The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Eryz the Akinji – Dragon Empire Prep Session 6
Fri, 20 Dec 2024
Mike prepares the next session of his Tales of the Valiant Dragon Empire campaign. Visit the Sly Flourish Blog Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Newsletter Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Podcast Support Sly Flourish on Patreon Buy Sly Flourish Books: Midgard Worldbook Tales of the Valiant Obsidian for TTRPGs
Hey friends, it's your pal Mike Shea from Sly Flourish, here with another episode of Sly Flourish's Lazy GM Prep. In this weekly show, I go through steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master while preparing for my Sunday role-playing game. In this case, we are playing a Tales of the Valiant game set in the Midgard world, specifically in the region of the Dragon Empire.
This show, like all of the work of Sly Flourish, is brought to you by the patrons of Sly Flourish. Patrons get access to all kinds of tips, tricks, tools, adventures, and resources to help them run their fantasy role-playing games. They get access to the awesome Lazy GM community over on Discord, and they help me put on shows like this.
To the patrons of Sly Flourish, thank you so much for your support. So here's two quick tips that you can pick up from my prep session today. I'm dropping these at the beginning of the video, even though they came from the video itself. And my first tip is that characters are the only source for secrets and clues you can count on. They're the only source that you know will be in the game.
Characters are in the game. If the character is there, that means that they can be a vehicle for secrets and clues, which means when you're doing your prep, you can actually add a secret to each of the characters that are going to be there because you're pretty confident that you're going to be able to reveal that secret because the character is there. So tie secrets and clues to characters.
Probably like one secret per character is a really good way to go. And recall that characters are the only source for secrets and clues that you can actually count on. Two is when you're running Tales of the Valiant with the monster vault, pay careful attention to challenge rating one and two monsters.
Challenge rating one and two monsters in Tales of the Valiant seem to be hitting about one challenge rating ahead of what they look like. So if you run them and they're fine, that is totally fine. But you might want to be a little careful because they seem to hit as though they're one challenge rating ahead. That seems to be specific for challenge rating ones and twos.
Threes and above seem to hit pretty reasonably. And by that time, your characters can weather that sort of attack. And below that, that appeared to work well is below CR one appeared to be pretty on par as well. But CR ones and twos are a little bit dangerous. So you want to keep an eye out for that. Now on with the show.
Last week, the characters were right at the entrance to the camp known as the Campo, the ruins of blood and sand, which was an old ruined shrine.
on the outskirts of the village of kukatarma this is sort of like out in the wild out in the badlands southwest of the dragon empire the character's home base is in the 440 fingers which is actually at the joint of three major regions of the dragon empire mazar batek and gizmiri and i think it's kind of fun and it sits on ley lines which is really fun too so we got lots of
Lots of like things that can happen in the region that they're in and also in the outskirts. But they made their way down to the Gidigada Hills in order to set up a smuggler route, which they did set up. But now they moved over to Kukatarma, which is an old ruined city. They went there basically to follow a very small quest, which was, hey, a goblin stole a puzzle box.
And ran off to Kukatarma, and we, some gnolls that the characters had hired, we were going to go after the guy, but now we work for you, so we don't need to do it. And the characters were like, I guess we'll go there, right? It sounded interesting and fun. So they were like, we're going to go head out to Kukatarma.
So they headed out to Kukatarma, and what they found is like a big ruined city with lots of things going on. Here is the city of Kukatarma. I just grabbed a, as I do, my favorite trick, right? I think probably my, one of my most used, if not my most used resource for running RPGs these days is Dyson maps. And Dyson had a great map of a kind of city.
And I grabbed it and said, that's going to be Kukatarma, my ruined city. And I'm going to draw on little interesting places. There's actually a couple of other places that I should have drawn on here that haven't, including on the outskirts. If you see that hill on the lower right, that hill on the lower right is where I put the camp of blood and sand.
And the characters, let's see, have the runes of blood and sand. So here's the runes of blood and sand. They were sneaking up from the upper left, kind of from the west. And we began the session by having a couple of thralls that had escaped from their enslavement being chased by gnolls, one of whom was killed with a poisoned arrow.
