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The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish

Return to Bittermold Keep – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 43 Lazy GM Prep

Fri, 27 Sep 2024

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Mike prepares for his Shadowdark RPG campaign, the Gloaming! Join the City of Arches Kickstarter! Shadowdark RPG Campaign Notebook available to Sly Flourish patrons Visit the Sly Flourish Blog Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Newsletter Support Sly Flourish on Patreon Buy Sly Flourish Books Shadowdark RPG Cursed Scroll 1 Dyson Maps

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0.469 - 15.719 Mike Shea

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 coming to the end of my Shadow Dark campaign.

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15.779 - 32.447 Mike Shea

I have been running an awesome campaign using the RPG Shadow Dark by Arcane Library, set in the Gloaming, which is the setting from Cursed Scroll 1, also available from the Arcane Library. This show, like all of the work of Sly Flourish, is brought to you by the patrons of Sly Flourish.

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32.827 - 49.351 Mike Shea

Patrons get access to all kinds of exclusive adventures, source books, tools, tips, tricks, online tools to help you run your game. They get to join the awesome Lazy DM community over on the Discord server, and they help me put on shows like this. To the patrons of Sly Flourish, thank you so much for your outstanding support.

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50.892 - 67.123 Mike Shea

I believe today is going to be the penultimate session of my Shadow Dark game. We are getting right to the super tippy point of the yam-shaped adventure with lots of different directions that they can go, narrowing down to very few directions that they can go.

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67.683 - 85.523 Mike Shea

i had a patron ask me a question about that he said like they said hey i know that you have like a yam shape design where you kind of have a clear start for your campaign you have and then it sort of widens out and then the characters can kind of do lots of different things while still kind of moving generally forward like the outside of the yam right

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86.204 - 103.895 Mike Shea

And then as you get closer to the end, it tapers back down again and narrows down until you have kind of this big final conclusion. One of the things that I did with the gloaming campaign is I didn't I had a couple of other potential conclusions. So one of them was, hey, the gloaming is dead and you're not going to be able to stop it.

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103.975 - 117.443 Mike Shea

And maybe you should just collect artifacts and then bring them to Titania, the witch queen or the queen of the fae and use it as passage to go to the realm of the fae. And that was always, and the characters brought up, like, maybe we just get out of here. I mean, this is really terrible.

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117.483 - 131.529 Mike Shea

Like where you got people hunting us down and the muggle blob in the sky has a giant jaws that are chewing on the thing. Like it's getting really, really bad. So maybe we should just leave. And then they're like, nah, we gotta give it a shot. Like, let's try. And so they've been doing that. They've been taking the harder course.

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132.03 - 145.8 Mike Shea

But I did have some kind of alternative conclusions to this, which is mostly them leaving worlds. I think at one point, I mean, they had opportunities to just literally leave the world where they could pierce open and open a dimensional portal to another world and step through and then they'd be in another world.

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146.1 - 166.705 Mike Shea

I was actually considering jumping to one of the other cursed scrolls and then have them basically restart in a whole new world, which would have been really fun and interesting. So they had those opportunities, but now things have really narrowed down. So in our last session of the game, the characters met with Haldren. Haldren is the husband of Gwendolyn.

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166.925 - 191.168 Mike Shea

So Haldren was the wife or the husband of Gwendolyn, who was mother, the two of them were the mother and father of Morrigan, who was one of the main characters, one of the longest surviving characters in it. Morrigan was disintegrated upon the tip of an enrivating blade wielded by a demon after refusing to give up the obsidian witch knife, one of the three things.

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191.748 - 216.828 Mike Shea

which drove haldren bananas he was completely destroyed when he saw his own his he tried to keep his daughter safe he did all these things to keep her safe and then she makes it all the way to him and before they can even talk she's she's killed in front of him he was trapped inside of a big soul vessel as a soul the characters drew him out of the soul vessel and told him hey you've got more work to do like you you can't just leave you can't you know he said just destroy me please

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217.368 - 236.519 Mike Shea

And they said, no, you've got more work you need to do. So they used like dark magic and drew him out and ended up reforming him as a lich. So now he's a lich. But as soon as he became a lich, he kind of lost his soul and he didn't know. He's like, I remember being in love with my wife. I remember loving my daughter. I remember wanting to save this world. And now I have no idea why.

