout for the clue, like the lore book for Dilar’s notes. But this is usually not, strictly speaking, necessary, and the time you’re investing there is more in the value-add of the cool handout than it is in the clue itself.)

Despite the relative ease of adding these clues, also note how much depth we’ve added to this scenario. For example, the original adventure only told us:

The cultists are here to plan further murders, trade advice on poison use, and engage in perverted sexual acts.

But we now have a much more specific agenda for the meeting. The natural interrogation of the scenario that happens when we think about the vectors required for clues means that we now understand the what and why of the cultists here. So if the PCs were to eavesdrop on the meeting or, as it turned out, infiltrate the meeting, we have a much firmer foundation to stand on for improvising the scene.

As I say, this happens all the time when you apply the Three Clue Rule in your scenario design.

The other thing you’ll discover is that missed clues will no longer be something that you fear. This can feel weird, but it’s incredibly liberating. For example, if this scenario had still depended on Tee looking at Dilar’s notes, I would have felt the need to reassure her that it was OK to sneak a peek. I would have needed to find some direct or indirect way of letting her know that she didn’t really need to be afraid of exposing herself and getting caught.

But because I knew that I’d made the scenario robust, I didn’t need to do that. The result was a vastly better scene, in which the tension of discovery drove the stakes from beginning to end. It would have been a shame if I’d felt a need to deflate that tension in order to prevent the scenario from breaking.

And this is, again, something that happens all the time when you’ve got the Three Clue Rule backstopping you. Missed clues are no longer catastrophes; they are a vital part of the scenario’s flow.

If you haven’t experienced this firsthand, it can feel paradoxical. It might even feel like a violation of the principles of smart prep: You have this prepped content that you’re not using! It’s wasted! But, in practice, missing a clue isn’t a waste — it’s a consequence, a cost, or a choice. And even if you have a clue that is “wasted,” it’s not that big of a deal because, as we noted before, the clues are mostly ephemera. They aren’t the meat of the scenario.

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 27B – Running the Campaign: Improvising Floorplans
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Go to Part 1

The last piece of the puzzle here is that, in order for the Rivals and PCs to disagree about the current agenda, there has to BE a clear agenda for them to disagree about. As noted, this is something that Call of the Netherdeep struggles with.

Even if the Rivals weren’t a factor here, this is still something you’d want to fix. In fact, the Rivals can be a good diagnostic tool: If you hit a section of the campaign where you can’t figure out how the Rivals could have a competing agenda, that’s probably a good indication that you’ve failed to give the players enough information to have an opinion and a choice of their own.

Fortunately, I think addressing this problem doesn’t have to be particularly complicated. You just need to focus on two things. First, backfilling the lore surrounding Alyxian the Apotheon. Second, making sure there’s a clear goal (or choice of goals) at each stage of the campaign.

LORE OF ALYXIAN

When the PCs reach the Netherdeep, they are confronted by an extraplanar extrusion of a demigod’s traumatized mind. In exploring the physical space of the Netherdeep, they are simultaneously delving into the mystery of Alyxian’s past (and the trauma he has suffered).

This is a really cool dungeon, but in its current form the Netherdeep is doing most of the heavy lifting for both establishing a mystery (What is Alyxian’s story?) and then also solving that mystery. If you want to elevate this material, then you need to pull some of this amassed lore backwards so that it appears meaningfully earlier in the campaign. (All the way back, in fact. From the Emerald Grotto if not earlier.) What you want is for this enigma (Who is the Apotheon?) to be much more front-and-center throughout the campaign, so that by the time the PCs get to Netherdeep the players are fully engaged with the mystery and trying to figure it out. The Netherdeep should just be the focused resolution, as they fill in the gaps and realize some deep and terrible emotional truths.

The result will be much more satisfying, and feel more like the culmination of an entire campaign, instead of just another procedural step.

To understand what I mean here, let’s consider one small, concrete example: In Area 24 of the Netherdeep, the PCs encounter Perigee the Deva. This celestial actually fought with Alyxian during the Calamity centuries ago and remains, ruidium-corrupted, by his side even now.

