The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
The Red Portal Part 1 – Dragon Empire Prep Session 12
Fri, 21 Feb 2025
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
Chapter 1: Who is hosting this episode of Sly Flourish's Lazy GM Prep?
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 roleplaying game. In this case, we are running a Tales of the Valiant campaign set in the Midgard, the world of Midgard, called Scourge of the Dragon Empire.
This is set over in the Maradi Empire of Midgard on the eastern side of Midgard. 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, source books, scenarios, adventures, a whole extra podcast, all kinds of awesome stuff you get by supporting Sly Flourish.
You also get access to the awesome Lazy GM community over on our Discord server, and you directly support me and help me put on shows like this. To the patrons of Sly Flourish, thank you so much for your outstanding support.
i missed last week's session i was actually away at winter fantasy a big fifth edition d d convention that exists in fort wayne indiana it's the 49th year that winter fantasy has been going around a couple hundred people there you know almost got we had some snow it's always a risky winter fantasy is always a risky proposition because of weather and illness and things like that i have about a 50 50 shot of making it when i when i plan to go it's kind of a hard convention to get to
But it's a really fun convention, lots of awesome people, lots of opportunity to drive things out. And I spent a fair bit of time playing a bunch of new D&D 2024 characters and watching GMs run D&D 2024 games. That was really eye-opening. In a later episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show, I will be digging into some of my insights in that.
and that was a lot of fun but now i am back and we are back to running the game my home games and last night i just ran a dnd 2014 game set in the vault of the drow and on my wednesday game we are running city of arches using a hybrid of dnd 2024 dnd 2014 and level up advanced 5e all in one game and the big question is how does that work and the answer is just fine it hasn't been a problem at all
But today, we're going to talk about my Tales of the Valiant game. So in our last session, let's see, we'll drop over to Obsidian here. In the last session of the game, the characters are in the city of Kukatarma. Kukatarma is a ruined city where the Nuria Natal, Natalian folk, had been battling against the Dragon Empire hundreds of years ago.
The Dragon Empire ended up winning, but the people of Kukatarma delved into powerful and yet dangerous and dark magic in order to try to repel the dragons. They were unsuccessful in this. But many of their experiments, many of their attempts at dark magic still exist beneath the ruins of Kukatarma. Our heroes are resistance, almost kind of like, are they resistance fighters?
Are they thieves and scoundrels? They're still trying to figure all of that out. But they all definitely hate the Dragon Empire and the sort of the brutal tyranny of the Dragon Empire. They wish to thwart it in many ways. They had worked for a while to set up sort of a money train that they could where they could harvest money from it.
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Chapter 2: What is the setting for the Tales of the Valiant campaign?
So I think Ammavan might be aware of the value of a red portal connection in the Empire, in the deeper Empire. One of the things I like to do... There's a lot of different things you can do when you are considering the characters. You can think about their abilities and magic items that they have and other things like that.
You can also kind of think about their context, the character's context in the story. And that's kind of what we're doing here. Mateo, Mateo aware, recognizes the ability to make duplicate red portal keys. So the Red Portal is not particularly useful for the money train if only the characters can use it.
But Mateo, who is a mechanist, which is kind of like an artificer, can look at the puzzle box and probably determine that they can make sort of, you know, limited use keys that they could then give to the other groups that they want to use the Red Portal to be able to bypass stuff. So I'm going to open that up.
I'll probably have to be ready to drop some limitations on it because it seems like it's too powerful otherwise. One other factor is that this red portal can actually open up to two other locations. So there's three. I think once they do it, they will sort of have a triangle of three different locations, and they'll probably have to clear out all three of them.
At this point, they will have cleared this one out. They'll have to clear out other locations in order to open them up so then they have these other portals that they can use to jump around the Empire a little bit. And Rowan is a dwarf. So he is a dwarf former, you know, it was going to be on the front lines and a secret that I've been using for him in the previous ones.
I'm probably just going to steal again in this one, which is that he is aware of the heavy toll. That Ibelin, the illustrious, one of the three Morza, the three big dragons that they're dealing with, that they're, you know, the heavy engagement in holding the West is keeping them, you know, there's a high cost, both in attention and money and resources.
And that that is something that the characters could end up benefiting from, the fact that there is this front there. There's a big battle, a big front that is continually occurring and holding those lands is really difficult. Tolstoy has the puzzle box and is kind of bound to it and now has Cattell speaking to them. And, oh, and had become, this was very funny.
I want to share a fun story that occurred. So I had this really grim scene where the characters are making their way to the ziggurat and they saw these bound skinned still living beings that were chained with big barbed chains to these four pillars. And there was this this circle on the ground, this like blood drenched circle.
and there was a creature there was a humanoid kneeling in the circle who turned around and saw tolstoy and said you you're the one i've been waiting for you this this being a halfling herald right a herald of i think we had a name for clancy nightcloud was his name there was a herald of mott right the mott being this this this god of death and decay and stuff like that and he said you you can become and he started talking to him he's like come and talk to me and tolstoy's like
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