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Sample file Credits Contents Designer & Writer. Jack S Duncan Editor. Laura Hutton Template. From GM Binder by We Write Code Adventure Outline...... 4 Cover Image. Laura Hutton Introduction...... 4 Watercolor Stains. Jared Ondricek Maps. Jack Duncan Ch. 1: Planet of the Dead...... 6 Maps Created With. Dungeondraft Spelljammer Graveyard...... 6 Other art from royalty free sources. Additional art by Wizards Of The Coast and used with Ch. 2: In Name Only...... 8 permission. Taking Off...... 8 Playtesters. Heather Duffy, Leslie Spence, Laura Hutton Sailing on the Sea of Stars...... 8 Haven...... 8 Special Thanks. Ch. 3: Save Me...... 10 David Wright, for encouraging a stranger. Storming the Exile...... 10 Azzulock Defeated...... 10 Donald Smith, for utterly ruining my idea of "balanced combat" and being such a sweet boi. Conclusion...... 11 Outcome 1 - The Journey Home...... 11 Heather Duffy, for only scamming the wealthy (sorry about Outcome 2 - Joining the Fight...... 11 constantly murdering you). Outcome 3 - Shiny...... 11 Leslie Spence, for creating the character "Shaadis" and Outcome 4 - The Coming Apocalypse...... 11 blowing my conception of the game wide open. Rewards...... 11 Laura Hutton, for literally all of it (and letting me talk your App. A: Magical Items...... 12 ear off at 3am about screaming 3.5e planets). Ebresk's ring of telekinesis...... 12 Pride...... 12 Everyone at RPG Writer Workshop for all the advice and Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon...... 12 encouragement. App. B: Spelljammers...... 13 Types of Spelljammer...... 13 Content Warning Spelljammer Modifications...... 14 Violence. This adventure contains some graphic descriptions of violence. App. C: Maps...... 15 Slavery. This adventure depicts a fantastical form of slavery Haven: Abattoir...... 15 and its aftermath. Haven: Private Docks...... 16 Please speak with your players about this type of content Spelljammers...... 17 before running this adventure. App. D: Creatures...... 18 Adeya...... 18 Legal Angel of Decay...... 19 DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, D&D, Wizards of the Coast, Azzulock the Reviled...... 20 Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Eberron, the dragon Ebresk...... 22 ampersand, Ravnica and all other Wizards of the Coast Oortlings...... 23 product names, and their respective logos are trademarks of Shaadis...... 26 Wizards of the Coast in the USA and other countries. Zombilithid...... 27 This work contains material that is copyright Wizards of the Coast and/or other authors. Such material is used with App. E: New Player Options...... 28 permission under the Community Content Agreement for Oortling Player Race...... 28 Dungeon Masters Guild. Blessing of Atropus...... 29 All other original material in this work is copyright 2019 by Jack Duncan and published under the Community Content AgreeSamplement for Dungeon Masters Guild. file