And the other one they saved and they took care of the two gnolls. But it was a very tricky business because they were starting to alert more gnolls. There was a gnoll up on a watchtower that they had to then take care of. But luckily they managed to take care. I think it was about three gnolls in the end that they had to kill before they alerted all the other gnolls.
The gnolls are all part of a tribe known as the Black Venom tribe, who use sort of a supernatural poison to put themselves into a, you know, into terrifying violence. And they are, the gnolls are actually in service of... of a member of the dragon empire a an official of the dragon empire which was um eris dawn gaze a akinji commander of the um which of the dragons
Yeah, Adesha of the Burning Sands, who's the dragon ruler of the Gizmiri area. So there's like three draconic rulers. And Adesha probably has dozens, if not hundreds, probably dozens of these exploration groups that are out there in the desert, digging through old ruins, trying to find more treasure to amass to his massive horde. And he's got these commanders...
These kind of military commanders that are out there commanding mercenary groups and enslaved groups and all these other ones to dig into these super dangerous ruins and find the things that they've got. And Eris Dawngaze, this half-dragon Akinji commander, is going to be one of them. The characters dealt with – they snuck around. They did a lot of recon-y stuff.
They then – like one of the characters turned into a giant constrictor snake and caused problems, attacked many of the gnolls. And then they killed the gnolls that were guarding the prisoners in the slave pits. And then they went to the main temple area and found the leader who was Gavish Blacksting. And they faced... And that was really hard.
They had a good, hard fight against Gavish Blacksting and some other gnolls and gnoll cultists. And they were engaged in some... They had this big effigy of Abriac in the center of it. And so they defeated him. And then they're making their way out. And as they were making their way out, Eris Dawngaze, who was...
staying over in that tower in the upper left, came on out to see, like, what is all this commotion going on? I'm hearing all this noise. Uh-oh, right? And it pops out. So the strong start in today's game is going to be facing Erez Dongay's half-dragon commander of Adashav, the Burning Sands. So we are going to go to our session notes, and we are going to make a new note from template.
I'm using Obsidian to do my campaign planning these days. If you want to learn more about Obsidian, there will be a link in the show notes section that tells you all about using Obsidian for your game. But we are starting off, the nice thing is we're starting off with just a straightforward big fight and the characters are pretty worn down.
So one thing is like the characters are third level and third level is not a lot Third level is pretty low to face a lot of powerful encounters, one right after the other. And we're down two players today, so we're only going to have four characters. The ones who are not there, Cal there, Gaudenzia is there. I think Mateo is not there. So I think we've got Amavin, Gaudenzia, Rowan, and Tolstoy.
So we can start. And one of the things I've started doing recently is thinking up secrets. So one of the specific things, and I've started doing this more recently, is during that step one of review the characters is I try to think of like, what is like a secret that the characters can pick up? That the characters would know about today's session, right?
Like if we think about the character, and I brought this up last week, too. The tip is, and I actually made it a tip on my Blue Sky slash Mastodon feeds, and it's in my tips of the week in my weekly newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter, and you get your tips of the week along with an article. There's an article, there's a bunch of links to like...
show notes from the shows and everything else. But then there is also seven D&D tips at the bottom of every article, seven tips that you can find. And one of the tips that I did last time was that characters are the only vehicle for a secret you can count on. And it's because the characters are actually there and they're always there.
If the character is there, they can be a catalyst for secrets, right? So characters is a catalyst for secrets. And as part of step one, we can think about that. So if we look at, we know where they are, we kind of know, we're getting an idea about where they're going.
But one of the things we can start right off with is like, what are something about today's session that the characters might know or learn? And they could just know it. It could just be because you're X, you know why. And that's a really powerful template. We'll put that in there because of X.
you know why and it could be because you're a fighter you know this or because you're a druid you know that right it could be because of this background you've got or this ancestry you've got or whatever right whatever the character's got because of this magic item you've been carrying around you know what you know x and that is a really good solid way to like tie a secret to a character very quickly and one of the tricks with that is like
Every other aspect, you can't really determine where the characters are going to learn a secret and clue because the game changes so much, but the characters are always there. So you always know that the characters are there. So I think it can really, it can really work. So we're going to, so let's take a look at those characters because I always forget who they are.
