Banewarrens.pdf

™

™

THE

BANEWARRENS

A mega-adventure taking characters from 6th to 10th level

By Monte Cook

Requires use of the Dungeons & Dragons® Player's Handbook ,Third Edition,

published by Wizards of the Coast®

Additional Credits

Editing and Production: Sue Weinlein Cook

Proofreading: Mark Ashton

Cover Illustration: Alan Pollack

Interior Illustrations: Toren Atkinson, Lars Grant-West, Quinton Hoover, Alan Pollack, and Arne Swekel

Cartography: Robert Lee

Art Director: Monte Cook

Cover and Interior Page Design: Peter Whitley

Playtesters: Michele Carter, Andy Collins, Sue Cook, Bruce Cordell, Jesse Decker,

Erik Mona, Chris Perkins, Sean Reynolds, and Keith Strohm

Special Thanks :Sean Reynolds

For supplemental material, visit Monte Cook’s Website: <www.montecook.com>

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ed to The Book of Eldritch Might, Book of Eldritch Might II: Songs and Souls of Power ; The Banewarrens, Requiem for a God, Book of Eldritch Might III: The Nexus,

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The Banewarrens

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE

Background ......................................................3

Sidebar: Timeline...............................................................4

Adventure Synopsis.........................................4

Running the Adventure..................................5

Map: Master Map Key ......................................................6

Setting ..............................................................6

Sidebar: Imperial Identification Papers........................7

Sidebar: The Look and Feel of Ptolus ...........................7

Map: Ptolus ........................................................................8

Organizations..................................................9

Sidebar: Lothian................................................................9

Characters ......................................................12

Adventure Hooks ...........................................13

Sidebar: Ptolus Technology ..........................................13

Returning to the City ...................................13

Banewarrens Specifics ..................................15

Map: Banewarrens Side View........................................15

Chapter One: IT BEGINS

What’s Going On? ...........................................16

Encounters .....................................................16

Sidebar: Latent Sorcery..................................................17

Handling Tavan Zith......................................19

Sidebar: Experience Awards..........................................20

The First Inquiry ...........................................20

The Second Inquiry ......................................20

Sidebar: Relocating the Banewarrens .......................20

Chapter Two: THE MEANDERING PASSAGE

The Manor House ...........................................21

Sidebar: Quaan Rings ......................................................21

The Umber Hulk Lair......................................21

Map: Umber Hulk Lair...................................................22

Entrance to the Banewarrens ....................23

Chapter Three: THE BROKEN SEAL

Event: The Grailquest Team Returns .........24

The Broken Seal Area....................................24

Map: Broken Seal Area .................................................25

Table: Magical Energy Splash Effects ........................29

Interlude: Return to the City ....................30

Sidebar: Variant Rule: Research Check .......................33

Chapter Four: ENTER HOUSE VLADAAM

The Knights of the Chord............................35

Breaking In .....................................................36

Negotiating With House Vladaam ..............37

Navanna’s Agents ...........................................37

Other Family Members ..................................37

Sidebar: Navanna’s Urban Werewolves ........................37

Key to the Estate ...........................................38

Map: Estate of House Vladaam ...................................39

Map: Below House Vladaam .........................................41

Sidebar: Freeing the Prisoners.....................................41

Dead End ..........................................................41

Chapter Five: THE OUTER VAULTS

Event 1: Green Hag ........................................42

Event 2: Grailquest Team 2 ..........................43

Event 3: Navanna Vladaam ............................44

Event 4: Kidnapped! .......................................44

Event 5: Time Passes.......................................44

Sidebar: New Magic Item................................................44

Passing Through the Broken Seal Area ....45

Key to the Outer Vaults ...............................45

Map: The Outer Vaults: Map 1 ......................................46

Diagram: Area 3 Trap.......................................................47

Map: The Outer Vaults: Map 2 .....................................56

Sidebar: The Fish Generator .........................................57

Chapter Six: THE BELFRY

Return to the City ........................................60

Tracking a Kidnap Victim.............................60

Sidebar: The Infiltrator .................................................61

A Diversion .....................................................62

Going to the Church ...................................62

Event: A New Mission ....................................62

The Chapel of St. Thessina ...........................63

Map: Chapel of St. Thessina ........................................64

Sidebar: New Information ............................................69

Chapter Seven: PORTAL TO THE QUAAN

Effects of the Quaan ...................................70

Arrival.............................................................70

Random Encounters.....................................70

Sidebar: Andrecite...........................................................71

Topography .....................................................72

Font of the Pact.............................................72

Map: The Quaan..............................................................73

Tower of Charch-Pahn..................................74

Map: The Tower of Charch-Pahn.................................74

Sidebar: Switching Senses.............................................75

The Black Manor............................................76

Map: The Black Manor ..................................................77

Going Beyond the Map..................................78

Chapter Eight: THE INNER VAULTS

Event 1: Complications .................................79

Sidebar: Working Avach In ...........................................80

Event 2: The Inverted Pyramid’s Next Move ..80

Event 3: The Church’s Delvers ...................80

Event 4: Pactlord Attack ..............................81

Sidebar: Portable Portal ................................................81

Event 5: Old Friends .....................................82

Event 6: Time Passes ......................................82

Key to the Inner Vaults................................82

Map: The Inner Vaults: Map 1 .......................................83

Sidebar: Vaults.................................................................93

