'Random' Encounter between Carrion Hill and Illmarsh


Carrion Crown


Again, we're in old Ustalav, with potentially a 100+ mile journey on our hands with a little bit of detail to flesh it out. Obviously, I want to continue showcasing the wonder and horror that comprises this country. The PCs will travel overland,(since no one has the capability to Teleport, which I am overjoyed with), passing through the Varno/Ulcazar border into Verserx. While the wandering encounter chart is all well and good, a lot of the monsters featured are already present in Wake of the Watcher and I don't want to over-saturate the campaign with 'those' kind of monsters, especially since a lot of the horror element results in encountering them for the first time in the context of the adventure.

Sort of spoilers:

The planned land route is as follows:
*Carrion Hill --> Lantern Lake (50 miles)
*Road between Lantern Lake and Watching Wood (Old Wikeneim Road) --> Hyannis (55 miles)
*Hyannis --> Rosenport (Danver Road) (17 miles)
*Rosenport --> Thrushmoor (Danver Road) (14 miles)
*Thrushmoor --> Illmarsh (16 miles)

Encounter Ideas
1)Apostasy Wraiths (Inner Sea Bestiary) Being close enough to the border of Razmiran, this might be my only chance to ever use these awesome undead in the context of any campaign that's out right now. I think their ability to supress clerical powers could make for an interesting fight. I think maybe some sort of abandoned hamlet context, like a failed missionary attempt. Maybe I could even foreshadow what killed the priests with some sort of monster that appears later in the jounrey.

2) Aboleth Between Avalon Bay and the Destach River, there's all sorts of waterways the PCs are going to travel near, which begs for an aquatic encounter of some kind, if nothing else than to give the PCs a refresher on the possibility of underwater combat and its rules. I could see an Aboleth keeping tabs on what's transpiring in Illmarsh, using dominated proxies to gather information and watch from afar. In this regard, I think an Advanced Aboleth with some Scrag minions could prove a good encounter; even if the Aboleth charms/domnates everyone, it still wants them to go to Illmarsh anyway and gather information.

3) Savage Dire Bats I like the idea of the wildlife itself being tainted by the 'Phage' described in Rule of Fear, that the whole of Versex county has an palpable aura of wrongness that sometimes poisons the animals into something else. AP #74 (Sword of Valor) gives the Man-Eating Animal template for creatures of the Animal Type, allowing a number of horrors to have plausible reason for attacking the PCs. In this way, I plan on having some sort of 'natural' spring tainted by the leyline energies in a way that animals that drink from the spring or eat the flesh of those who did become 'diseased'. (Like rabies, I get to play out the whole Cujo trope). In this regard, I think I'm going to mainly have Dire Bats and a Dire Bear be the main adversaries, but I have to get a hold of those Troop rules. I think a Troop of Man-Eating Elk would be terrifying...

4)Shining Child? I'm worried that this thing might be overpowered for a group of 4 9th level PCs, sort of like encountering the Witchfire randomly in Broken Moon. This could prove a horrifically awesome fight or a potential TPK. I'm on the fence on this one (It should be noted that the thing IS on the random encounter chart in the module).

5)Nuckalavee Since Hyannis is supposedly a sight of great environmental desolation, I feel that the inclusion and CR of this monster would be appropriate. The question is what else to include with it... I'm loathe to run solo monsters for a number of reasons.

Thoughts on any of this? Also what,if any, random encounters have other DMS used to detail this journey?


Edited for spoilers.


This is great ideas

Im going to steal it and when I have time I will give you some ideas

Do you really think you need that many encounters on the travel that's like a whole nights gaming for most groups right there


Yeah, that is the conundrum. I don't necessarily want to spend an entire session traveling (We are eager to begin WotW), but if I run 4+ encounters (including the assassination event), they won't even get to Illmarsh.

However, I feel that I am doing a disservice to the setting if I gloss over the travels, especially Versex. That was sort of the problem with the 'Ardis-->Feldgrau' stuff. It worked really well but stretched the journey from a gloss-over into a two-session affair. While everyone really seemed to like it, I am SO eager to run a number of the main encounters in WotW. I guess the rule here is patience.. Meaning I'll probably run at least 3 or 4 of the above listed encountes. (probably not the Shining Child.. No one's ready for permenant Insanity.. at least not til the leave Illmarsh :) )


I think the wraiths of the missionary's and the man eating animals will be two of the best ones


So were you able to run any of these encounters


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Just ran the Apostasty Wraiths. Basically had the abandoned chapel with relics of Razmiran (masks and such) and some alchemcial healing supplies. I had a Wand of Magic Mouth be the big treasure the priests used to trick their clergy. The three bodies were blood drained. I had thought about using an advanced Vampiric Mist, but decided to have vampires be responisible. The vampires did not want the false priests as their spawn, so they rose up instead as the wraiths. (I ran 3 of them). I also had the bodies and holy symbols reachable within the chapel so if the PCs wanted to, they could grab them and use the Wraiths' aversion to buy them time. As it was, the wraiths ganged up on thew Oracle (displays prominent holy symbol of Pharasma), but were dispatched in the nick of time.
Besides that, I ran the Assassination attempt, which almost killed the fighter. I detailed some of the wronglness of the animals but didn't actually have any attack. A lot of the time was spent buying and selling the unusable treaure from the last module, so in the interest of expediency ran only those two. I still gave as thorough of a description of each geographic locale as detailed in Rule of Fear but didn't have anything directly encounter them.
Right now, they just cleaned out the temple and are getting ready to go to House Undiomede...


Thanks that was the one I wanted to run for sure too
Just to get to use the Wraiths

Scarab Sages

I threw in man-eating long-horned cattle (aurochs). Template in on of the Wrath of the Righteous APs.

They also had an encounter with a caster summoning a familiar, something that was a tiny protean, at a convergence of ley lines. it was a fun encounter that didn't involve fighting but could have.

(speaking of unearthing something dead...like this thread)

I also through in a hamlet or village on the lakeside that was being terrorized by a large humanoid/giant creature that did crazy things at night. (can't remember the name) All of the trees were uprooted in town, and he had just the previous night dug up all of the bodies in the graveyard. They had only gotten to re-bury half of them, so he was there again that night.

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