I am running this adventure now, and these are the types of details the adventure needs to help DM's setup the adventure, the background and lore you give is amazing! Thanks for these details man! Great content!
Cannot describe how helpful you're videos are. Helping someone with no writing background think more about making worlds more realistic and emerse my players. Thank you
I plan to run this after LMoP. I plan to move the village attack to Phandolin, they will then follow the cult south to the mere of dead men and continue the story normal from there.
I like this video allot, because I have been running Lost Mine, and Icespire. I have been wanting to transition into Tyranny of The Dragons, and this video helped me get an idea of what I want to do
It's 00:12 in my country. I was watching your video while trying to go to sleep, and I had to stop the video just to give you a like for the intro. Now I'll continue...
I hope you are doing good my friend! I pray for you and your family, as well as all the people of Ukraine. Thank you for this video. It has given me ideas on how to run this chapter.
i love your videos! will steal some of those ideas when i run this campaign! Could you let us know where you found the information on the star gazers? and the old map of the mere?
Hey, thanks! Yes, I've found those in an old Dragon magazine issue, I can't remember the issue number right now, but the adventure is called Mistress of the Mere.
@@LutesDice I have found it! Dungeon Magazine #72, it seems its also a mini-series and "Mistress of the Mere" is the fourth part- so plenty more lore to explore! One thought about the dragon cultist bringing their loot to the mere, would be that no one would bat an eye if someone was told that a caravan disappeared by the Mere of dead men. Still it's a rather convoluted plan though...it could avoid Waterdeep entirely by heading from Daggerford to Parnast- then "getting lost" in the Anauroch desert. Considering that the hunting lodge chapter takes place near Parnast, and Skyreach Castle is also somewhat "parked" there it could pose as a viable alternative route...but I'm no dragon cultist maybe they though of something i did not
@@007solstice Yeah, we're probably missing something that the cultists know :) I'm not sure about getting to Parnast by land though. On the map it seems to be on the far side of the mountain range. If you're talking about the portal - the one in the Naerytar dungeon was already there when Rezmir discovered it. As far as I understand it's no easy task to deploy and maintain such a thing.
@@LutesDice What strikes me as off is that they could have offloaded a small chunk of the loot at Daggerford, and sail it upriver the Delymbiyr river, that way you only encounter three small inhabited settlements: Julkoun, Secomber, and Loudwater (c.f. Strom king's thunder) then go to the ruined town of Llorkth from Parnast and rendez-vous with the riverboats; then the new caravan only has to go though the Dawn Pass of the Graypeak mountains(found on SKT maps). While the masking your large caravan convoy in the Sword Coast traffic, is smart, not pretending to "sell off" some your wares seems a bit off. From what i could read though the Daggerford-Parnast road had some bandits- it could be why the cult did not opt for that route. While having a lot of caravan go though Parnast at once could tip off something odd happening to the inhabitants- hence maybe the hunting lodge delivery masks them sending one or two wagon load at a time back to the castle. The wagons bring provision, and brings back Tiamat's treasure back to Skyreach Castle. This could be the reason we are looking for, mislead observers as the destination of the convoy, go "missing" in the Mere of Dead Men(or use the Carnath road house-Bog luck's smuggling switcheroo with provisions or supplies from Parnast to avoid people asking questions...), and slow trickle though Parnast to not tip anyone off As for the castle's use HoDQ mentions that "Castle Naerytar and the Graypeak mountain lodge were constructed by the same reclusive wizard, and this was his means of transit between the two" (p.61) Implying that the cult only recovered it, and it was made permanent by that wizard-from i assume casting it daily for one year (as per the spell description); so no need for the cult to maintain it. Adele Astrolara brought the farseer of illusk over; then the Cult of the dragon made use of both to spy around, and covertly transport treasure over large distances I would be interesting to know who that wizard was....after-all he is the original founder of the castle
I am currently running this campaign, and here is how I am justifying the Cult moving the treasure to Naerytar in my head. The Cult begins it's raiding in the Greenfields, a fairly sparsely populated and spread out area on the southernmost edges of Baldur and Elturgard. At this point they are a relatively unknown threat to these realms. If we look at the size and strength of the band that attacks Greenst, we can see that against an actual army they would be wiped out, Dragon or no Dragon considering how little damage it takes to get him to nope out and abandon his Cult allies. So how does one avoid getting wiped out by an army that outnumbers you and has much better arms, armor, and training than you? Simple. You avoid them entirely. A medieval army takes a lot of time to raise and get ready, as you have to assemble the forces of disparate vassals from all over your territory. So if the Cult simply marched north openly, they would be met with this slow to assemble but vastly superior force, and be destroyed. So instead after their raiding is done, they go to ground. They disappear and split themselves into tens, maybe even