The Reroll: A Weekly D&D Chronicle (Issue #3)

Welcome back, dear reader, to another entry of The Reroll!

In this blog series, I chronicle my weekly Dungeons & Dragons game, revealing what I planned for my players, followed by what actually occurred when dice hit the table.

With that,

The Adventuring Party

The intrepid crew of the Morning Zephyr returns this week in full force: the noble pirate Captain Krass Redbeard, prodigal son Alucard d'Cannith, the fearsome Hellggah Boromar, and the brilliant Ilsensine.

They are joined by the spore druid Spein Veyn and artillerist Osz, introduced last week. If you haven't read last week's issue yet, you can do so here.

Last Week's Tale

When last we met, the players led the Infernal Mirage to victory and, as a result, elevated the title of their patron, Raqashtar, to Sultan of High Hearth, making him the most powerful efreet in Fernia (for now.)

For their efforts, Raqashtar offered the players a Wish, a powerful spell that produces a range of effects, my favorite being whatever you want, provided the Dungeon Master thinks it's cool.

This Weeks Plan

Looming in the future of our story is the threat of war.

A fleet of Githyanki, a species of militant, space-faring xenophobic supremacists, have discovered the location of the once-impossible-to-find planet Eberron, and their queen has personally come to collect their target: Ilsensine.

But why Ilsensine?

We know from our first issue that he's an escapee the Githyanki once held prisoner, but Ilsensine's not a criminal (or, at least, he wasn't then); he was a high-value asset, a Githyanki bound for the sacred "Rite of Ascension."

Undergoing the Rite of Ascension sounds like a real honor, but it is, in fact, what happens to all Githyanki when deemed too powerful: their queen consumes their soul, absorbing their power and reasserting her dominance over the species.

But the Githyanki threaten more than just Ilsensine; their arrival to Eberron alerts the highest powers of the planet, unseen forces that have pulled the strings of history for centuries past. They'll closely watch this event unfold to determine if and when to get involved.

Should that happen, the continent of Khorvaire, having just emerged from a hundred-year-long war, will be fodder beneath the feet of living gods.

It all starts in the forested countryside of Breland, where the Githyanki first emerged and where they now patiently await Ilsensine to turn himself in.

And so to Breland, we must go.

Maybe.

Behind the Screen

I know the players are using their wish to leave Fernia and teleport somewhere, but I needed to plan for two potential locations:

the city of Fairhaven or the city of Sharn.

Fairhaven is the capital of Aundair, which isn't geographically close to Breland by any means. However, it is where the players parked their airship (and their airship's crew), which they might want for the imminent conflict with the Githyanki.

On the other hand, the city of Sharn is located in Breland, but there's no airship there. Although having saved the city twice, most of Sharn regards them as heroes, so they've plenty of allies to call on.

Option A: Fairhaven

Awaiting them in Fairhaven would be local guards staging a citywide lockdown while they search for Captain Krass, who recently evaded capture.

I imagined this as a stealth operation or an all-out sprint to the airship dock, so I littered the streets with guard checkpoints, floating patrols of scrying eyeballs, and dragonhawk riders circling overhead.

Players navigate this obstacle course through a series of increasingly difficult Survival checks, which they can influence using spells, stealth rolls, or improvised solutions.

And should they fail, a table of trouble awaits:

Of course, they might not head straight for the airship, so I planned for a potential social encounter in which they seek out their airship crew hiding in a flower shop.

The business is a front for one of many entrances to a famous interdimensional tavern called "The World Serpent Inn."

It would've been one helluva rabbit hole.

For the end, I grabbed an excellent airship tower map by creators Cze and Peku, where the dragonmarked House Lyrandar and the Royal Eyes of Aundair would make a final stand before the players reached their ship.

Option B: Sharn

The players began their story in Sharn five real-life years ago.

At the time, the Boromar Clan, Hellggah's family, lent them an abandoned library for shelter in a neighborhood decimated during the war.

Formerly known as God's Gate, a floating glass tower fell thousands of feet before crashing into the district. God's Gate was promptly abandoned and renamed Fallen, where it remained nothing more than ruins.

But since the player's initial arrival to Sharn, they've breathed life into Fallen, learning the names of the people who remained there long after its abandonment and taking the old library as their safe house.

This gave me an idea.

With the new 2024 Dungeons & Dragons update, players can now own a Bastion, described in the rules as "player strongholds and a base of operations."

Basically, it lets players manage different services maintained by hirelings in the player's absence, like governing a keep.

It's a welcome addition to a system that often places the onus of storytelling and business on the Dungeon Master. With Bastion's, players get direct control, both mechanically and narratively, over a significant portion of their game world.