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236.639 - 237.38 Mike Shea

Like, I don't remember.

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238.34 - 259.793 Mike Shea

i don't have i know that i remember that but i don't have those feelings anymore those feelings are gone he left he said meet me at the tower but he still had like the remnants of his former self were still around so he said meet me at my tower it's on the lake so they go to the lake they find that the whole lake has been drained because they had done something else with another artifact earlier that sort of cracked the world and it drained all the water out of the lake and now there's like a primordial ooze at the bottom of the lake

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260.553 - 280.859 Mike Shea

And they, so they made their way to the lake, got involved in shenanigans and adventures along the way and made it to the tower. They navigated the tower and found it filled with all kinds of like old artifacts of his. And there was a magic eating Atiyag at the bottom. And then they faced an Oni who was kind of his librarian.

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281.339 - 301.794 Mike Shea

And they fought the Oni and they defeated the Oni who then like, you know, surrendered everything. and explained to them that, yeah, you know, the Haldron who came back is not the Haldron who left here. He's different. And so they're like, well, you know, we still need to go up there because they need to get the third artifact that they require from Haldron.

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301.974 - 313.545 Mike Shea

And so they have there were three artifacts that they needed. They learned this early on and they knew that Haldron and Gwendolyn were seeking these things out before and failed to get all three. And that was the obsidian witch knife, which Gwendolyn had.

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314.205 - 343.24 Mike Shea

the sphere of annihilation which haldren had tried to get from a temple of rom lot a temple a big demon temple of rom lot down down in the underdark and and the well of worlds and he had the well of worlds already so so haldren had the well of worlds gwendoline had the knife and the haldren had said i'm gonna go down i'm gonna leave the well of worlds back on my tower so i don't you know give it up but i'm gonna go down and try to get the sphere of annihilation and that's when he was he was killed and his soul trapped in a soul vessel down in the in this demon this demon temple and that's when the character found him

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343.82 - 360.744 Mike Shea

So at that point, the characters had this fear of annihilation. They had the obsidian witch knife and they made their way to Haldren and they met Haldren and had a conversation and Haldren told them like, I don't know that I care anymore. And they're, you know, and I was playing as it from a, from a GM standpoint, I was playing it like this conversation could go really good or really bad.

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360.844 - 366.785 Mike Shea

And if it goes really bad, they're going to be fighting a lich and it's going to be really hard. If it goes well, then, then he'll probably do what they want.

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367.425 - 389.174 Mike Shea

and the conversation went well they explained the situation they said like you know we know you don't feel this way now but trust me you did and you you you did love your daughter and you did love your wife and if there's any remnant left in you that remembers them even if you don't feel the same way do you really want the world destroyed and he's like well maybe it should be like maybe this world deserves to die and maybe we should just leave and maybe i should just leave and

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389.534 - 406.562 Mike Shea

They're like, no, like, you know, we can do more. And so they talked to him and they convinced him. And he said, all right, you know, I'm, I'm not, I'm not helping you further, but you can have the well of worlds and we'll see, we'll see what you've managed to accomplish. He goes, cause the alternative is you're going to take all three artifacts to the God who wants all three artifacts.

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406.622 - 425.635 Mike Shea

And if he gets them, he's going to not just destroy this world. He's going to destroy every world. Because if they give two of the three artifacts, the obsidian witch knife and the well of worlds, if they give those to Mugdalblub, he can use those to invade every world. The slime god can invade every world. But they also have the sphere of annihilation.

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426.656 - 445.781 Mike Shea

So, so they convinced him and we ended the session with them going to the top of the tower, peering down into this hole that was going through the world that he gave them a special glove that they could essentially grab the surface of it and whip it up and turn it into like a ball of cloth and then carry this around with all of their stuff.

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445.941 - 468.545 Mike Shea

And so our session begins with them at the top of the tower, holding the well of worlds in their hands. So we're going to generate a new session planning template. I am using Notion for our campaign planning today. I will probably not be using Notion for my next campaign. I'm going to switch over to Obsidian just because I'm digging Obsidian, but we're still going to be doing this here.