over a hundred little groups, all smuggling their treasure and personnel north under the guise of merchants. Even if one group is found out and destroyed, others will get through. But then the problem is, how and where to reassemble? Doing so anywhere in Elturgard, especially once roused to the raiders pillaging their southernmost territories, would be risky. Not to mention that travel to the Well of Dragons is dificult at best. There are no roads, and overland travel without them in heavy, treasure laden wagons is a recipe for disaster. You cant go through the reaching woods either, as it is infested with hostile creatures, hard to navigate, and utterly inhospitable to wagons. The best option is to sail up the river that leads to the Well of Dragons from Scornubel. But this foolhardy. Not only will your regular and numerous shipments heading up-river to a desolate and inhospitable place be easily noticeable, the cult would have also just lead their biggest enemy to their front door when they are not ready to confront them. Instead, the Cult wants to remain as hidden as possible. The less the powers that be know of the scope of their plans, strength, and location, the better. So since the option of Castle Naerytar exists with it's magic circle beneath, it presents it's self as a good way to move your treasure to the well of dragons without drawing attention to themselves. A few more merchants on the largest trade route along the sword coast is much less noticeable, and allows them to regroup not in Elturgard or Baldur, which are on the look out for them, but north of Waterdeep. This is important because Waterdeep isn't worried about the cult yet. They aren't being raided, Elturgard and Baldur are showing no signs of being overrun. These raiders haven't even engaged their armies in open battle, let alone won any! Waterdeep considers the cult to be a southern problem that so far has shown no signs of coming north. They are hardly on high alert. This makes the castle a good place to regroup, because no one is looking for the cult so far north. And from there, the magic circle takes the treasure to Parnast, and from there to the Well. This also gives the well of dragons a layered defense in both a physical sense and in the sense of protecting it's location. Even if adventurers find the cult sneaking north, there is the roadhouse to hopefully throw them off the treasure's trail into the Mere. Even if they get to the castle, it's a fortress and should be able to either repell a small force, or stall a large one long enough to allow the cult to destroy the magic circle once the leaders flee to the hunting lodge, leaving the trail cold. And even if they get to Parnast, they still have to get onto the flying castle, and even if they get control of the castle, unless Blagothkus or one of the leaders gives it away, an attacker would still have no idea that the treasure's ultimate destination was the Well of Dragons, or even where that is. In summary, at this early stage of their plan, the Cult isn't strong enough to openly challenge the powers that be in the Sword Coast. So everything must be done to keep their plans, movements, and locations of importance secret from said powers. There's a reason the Cultists in the camp at the beginning pack up and leave as soon as they know someone has found them. It's because they fear being caught out by a stronger force than themselves before they can gain enough strength to challenge such forces openly as they begin to do in The Rise of Tiamat. Edit: Also point about Dragon Airlift. There are several problems with it. Firstly, such an effort needs a place to actually load the dragons for their flight north. I'm not sure how the dragons would carry the heavy treasure, but i know that a dragon Airfield with dragons coming and going regularly would draw a lot of attention sooner or later, especially if it was anywhere near a road. Secondly, with the sheer amount of treasure you would be moving you run the risk of exhausting the dragons you have, or exhausting their patience with you. Serving Tiamat's will and destroying her enemies is one thing, but manual labor is demeaning for such immensely prideful creatures. lastly, so many dragons flying openly is basically saying "Hey look here the dragons are all flying between these two places! Come look at what's here!" Where as the flying castle provides a stealthy last leg to the treasure's journey, with Parnast being a good and isolated place to have the flying castle dock when it's at it's most vulnerable state on the ground.
I hope this proves helpful or interesting to anyone running the campaign! My apologies for it being so verbose, I tend to run on a bit when I'm talking about something I'm passionate about.
As to how the cult traveled it looks more like player activity to me. the players traveled like that and the DM made the quests in those locations to draw them back into the main story line.
It has a little side adventure. I think it's free. Most of my Patreon content is free and doesn't require a subscription. www.patreon.com/posts/52008160?
I am running this adventure now, and these are the types of details the adventure needs to help DM's setup the adventure, the background and lore you give is amazing! Thanks for these details man! Great content!
You are most welcome. Thank you for your words.
You can tell that this is my favorite chapter of HotDQ, cause it's a 14 minutes vid and this is only part one :)
Cannot describe how helpful you're videos are. Helping someone with no writing background think more about making worlds more realistic and emerse my players. Thank you
Thank you, Stephen.
Wooow... Duuude!! Your editing skill has extremely improved!
I thank thee, kind mistress.