This could be a really incredible moment: The PCs get to meet this legendary figure out of myth!

… but it really only works if you know who Perigee is before you walk into that room. And in Call of the Netherdeep, you don’t.

Imagine that you went on an adventure in the dungeon beneath the hill where King Arthur is buried, fated to rise in Britain’s hour of greatest need. As you journey through the dungeon you encounter some of his knights: Galahad, perhaps. Percival. Guinevere.

Those are cool moments because you recognize those names: “Holy crap! It’s Guinevere!”

But you don’t get that moment with Perigee because… well, who the heck is Perigee? No one at the table cares.

But if you establish Perigee earlier in the campaign — she appears in a mural in Betrayers’ Rise; she’s mentioned in a scrap of poetry; she has a statue in Cael Morrow or the Emerald Grotto — then you CAN have the moment of, “Holy crap! It’s Perigee!”

You just have to put the work in.

Check out Getting the Players to Care for various techniques you can use for doing this. There are already numerous opportunities throughout the campaign for including this lore, you just have to take advantage of them:

• Establishing the Calamity during the Festival of Merit.
• Murals in the Emerald Grotto prayer site.
• The first vision.
• What the Elders of Jigow know.
• What basic research in Jigow can uncover.
• Lore in Betrayers’ Rise.
• Lore held by the Bazzoxan researchers.
• What advanced research in the libraries and lore-stocks of Ank’Harel can uncover.
• More material seeded in Cael Morrow.

Use the Three Clue Rule and build your revelation lists. And this will require some care and thought: Don’t reveal enough? The players aren’t engaged with trying to figure it out. Reveal too much? You’ll undermine the revelations in the final act.

You’ll know you have the balance right if:

• The players already have strong opinions about Alyxian before ever reaching Ank’Harel (and, ideally, those opinions are varied and shifting); and
• The players have big questions about the Apotheon that they talk about and clearly want answers to.

This will allow the Rivals to challenge those opinions and to join in the discussion hypothesizing what the answers might be. But, even more importantly, the desire to answer those questions will motivate the agenda of the campaign.

CAMPAIGN AGENDAS

Call of the Netherdeep is a linear campaign (Jigow → Emerald Grotto → Bazzoxan → Ank’Harel → Cael Morrow → Netherdeep), which means that the structure of the campaign can be largely summarized as a series of agendas — i.e., the sequence of goals that move the PCs through the campaign.

In the adventure as written, these goals are generally underdeveloped, vague, and merely procedural. We’ve already seen, for example, how the PCs go to Bazzoxan because “an NPC told you to,” rather than having any true, actionable reason for going there.

As we discussed in the article on Running Betrayers’ Rise, we can strengthen the agenda which brings the PCs to Bazzoxan by seeding a specific piece of lore: The Jewel of Three Prayers is depicted somewhere in Betrayers’ Rise and the Jigow Elder knows this.

Tip: I also recommend that all of the characters in the Emerald Grotto — not just the group who claimed the Jewel — receive Alyxian’s vision. (And he remains connected to all of them.) Similarly, the Elder should seek out both groups the next morning. They share a destiny.

This sets up one of three key questions that should drive the campaign.

What is the Jewel of Three Prayers? Specifically, the PCs should be able to figure out that it was empowered by the gods to aid Alyxian three times; that shrines were erected in those places; and that they need to find the shrines in order to fully reactivate the Jewel.

What is ruidium and what should be done with it? It should become clear that ruidium is appearing at sites associated with the Apotheon.

Who is Alyxian the Apotheon? Piecing together the details of his story and framing the ultimate question of the campaign, which is whether he should helped, freed, or destroyed.

The PCs may not fully understand all of these questions to start with, but they should be pretty firmly in place by the time they’re wrapping up Betrayers’ Rise (even if the complete answers won’t be realized until Cael Marrow and the Netherdeep).