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469.165 - 498.524 Mike Shea

And for some reason, I still have the old characters listed in this. I never bothered to update, to update the characters. Let's see if I can get the, did I up them here? So we, I know we have Dazder and Kalem and Uralt and Scree. So those are the three, those are the four characters today. Dazder, Kalem, Uralt, and Scree. is a, I think a kobold fighter arena is not here. Yes.

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498.785 - 519.579 Mike Shea

So this is our, we have four players today, four players, four characters, three of whom have lived for a long time. Kalem, Dazdar and Uralt have lived for a long time. Scree is the replacement character for, for Morgan and is still around as well. So, so that's cool. And they begin. So the well of worlds, all three artifacts are now in hand.

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520.319 - 545.35 Mike Shea

and it's time to head back to bitter mold keep to face mugdle blub so one of the things we need to do today is kind of begin to so this is the like i said this is the penultimate session we've got this session and next session and actually i have one tricky bit which i've got to noodle through which is attendance for the final session attendance has been spotty for the last one last week we didn't have a game because we had like i think three or four players out last week

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546.21 - 559.862 Mike Shea

And it's been pretty rare during the summer and early part of the fall where I've been able to get everybody. And so what do we do for that final one? And I'll probably just ask the group like, hey, what do we want to do to try to maximize attendance for this? You know, I think it's going to be next week.

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560.563 - 577.798 Mike Shea

And, you know, I think my plan is to basically say, hey, if you, you know, let's can can everybody make it on one of the next two weekends? Yeah. And if they can, then that's the weekend we will go. If they can't, then we're going to go with as many players as we can. And somebody might miss it, right?

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577.858 - 592.769 Mike Shea

And I hate to have somebody miss it, but we can still have sort of a, you know, they can still have their one year later. They can still learn what happened during the event. So hopefully they'll still be kind of included. But people have been busy, a lot of people out of town. And normally we just roll. Like today, we're just going to go.

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593.049 - 613.963 Mike Shea

Even though we're missing two of the six players are out, we're going to keep going anyway. I would probably even go if we only had three. But today is not a super important session. But next one is, because next one they're probably going to face it. I think a Wyvern flies... They already dealt with a wyvern, I think.

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614.224 - 635.852 Mike Shea

They already dealt with a wyvern, and they were crawling around the outside of the temple, and it kind of smashed against the door. And they sent, I think they, did they conjure a, they conjured something. I'm trying to remember. It was a couple weeks back. One of the characters, like, oh, no, they freed an Aranese. That's right. There was an Aranese that was trapped below.

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635.912 - 657.448 Mike Shea

The Aranese told them a bunch of stuff. They freed the Aranese who was like, hey, you know, I can't believe you freed me. And it said, well, I'm getting out of here. And it opened the door and there was a Wyvern smashing against the door and it just went out and butchered the Wyvern. So an interesting thing they could see is the Wyvern, the Aranese kills the Wyvern, right?

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657.569 - 684.8 Mike Shea

And like a huge, like severed body lands on top of the tower. That's kind of fun. So scenes are leaving the tower, leaving Haldrin's Tower, beginning their journey back to Mugdalblub, back to Bittermold Keep. And then we have some loose ends. So I want to keep track of some loose ends to decide if any of them should come into play on their way back.

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685.32 - 712.809 Mike Shea

So we have the remaining knights of Mugdalblub, which are a druid and a mage, I think, are the two knights of Mugdalblub that are left. We have Titania and her fey artifact hunters. We have the refugees of the town. What was the name of the town? Curse scroll one here. I forget it. Wardenwood. The refugees of Wardenwood. Another loose end. Let me get rid of the plural on here.

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713.609 - 747.625 Mike Shea

Another loose end is the exodus of Aklaklik, the goblin. Another loose end is St. Yidris and their knights. Their corrupt knights. Is there any other? Let's take a look. We have like, oh, well, yeah. And so another loose end is Almazotz and Kytheros. So these are all, when we think about, we don't have to tie off every single one of these. The criticality of some of this isn't important.

