ISSUE 179 | JUnE 2010 A Dungeons & Dragons® Roleplaying Game Supplement Contents 3 EditoRial 36 Chaos ScaR: The SplinteReD 65 eye on the Realms By Steve Winter spRinG By Ed Greenwood “There’s a new sheriff in town, and he’s not By Scott Fitzgerald Gray Wizards beyond counting died in the Spellplague. entirely sane.” As part of a search for missing magical items, the What makes Ondal memorable is not his wizardry. heroes must make their way to a scarred landscape He is remembered for the wine he’d bottled but where a shattered spring fills a misty lake. hadn’t yet sold when the Spellplague struck. 4 faaRlunG’s AlGoRithm A Dungeons & Dragons adventure for 3rd-level characters. By Syd Thurston 68 save My Game Kelphin Green suffers from a life-threatening By Stephen Radney-MacFarland condition arising from his experiments in arcane 49 siDe Trek: The Den of DReus The difference between a good DM and a great DM is the elemental energies—elemental discorporeation— ability to say, yes. But we’re going to let you in on a little that is slowly reducing him to dust. To save By Logan Bonner secret. Sometimes it is OK to say no. himself, Kelphin looks to retrieve the Faarlung The conclusion of HS1: The Slaying Stone suggests Algorithm. A Dungeons & Dragons adventure possible future adventures the heroes might 71 DunGeoncraft for 16th-level characters. undertake. This side trek lets characters of around By James Wyatt 2nd level who completed the quest to find and James spreads clues and quests for the fledgling destroy the slaying stone follow up by pursuing characters to gather and which will guide their 24 Chaos ScaR: The HammeR Dreus Matrand. adventuring careers. falls By Corwin Riddle 61 eye on DaRk Sun In “The Hammer Falls,” characters enter an abandoned metalworking refinery under the By Rodney Thompson control of a clan of duergar who have given their Sunwarped flats are areas where the blazing souls to infernal forces in exchange for power. rays of the red sun interact with the remnants of A Dungeons & Dragons adventure for 2nd-level powerful defiling magic to create pockets of highly characters. unstable terrain where everything from the land to creatures to magic quickly mutates. on the CoveR Illustration by Kekai Kotaki Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Dungeon, Dragon, d20, d20 System, Wizards of the Coast, all other Wizards of the Coast product names, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, in the U.S.A. and other countries. ® This material is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast, Inc. This product is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, places, or events is purely coincidental. Printed in the U.S.A. ©2010 Wizards of the Coast, LLC. no portion of this work may be reproduced in any form without written permission. For more Dungeons & Dragons articles, adventures, and information, visit www.wizards.com/dnd e dito r ia l 179 Du ngeon Jun e 2010 Introductions, again Editor-in-Chief Steve Winter Senior Art Director Jon Schindehette Web Production Bart Carroll “There’s a new sheriff in town, and he’s not entirely sane.” One of the few things I’ve never done in those 29 years Contributing Authors Logan Bonner, Scott Fitzgerald That’s how Chris Perkins summed up the change on of D&D is publish Dragon and Dungeon magazines. It must Gray, Ed Greenwood, Stephan the magazines in our team meeting a few weeks ago, and I be true that all good things come to those who wait. Rodney-MacFarland, Corwin rather like it. Not because I agree on the sanity thing—I’m Over the last several years, I’ve had a blast working Riddle, Rodney Thompson, completely normal, from my perspective—but because with and learning the magazine business from Messrs. Syd Thurston, James Wyatt a unique strain of insanity is needed to tackle a job like Youngs and Perkins. Thanks to Chris Youngs, the maga- editor-in-chief over Dragon and Dungeon Magazines. In zines are a smoothly-purring machine pointed up an Developers Jeremy Crawford, Peter Schaefer, that light, I see Chris’s pronouncement as a testimonial to exciting road. Happily, I’ll get to continue working with Stephen Schubert, Rodney a certain qualification for the job. Chris and Chris even when they’re not involved in day-to- Thompson D&D has been my career, and I’ve been around long day magazine production. Editors Miranda Horner enough for that to mean something, I suppose. After a For that, I’ll still be laboring alongside Bart Carroll and short stint as a newspaper reporter, I started working Jon Schindehette, two of the best teammates a guy could Cover Artist Kekai Kotaki at TSr as an editor in 1981, and