Map: The Inner Vaults: Map 2 ......................................98

Chapter Nine: TREMOC KORIN, THE BANEHEART

The Banemight .............................................100

Key to Tremoc Korin...................................100

Map: The Baneheart ....................................................102

Sidebar: The True Death of the Dread One ..............108

Chapter Ten: THE DREAD ONE’S PATH

Event: The Pactlords Arrive ......................109

Key to the Dread One’s Path.......................110

Map: The Dread One’s Path ..........................................111

Sidebar: XP for Doomwalker Controllers ................112

Sidebar: The Staff of Shards ........................................114

Conclusions ..................................................114

Banes Appendix

Magic Items and Artifacts ..........................115

Poisons ...........................................................116

Diseases and Curses.....................................116

Monsters........................................................116

Illustration Appendix .....................................119

Legal Appendix ..................................................135

Introduction 3

Prelude to Adventure

The basic premise of this adventure is simple: What happens if an ancient storehouse of evil artifacts and dangers opens up near

a very populated area? Who gets involved? Who wants in, and who wants it sealed back up again?

The answers, on the surface, might seem surprising.

T he Banewarrens is an adventure designed with four 6th-

particularly horrible diseases. Danar called all of these things

“banes” and imprisoned them. He believed that, if

destroyed, the banes would simply release their evil into the

world to wreak more havoc and bring about other darkness-

es. Destroying banes begat new banes.

Danar used powerful spells and magical items to accom-

plish his task, working tirelessly. As his collection of banes

grew he began to bury them beneath his tower, Mosul Pearl,

located near the sea. Danar constructed a vast catacomb, well

warded and sealed, deep underground, and he called it the

Banewarrens. He also found allies who believed in his cause

to aid him. Chief among them were the dragon known as

Saggarintys the Silver King and a celestial named Bastion,

Guardian of the Morning.

But Danar’s goal was folly. Concentrating so much raw

hatred and despite—so much darkness and evil power—

in one place was a terrible mistake. His actions drew the

attention of vile intelligences of whose existence Danar had

never even dreamed. These secretive forces manipulated

events (and perhaps even time and space) to ensure that

the Book of Inverted Darkness fell into the hands of this

well-meaning cleric.

The Book of Inverted Darkness is an artifact older than the

world itself. Scribed by gods and demons, its pages contain

vast lore (only the Book of Eldritch Might contains greater

lore, it is said), all of it dreadful. Unfortunately for Danar

Rotansin—and the world—the book presented this dreadful

knowledge using supernatural techniques, giving it an irre-

sistibly seductive quality.

While he intended to seal the book away with the rest of

the banes, Danar lingered over its pages for just one instant

too long. Its cunningly crafted words beguiled him to keep

the book by his side. Soon, he read more. And more.

And still more.

The book consumed Danar. He neglected his quest to

gather the remaining banes. He withdrew from his family

and comrades. The book’s dark lore corrupted his spirit and

twisted his mind. The lure of the dark power and forbidden

knowledge was too much, even for Danar. Danar Rotansin

became Eslathagos Malkith—the Dread One. With the vast

resources of the banes he had gathered and the knowledge

level player characters (PCs) in mind. If these charac-

ters proceed through the course of the adventure, they

should reach at least 10th level. A rogue is essential to the

party because the Banewarrens contains a lot of traps and

locks, and the group must do a lot of information gathering.

But, of course, fighters, arcanists, clerics, and other classes

all have a role to play.

The course of the adventure takes the PCs into the deep-

est bowels of evil: an ancient underground vault system used

to store the vilest artifacts and imprison the most evil of

creatures. But The Banewarrens is no simple dungeon crawl.

The PCs aren’t the only ones interested in this ancient store-

house of malevolence. No fewer than four large organiza-

tions are also involved—some friendly to the adventurers,

and some not.

This adventure is both location- and event-based. While

the PCs explore the warrens, other forces are on the move,

changing the way things work. The DM must not only man-

age the locations important to the Banewarrens, but the

events that occur as part of the dynamic plot. The adventure

is divided into chapters, most of which contain both loca-

tions and events. This format helps provide structure. The

events described in a chapter do not occur until the PCs are

in the locations that chapter specifies. Exactly when to stage

the events is up to the DM.

Background

In the ancient recesses of time, a powerful and benevolent

cleric set upon a well-intentioned plan. In those days, evil

was on the decline and the forces of darkness had been

routed in almost every field of battle. The master of evil

dragons had been chained, and even the fell races of orcs

and goblins—once more numerous than the races of

humans, dwarves, elves, halflings, or gnomes—had

squirmed back into their meager, shadowy refuges.

With malevolence on the wane, the cleric Danar Rotansin

sought once and for all to rid the world of the remaining evil

influences. This powerful figure began to gather up all the

evil artifacts, objects of dark power, trapped essences of van-

quished fiends, demonic relics, and even the last vestiges of

The Banewarrens: Introduction

he had gained from the Book of Inverted Darkness , the Dread

One withdrew into his tower, also renamed: Jabel Shammar.

