I understand that we won't see Denizens of Diamond Lake until the next online supplement.
However, I'd like to start this campaign either this weekend or next. Is there enough in the Denizens article to make me wait to start the campaign--or can I go ahead and start the Whispering Cairn without worrying about really missing anything?
On a similar vein -- Diamond Lake pun intended :P -- I'm considering creating a half-elf ranger, and I was thinking that in that when I do the character writeup I'd make him a member of the bronzewood lodge community. Is there anything I should know ahead of time, or anything I can tell the player about their affiliation to the lodge?
Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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I'm not sure I understand the first question. Start them outside the dungeon, and you shouldn't have to worry about the stat blocks for a few sessions.
As for the Bronzewood Lodge, here's my unedited text on it, which you may find helpful:
The Bronzewood Lodge
The ring of crumbling menhirs on the bluff overlooking Diamond Lake is a remnant of an ancient human druidic culture that once inhabited the region. They too came to the hills for the ancient cairns, seeing them as monuments to great ancestors of the invisible past. Although modern humans displaced the native druids during great migrations over a thousand years ago, pockets of indigenous architecture and culture remain. Foremost among these near-forgotten practices is veneration of Obad-Hai, the Shalm, the brooding patron of wilderness and natural order.
Druids and rangers who honor the Shalm and a host of minor nature deities and fey spirits (the so-called Old Faith) routinely congregate in great moots three hours northeast of Diamond Lake, at an ancient megalithic structure called the Bronzewood Lodge. Devotees of Ehlonna or the elven pantheon are welcome at these meetings, if a bit gruffly, but all other attendees must be invited personally by someone already within the circle of trust. At these great moots, the woodsfolk observe rituals from long ago, celebrate with great contests of strength and wit, and debate policy regarding the natural affairs of the region.
A small permanent community inhabits the Lodge itself and the wooded copse surrounding it. Perhaps 30 assorted druids, rangers, and scouts protect the sacred site and keep watch on the nearby roads and valleys. Occasionally, they step in to rescue a traveler from some natural menace, but just as often they warn explorers to stay on the roads and let the wilderness take care of itself. Their leader is Nogwier (N male human cleric of Obad-Hai 6), an aged proponent of the Old Faith who strives to keep the focus of his community on preservation of a near-extinct way off life and away from anger at the Free City and its operatives in Diamond Lake, whose avariciousness continually rapes the land. Nogwier urges cautious cooperation with Lanod Neff via a former Bronzewood man named Merris Sandovar, who now works as the garrison’s chief scout, but he wishes that the Free City would have given him a more reasonable governor-mayor than Neff, and knows he won’t outlive him.
The Lodge itself is a twelve-chambered structure composed of piled megaliths covered by earth. The cairn’s central gallery contains a huge uprooted petrified oak tree planted upside down so that its roots are exposed. Nogwier and his three servitors (N female human cleric of Obad-Hai 3) use the tree as a massive altar. Other chambers contain the sorted, commingled bones of generations of druids as well as priceless natural treasures accumulated over the course of centuries.
--Erik
As for the Bronzewood Lodge, here's my unedited text on it, which you may find helpful
Thanks! Really, posting your unedited text is above and beyond the call of duty. You rock!
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Awesome! Thank you very much Erik. I was just wondering if information of the Feral Dog would be posted in a later installment. I know that the section on Diamond Lake in #124 goes into some detail but in the actual adventure it shows a map of the place with numbered rooms. I was wondering when if ever we would get the key to these numbers. Let me just congratulate you and everyone else at the magazine for making a first adventure that easily rivals the intro to Shackled City!
Any chance that I could get some more info on the Twilight Monastery? One of my characters is from there and I would like to provide him a little more background before our next session tomorrow.
Sean, the key to the rooms is in a sidebar on the same page with the map. It lists what the rooms are, but not what they contain or any room descriptions... perhaps they'll be fleshed out in the Age of Worms hardback?
Squid