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747.685 - 766.864 Mike Shea

Meeting Titania and the Artifact Hunters doesn't really matter. A few of these matter. I think that Almazot and Kytheros matter. Because they have to convince Almazots not to devour the world if they manage to destroy Mugdoblub. So there's a few different loose ends here.

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767.264 - 783.993 Mike Shea

And I think we can kind of almost turn these into sort of like random encounters along the way and decide like which ones happen here. You know, so we can fill this out. One of the tricks I have is like it's a travel. Today is basically like a travel adventure. I want to make it fun and interesting and I want it to matter.

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784.753 - 802.478 Mike Shea

But I also don't want to just rush them straight to Bitter Mold Keep and like that's the end. Like they're at Bitter Mold Keep. But I really want to kind of pace things. And so I need to build on some controls. I want to pace things so that the characters are basically at the conclusion of the campaign at the next session. So I don't think I want to have another big dungeon crawl.

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803.118 - 821.334 Mike Shea

Like I think when they get to bitter mold, keep, I want them like, you know, I want them basically at the end. Right. And that once they, once they get there, they know what to do. And the next session will be, you know, dealing with that. So, so I can kind of think about like, well, what is that? What is that end?

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821.494 - 826.318 Mike Shea

And we could have, so I don't think like they're actually going to fight muddle blub.

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827.199 - 850.974 Mike Shea

at the end i mean they could maybe but i think that like you know who are the final guardians of mugdoblub and maybe we'll move the night the remaining knights of mugdoblub who are like two big spellcaster types plus like a bunch of like mugdoblub conscripts which are like new knights of mugdoblub maybe even some people the characters know that'd be kind of fun And, you know, kind of stage it.

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851.014 - 869.902 Mike Shea

So like what, you know, if I, what do I know is like the conclusion at the end of this session that will lead us into the final conclusion for the campaign. And then, you know, there's a question like, is this the shadow dark way? And it's like, maybe not, but it's kind of the way I'm going to do it. Right. That like, I want to have like a big final battle.

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870.002 - 890.288 Mike Shea

I want to have like a big final conclusion. Yeah. And I, you know, and it will be more of like the Baldur's Gate 3 style giant epic thing rather than we roll random tables until the game is up. So if I think about what that final scene is, the final scene could be the last nights of Mugdalblub plus conscripts.

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891.008 - 905.894 Mike Shea

And my thought is like, at this point, Mugdalblub has probably devoured all of Bittermold Keep, right? So like Bittermold Keep is now no longer there. And now when they go there, they go to the top of the hill and it's like a crater.

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906.935 - 926.746 Mike Shea

And at the bottom of the crater is a massive mugdle blub that has devoured, you know, they can see like ruined towers and, you know, rock walls and stuff like that, that have been all kind of disintegrated and chewed up. But really it's just mugdle blub at this thing. And it's, and he's, it's titanic in scope. Hey, my mom is here. Hello, mom.

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927.567 - 949.926 Mike Shea

So I think that, you know, and then so we could kind of end at this last battle. Like they are, you know, the knights. And one aspect, this could be a fun secret, is that the more humanoid knights of Mugdalblub recognize deception, even though Mugdalblub does not.

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950.626 - 973.398 Mike Shea

i think that's a secret another secret is the way to use the three artifacts includes giving laying down the well of worlds piercing it with the obsidian witch knife which opens it up which tears it open to all worlds baiting mugdle blub into the well

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974.258 - 1004.329 Mike Shea

so he can so it connects with all of its instantiations across all worlds and then hitting it with the with the server annihilation i can't spell annihilation there we go If this is done incorrectly, two bad outcomes could occur. One, this is the worst, this is the longest secret of all time. We're going to make this a separate secret. If this is done incorrectly, two bad outcomes could run.

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1004.489 - 1028.13 Mike Shea

Mugdablub takes over all worlds. Two, the sphere of annihilation destroys all possible worlds. Because you're sending a sphere of annihilation into a torn well of worlds, which thus could disintegrate all possible worlds in all places and destroy all of existence. So both of those things. I think that's an important thing. So St.