Ammavan, I think is the rogue, pretty sure. Oh yeah, Ammavan is the rogue and Rowan is not. And that's how I, I know Ammavan and Rowan because Rowan with R-O in the name, you would think would be a rogue and is not. So, Ammavan is the elf rogue cosmopolitan criminal, raised as an orphan to be a spy for the Dragon Empire. So, I think Ammavan knows the danger of killing a Akinji commander, right?
That is a, you know, kind of a secret. Like, hey, you know, even if we defeat him in combat... We're in real trouble because they're coming around. Gaudenzia is a ranger, I think. Smallfolk gnome ranger nomadic outcast runs the food truck at the 440 fingers. So I think Gaudenzia knows about the brutality of Adesha, right?
The Adesha is one of the more brutal dragon emperor, dragon, dragon rulers of the dragon empire. The Morza, one of the worst Morza. Rowan is the dwarf, dwarf fighter of, who was sent out here to avoid being part of the war. What could Rowan kind of see? He probably knows that the Dragon Empire relies heavily on mistreated mercenaries, including for dungeon delving.
And then Tolstoy is our wizard, a beast kin rat wizard outcast who wants to take down the empire. So what could Tolstoy, what could Tolstoy know? Probably that, that one secret. There are hundreds of these treasure seeking camps across the empire. So those are pretty straightforward. Not all of those are like super secrets or,
But, you know, like none of those are but they're all ways to kind of connect the character in the game. So so I dig that. So we have our facing era's dawn gaze as a scene. Then once they've defeated era's dawn gaze, my my my problem and my question was like, where are they going to go to next? And I had three paths for them.
They could go deal with the blood mages of the sanguine path, which were in the north. They're in a ruin in the north. They could go to the ziggurat of Thoth Hermes, or they could go to the pits of unending thirst.
I think I'm going to, and I don't really remember where, but I think I'm going to lead them towards the pit of unending, the pits of unending thirst to the, so we're going to travel to the pits of unending thirst. And we'll probably drop an encounter in here, right? They're going to see something along the way. Then navigating into and through the pit of unending thirst and then meeting the goblin.
We'll fill out some of this, and it's pit, not pits. So the pit of unending thirst, for example, let's see, I've got a map of that too, is a multi-level dungeon. They almost certainly need a rest, right? So they're going to have to have a rest after facing dawn gaze. This might be a good time for a campfire tale. So we'll drop a campfire tale in there. What's a campfire tale?
So a campfire tale is an opportunity. Hey, my mom is here. Hi, mom. A campfire tale is a great thing to drop into when you characters are taking a rest. And when the characters take a long rest, you can ask them a question and they can be kind of like leading questions.
And it's like, how do you feel about what's, you know, like, and then so the generic question is like, as you contemplate your, your, your past and your current position, like, where does your mind take you? Like, what do you think about where you've been and where you are now? It's not a fantastic question. I'd like to have kind of a better, more specific question.
But you want to give the players an opportunity to get into the heads of their characters and ask themselves questions about their character's place in the world. So the more specific it can be, the better.
you know and it can again be that sort of like because of x what about y and it could be you know like as someone who wants to take down the emperor or the empire how do you feel about what you just did with eris don gaze or as a former mercenary who has been part of the dragon empire in the north region how do you feel about these camps in the south and where do you you know what are your goals for for your here you know for what's going on and
You know, like the questions can be a little awkward, but when they kind of click and you really are just asking the player to spend a moment in the head of their character thinking about what's been going on in the area that they're at and thinking about what their background is and talking about that.
And what you get from that is interesting information from the player about what they're thinking about for their character in the game. And it gives you ideas for hooks. It gives you ideas about like what to focus on. You can get a lot of really good information from it. And, and, and I think it's, and it's really handy to do.
And essentially the, the, the model for it is the characters are all around a campfire spending a night resting. What are they talking to each other about? Or what are they thinking about? Like, as you sit around this campfires there with your friends, where does your mind go? What do you think about what's been happening? What, what do you think about in your past?