CORE STRUCTURE

Once the PCs get to Bazzoxan, the campaign moves into its core structure, which revolves around the scholar factions of Ank’Harel and their ruidium-based goals:

• Allegiance of Allsight (Prolix) want to use the ruidium to create weapons, armor, and other artifacts that they can sell to the highest bidder.
• Consortium of Vermilion Dreams (Aloysia) want to secure a monopoly on ruidium so that they can study its deeper mysteries and have sole access to its power.
• Library of the Cobalt Soul (Question) believe that ruidium is dangerous and it must be either destroyed or sealed away so that it cannot harm the world.

First, in Bazzoxan, the PCs make contact with one, two, or three researchers from Ank’Harel, who clearly communicate:

• The identities of their factions;
• The ruidium-based goals of their faction; and
• The existence of ruidium in both Betrayers’ Rise and Ank’Harel associated with the imagery of the Jewel of Three Prayers.

Second, these researchers refer the PCs to their factions (or come back with the PCs to Ank’Harel to make the proper introductions).

Third, the PCs join one (or more) of these factions and begin doing faction mission for them.

Structurally, this is quite straightforward. The key thing is that the factions and (most importantly) their conflicting agendas are made clear to the PCs immediately (instead of being largely obfuscated until later in the campaign).

Because the PCs now need to make some choices about what THEY think should be done with the ruidium, dynamic relationships with the researchers in Bazzoxan and the factions in Ank’Harel can emerge through actual play.

This also creates the opportunity to organically create a meaningful dispute between the PCs and the Rivals: Just give the Rivals a different opinion about what the significance of ruidium is and what should be done with it.

Design Note: I suspect it’s likely that at one point this WAS the intended structure for Call of the Netherdeep. At some point during development, however, the decision was made to (a) script a scene with Aloysia as a monologuing villain and (b) have all the researchers in Bazzoxan play coy with what they know in order to create Startling Revelations™ in Ank’Harel.

If so, these decisions really broke the back of the adventure as written: The PCs are forced to blindly “choose” a faction without understanding the significance of that choice, and Aloysia’s faction has been railroaded off the table as a viable ally (even though the rest of the adventure acts as if the PCs are just as likely to join it). Much like the Rivals, the factions get reduced to a simply “Me Help” / “Me Fight” dichotomy.

Go to Part 3: Situational Advice

Go to Part 1

THE CURIOUS TALE OF WISTERIA VALE (Kienna Shaw), much like “The Lore of Lurue,” is a fantasy holodeck in book form. But unlike “Lurue,” Shaw’s “Wisteria Vale” is a brilliant success.

What’s the difference?

Beyond a simply higher level of craft and execution, it largely boils down to stakes.

Wisteria Vale is a fake reality being used to imprison a cursed adventurer until such time as the cure can be found.

… which, it turns out, is right now.

The PCs are hired to take the cure into the book, cure the cursed hero, and bring them out again. The PCs then discover that the book has ended up in Candlekeep, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Because the things that happen in Wisteria Vale actually matter, everything about the adventure is heightened and it can give you things to actually care about. And because the PCs are given meaningful agency in the adventure, the stakes of the adventure are placed in meaningful jeopardy and the things the PCs achieve (or fail to achieve) are meaningful (and, therefore, exciting).

In Wisteria Vale itself, of course, the PCs discover that things have gone awry in the pocket dimension/simulation, and they’re confronted with a mystery which alternates freely between the creepy and the surreal as they seek to unravel the Vale’s enigmas.

Shaw does a particularly fantastic job of prepping a situation rather than a plot, giving the GM lots of tools for actively responding to whatever course of action the PCs choose.

Conversely, the players are given a cool little playground where they can run wild to the limits of their imagination.

There are cool places, cool characters, and cool events.

It’s just cool.

Grade: A

THE BOOK OF INNER ALCHEMY (Daniel Kwan) features the Order of the Immortal Lotus, a school of martial artists under the instruction of Master Bak Mei who have fled from eastern lands and established a temple in the Cloakwood near Candlekeep. The adventure begins when Bak Mei sends several of his monks to break into Candlekeep and steal several pages from The Book of Inner Alchemy which contain instructions for making a legendary ki-stealing magic item called the gloves of soul catching.