I’ve been publishing want. Then there are our regular contributors, a stable of Contributing Artists Sam Burley, Slawomir Maniak, D&D one way or another ever since as an editor, devel- up-and-coming writers, the whole rPG r&D crew, and William O’Connor, Ryan Pancoast, oper, designer, lead editor, managing editor, and creative typesetters and illustrators and cartographers. Dragon and Ben Wooten director. Dungeon couldn’t happen without a host of people pulling Of the countless projects I worked on at TSr, the ones together, and I’m every bit as thrilled to be one of them Cartographers Jason A. Engle, Mike Schley I’m most proud of are AD&D 2nd edition (as one of three now as I was when I walked through TSr’s front door in Publishing Production Specialists Angelika Lokotz, Erin Dorries, leads, alongside Dave “Zeb” Cook and Jon Pickens); Marvel 1981. Christopher Tardiff Super Heroes (as co-creator with designer Jeff Grubb); the original Oriental Adventures and Spelljammer (as editor/ Web Development Mark A. Jindra developer); epic adventures such as Night Below and D&D Creative Manager Christopher Perkins Dragon Mountain, and two of the best campaign settings ever, Al Qadim and Dark SunTM (as creative director). Executive Producer, When TSr moved to Seattle, it was finally time D&D Insider Christopher Perkins for me to move on to something new. It turned out to Director of RPG R&D Bill Slavicsek be website production . which led me right back to Wizards of the Coast as a web consultant for the Harry Potter card game, Avalon Hill games, D&D Miniatures, Special Thanks and—wait for it—D&D. Richard Baker, Greg Bilsland, Michele Carter, Jennifer Clarke So aside from a few years off in the late ‘90s when I Wilkes, Andy Collins, Bruce R. Cordell, Jeremy Crawford, Peter was learning a new craft, I’ve been up to my pauldrons Lee, Mike Mearls, Kim Mohan, Cal Moore, Peter Schaefer, Stephen in Dungeons & Dragons toil. I’ve been honored to work Schubert, Matthew Sernett, Rodney Thompson, James Wyatt with some of the top talents this industry has to offer, and the current crew, I’m happy to say, is among the best of the best. Faarlung’s Algorithm An adventure for 16th-level charaters By Syd Thurston illustration by William O’Connor F cartography by Jason A. Engle Kelphin Green suffers from a life- (where his delivery was to take place), but threatening condition arising from his the chaotic power of the device destroyed experiments in arcane elemental his mind and left him a raving lunatic energies—elemental discorporeation— wandering the roads at night. and it is slowly reducing him to dust. At the same time, a sinister plot was To save himself, Kelphin Green hired beginning to unfold, for word of Xixix Xixix, a reputable mercenary acquisi- and the Algorithm had reached the ears tionist, to retrieve Faarlung’s Algorithm. of a sect of Mual-Tar cultists. The sect’s Green wisely forbade Xixix from using leader, an undead wizard named lygis, the device. Unfortunately, Xixix’s search realized that the Algorithm’s energy could drew him into a deadly predicament destabilize the chains binding the thun- within the elemental Chaos and, in an der serpent to his prison. lygis and his act of desperation, he activated the Algo- subordinates traveled to the rumored rithm to escape. The device allowed Xixix exchange point in the hope of catching to flee back into the Material Plane—by Xixix off guard and absconding with ripping a hole in the fabric of reality. the Algorithm. Instead, they found only Xixix managed to position the tear in a Kelphin Green, who had arrived at the farmhouse near the town of Fitherton now-ruined meeting point to await his TM & © 2010 Wizards of the Coast LLC All rights reserved. Jun e 2010 | Dungeon 179 4 Faarlung’s Algorithm friend Xixix. lygis captured Green, but the only sign Synopsis hulking elementals to murder them outright. (See of Xixix was his abandoned ledger. The cultists split encounter FA5, The Crypt.) lygis’s defeat heralds The adventure begins with the party entering and into three groups to widen their search: lygis trav- the arrival of a much more dangerous foe: an aspect spending the night in Fitherton. In the night, they eled to his old crypt with Green in tow to establish a of Mual-Tar. To get to the bottom of the mystery sur- receive a summons from the lord mayor to Frank’s base of operations, a small group stayed behind at the rounding Xixix and the Algorithm, the heroes must loft, an inn that was closed and guarded by town farm in anticipation of Xixix’s arrival, and four or five venture into lygis’s crypt, defeat the rest of the cult- militia when they first arrived.