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1028.19 - 1073.175 Mike Shea

Yidris walks the lands seeking to purify all living souls before the end. That's cool. Let's see, Titania's artifact hunters seek the final and most powerful artifacts to gain passage to the realm of the Fae. The refugees of Wardenwood, what's been going on with them, managed to survive all this time, not being devoured by either the Marrow Wolves of Almazotz or the folk of Mughal Blubb.

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1073.695 - 1106.348 Mike Shea

We have another loose end. Where is CRISPR? I think CRISPR is probably with the... Oh, the refugees of Wardenwood. Why don't we get two groups together, right? The refugees... The refugees of Wardenwood found... What did they do? Met up... With the folk of Wardenwood, with the folk of Acklacklack, they now travel with CRISPR, the Mugdahlblub curing gelatinous cube. That's cool.

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1106.528 - 1127.216 Mike Shea

Because that could be like a third alternative. Like what if you send CRISPR into it instead of the Sphere of Annihilation? It could actually be safer. So that could be something. What else we got? The remaining Knights of Mugdalblub. They probably, they, they probably have figured out that the characters are on their way back to Mugdalblub. So they probably returned back to Mugdalblub.

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1127.256 - 1149.31 Mike Shea

The remaining, the remaining Knights of Mugdalblub have returned, returned to Bittermold Keep. They know the characters are coming. Any other loose ends? So how can the characters communicate with Almazots and Kytheros? Met Almazots before. They met Undeluk. But they need to speak to... So let's see. We could have Undeluk. Stalks.

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1150.39 - 1173.299 Mike Shea

the characters but does not attack it's curious about their resilience and their goal maybe underlook isn't such a bad guy after all underlook is a giant six-eyed wolf they defeated it they sent it to another world it came back again and it leads the marrow wolves so maybe speaking to underlook is the way to speak to almazats and kytheros and really it just has to speak to kytheros

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1174.264 - 1208.071 Mike Shea

Beyond obliterating Muggleblub, the characters must still convince Kytherios to call off Almazotz from devouring the world. There is in this area, there is a shrine. There's a stone circle, 807. Let's get our map up here. We should have a map. So 807 is way down here. I think I'm going to flip 807 and 1002. There's also some fun werewolves to meet along the way in 103.

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1208.131 - 1229.792 Mike Shea

But 102 could be... I think 102 looks like a... Standing stone. But I think we can actually have an altar to Kytheros there. 807 is a stone circle. One minute of time passes inside this low circle is actually an hour in the outside. Kytheros grants a random patron boon to those who lay the six eyed wolf inside the slain six eyed wolf in the circle.

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1230.473 - 1254.915 Mike Shea

That's kind of funny because the six eyed wolf works for him. I wonder why I would care. But I think we're going to change that so that there is an altar to Kytheros east of Bittermold Keep. About, and it's hex-wise, it is two full hexes away. And I forget how we determined east of Bittermold Keep. So there's that new Shadow Dark preview.

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1255.015 - 1282.58 Mike Shea

Let's see if I can find that because that had new hex rules in it, right? Yeah. Yes. This is a new preview of Curse Scroll 4 that Kelsey put out and it has new hex crawl rules in it. And what did we determine? So we have like points of interest and stuff like that. So hexes are six miles across. You can cross four hexes a day. So it's about a half a day's journey.

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1283.761 - 1312.332 Mike Shea

it's about a half a day's journey to the east a set of ancient standing stones where time slips backward that doesn't slip backward the fact that time slows there could be very interesting this would be a good way a good place to to speak to kytheros what is it called not speaking it's like when when you talk to a divine entity there's a name for that commune commune with that's the word okay

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1313.021 - 1330.433 Mike Shea

Lots of secrets. So if we're thinking about our loose ends, do I have like secrets connected to all the loose ends? Remaining Knights are mugged up. Yes, they're waiting outside. Titania and her fey artifact hunters, sure, they're around. Refugees of Wardenwood, they now have CRISPR and they're wandering around. The exodus of Alaklik. Yeah, we said that the goblins made their way.

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1330.533 - 1347.999 Mike Shea

They actually used artifacts and made their way through and they are now living in the realm of the fey with Titania. St. Yidris and their corrupt knights are still walking around. Almazots and Kytheros, we have some stuff there. Crispr, we've decided, is with the refugees of Wardenwood.