The break-in goes awry, however, and although the monks escape with the pages, they leave several dead Avowed in their wake. Candlekeep hires the PCs to track down the killers.

The atmosphere of the adventure seems very much intended to evoke the kung fu flicks of the 1970’s, including the cheesy, badly translated dialogue:

• “Do you really think you can defeat my Immortal Lotus style? You were mere worms slithering through the mud on a rainy day. I am the bird, here to feast!”
• “Before you get a chance to fight Bak Mei, you’ll have to deal with me—Steel Claw!”
• “My Immortal Lotus style was supposed to be… unbeatable!” <dies>

Overall, the adventure is fairly threadbare, but quite serviceable. There are some things to nitpick (the central premise is that somebody decided to hide a book that must never be read by shelving it in the correct section of the most famous library in the world), but the only serious problem I see here is that the PCs are not positioned as the protagonists. The story just kind of happens to them.

Here’s a simple example, which is perhaps also the most clearly egregious, from the initial murder investigation:

A character who examines the bodies and succeeds on a DC 13 Intelligence (Investigation) check discovers a torn piece of white cloth clutched in the fist of one victim. The scrap of fabric is emblazoned with a white lotus inside a black circle. The Avowed recognize this as the symbol of the Order of the Immortal Lotus, a league of monks led by a master martial artist known as Bak Mei.

Ignore the bit where the PCs need to make a skill check to find the one-and-only clue that allows the adventure to happen (Kwan deals with that shortly thereafter by just having an Avowed find the clue for the PCs) and focus on what happens after the PCs find the clue: Instead of being put in a spotlight (making an Intelligence check to identify the symbol themselves or being allowed to research it while standing in a giant library), the PCs are automatically shunted to one side so that an NPC can solve the mystery for them.

It’s a small thing, but there’s a lot of small stuff like this through the whole adventure. And it drags the whole thing down.

Grade: C-

THE CANOPIC BEING (Jennifer Kretchmer) has an absolutely fantastic hook. The PCs arrive in Candlekeep to do some research and, shortly thereafter, are summoned to meet with Great Reader A’lai Aivenmore, who shows them a copy of The Canopic Being. This ancient tome contains incredibly dangerous rituals that allow a mummy lord to place its organs, normally sealed within canopic jars, into living hosts.

The ultimate chapter details how Valin Sarnaster, an honored oracle of Savras, has studied the work and intends to follow its instruction and ascend as a mummy lord. The final page contains a list of the living victims in which Valin will place his organs.

The last names on the list?

The PCs.

This is one of those hooks that’s so good that it more or less demands that you run the adventure. And the rest of the adventure follows through on its promise.

The PCs track Valin back to his tomb. Here Kretchmer designs an absolutely stunning dungeon featuring an incredible array of unique divination-themed encounters. It’s magical and amazing and creepy, offering a dungeon experience that’s not only solid in its fundamentals, but delightful and memorable in its execution. Things are further fleshed out with a tight cast of memorable NPCs, with everything eventually culminating in a stunning set-piece battle with Valin in the mummy lord’s zero-g demesne.

As a high-level adventure (targeted at 13^th level PCs), Kretchmer does an absolutely fabulous job of lacing advice throughout the entire adventure on how it can be tightly integrated into an ongoing campaign — through foreshadowing ahead of time; by planting lore from your wider campaign within the adventure; and with a thoughtful breakdown of how the aftermath of the adventure might play out over time.

This adventure is a rare gem.

Grade: A

THE SCRIVENER’S TALE (Brandes Stoddard) features an incredibly creepy cursed book which is also the prison for the Princess of the Shadow Glass, a powerful and evil archfey. After accidentally triggering the curse, the PCs need to backtrack the book, discover the true history of the Princess of the Shadow Glass, and eventually figure out how to free (and then defeat) her. All the while, the Princess herself will be in telepathic communication with them, hoping to make them her allies.

The adventure is solid throughout and does a very admirable job of capturing an epic scope (it’s designed for 14^th level characters) while only having a handful of pages to work with. My one critique is that it would benefit significantly from a clearer and more concise summary of the Princess’ history for the DM.

