So, I just recently picked up a copy of the Dungeon Master's Guide II and was reading about the town of Saltmarsh. I know the town had been the basis for a recent Dungeon adventure (issue 135's "Funeral Procession") but I was surprised to see that a few of the plot elements from that adventure were actually laid out in the DMGII setting.
I'm curious, have there been any other Dungeon adventures that expand on the information given for Saltmarsh?
Don't know of anything in Dungeon, but the setting is from the 1st edition module "Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh," about an evil skulk. There was a sequel, too, if I recall correctly (we were waist-deep in Slave Lords at the time and never did get a chance to run those).
The three modules were U1 sinister secret of saltmarsh. U2 Danger in Dunwater. and U3 The final enemy. it had to do with shaugin taking over lizardfolk communityand the repercusions of that. I enjoyed playing in them in the 80s and DMing them w/3.5 conversions 3 years ago
The three modules were U1 sinister secret of saltmarsh. U2 Danger in Dunwater. and U3 The final enemy. it had to do with shaugin taking over lizardfolk communityand the repercusions of that. I enjoyed playing in them in the 80s and DMing them w/3.5 conversions 3 years ago
Thanks!
Hey, Fletch. I actually ran a campaign in Saltmarsh during the summer that I never finished. I made up most of my own material, using Funeral Procession as a starting point. We went from Funeral Procession to following up on the trail of the Graz'zt cult. I had their allied priest of Pelor hand them a list of a few former parishoners that he wanted the PCs to check on. There's a few Saltmarsh write-up spoilers down here.
A few were cultists, but I left a few that weren't as red herrings. One just switched to the church of Kord, another moved away. A wool merchant pretended to have switched to Fharlanghan. I had a scribe that had a suspicious turn of good luck after leaving the Pelor church and adopting an orphaned girl from the Lilybrook Orphanage. A halfling handyman was holding a suspicious gathering and one of the women working at the Orphanage had also recently dropped out of the church.
I used the escaped ettercap and the old guildhouse as an encounter where the wool merchant met an untimely end while "slumming" with a lady of the night. There, they found a book that lead to the scribe's commission, etc. The mysterious gathering (broken up by the PCs with their honorary guardsman status) turned up the same book and the groundskeeper at the orphanage. A quick visit and a tense lunch with Audrey and the children furthered their suspicions.
The next adventure was an evening raid on the Orphanage. I had all the children mysteriously vanished. The PCs were ambushed by a group of assassin's guild rogues, fought the harpy in the attic and found a passage down to a hidden church to Graz'zt, complete with fiendish animals, displacer beasts, Audrey and all the children, in a catatonic trance. I juiced Audrey up with feats from Hordes of the Abyss, namely Dark Speech or whatever the feat is called where you can speak in a demonic voice that scatters enemies. After dealing with her, they find that the kids were given "kool-aid" spiked with a rare urchin venom that enduces a long coma. The PCs then found evidence that a boat had recently cast off from below the Orphanage.
Then, I staged a Sahuagin assault on Oak Island as they returned for revenge on the town. They used the same urchin venom and abducted the head druid. After the town hired a crew, the characters headed to "Devil's Reef" (Lovecraft reference), which was full of ships driven into the reef itself to form Sahuagin encampments. After rescuing the druid, they were dispersed into the sea by a storm and that's where I ended the adventure.
I was going to have Eldara (she got away through invisibility) and the raised (improved and multiclassed) Sawfish Boys attack them later as the campaign progressed, but the summer ended before I could do it. That's how I handled a campaign there, if you want to try your hand at making your own adventures for the town.
Sorry for the long-winded post.
If one wanted to expand out on a campaign involving the U series of products there was a series of 2nd edition adventures written by Bruce Cordell that would seem to be somewhat ideal. Evil Tide, Night of the Shark, and Sea of Blood. Now I thought these adventures where essentially decent without them actually blowing me away or anything. However they do fit the theme along with the U series and providing links between them to create a mini-campaign might make every adventure involved greater then the sum of its parts. However just make sure that your version of Salt Marsh is not that far from the sea as Sahuagin heavy adventures need lots of water for the sharks.
The adventures can be downloaded for a song (and 4 greenbacks) from Paizo.