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1348.339 - 1371.787 Mike Shea

And we know where we want our final scene to be, that when they arrive at Bittermold Keep to find that Bittermold Keep has now become a giant crater. So that's a secret, right? We put that in here. Mugglerblub devoured all of Bittermold Keep and turned the whole area into a giant crater. Cool. Some fantastic locations. So we probably want to have... Let's see. Let's take a look at our map here.

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1372.648 - 1399.688 Mike Shea

This is really the region that we care about. So they're at the tower now. They can go back across the lake and then follow the shore. If they follow the shore, they'll end up at 1003. And 1003 is where... The Bone Cave. And I think I changed this too. Yeah, Werewolf. Victoria the Werewolf. So what is, what's her deal? So she and a bunch of other werewolves have, we could put a secret in for them.

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1399.908 - 1437.771 Mike Shea

So Victoria and the other werewolves have been left alone by both Mugdalblub and Magna Blob, Undeluk, and what else have they been left alone by? Oh, and Titania. Bans them from entry into the realm of the Fae. The werewolves have accepted their eventual death, but hunt the knights, not the knights of Magna Blob, but they hunt the knights of St. Yedris, who has killed so many of them.

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1438.391 - 1459.796 Mike Shea

So we have a fun NPC interaction there with Victoria the werewolf, and that's at the werewolf cave. I'm moving that around a little bit, I think. No, no, it's true. If we look in the book here, the bone cave it's called. Victoria lost her two cubs to the swamp dragon Drusilla, coaxing the grieving Victoria into a plot to turn the children of Wardenwood Village into her new pack of werewolf cubs.

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1459.996 - 1488.556 Mike Shea

Yeah. But boy, things have changed since then. So we have the Bone Cave, the Standing Stones of Kytheros are two locations along the way. And we have Mugdalblub. We have the Ruins of Bittermold Keep. That's there. I like the idea. So let's see one other thing. Huge severed lands in the body. Something horrible rises out of the primordial ooze at the bottom of the lake.

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1489.316 - 1517.053 Mike Shea

A sphere with 10 eyes burning the lands around it. So what is that? You might ask. It is a 10-eyed oracle. Where's your monsters? And there was only one of these things. Level 18. Yeah, I think this is like a... We're going to use this as sort of a... Only damage from magical sources. Hostile spells targeting the eye are DC 18 to cast. Each ray can shoot once per round at a target.

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1517.633 - 1541.529 Mike Shea

They'll probably need to run from this thing. DC 15 counter dropped to zero with a death timer of one. Woo! Disintegrate. 5d8 damage or disintegrate it. It doesn't look actually that terrible. Oh, the attack is 2d4 eye stalks. So you roll to see how many eye stalks it fires off. Oh, that's terrible. Wow. I think I might change that to be 1d4.

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1543.331 - 1564.279 Mike Shea

It only flies near, so it could be far away and they could, probably the characters would be like, let's just, you know, what the hell? But I might tell them that defeating such a thing would result in 20 experience points. That might be kind of a fun, strong start. Seeing one of those things. It's our last chance. Let's see monsters. We're going to generally roll randomly.

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1564.299 - 1591.296 Mike Shea

I don't think I need to have a list for that treasure. We're also going to roll randomly. So I don't need to have a section for that. I don't think I do want to have so NPCs, some NPCs to keep track of here. I want to pull some old friends up. Matilda Bauer is still around. She is the elder of warden wood. Of course, a blub eating gelatinous cube curing, right? And mugged a blub curing. Cool.

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1591.897 - 1607.344 Mike Shea

What else do I need? So does that give me enough? I have all these loose ends, but what I really need, so we have a three hour game. I'd like to have five scenes, right? I'd like to, you know, have like five clear things that they could potentially do instead of just rolling. Cause I don't want them to get there.

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1607.384 - 1624.154 Mike Shea

And like, you know, they all came over to my house and we spent an hour and they're already at the end. Right. Don't thanks. We're going to save it for next time. So I want to make sure there's enough stuff going on here that there's enough stuff going on here to fill out a full session. And then I want to be able to turn the dials on it.