The adventure’s shining achievement, however, is the curse of the Scrivener’s Mark. Stoddard has put a lot of careful thought and care into its design, and the results have paid off: The curse is progressive, slowly growing in dread as its effects grow worse and the tell-tale Elvish script which slowly begins to cover the victim’s entire body, until it finally consumes them and turns them into a statue made of solid, smoky glass.

This is made particularly clever, however, because Stoddard has designed each stage of the curse to have both a drawback AND a benefit. These start with simple things — the character stops casting a shadow and begins speaking strange languages they’ve never known before — but then grow steadily worse and more powerful as the character’s nature is drawn into that of the Princess of the Shadow Glass. The curse is thus flavorful and terrifying in its looming doom, but not something that the players will simply resent.

It’s complicated and beautiful… much like the Princess.

Grade: C+

ALKAZAAR’S APPENDIX (Adam Lee) features the fabulous stories of Alkazaar’s Thrilling Tales… and also a small appendix detailing the one adventure Alkazaar was never able to complete. If the PCs take the hook, they’ll be able to follow Alkazaar’s directions and locate the Lost Golem who has been seeking its master for centuries.

What seems like a fairly charming fairy tale, however, suddenly rolls back to reveal a fantasy epic: The golem’s master was a king who enacted a mighty spell to seal away the Nether Scroll of Azumar and keep it from the rapacious grasp of an evil wyrm. The king remains trapped within the seal, the wyrm has transformed itself into a dracolich, and the PCs are about to get right in the middle of the ancient feud.

“Alkazaar’s Appendix” is a fun adventure. It’s a little fragile in parts (requiring alliances with specific NPCs at specific points for the adventure to continue), has a few hiccups (like intermittently forgetting that the PCs’ guides exist), and a few missed opportunities (the picture-portal used to go to the golem should be a functional puzzle the players can solve and not just something that “requires 1 hour of study” and then the DM tells you what you did). But I would comfortably describe this as “eminently playable.”

And the emotionally resonant ending — where, if all goes well, there is a heart-touching reunion between golem and master (and, if not, other emotions to be had) — adds significant flair, in my opinion. Lee grounds the adventure in characters and human drama, which elevates the material above a procedural hack ‘n slash.

Grade: C+

 XANTHORIA (Toni Winslow-Brill) features Xanthoria, a druid who became obsessed with immortality and has transformed into a lichen lich. This central concept of the undead remnants of a druid clinging to existence through a perverted symbiosis-turned-parasitism with the natural world is really cool and well worth pilfering.

Unfortunately, the associated adventure is a bit naff.

The opening is very awkward, and I’ll let the adventure speak for itself (through its opening boxed text):

A fungal plague is ravaging the Sword Coast, spreading quickly from one settlement to the next. Although magic has proven effective at ridding individuals of the spore infection, the plague is spreading too quickly to contain. Creatures that become infected fall ill with a fever and sprout disgusting, gooey, fungal growths before losing their autonomy, acting like zombies. They also release spores that infect other beasts and humanoids. Eventually, the plague reduces all infected creatures and foodstuffs to puddles of ooze.

Humanoids infected with the plague drone the word “Xanthoria” over and over for no discernible reason before death finally claims them. You have determined that there’s a book by that name contained in the library-fortress of Candlekeep. With luck, the book holds information that might help you end the saprophytic plague before it wipes out every village, town, and city in Faerûn.

As you dig into the mechanics of the plague, you’ll discover that it is, in fact, truly horrific:

• Anyone within 10 feet of a plague victim must make a DC 20 Constitution saving throw or become infected, forcing additional DC 20 saving throws until they die.
• If you’ve had the disease, you’re immune… for 24 hours. Then you can get sick again.
• It also infects (and can be spread by) animals.
• It infects food and crops, which are automatically destroyed within a day and can also spread the plague.