I plan to run this after LMoP. I plan to move the village attack to Phandolin, they will then follow the cult south to the mere of dead men and continue the story normal from there.
im running this chapter today, and now i have the perfect descriptions about the swamp and the castle, thank you for the help my friend!
You’re a fantastic creator man, subscribed with notifications on. Can’t wait to see more!
I like this video allot, because I have been running Lost Mine, and Icespire. I have been wanting to transition into Tyranny of The Dragons, and this video helped me get an idea of what I want to do
It's 00:12 in my country. I was watching your video while trying to go to sleep, and I had to stop the video just to give you a like for the intro.
Now I'll continue...
Perfect! Just what I needed and I found this by chance. Tha m you so much.
I hope you are doing good my friend! I pray for you and your family, as well as all the people of Ukraine. Thank you for this video. It has given me ideas on how to run this chapter.
Thanks
Man thank you. I'm running Chapter 4 and already intimidated by the sheer scale of Chapter 6.
Awesome advice thank you so much, really helped
Awesome advice first time dm using this a out line for my group
i love your videos! will steal some of those ideas when i run this campaign! Could you let us know where you found the information on the star gazers? and the old map of the mere?
Hey, thanks! Yes, I've found those in an old Dragon magazine issue, I can't remember the issue number right now, but the adventure is called Mistress of the Mere.
@@LutesDice I have found it! Dungeon Magazine #72, it seems its also a mini-series and "Mistress of the Mere" is the fourth part- so plenty more lore to explore!
One thought about the dragon cultist bringing their loot to the mere, would be that no one would bat an eye if someone was told that a caravan disappeared by the Mere of dead men. Still it's a rather convoluted plan though...it could avoid Waterdeep entirely by heading from Daggerford to Parnast- then "getting lost" in the Anauroch desert. Considering that the hunting lodge chapter takes place near Parnast, and Skyreach Castle is also somewhat "parked" there it could pose as a viable alternative route...but I'm no dragon cultist maybe they though of something i did not
@@007solstice Yeah, we're probably missing something that the cultists know :)
I'm not sure about getting to Parnast by land though. On the map it seems to be on the far side of the mountain range. If you're talking about the portal - the one in the Naerytar dungeon was already there when Rezmir discovered it. As far as I understand it's no easy task to deploy and maintain such a thing.
@@LutesDice
What strikes me as off is that they could have offloaded a small chunk of the loot at Daggerford, and sail it upriver the Delymbiyr river, that way you only encounter three small inhabited settlements: Julkoun, Secomber, and Loudwater (c.f. Strom king's thunder) then go to the ruined town of Llorkth from Parnast and rendez-vous with the riverboats; then the new caravan only has to go though the Dawn Pass of the Graypeak mountains(found on SKT maps).
While the masking your large caravan convoy in the Sword Coast traffic, is smart, not pretending to "sell off" some your wares seems a bit off. From what i could read though the Daggerford-Parnast road had some bandits- it could be why the cult did not opt for that route.
While having a lot of caravan go though Parnast at once could tip off something odd happening to the inhabitants- hence maybe the hunting lodge delivery masks them sending one or two wagon load at a time back to the castle. The wagons bring provision, and brings back Tiamat's treasure back to Skyreach Castle.
This could be the reason we are looking for, mislead observers as the destination of the convoy, go "missing" in the Mere of Dead Men(or use the Carnath road house-Bog luck's smuggling switcheroo with provisions or supplies from Parnast to avoid people asking questions...), and slow trickle though Parnast to not tip anyone off
As for the castle's use HoDQ mentions that "Castle Naerytar and the Graypeak mountain lodge were constructed by the same reclusive wizard, and this was his means of transit between the two" (p.61) Implying that the cult only recovered it, and it was made permanent by that wizard-from i assume casting it daily for one year (as per the spell description); so no need for the cult to maintain it. Adele Astrolara brought the farseer of illusk over; then the Cult of the dragon made use of both to spy around, and covertly transport treasure over large distances
I would be interesting to know who that wizard was....after-all he is the original founder of the castle
I'm running this campaign for my players there are about to enter the swamp thanks for the video
I am currently running this campaign, and here is how I am justifying the Cult moving the treasure to Naerytar in my head. The Cult begins it's raiding in the Greenfields, a fairly sparsely populated and spread out area on the southernmost edges of Baldur and Elturgard. At this point they are a relatively unknown threat to these realms. If we look at the size and strength of the band that attacks Greenst, we can see that against an actual army they would be wiped out, Dragon or no Dragon considering how little damage it takes to get him to nope out and abandon his Cult allies. So how does one avoid getting wiped out by an army that outnumbers you and has much better arms, armor, and training than you? Simple. You avoid them entirely. A medieval army takes a lot of time to raise and get ready, as you have to assemble the forces of disparate vassals from all over your territory. So if the Cult simply marched north openly, they would be met with this slow to assemble but vastly superior force, and be destroyed. So instead after their raiding is done, they go to ground. They disappear and split themselves into tens, maybe even over a hundred little groups, all smuggling their treasure and personnel north under the guise of merchants. Even if one group is found out and destroyed, others will get through. But then the problem is, how and where to reassemble?