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1624.194 - 1631.038 Mike Shea

So I want to have a number of scenes that could potentially happen. I could always make them random scenes. So one scene is meeting Victoria.

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1632.439 - 1659.813 Mike Shea

and the werewolves another potential scene could be facing another scene could be meeting the refugees of wardenwood we have of course our starting scene but i don't think it's going to take too long witnessing the ten-eyed oracle i even have a cool mini i'll pull out What other, so let's see, communing. I don't know if they'll choose this, but communing with Kytheros at the Standing Stones.

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1660.573 - 1665.736 Mike Shea

A dialogue with Undeluk could be another path.

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1667.117 - 1692.838 Mike Shea

the fey artifact hunters could be another one what other is there any so i think i now let's see and then we know that these guys are the final ones we just talked about those the fey artifact hunters we have the refugees of meeting the refugees of warden wood and crisper we figured out the aclac like we saint yidris is on our list and kytheros is is meeting so we have the several scenes here.

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1693.058 - 1711.745 Mike Shea

Is that enough? So let's see. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. We have seven scenes. We're probably going to run five of them depending on what the characters do. Is there any other, I mean, we can always like roll random, random scenes as well. And you know, other, other things that they might run into while they're making their way.

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1712.326 - 1730.631 Mike Shea

But like, let's see if they can cross four hexes a day, half a day gets them to the cave, right? And then another, you know, so they're only about a day away from Magdal Blub. I might extend that and say, like, hey, it's getting, you know, it's getting harder and they're probably going to have to rest somewhere along the way. So then we could roll some random encounters in there as well.

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1731.391 - 1764.422 Mike Shea

That could be, that could be a good time. Why don't I turn some of these into random, into a random roll? So I think we're going to have the Ten-Eyed Oracle is going to be a normal one. But we can do, instead of monsters, we'll just do encounters. And let's see. So we have St. Yidris as an encounter. We have Mugdalblub. Mugdalfolk is another. We have Marrowfolk is another. Werewolves is another.

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1764.442 - 1784.688 Mike Shea

Refugees is another. Artifact Hunters is another. Do we have any others here? Artifact Hunters... I think, I mean that, right? Is there any other, we can always say like other random monsters, you know, we can kind of roll on both tables and figure out like, you know, but I don't need to make that a list.

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1784.708 - 1806.226 Mike Shea

So I've got this sort of like encounter list and let's see, in that new hex chart, there is like points of interest. But they're not really filled out yet. So I'm probably going to use my own point of interest generators from the LazyDM's companion or the random generator available to... Ooh, look at this. A fairy foggy charnel pit. Let's do some random locations.

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1806.246 - 1814.912 Mike Shea

So these are part of the LazyDM random generator, which is a Patreon, a feature for Patreon, Patreon, SciFlare's Patreon backers. And I use it all the time.

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1815.772 - 1846.08 Mike Shea

so we're gonna we're gonna do a handful of these a temporal ruby crater that sounds fun a defiled foggy stone circle i can't go wrong with that these are see how great these are unhallowed glowing throne that would be for saint yidris could have that lightning touched unhallowed obelisk sounds kind of fun psionic cyclopean planar rift i like the word cyclopean So those are fun.

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1846.32 - 1869.894 Mike Shea

We can make these a random list too, if I want to roll on those. So that gives me kind of interesting locations that the characters could find as they're journeying along the way. And then I can sort of roll on the list to mix things up. And in fact, on the encounter list, I can even roll like one of these encounters plus one of the encounters going on in the Shadow Dark book itself.

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1870.394 - 1899.414 Mike Shea

So for example, I'll get my dice. Let's see. There is woods. Let's see. Deep towns are forests, right? So we have forest encounters here, which is a D 100. Let me get my dice. I'm missing a die. There it is. And I need a D 20. So I can take a forest encounter and I can roll and I get 87. So 87 is 1d4 cave creepers charge out of a cave reeking of sulfur. And then I can mix that.

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1900.115 - 1907.701 Mike Shea

I'll roll a d6 and I roll a 1, which means they come to like a cave where a bunch of dead cave creepers are there.