So avoiding infection is basically impossible, more than half of the population is going to die the first time they catch it, and most of the rest will follow shortly thereafter. I’d say this is literally a biblical plague, but it’s actually much, much worse than that and even if people DO survive, it’s going to be followed by a famine of almost unfathomable proportions.

This is literally the Apocalypse. Even if the PCs manage to destroy Xanthoria and end the plague, the Sword Coast will have already been destroyed.

But here’s the thing: You can’t blow up an entire setting and then “fix” it in 15 pages, for the same reason that The Lord of the Rings isn’t a short story.

In an adventure like this, the set up for the Apocalypse has to be so scant (as demonstrated in practice by the boxed text above) that it’s impossible to set the stakes and have the players take the situation seriously. And even if you put in the legwork of setting up the saprophytic plague, adding all the pre-“Xanthoria” scenes of apocalyptic horror as the plague spreads, and then structuring things so that the PCs actually discover the existence of the book at Candlekeep (instead of just being told that they do)… you’re still faced with the impossible task of satisfactorily resolving the entire Apocalypse of the Sword Coast in a one-shot.

So “Xanthoria” is fatally flawed from the beginning.

Okay. So let’s say you scrap that entire premise and reframe things: The plague has broken out in a single city and it is so utterly horrific that the consequences if it’s allowed to spread are clear. The PCs are in a race to prevent the Apocalypse, and they’re following a lead to Candlekeep. (Let’s say that, once the plague victims start droning “Xanthoria,” a local bookseller remembers selling a unique book of that title to a scholar who said they were going to use it to gain entrance to Candlekeep. The person who brought the book to the bookseller is already dead of the plague.)

Is the adventure itself any good?

I’d say it’s serviceable, but rather mediocre. It’s saddled with a twee, amnesiac NPC who turns out to be Xanthoria’s living phylactery, so the only way to actually solve the adventure is to “convince Thunderwing to give up her life” with a Charisma check. (For some reason just stabbing her is never even mentioned as an option.) This is supposed to be very, very, very, very sad… but is only moderately so because the PCs met her like three seconds ago and not-at-all so because these are 16^th-level characters and they can just cast raise dead. Except they can’t because, if they could, it wouldn’t be “sad.” (No other reason is given.)

The adventure itself is a little dungeon with eleven rooms. The key for these rooms feature a lot of cool descriptions of fungus and some moderately creepy fungoid experiments being carried out by Xanthoria that also let the PCs slowly discover the tale of her fall… if they hadn’t already read about it in the titular book. The lore here is atmospheric, but the combat encounters seem perfunctory and aren’t balanced correctly for a 16^th-level party. Similarly, some efforts are taken to nerf the abilities of 16^th level characters that would trivialize the challenges presented, but even if I thought this was a wise effort, I don’t think it’s a successful one. (If you use the adventure, I would aim for a lower PC level and tweak things accordingly. It would be significantly less work than the more drastic alterations required for the reverse.)

Grade: D

CONCLUSION

What I’m personally looking for in an adventure anthology (or any anthology, really) is just a good selection of stuff I like. Some of the best anthologies I’ve ever read only have a hit rate of like 80%. I’m not expecting every single entry to be good (or suited for my tastes if it is). I can ignore the stuff I don’t like. There just needs to be enough of the stuff that I do like.

In some cases, just one truly phenomenal entry can make an entire anthology worthwhile.

With that in mind, let’s briefly survey the scenario grades:

Anything with an A or B grade is an adventure I would definitely run. Stuff with a C grade I’m more skeptical of, but are likely salvageable if you particularly like the concept or content.

So out of seventeen adventure we have:

• 8 that I would definitely run;
• 4 that could be salvaged; and
• 5 that I think are a complete miss.

That, by itself, is not quite hitting “greatest anthology of all time” levels, but it’s a very good anthology. If you break that down, it works out to about $4 per really good scenario and that feels like a no-brainer to me.

But to this must be added that two of these scenarios — “A Deep and Creeping Darkness” and “The Canopic Being” — aren’t just good scenarios, in my opinion, they’re truly great scenarios. Honestly, even if everything else in the anthology were utterly unusable, I’d probably still recommend it just on the strength of those two adventures.