3 Adventure Outline

Introduction Atropus "In the final days, the stars wilted upon the black vines of Atropus’ orbit of Glyth has several detrimental night as even the dead sprung forth to deliver us from His effects on the planet and its surrounding moons: gaze. When the skies darkened, only then did we behold His face, and all our wailing could not drown out his silence." - Any creature slain in and around Glyth has their Author unknown soul devoured by Atropus and cannot be restored to life by any means while Atropus still exists. Background Any creature that isn’t undead slain in and Near the edge of the Torilian solar system lies the planet around Glyth rises as a zombie 1d4 turns later. Glyth. Once the home of a mighty resurgent illithid empire, These zombies are under no one’s control and Glyth now lies empty and in ruins, its poisoned surface are hostile to all creatures that aren’t undead. haunted by the shambling undead. Orbiting the planet is the Elder Evil Atropus, a silently screaming planetoid sized head covered in a layer of rotten Adventure Hooks amniotic fluid. Atropus was drawn to Glyth by the orgy of This section gives a number of ideas for how the characters violence perpetrated by the illithids. When it touched down find themselves on Glyth. on the planet’s surface all life died. A few of the moons orbiting Glyth were inhabited, and pockets of the illithid's empire survived there. Unfortunately for the illithids, both Code Helm Razir Cinderwatch, a representative of Code Helm, visits the factions of gith have arrived to complete the purge of their party. Code Helm is an extra-planetary mercenary force that hated enemy. specializes in battling Mind Flayers. Cinderwatch is tasked While the gith fight each other as much as the illithids, the with recruiting reinforcements for the escalating battle illithilich Azzulok has been experimenting on the oortling around Glyth and has selected the party as potential cattle race to create an army to drive away the gith and claim mercenary recruits. If one of the characters worships Helm, the remaining illithids and Glyth’s countless undead as its Cinderwatch offers them full membership in Code Helm. As own. Its experiments have finally been fruitful, creating an they arrive in orbit of Glyth the Singularity is created. The oortling singularity, a being of unparalleled psionic resulting psionic blast damages Cinderwatch’s spelljammer, potential. breaching its hull and sucking Cinderwatch out into the With such a potent weapon under his thrall, Azzulok is vacuum of space. The spelljammer crashes on Glyth, leaving rapidly feeding the singularity more and more psionic power, the characters stranded. until it unleashes a psionic blast that will cripple the mind of every living being in the Torillian system and beyond. Gith Distress Call As the last shreds of its personality were destroyed in the If any member of the party is a gith, that character receives a agony of its creation, the singularity sent a single mighty psionic distress call from their faction orbiting Glyth. The pulse of psionic energy out into the multiverse: “Save me”. distress call will contain a magical component requesting reinforcements. If the character accepts, they and the rest of Overview the characters will be teleported to Glyth. Chapter 1: Planet of the Dead In this chapter the characters arrive on the surface of the Harvested The party is captured by mind flayers and transported to planet Glyth. The characters will quickly encounter a Glyth in a spelljammer to be used to replenish the illithid’s githyanki, githzerai and mind flayer, locked in mortal three- depleted livestock. This grim fate is averted when the psionic way combat. To escape the planet, the characters must blast from the Singularity’s creation crashes the mind flayers’ choose to side with one of the three NPCs as planar and spelljammer on Glyth. This hook can be a good alternative to magical travel are impossible. a TPK if the characters are ever defeated by mind flayers in the course of another adventure. Chapter 2: In Name Only This chapter will see the characters travel to the moon Haven “ ” in the company of their chosen NPC. Here they will battle Save Me While the characters were going about their normal business, through several chambers of Azzulok’s undead and oortlings, the psionic cry for help from the Singularity teleported them before arriving at the illithilich’s private docks. across the solar system to Glyth. This could be because the Singularity simply chose them at random while desperately Chapter 3: Save Me flailing, or the characters could have performed a great feat The chSamplearacters battle Azzulock. Once defeated, Azzulock's file that even an oortling half a solar system away has heard of. mind is transferred to his spelljammer, forcing the party to defeat him in ship to ship combat.

4 Teleportation Mishap The characters were magically teleporting or plane shifting in the moments when the Singularity was created. The psionic shockwave diverted their destination to Glyth, where they now find themselves trapped.