I think that's probably the best kind of question that you've got there. So, you know, so I think that dropping that in is a really good, a really good thing. And it's a valuable aid that offers you a lot of stuff as a GM, as a lazy GM in particular. Yeah. So then we meet the Goblins. So we've got our scene. This is probably a couple of sessions at least.
In fact, oh, I think they're going to level up. Campfire Tail and level up. I think we're going to get them to fourth level, right? Now that they've defeated the Shrine, now that they've rescued the prisoners, and now that they've dealt with Erez Don Gaze, they're going to level up to fourth level and take a rest. Which, you know, this is going to take a long time.
Like that's going to be half the session right there. And then there'll be like another scene where they're making their way to the pit of unending thirst. And that will be another scene. And then they'll really just start to get into the pit. So I don't think we're going to get very far into that fourth bullet there. I think that that, you know, is about as far as we're going to get.
But on the other hand, we only have four players today. And when you have four players, more stuff gets done. Yeah.
so we got our scene so what about secrets and clues let's take a look at our old secrets and clues here i like to copy them over a lot of these are no longer relevant because they dealt with the the black venom no so kuka tarma was ravaged by the blood magic the kandaharians who used it to defend themselves i don't think they learned that so that's really good beneath the ziggurat is a red portal the puzzle box is the key that's really good we're gonna keep that the puzzle box is in two parts one part is held by the goblin i need the goblin give the goblin a name i think we have a goblin
name puzzle box also imprisons a demon they did not learn that sanguine path seeks the puzzle box to bind this demon so it can serve them they also seek forbidden texts in the pit of unending thirst that's a really good one thoth hermes god of knowledge and learning the wise creative so that's just like information about thoth hermes that's good lord of unending thirst was worshipped by the kandaharians who sought the lord's connection to blood and hunger as a source of magical power a purple worm with tentacle that's really good so what's funny is most of these are really solid and they didn't learn them last game because they were too busy dealing with the black venom gnolls
Black Venom Nulls worship Abriac, Prince of Swarms. They did learn that. Sanguine Path gave the Black Venom Nulls rituals to strengthen their concoctions, to control their slaves and forbid... They didn't learn that. I don't know how important that is at this point. The Black Venom Nulls are conscripted by Ermonli, Scaled Lords of Adasha. We don't need that.
So that gives, how many secrets is that? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. So we have seven secrets that are still valid given their current position. Oh, so I think we, let's look at some stuff about Adesha because they're facing a scaled Lord of Adesha and they might learn more stuff from that. So Adesha, Lord of the Gizmiri province, right?
Padishah of the Flaming City, Morza of the East, Heart of the Desert, Khan of the Province of Gizmiri. That's pretty good. So, well, that gives a bunch of titles. That's cool. Titles are cool. Multiple titles are cool for villains. I really dig that. So Dominion of Adashah, the Burning Sand, deadly wasteland that is what is due to the dragon who rules it.
Adashah incorporates the essence of fire as few dragons do. Fiery presence create the deserts around him and he carries it wherever he goes. I like that. Adashah's fiery presence creates the desert around him and he carries it wherever he goes. That's a fun secret. Lives in the holy temple of Al-Araq in the city of Sarkland.
Only Dragonkin, Efreeti, and other fiery creatures can survive the burning presence of Adesha. That's cool. Some believe... A good secret here. Some believe Adesha wants to turn the entire world into a burning ember. Only he, his fiery minions, can live in. And he seeks... The apocalyptic magic to do so. That's kind of a fun secret. So those are three secrets that we've got.
Let me switch my notes over. Here are my notes. Let's take a quick look through the notes that I wasn't showing previously. So we have our characters, Amavin, Gaudenzia, Rowan, Tolstoy. I wrote the secrets for each of them under the thing there. And I have my strong start, Facing Air and Dawn Gaze, Half-Dragon, Akinji Commander. Havadishah of the Burning Sands. We have the scenes.
Facing Erezdon Gaze. Taking a rest. Campfire Tales and leveling up. Travel to the Pit of Unending Thirst, which is an encounter. Navigating into and through the Pit of Unending Thirst and then meeting the Goblin. Let's go find out. Who is this Goblin? So initially we were thinking like, oh, there's like a sneaky Goblin running around who stole a thing, right?