So the only mystery left to Candlekeep Mysteries at this point is why you haven’t bought it yet.

Style: 4
Substance: 5

Project Lead: Christopher Perkins
Writing: Graeme Barber, Bill Benham, Kelly Lynne D’Angelo, Alison Huang, Mark Hulmes, Jennifer Kretchmer, Daniel Kwan, Adam Lee, Ari Levitch, Chris Lindsay, Sarah Madsen, Christopher Perkins, Michael Polkinghorn, Taymoor Rehman, Hannah Rose, Derek Ruiz, Kienna Shaw, Brandes Stoddard, Amy Vorpahl, Toni Winslow-Brill
Rules Development: Jeremy Crawford, Dan Dillon, Ben Petrisor, Taymoor Rehman

Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Cost: $49.95
Page Count: 224

FURTHER READING
Random GM Tip: Running Portals
Review: Candlekeep Companion

Go to Part 1

What is the Yawning Portal?

Ultimately, of course, it is a mythical locale which lives in the imagination. So it can be whatever you want it to be.

As I’ve dived deep into its lore, however, there is a kind of gestalt vision of the Yawning Portal which has grown strong in my mind. And if you wouldn’t mind indulging me, I’d like to share it with you here as a way of drawing together everything that we’ve learned.

I’m not going to attempt a full map of the tavern, but we can use the rough sketch above to orient ourselves a bit.

FOOTPRINT: I’ve based the outlines of the sketch more-or-less on the 5^th Edition outline of the building. If you’d prefer the FR1 outline, you basically just need to shove what I’m describing as the West Wing back from the street so that it juts out the backside of the building.

• Built of stone.
• Three storeys high.
• Several chimneys.
• Slate grey roof.
• The front door is rounded. The signboard of silvery wood above the door reads, “The Yawning Potral.”

NEIGHBORHOOD: The Yawning Portal has been described as “two doors down from the Empty Keg tavern, right next to Mother Salinka’s House of Pleasure” (Ruins of Undermountain, p. 8). So Mother Salinka’s is the building directly to the east (sharing a wall with the Portal) and the Empty Keg is just beyond that on the corner.

Note: Given all the secret entrances perforating the Yawning Portal, could we imagine one from the East Wing leading into Mother Salinka’s? Yes, I think so.

Directly to the west of the Yawning Portal is the opening to the alley which lies behind it. Waterdeep has a number of these intra-block courtyard alleys (Trollskull Alley from Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is another). The one behind the Yawning Poral has never been detailed or named. Let’s call it Halaster Alley, which is sometimes known by the name Halaster’s Cove.

STABLES: The Yawning Portal’s stables are located in a separate building in Halaster’s Cove. They are likely also employed by customers of other businesses in the Cove, including Mother Salinka’s and the Empty Keg.

TAPROOM

The taproom takes up the front two-thirds of the main building, with a general look and feel according to Jason Thompson’s illustration. The front door looks across the Well of Entry to the well-worn, but polished three-sided bar at the back. Rounded balconies run along three sides of the second and third floors, with railing seating positioned to look down into the Well. On the ground floor, there are open arches leading to the East and West Wings.

• Blue tapestries hang at regular intervals around the room.
• The walls are wood-paneled.
• The floor is made from well-worn boards.
• The demon-faced fireplace stands next to the bar, facing the front door.
• The room is lit with candle wheels.
• There are tables all around the Well of Entry (including between the Well and the bar). A number of tables are built around the wooden pillars supporting the ceiling.
• A large number of curios, mostly donated by delvers returning from Undermountain, are on display throughout the taproom. (See Tales from the Yawning Portal, p. 6 for a sampling.)
• Two sets of spiral stairs, located to the east and west side of the Well, provide access to the balconies.
• Because of the design of the space, on the second and third floors there’s a narrow “hall” of sorts that extends back along the east side of the taproom. On both levels there are some fairly private tables that are not well lit and not easily seen from the rest of the taproom.

