Good afternoon from Italy! Long short story: after three years of abstinence I finally founded a party and we played since September! The campaign is The Dragon's Demand, sure, but I prefer to start with Murder's Mark Module (settel on Belhaim of course) so that players could explore the town and meet sone NPCs (like the baroness's son and Hunclay).
These are the players, from left to right: a Keleshite rogue, a Chelixian one-eyed fighter, a Taldan wizard of noble birth (the most recent player, he joined us just to the start of TDD), a LG cleric of Sarenrae (accompanied by a half-elven adept) and a wannabe dragonslayer ranger. The party was able to successfully *Murder's Mark* and started to gaining popularity on Belhaim for this. And in the last session they just found the body of Hunclay under the tower's dungeon and they now head on the wizard's estate...
Now, the reason why I chose to use this short campaign it's not only because a dragon appear as the main villain of the Module - but even because I love Lovecraft, and the Mythos references on this campaign about the Dominion of Black, the alien minions of the dragon (about him, I replace the green dragon with a nightmare dragon) and the Monastery of Saint Kyerixus. Lovecraft and occult stuff are my weaknesses, I must say, but I'm planning to make a lot of change about the last location of this campaign. this because I partially change the background of the adventure.
Between the Slayers there's a particular man - his name has been lost from the story. He was an old and blind man armed only with a wooden mace and a habit, but he joined up with the Slayers and help them with his faith and magic against the domain and menace of dragons - especially of the "Black Tyrant" (the moniker of Aeterpax in some ballads and chronicles). Despite of his conditions, the old man fought with Lady Tula and other Slayers in the final battle against Aeterpax; and while Tula received the title of Baroness, the old man refused any award from the emperor and spent some years in the newborn town of Belhaim becoming a spiritual adviser for inhabitants. Then, one day he made a request to the baroness - he was willing to reclaim an ancient and abandoned monastery to the mountains of the east. He was able to cleanse the godfosarken place by the evil, but he chose to not come back on Belhaim and he spent his last years of his life in the monastery. Some people joined with him and a monastic order, now disappeared, was founded in his honour.
The "forgotten saint" was really a good and pious man, a blind pilgrim. He didn't worshipped a particular god, he roamed from land to land to preach the ideals of law and goodness. Then, one day while he was on his way to Nazilli, he tripped on a root. He lost his shillelagh for just a moment and he took it back - but he didn't realized he found instead the Saint Cuthbert's Mace. He met Tula Belhaim and his friends short later: Nazilli was destroyed by Aeterpax, and they were the only survivors of the doomed city. The old and blind man, imbued with his fervent love for justice (but even by the artifact), decided to help Tula and his friends to revenge Nazilli and fight against Aeterpax. The vile black dragon was killed, and Belhaim was fonuded: the old man, hailed as a living saint, stayed in the new barony. He refused any kind of rewards like noble titles or land plots, keeping up with his lifestyle and becoming a shepherd of souls of the inhabitants of Belhaim. This until, some years after, he suddendlyd decided to leaving the town and moving towards an abandoned monastery...
The place known as “Monastery of the Forgotten Saint” already existed before the dominion of Aeterpax on Dragonfen. No one knows who or when the monastery was built, but since the foundation of Belhaim the place is the seed of some sinister stories and legends – for example the “faceless devils”, creatures of the night who kidnap lost travelers with their batlike wings. The inhabitants knows some monks lived there in the past, but some time before the fall of Sarvo Canterclure silence fell on the place. Some Devy soldiers, going to explore the monastery after the fall of Sarvo, came back with confused and scary stories about "crawling things", "spooky apparitions" and "creepy whisperers". The new rulers of Dragonfen, the Devy, decided to don't get much closer with that place. And today the Monastery of the Forgotten Saint is still abandonded and considered a dangerous place by the inhabitants of Belhaim.
Founded some centuries before the Dragon Plague events, this place was a monastery founded by Nethys worshippers and scholars. The studies of magical theories isn’t just their only focus – they explored the truth beyond the known reality, studying about mysteries of other worlds, of other realities. But this occult knowledge couldn’t be gained without a price. They come into contact with the starless sky above the known solar system and its alien inhabitants. They found new secrets, acquired new knowledge. They were so obsessed by the results obtained in these researchs that they eventually turned their backs on Nethys for another patron – the Outer God Yog-Sothot. Following the revelations gained by the entities of the Dark Tapestry, the fools created the Dark Window so that they can found a way to directly contact the Lurker at the Threshold. But something went wrong, and the Dark Window opened the door that led these men to death. Or worse. And the Dark Window stayed open since then.
The saint, some years later the foundation of Belhaim, had a sudden revelation about the elder evil into the abandoned monastery. He choice totake on the duty to banish the cosmic horrors hidden within the monastery, and in the end he was able to close the Dark Window and cutting the Outer God's malevolent influence on Dragonfen. He then founded the monastic order, becoming the first abbot of the monastery, and training the members as watchers against the forces of cosmic evil if the Dark Tapestry's influence gone back to Dragonfen. Since the saint had not revealed his motivations and plans to Lady Tula the baroness never knew anything about this, just like the Canterclure when they came to govern the barony after Tula’s death. But unfortunately, generations after the death of the saint, his teachings and warnings were lost. The monastic order stopped to follow the rules and some people found some of the foolish knowledge about the eldritch abominations called "Great Old Ones" and "Outer Gods". History repeats itself: the order had fallen to corruption of the Dark Tapestry, exploiting their isolation to perform occult rituals and calling dark entities. In the end they found a way to reactivate the Dark Window - and they were all killed (or found a fate worse than death) as their predecessors, and once again the monastery became a dark place for unspeakable things.
This is the background about the monastery. I want make the last part of *The Dragon's Demand* oriented to occult and horror elements - a pure *Call of Cthulhu* moment before (or after) the fight with the dragon. I need to seelct the DC of various Knowledge checks (history, arcane, local), implementing new rooms or section of the monastery, adding themed haunts, references and hints about the story of the Forgotten Saint, Nethys and the Yog-Sothoth. For example, the Irorian mummy could be instead a Nethitian undead or a ghost of the last abbot; insert some nightgaunt (the "faceless devils" from the legends) as random encounters aroubd the monastery; and other things.