And that kind of fits that stereotype of a Goblin. But I think instead it's Athelia Silvergaze is the name of the Goblin. and Athelia Silvergate is the Goblin Sage of Hewn. And they met some priests of Hewn before, and I was going to have them be good guys, but it might be kind of interesting. The reason was, why didn't they mention that Athelia is one of their priests?
And it could be that they feel, the other priests, feel that Athelia's work to unlock the Red Portal is sacrilegious to their order. They study portal magic, but only academically. So this is actually kind of similar to wizards in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. There's this idea of like, oh, or whatever they call themselves, wizards or whatever they meant.
And they were like, well, we don't know. Wizards don't cast spells like wizards study magic. We just understand it. We don't use it like that. Yeah. Oh, like we're using it. And I think it might be interesting if the order of Hune is sort of like that, that Ithelia is like, look, we can actually use this thing. Like, no, no, no. We're just supposed to understand the portals.
We're not supposed to use the portals. So, yeah, right. Applied portal magic. How low class. Yeah, that's pretty funny, right? So that could be a fun, that's a fun little secret there. So now we've, I think that's a fun way to introduce Athelia.
And I think Athelia could be a good ally of the characters who can then use portal magic to help them get around the Dragon Empire faster and easier and secretly and in a speed that no one else can because they'll have access to one red portal. And then we'll have to figure out where that other red portal goes. But I don't think we have to worry about that right now.
That's a problem for next week. So fantastic locations. One of the locations I would like to drop in here is this encounter that's heading to the pit of unending thirst, right? So we are going to... Actually, here's a cool thing. I have an RPG resources thing. There's a bunch of stuff now that's in Markdown, a bunch of RPG stuff that's getting to be done in Markdown.
Actually, I announced to the City of Arches Kickstarter that I am going to release the City of Arches. All digital purchasers of the City of Arches will get access to a Markdown version. It's going to take a couple months. You're not going to get it right away. You're going to get the PDF version.
sooner because we want the pdf to be as solid as possible first and then get that off to print and then when that's off to print that's when i'll start working on the epub and the markdown version but a markdown version of city of arches means you can drop it right into your obsidian notes you can have all the city of arches sitting there in obsidian notes and i took this idea because i saw raging swan do it with dread thing and omicron stuff like that and we actually have the lazy gm resource documents are available in markdown and droppable directly into your um
Directly into your Obsidian notebook. I will link to that in the show notes, if I remember. But one of the things we've got is, for example, the, I've got some tables in here, the core adventure generators. And in the core adventure generators, we have things like monuments and locations, monuments and conditions, descriptions and origins and stuff like that.
That's interesting, it's got this interesting, I guess this is for like if you wanted to roll dice on it directly. It's got that built into the Obsidian version. But I don't have that plugin. So I'm just gonna roll my actual physical dice. So let's see, I want a, we'll do four, right? I want the monument, condition, description, and origin. So I'm gonna roll 4d20.
And we will start with the monument. And roll them out. And I got a three. A three, a one, and a nine. The three is an orb. Okay, that's cool. The other three, a bloodied orb. That sounds cool too. One is a ruined bloody orb. And the origin is nine, a goblinoid ruined bloody orb. So goblinoid doesn't quite fit.
But I think the idea, so now I've got, like even before I roll a random encounter, I kind of have an interesting idea. We'll go back to our notes here. Instead of worrying about, because we haven't really dealt much with the sanguine path, the blood mages of the sanguine path. But the idea that there is a bloody orb there sounds definitely like sanguine path stuff going on.
So the encounter, we'll put it in our scenes here. The bloody orb of the sanguine path.
sanguine path and so the fantastic relationship the bloody orb what will be some other are there are there other things going that will have like ruined statues we're going to do our three aspects like we did in the old school return to the lazy dungeon master where what are what are other things so obviously the bloody orb is like the main focus of this area but what else is going on there
So we have like ruined statues, crumbling walls. Is there any other kind of interesting... If you imagine yourself kind of going through this ruined city, we could have a sinkhole, right? Like a six-foot sinkhole. So that's pretty cool. And then the monster-wise, we'll probably have two cult fanatics of the Sanguine Path. And... probably four cultists, right?