THE BAR:

• Under the bar, Durnan keeps a crossbow loaded with blunt-headed sleep arrows.
• A broadsword hangs on the wall behind the bar.
• There’s a lance-and-lion board set up for play on the bar.

THE WELL OF ENTRY: The Well is 40 feet across with a 1-foot high stone rampart. It’s 140 feet deep.

• A stone ledge juts out from the bar side of the Well, allowing access to the rope-and-harness suspended from a block-and-tackle.
• The harness is notably studded with a bronze bas relief of a skull.
• The pulley system allows Durnan to lower would-be delvers from the bar; there is also a release lever there that will rapidly drop the entire rope into the Well.
• The walls of the well are crumbly, with abundant handholds and footholds.
• The entry/exit fee to be lowered into or raised out of the Well of Entry is 1 gp.

WEST WING

The West Wing is made up entirely of guest rooms. Three floors, each with a public stair on the south end and a servant’s stair on the north end.

• Barrels filled with fireplace-heated stones are placed at the end of every floor’s central hall.
• On the third floor there’s a dining area at the far end of the hall, with a fireplace and a trestle table where the staff will serve food to those renting rooms.

EAST WING

The first floor of the East Wing has additional seating ringed by a number of private dining areas, discreetly screened with blue curtains.

• A service hallway connects the storerooms on the north end of the East Wing’s first floor to the kitchen (see below; it’s really more of a single, rambling complex of staff rooms). This hallway can also be accessed from a door in the northwest corner of the dining room (servers sometimes use this to deliver food).
• There is a secret door leading from one of the private dining areas into the back rooms.
• Another secret door leads from a storeroom into the dark end of Halaster’s Cove . Just across the alley from this door is the back door of the stables.
• The Wet Well, sometimes referred to as the Wet Way, is located in one of the East Wing’s back rooms.

Note: Exactly what connection(s) the Wet Well has to Undermountain is beyond the scope of this vision. It seems likely they also change depending on the current architectural whims of the Mad Mage. But it is generally known to offer more direct access to Skullport than the Well of Entry.

The second floor of the East Wing is a large hostel, with multiple bunkbeds and cheap cots. This area often ends up being a congregation of adventurers, swapping tales and tips while preparing for their sojourns.

• There’s a small library of books here. (With sometimes surprising titles to be found crammed amongst the common fare.)
• The room is also accoutered with medical supplies, usually overseen by a Tymoran priest who can offer healing services.

The third floor of the East Wing is newer construction and has a pair of luxurious suites, particularly well-suited for adventuring parties who have just returned with gold to spend from Undermountain.

• Both suites have secret doors leading to the third-floor balcony of the taproom.

STAFF AREAS

REAR AREA – FIRST FLOOR: Behind the taproom are several rooms.

• The kitchens, including the back door.
• Durnan’s Office, furnished with two facing couches of red velvet, a small table, and a desk.
• A private meeting room.
• Access to the Lower Depths (see below).

REAR AREA – SECOND FLOOR: Rooms for the live-in staff can be found here.

REAR AREA – THIRD FLOOR: The private quarters of Durnan and his family are located on the third floor.

LOWER DEPTHS

Wine cellars and storerooms which extend for at least three levels below the Yawning Portal. These are labyrinthine, some being of new construction and others actually being chambers that were once part of the lower levels of Halaster’s Tower.

• The lower depths are warded against teleportation and divination (most likely due to ancient protections placed here by Halaster).
• A secret tunnel from the Blackstaff’s Tower can be accessed from one of these storerooms.
• The deepest wine cellar is also Durnan’s trophy room. Some of the stone pillars here have secret vaults concealed within them, including one which holds Durnan’s old adventuring sword and a magic ring.

STAFF

The Yawning Portal has a total of fourteen staff members, including Durnan and the members of his family.

CONCLUSION

But who is Durnan? The innkeeper himself, of course, has gone through a number of iterations. I have chosen to focus primarily on the tavern itself and not dive deeply into Durnan’s evolution because NewbieDM has already done the work here.

So if you’d like to dive even deeper, check out The Many Faces of Durnan the Wanderer.