So, my idea was that awaiting them in Sharn would be their Bastion:

the district formerly known as God's Gate, then Fallen, would now be named Rising.

There, the players would spend time in their new Bastion, choosing their businesses (they each get to pick five) and tying their choices into the narrative.

I also peppered in two unique puzzles to occur in two of Rising's refurbished buildings, conveying mystery in these once-thought-familiar places and delivering interesting rewards to Krass and Ilsensine.

Afterward, I'd pull the group back together with an important NPC encounter with a character named Thort, an old wizard in blue (like Merlin from Sword in the Stone) who's secretly a silver dragon in disguise.

The players have crossed paths with this character in this campaign and others. He's always an ally, but he only gets involved when something big is on the horizon.

Sidenote: I love bringing back characters from previous, unrelated campaigns. It creates a broader narrative tapestry that elevates each campaign to a grander plot.

Anyway, Thort's concerned with the Githyanki, mainly for the less apparent reason I previously mentioned, and he needs to make the players aware, setting them on the path from Sharn to this conflict.

For the final encounter, I planned a similar fight to the airship dock in Fairhaven. However, this time, it would be Sharn's train station, Terminus.

I grabbed another map by Cze and Peku for this, too, which is this wonderfully versatile Train Station map designed explicitly with Eberronian-style motifs.

I can't spoil any details of that fight, and you'll soon see why!

At the Table

We began our session in High Hearth's dockside tavern, "Ol' Basalts," where players gave a proper goodbye to their newest friend, a salamander named Septimus, while recovering from their battle.

And when it came time to make their wish to Sultan Raqashtar, the players wished to return to...

...Sharn!

Specifically, they wished to return to Sharn with their crew trapped in Fairhaven, thus killing two birds with one stone.

Clever monkeys. Wish granted.

So right off the bat, there goes all that prep for Fairhaven.

As expected, the players spent nearly the entire evening playing with their new Bastion, filling the neighborhood with new businesses, faces, and purposes.

Here's some of what they came up with:

• Hellggah opened a menagerie currently housing two apes, a personal herb garden (yes, that kind), an authentic Talentan dance school, a community center for the elderly, and a tavern with Captain Krass. Truly a Halfling through and through.

• Besides the pub with Hellggah, Krass opened a barracks with Spein Veyn, hiring Boromar Clan mercenaries as protection, an armory to outfit said mercenaries, and a theatre where the player-made musical revue "The Redbeard Review" has a permanent run (don't ask). He also reopened the old Silver Flame Church's reliquary, which involved that puzzle I mentioned earlier, earning him a Necklace of Prayer Beads.

• Spein Veyn opened a greenhouse for mushrooms and other magical flora, which he then sells through his new kava-style cafe. He also set up a teleportation circle in his new apartment so his old druid buddies could pay him visits.

• Ilsensine focused on renovating the library, updating its catalog, and adding an archive, a scriptorium, and an observatory. The observatory is accessible only through an underground passage, where he visited the library's recently discovered secret chamber. He solved a tricky floor puzzle, awarding him a Planecaller's Codex.

• Osz went all-in on an underground industrial bar featuring the special cocktail, the "Vampyr Coagulatte," and a room displaying trophies of undead he's hunted. He also gave himself a storehouse for weaponry he'll manufacture in his new gunsmithy and workshop.

• Alucard first took a curious path, creating a memorial where future visitors to Rising can learn and reflect on the district's past. Like Osz, he gave himself a forge and storehouse (typical artificers), then finished with a combination flower garden and lab, which he calls a perfumery. Cyran's are nothing if not people of taste.

Afterward, the players ended the evening on that unexpected visit I mentioned, but that's next week's tale.

The Roll-Up

Planning for a sandbox-style campaign, one where the player can virtually go anywhere and do anything, requires an immense amount of prep work, but man, is it satisfying to have a session like this, where you can watch years of storytelling efforts culminate in something like Sharn's new district, Rising.

I mean, I planned an entire adventure in Fairhaven that the players completely skipped over. However, that level of detail of life breathed into parts of the world left untouched is what makes a sandbox; the world is constantly moving, whether you're there to witness it or not. In the case of Rising, indeed, it was the player's actions that paved the way forward for this fading neighborhood, but it was the people of Sharn who then built it up in the player's absence, showing the group that their actions in Sharn weren't just one-hit wonders; their deeds echoed in the minds of the people, and the people reacted in turn.

In the setting of Eberron, with all its diversity and history, I couldn't imagine presenting it to players any other way.

Luckily for me, next week will be more straightforward.

The session will likely involve a large amount of action and combat as they make their way across Sharn once more.

Returning only to leave again so quickly? That's coming home for you!

Until next time, happy rolling. - Dace