And we're going to use, let's go to our Tales of Valiant monster vault here. And let's go to NPCs. And I'll tell you, cult fanatics in Tales of Valiant are brutal. CR1-8. So yeah, cultists are perfect. Nine hit points. They attack with a sacrificial dagger. They do three damage.
And for the cause, when a friend of the creature, the cultist can see within five feet is hit by an attack that would reduce it to zero. The cultist can leap in front of the attack, taking damage instead. That's pretty cool. That's fun. So the cultist is on page 364. And cult fanatic is on page 365. So we got that.
And cult fanatics who are CR2, you should really treat them like CR3s because they hit really, really hard. 60 hit points. I think I talked about this last time. Here's your tip. CR1s and 2s in...
the tales of valiant monster vault really hit one challenge rating ahead of what they look like that a cr1 is really hitting like a cr2 a cr2 is really hitting like a cr3 so consider raising those two monsters consider them on one cr higher if needed because like again 60 hit points at cr2 is really high but it's dead even if you consider a cr3 so we might only do one because like the characters are going to be fourth level there'll be four of them
which means four CRs. So if this is one, probably one cult fanatic is appropriate because, yeah, they're hurling around unholy bolts. You might get away with two. It would be a hard fight. It'd be a really hard fight with two. You could drop two in and then give them like half their hit. Maybe they're sacrificing their blood to the orb.
And so they're at half hit points, which means they drop a little bit sooner than they normally do. That could be one way to drop in CR2s, but not have them beat so powerful and still have a story reason for doing so. So they're all kind of... And maybe there's a bunch of dead cultists who are kind of giving themselves... I think I just ran a session where a bunch of guys were killing themselves.
Oh, it was in my Wednesday game. Yeah, I had a bunch of cultists that were killing themselves to resurrect somebody else. So in this case, they'll be feeding into this blood orb. And maybe the blood orb can talk to the demon that's trapped in the puzzle cube. That would be kind of interesting, right? Probably for that. So what is the demon in the puzzle cube? Let's go back and figure that out.
So I've got my cultists and cult fanatics of the Sanguine Path. Oh, so we need to have eras. Do they have half dragons in here? I don't know if half dragon is one of the monsters that they've got in here. Let's take a look. I mean, I think what we'll do is just take a veteran. We will make him resistant to fire and he breathes fire. All right. I think, I think that that's what we'll do.
Cause I don't, I don't think we have a, I don't think there is a half dragon. I don't think there's a half dragon monster in the monster vault that I have seen. We'll do a quick look. It would be. So, yeah, because these are all the NPCs are not based on a race. We can look at our creatures by challenge rating. So Half Dragon would be like CR2s and 3s. Yeah, I don't see one. There might be.
So let's take a look in the Game Master's Guide because they have templates in here. in the Homebrewers toolkit, I believe, are monster templates. And we'll see if they have a draconic template. They have clockworks. They have the dragon lich template. They have elemental infused. Lycanthropy. They have the controllers and leaders and soldiers. That's interesting. Shadow monsters.
Skeletal monsters. I don't see a draconic monster. The elemental one can work, though. Let's take a look at their elemental template. So element infused creatures and points are reduced by 10% rounded up. Okay. Resistant creatures resistant to paralyzed, petrified and conscious. Cause I think this is turning them into an elemental.
So we might not use all these immune to the type of damage you choose. I think in this case, it's going to be fire element infused and actions. When the element infused creature deals damage with an action bonus action or attack half the damage is the type you choose. Yeah.
So, and they have like this example of the lightning infused cloaker, but I think I am going to give him a breath weapon and probably just be a, so I'm going to use the veteran stat block, which is on page 371. And he can, as a bonus action. So he gets, I think he gets four attacks, right? Two long sword attacks and two short sword attacks or makes three.
We're going to go with three long sword attacks. And he can replace one of those attacks by casting Burning Hands. He's actually breathing out. Breathes fire. So we'll give him immunity to fire, and he breathes fire for one attack. That makes him pretty good and dangerous. So that's solid. I don't remember if they already got treasure or not. Let's take a look at the treasure from last session.