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1908.462 - 1932.139 Mike Shea

and sitting on a rock nearby is a sort of angelic figure and it turns and it looks at them and it's saint yidris like out hunting in the woods and maybe there's a couple of dead knights of saint yidris around who got killed by the cave creepers and so now i'm mixing up multiple encounters to kind of say well there would have been cave creepers here but saint yidris showed up before you guys did so now they can they can deal with that

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1932.779 - 1953.263 Mike Shea

There's also a lot of different ways for these encounters to go. Like they could have a conversation with St. Yidris or they could fight St. Yidris. If they fight St. Yidris, St. Yidris is in fact, one thing is like, boy, Shadow Dark, you know, Shadow Dark is swingy anyway, but it's really swingy even at high levels. So I think St. Yidris is an Archangel. It doesn't... Yeah, let's see.

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1953.363 - 1972.217 Mike Shea

It could be a Domini instead of an Archangel. Like, the Archangel is AC 18, 76 hit points, 3 sword attacks, 10 to hit, 2d12 damage. DC 18 to Crown of Fire. Hostile spells targeting the Archangel are extreme. You know, I could turn it into a Principai, which is 53, only a mere level 11. More reasonable, but...

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1976.52 - 1999.893 Mike Shea

right that that saint yidris is a principi angel you know more decent armor class 53 hit points three silver bastard sword attacks plus nine 1d10 each can fly near i think that would be pretty cool so we're gonna i think that's what we're gonna use 195. uh i got that wrong 195. yeah so i got a big pile of locations I've got a pile of potential encounters.

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1999.973 - 2014.9 Mike Shea

I, of course, have encounters in the book. I know that I need... I can use as many encounters as I need to... And I can watch the time to make sure that the players are having a good time. There's only four, which means things move fast. So I may need even more scenes.

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2014.96 - 2030.187 Mike Shea

But as they're making their way, they're learning things, they're talking to people, have good role-play scenes, good exploration scenes. And then in the end, they're going to come to... They're going to come to Bittermold Keep, find out that it's a giant crater, and they're going to see the knights in the conscripts of Bittermold Keep standing there waiting to meet them.

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2031.068 - 2048.876 Mike Shea

And that will lead into the final conclusion of the campaign the following week. So I think that narrows down the tippy point of the Yam Shape adventure. I do feel like I have enough material here and I can fall back on the stuff that I have in my various books if I need to fill it out anymore. What I'm most worried about, and maybe this is a false conclusion,

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2049.036 - 2067.559 Mike Shea

What I'm most worried about is not having enough interesting things to fill out an entire session today before they come to the final conclusion. So I went a little overboard and I would rather be overboard because I can always cut stuff, right? But it's hard to make up stuff on the fly. It's much easier to cut stuff when I don't need it. So I feel like I've got what I need for today's adventure.

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2067.919 - 2081.704 Mike Shea

Friends, I want to thank all of you for hanging out with me today. I hope you enjoyed today's show. If you did, the best way to find all of the information that I do is to subscribe to the Sly Flourish newsletter. You can find a link down in the show notes. It's absolutely free to sign up. You get a free adventure generators for signing up.

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2081.744 - 2098.855 Mike Shea

It helps you build things like those monuments that I was showing earlier. And you get a weekly RPG related article. Monday's article is going to be how to use Shadow Dark with Ravenloft, which actually just came out. If you're watching this on YouTube or the Patreon on Friday after I publish it, then the article is already available on Sly Flourish.

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2098.875 - 2114.851 Mike Shea

But you get more articles like that by signing up for the newsletter. You can also support me directly on Patreon, get access to things like the Lazy GM random guide tool, random tool, also access to the awesome Sly Flourish Lazy DM community over on Discord. And you help me directly by putting help me put it on shows like this.

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2115.452 - 2126.17 Mike Shea

and you can pick up any of my books, including Return to the Lazy Dungeon Master, The Lazy DM's Workbook, The Lazy DM's Companion, Forge of Foes, and others at the Sly Flourish bookstore. Thank you all so much. Have a great day, and get out there and play an RPG.

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