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5 Chapter 1 — Planet of the Dead he adventure begins on the surface of the planet Glyth. If the characters arrived on the planet via Oortlings spelljammer the characters start amongst a Oortlings are a tragic race that once dwelt among spelljammer graveyard on the planet’s surface. the stars on the comets that traverse Realmspace. If the characters were instead teleported to They were conquered by the mind flayers early in TGlyth they begin inside a nondescript cave their cultural development and mutated into a near the spelljammer graveyard. The cave's floor is coated in chattel race with an overdeveloped brain and oortling skeletons, which appear like 4 foot human skeletons atrophied body. Their minds hold the potential for with three fingers and a swollen cranium, about three times a level of intelligence that far exceeds the norm, human size. Each skull has a two inch hole in the skull. but they were kept in conditions that made cultural and intellectual development impossible. The Regardless of how the characters arrive, they soon end up average oortling is about the same height as a in the spelljammer graveyard. Read or paraphrase the dwarf, with an obviously swollen skull. They have following when they first enter that area: only three fingers that can accomplish only basic grasping actions. Around you are the ruins of several strange constructions of wood and metal, destroyed so thoroughly that they are barely Ebresk. The mind flayer gestures around at the spell recognizable as ships. Smoke rises from many of these wrecks, jammer ruins. He claims to be a capable spelljammer joining the smoke of huge fires burning far off in the distance. engineer (a lie) and says that without his help the party will be unable to escape this planet. Beyond their immediate surroundings, the characters will likely notice very quickly that they are not on Toril anymore. Shaadis. The githyanki claims to be a capable warrior Above their heads the sky is green and the planet’s rings can and spelljammer pilot. He argues there will be many mind be seen as a completely uniform cloud stretching in a straight flayers to kill, and none are more capable at this than him. line from one horizon to the other. Two of Glyth’s three The difference between these three are irreconcilable, moons are also visible, Mingabwe and, orbiting the larger none of them will agree to aid the party while the others yet moon, Polluter. Most troubling of all, Atropus is visible above live. the planet. During the day he appears as a simple If the party refuses to intervene the battle resumes and impenetrable orb of darkness, taking up about one eighth of Ebresk quickly manages to stun the other two combatants the sky. Only at night is his face visible. with a mind blast and consumes their brains. He will still agree to aid the party, but will look for the first opportunity to Spelljammer Graveyard betray them. Two dozen spelljammers dot the immediate area. The ground is grey due to the coating of ash that rains perpetually from Restoring a Spelljammer the sky above. As the characters take in the scene, another The surviving combatant informs the party that a growing spelljammer falls from the sky, crashing into the ground some level of psionic interference is coming from the orbiting miles away. asteroid Haven. This interference is preventing all The characters will quickly notice that there is a fight teleportaion and plane shift spells. At the rate the power is taking place amongst the ruins. A mind flayer named Ebresk, growing, the combatant believes they have at most four days a githyanki named Shaadis, and a githzerai named Adeya. As to stop what is happening. The combatant doesn't know they approach the characters will notice fresh bodies of gith what's causing it, but knows it wasn't their faction and is and mind flayers scattered around the combatants. Ebresk, pretty sure its something that must be prevented. Shaadis and Adeya are the only survivors of a battle in this The combatant begins scavenging for parts to repair one of area, and each seeks to see it through to its conclusion. the spelljammers scattered around the graveyard, allowing the party to choose between a skiff or warship. The party can Picking a Side aid the combatant to reduce the time needed to find the parts by rolling Intelligence (investigation) checks. The fight will temporarily halt at the sight of the party. All It will take the combatant 48 hours to repair a functional three of the combatants are intelligent enough to recognize spelljammer. Each party member who rolls an Intelligence that the intervention of the party could drastically alter the (investigation) check reduces the time required by 1 hour for battle in one of their favors. Each offers a quick one or two every number above 15. sentence appeal while suspiciously eyeing the other two: A roll of 20 or higher also finds one of the spelljammer AdSampleeya. The githzerai explains that they alone come from a modifications, determined randofilemly, as detailed in Appendix people who bares no ill-will towards the party's races. B. They claim the others will inevitably betray them.

6 If all the NPCs are dead, the players can attempt to mend one Development themselves, but this will likely be impossible. If the players With the spelljammer repaired the party departs for Haven are completely stuck, one of Azzulok’s alhoon’s could descend with their chosen NPC companion. Alternatively the DM can via spelljammer to harvest the spelljammer parts and battle decide that the task of fixing a spelljammer is much more the characters, potentially leaving the characters a working complex, requiring parts scavenged from far away, requiring spelljammer. several lengthy journeys across the surface of Glyth to retrieve. If the DM decides to do this, either lengthen the four day time limit or remove it entirely. Characters traveling any real distance across Glyth will likely face roaming undead, acid rain and other hazards.

From Glyth to Haven Haven is 180,343 miles from Glyth. In other words, whether the party selects the skiff or the war ship, it will take them two full jumps to reach Haven. If the party did not speed up the combatant's time to repair the spelljammer, they will have mere hours left before the singularity's second psionic pulse destroys the minds of all living things in and around Haven and Glyth.

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