They got the Infernal Insectoid Studded Leather Armor. So they pick that treasure up. So we probably don't need another big treasure hoard, but we'll roll one up. I'm going to use my random generator to roll up treasure. And we'll go bang. And the helm of comprehend languages is pretty interesting. And an elemental gem.
I'm probably not going to do that because I don't want them summoning an elemental. Maybe one time, right? That might be kind of fun. So we'll go back to our notes here. And under treasure, we'll drop the treasure I got from my generator. Dark elven hallowed wand that casts foresight. This foresight, foresight's really powerful, right? Ninth level.
You touch a willing creature and bestow a limited ability to see into the immediate future. For the duration, the target can't be surprised it has advantage on attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws. Additionally, other creatures have disadvantage on attack rolls against the target for the duration. For one minute. Oh, the casting time is one minute.
We could do a limited foresight where it only lasts for one minute and only gives advantage on attacks. That's not bad. So we've got that. Monsters. Any other monsters? So we should probably start to think a little bit about what's going on in the ruined shrine. So the top level, oh, I think we've got like a random list of creatures that are wandering around Kukatarma.
I would love to introduce a Gray Thurster. The Gray Thurster is actually from Toma Beasts 2024, but it's really cool. Let me pull that up here. Is that what you call a gray thirster? Yeah, there it is. Bang. So gray thirsters are undead, CR2 undead, and they're on page 221, Tomebeast 1-221. And I'd like to introduce one because I think there's going to be a few of those here.
So I think when they, they might find a gray thirster sucking the moisture. When they get to the top of, I think they will find a gray thirster sucking the moisture out of some dead thralls. I think that'll be fun. And then they can actually go down into the pit. And we I don't I mean, we probably do a little bit of it now because we got like everything else going right. We're solid on our notes.
I'm trying to remember if in the last one I had in the monster section. I did. I had sort of a mini random encounter table here. But I don't think that that fits. I don't think that that fits what's going on specifically in the ruined shrine of Anuakma, which is also known as the Pit of Unending Thirst. So skeletons, certainly. Zombie, dehydrated zombies. We could drop some oozes, right?
Gray oozes. Everyone appreciates some gray oozes.
specters ancient specters of blood of former blood mages we don't have to make them ancient because it wasn't that long ago wounded explorers so some you know explorers that have come from the other one that that managed to survive but haven't found a way back out yet probably guardian armors animated armors weird ancient armor with like bird heads and stuff that'd be fun
I think, well, let's see. So this, there isn't a portal here. There isn't a portal down here. So, but I think in the other place, there might be like a breach where like demons and devils and stuff got through. So they might find some like mains and things like that. That might be kind of fun. Any other kind of, let's take a look. So the Game Master's Guide, again, has random encounter tables.
One of the things I'm trying to do is like, I have random encounter tables from a lot of different places, but I'm running Tales of the Valiant. I might as well look at Tales of the Valiant. And they've got underground. So let's take a look at some of these underground encounters. So we have kobolds and fire beetles. We have shriekers, dark mantles, silver dragons. They need like a haunted one.
I don't, I don't see like a haunted one. All of these are, yeah, would be like in the, in the natural underground, not in like a ruin. I kind of wish it had a ruin. Let's see. It's got Arctic badlands, coasts, deserts, farmlands, forest, grassland, hills, mountains, planar swamps. We could try urban because urban sometimes includes undead. Yeah.
Passing through the arches of a mortuary PCs with passive perception spot and three shadows hiding against the stone. So shadows would be fun. It could be like blood shadows, right? Ooh. Cause we're doing all blood magic.
yeah zombies and fighting swords yeah this one has a lot of undead in it but i yeah i could i i i would love to have a dungeon random encounter table you know that one that's specifically for like an actual dungeon dungeon but i guess you never really know exactly what to put in there but it's actually something missing from a lot of random encounter tables is they seem to avoid the dungeon even though it was one of the biggest tables in the original dungeon master's guide who could say
So I think that that gives me enough, like that's eight, you know, that's a, that's a random list of eight things that they could find. And, and each of these with bird heads, each of these kind of has a little bit of a theme to it. I mean, the skeletons don't, but like, you know, I could still, I could still, I can, I can make skeletons scary if I, if I, if I end up using that. So that works.
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