Doing so anywhere in Elturgard, especially once roused to the raiders pillaging their southernmost territories, would be risky. Not to mention that travel to the Well of Dragons is dificult at best. There are no roads, and overland travel without them in heavy, treasure laden wagons is a recipe for disaster. You cant go through the reaching woods either, as it is infested with hostile creatures, hard to navigate, and utterly inhospitable to wagons. The best option is to sail up the river that leads to the Well of Dragons from Scornubel. But this foolhardy. Not only will your regular and numerous shipments heading up-river to a desolate and inhospitable place be easily noticeable, the cult would have also just lead their biggest enemy to their front door when they are not ready to confront them.
Instead, the Cult wants to remain as hidden as possible. The less the powers that be know of the scope of their plans, strength, and location, the better. So since the option of Castle Naerytar exists with it's magic circle beneath, it presents it's self as a good way to move your treasure to the well of dragons without drawing attention to themselves. A few more merchants on the largest trade route along the sword coast is much less noticeable, and allows them to regroup not in Elturgard or Baldur, which are on the look out for them, but north of Waterdeep. This is important because Waterdeep isn't worried about the cult yet. They aren't being raided, Elturgard and Baldur are showing no signs of being overrun. These raiders haven't even engaged their armies in open battle, let alone won any! Waterdeep considers the cult to be a southern problem that so far has shown no signs of coming north. They are hardly on high alert.
This makes the castle a good place to regroup, because no one is looking for the cult so far north. And from there, the magic circle takes the treasure to Parnast, and from there to the Well. This also gives the well of dragons a layered defense in both a physical sense and in the sense of protecting it's location. Even if adventurers find the cult sneaking north, there is the roadhouse to hopefully throw them off the treasure's trail into the Mere. Even if they get to the castle, it's a fortress and should be able to either repell a small force, or stall a large one long enough to allow the cult to destroy the magic circle once the leaders flee to the hunting lodge, leaving the trail cold. And even if they get to Parnast, they still have to get onto the flying castle, and even if they get control of the castle, unless Blagothkus or one of the leaders gives it away, an attacker would still have no idea that the treasure's ultimate destination was the Well of Dragons, or even where that is.
In summary, at this early stage of their plan, the Cult isn't strong enough to openly challenge the powers that be in the Sword Coast. So everything must be done to keep their plans, movements, and locations of importance secret from said powers. There's a reason the Cultists in the camp at the beginning pack up and leave as soon as they know someone has found them. It's because they fear being caught out by a stronger force than themselves before they can gain enough strength to challenge such forces openly as they begin to do in The Rise of Tiamat.
Edit: Also point about Dragon Airlift. There are several problems with it. Firstly, such an effort needs a place to actually load the dragons for their flight north. I'm not sure how the dragons would carry the heavy treasure, but i know that a dragon Airfield with dragons coming and going regularly would draw a lot of attention sooner or later, especially if it was anywhere near a road. Secondly, with the sheer amount of treasure you would be moving you run the risk of exhausting the dragons you have, or exhausting their patience with you. Serving Tiamat's will and destroying her enemies is one thing, but manual labor is demeaning for such immensely prideful creatures. lastly, so many dragons flying openly is basically saying "Hey look here the dragons are all flying between these two places! Come look at what's here!" Where as the flying castle provides a stealthy last leg to the treasure's journey, with Parnast being a good and isolated place to have the flying castle dock when it's at it's most vulnerable state on the ground.
I hope this proves helpful or interesting to anyone running the campaign! My apologies for it being so verbose, I tend to run on a bit when I'm talking about something I'm passionate about.
I can totally relate to that :) You should join our discord if you haven't already.
As to how the cult traveled it looks more like player activity to me. the players traveled like that and the DM made the quests in those locations to draw them back into the main story line.
My players just immediately ran inside
Does your Patreon have any ToD content?
It has a little side adventure. I think it's free. Most of my Patreon content is free and doesn't require a subscription.
www.patreon.com/posts/52008160?
Where is Part 2??????????
Lol
Good work
It's on the way. Thanks.
Following for part 2 myself! Love the way you made your video!
&
Как же не хватает русских субтитров