He emerged only a few years later, launching an attack so

devastating, it threatened to tear the world asunder. His

might knew few bounds, and with his magical aid, the

armies he had created or summoned conquered the sur-

rounding lands with ease.

The earth itself, no longer able to tolerate the concentrat-

ed evil that Eslathagos Malkith and the banes represented,

thrust Jabel Shammar away from it, creating a tall, impossi-

bly high and narrow spire atop which the tower stood, its

former pearly hue turned black as night. From there, the

Dread One could survey the world—a world he desired to

either conquer or crush entirely.

Only the actions of all the mortal races, led by powerful

and stalwart heroes (many of whom had been friends and

companions of Danar), stopped the forces of Eslathagos

Malkith. It is said they

carried the battle into

the halls of Jabel

Shammar itself. When it

was over, the Dread One

lay defeated. The world’s

greatest heroes sprawled

dead and dismembered

all around him. Most of

them had lost not only

their lives but their souls

to their foe’s magic and

the banes he wielded.

Some bit of Danar—the good and true man he had once

been—still remained, however. His spirit, now free of

corruption, managed to seal the Banewarrens once again.

Although his quest remained uncompleted, and some of the

banes were released again when he became Eslathagos

Malkith, the warrens still contained vault upon vault of evil

artifacts, foul creatures, and vile relics that it would keep

away from the world at large.

Unless the Banewarrens should ever become unsealed

again.

Adventure Synopsis

As the characters mind their own business in the city, they

run afoul of a strange dark elf who inadvertently seems to

curse the innocent bystanders around him with uncontrol-

lable magical powers. After that strange encounter, the

player characters are contacted by either a powerful arcan-

ists’ guild (the Inverted Pyramid) or an influential reli-

gious group (the Church of Lothian), or both, to investi-

gate the mysterious origin of this dark elf. Could it be the

fabled Banewarrens?

Delving deep to investigate, the PCs discover a section of

the Banewarrens that was not completely sealed. They

encounter members of the Pactlords of the Quaan, an evil

group of monstrous creatures intent on getting in to obtain

something called the Black Grail . The Pactlords breached this

section of the Banewarrens recently, their actions loosing the

dark elf. They used a wish to get past a Sealed Door in the

warrens, but a paladin named Kalerecent closed the door

again before most of them could get through.

So everything seems fine, except that the PCs learn that

this door has a key, and it is in the possession of an evil noble

family: House Vladaam. If they want the key, either to use it or

secure it, they have to negotiate with the Vladaam family—or

steal it from them. And it just so happens that someone

wants to help them break into the estate. Except that this

someone is family matriarch Navanna Vladaam in disguise.

She intends to steal the key back from the PCs, of course; she

only wants people to think that her family no longer has it.

Now the Inverted Pyramid wants to learn more about the

Banewarrens and seal the place back up again. The Church

of Lothian, on the other hand, wants to explore. So the PCs

head back down into the Banewarrens, dealing with traps

and guardians as well as some of the banes, the Pactlords,

and Navanna herself. As they explore, they learn of the exis-

tence of the sealing rod, a magic item that will help reseal the

Banewarrens in conjunction with the warding generators

located throughout the dungeon. It seems that the generator

in the section that the Pactlords initially penetrated was

never entirely functional, explaining how they got inside in

the first place.

Eventually, the PCs return to the city to discover the

Pactlords operating out of a chapel of the Church of Lothian

and learn that a cleric they were dealing with actually works

for them. Once they handle the traitorous priest and his lack-

eys, the adventurers discover an intelligent magic item that

once formed one third of the powerful staff of shards . They

also learn that in the Quaan, an extradimensional realm, the

Pactlords possess another part of the staff. This staff, when

whole, can destroy the Banewarrens key. Perhaps important

now, perhaps important later (that’s up to the PCs), but

they’ll want to collect the staff pieces at some point.

Back in the Banewarrens, the Church of Lothian is look-

ing for a fabled artifact it considers to be of religious impor-

tance: the sword of lies (which the Church believes is actually

the sword of truth ). It is just this sword the Inverted Pyramid

fears, though, because it proves so useful against arcanists.

They send in an agent of their own and eventually attempt

to seal the Banewarrens entirely, with everyone—including

the PCs—still inside.

Once the PCs find a huge shaft known as the Baneheart,

they can obtain the sealing rod and the last remaining piece

Timeline

Throughout this book, the timeframe during

which Danar built the Banewarrens and subse-

quently became Eslathagos Malkith to threaten

all creation has been left intentionally vague. In

the playtests, these events took place around

18,000 years ago. In your campaign, the inter-

vening time could be much shorter. At mini-

mum, the DM should allow many centuries—

perhaps a thousand years—to have passed

since Danar’s redemption. The terms “The

Dread One” and “Jabel Shammar” should refer-

ence legends of mythic proportions. Some peo-

ple might not have even heard the tale of the

saint and his quest. Most people have forgotten

the Banewarrens entirely.

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