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Hello! My campaign continues apace; the party has finally cleared the distance from Sandpoint to the Storval Stair. Now, after what is going to be a fun little stop in Jorgenfist with some 'oh no some threat has re-invaded the thassilonian ruins/excuse to re-use the map from Rise/ReturnotRL' I am faced with a huge order: fill the distance from there to the base of the mountains wherein lies Xin-NotYetEurythnia with interesting and fun adventure.
I also need to give the party like... maybe 2 levels worth of XP across the plateau. I was thinking of maybe converting the entire area north of the Cinderlands into a hexcrawl.
If you were tasked with adding some fun level 7-9ish adventure and plot hooks in that region, what would you do? I have some vague plans about involving the Shoanti and since this is a post-Rusthenge game I have some ideas to use a scaled-up Rust Hag pursuing them for thematic reasons but aside from that I'm sort of drawing blanks. Maybe a mini-dungeon in a Thassilonian ruin like the one from History of Ashes.
What do you guys think? What would you put into the northern half of the Storval Plateau for a travelling party to deal with?
Also: there is the possibility they just take the Storval Deep to the Kazaron River and branch off at the Stalak which does sort of negate a lot of overland travel, so perhaps some ideas as to why river travel is dangerous, or alternately, ways to make it interesting.
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The funnest 7th-9th EPL I had in the area was with a Lamia Matriarch -- the one from RotRL, with quite a bit of Homebrew depth, addition and filling-out. And this is what works for me:
What is a favorite monster for the player playing the Barbarian PC (if he hasn't had a chance to really shine recently)? Or, what is the perfect monster to give the Elf PC a bit of character background if it's that PC who hasn't gotten to really adventure down the lines of his backstory? Is there a PC who loves Thassilonian stuff but you haven't been able to really juice up the campaign with Thassilonian stuff? Or are your PCs sick of all the 'Thassilonia, Thassilonia, Thassilonia' themes? Maybe they haven't had a good Young-Adult Dragon fight in a loooooong time and so make a Young-Adult Dragon and give it a bunch of slave Orcs or something unique that the Ranger with the Favored Enemy finally gets to tackle. Or,.... If you've been tailoring the campaign to the PCs really well recently, well, what is your favorite monster? Has it been a long time since a really cool Vampire or Rakshasa has shown up in one of your games even though you love designing a wicked Vampire or a sweet Rakshasa? One could have fled Magnimar and is newly laired out here in the wilderness to rebuild its power base. Or research a magic item. Or whatever.
Again, I had lots of fun with the Lamia Matriarch (Xanesha), giving her some regular Lamia, some Gnolls, and a pair of Manticore -- art'ed out a little map they carved out of the wilderness, and let them haunt the PCs during night watch for a couple days of overland travel before Survival Skills and Tracking led them to the area.
Bonus points for Xanesha mention. She threw my cleric off a roof.
If they keep to the river, I thought maybe a baby Black Magga spawn too could be fun.
Maybe I SHOULD browse the monster core and just find something super interesting. Have we had any recent lore updates about the dragon up at Guiltspur by any chance?
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I don't think so. And the only other 'further development' thing in the area -- that I know about, at least -- is a grossly high level Lich lairing at the very bottom of The Storval Deep. But he's hiding in canon so it'd be awkward if you're sticking to canon and the Lich (Demi-Lich?) allows some lower-level Undead to walk up from the bottom of the de-oxygenated great-lake to hassle your PCs.
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You could also add an Easter Egg or Foreshadowing Clue to something that you know you're going to introduce later in the campaign. I mean, if it fits.