Draftinggoblin's Drafts

Hello all!

Welcome back to my attempt to ‘weld’ the six adventures found in Dungeon Magazine #1 into a cohesive mini-setting.

Originally, this article was meant to flesh out the various factions found in the mini-setting. However, I think that was a little ambitious to try and tackle in one article, so I’m going to break it into parts. This article will take stock of what we have and put down some ideas that I will expand on in the upcoming articles.

Previous articles in this series:

– https://draftinggoblin.ca/2023/05/30/campaign-welding/

What do we have to work with?

Going off of what was provided in Dungeon magazine #1, and what I made last week:

The Kingdom of Everwillow: There are several forts and towers in this territory. It is ruled by an unnamed king. There is explicit mention of an assassin guild being active in Everwillow(The king and assassin’s guild are not on good terms). It is coastal, so it would have traders, pirates, merchants, and fishing people. If there is an assassins guild, there would probably be other guilds(both trade focused and player focused ones). Given the volcanic nature of the western mountains(renamed to The Dark Mountains for the mini-setting) I think it makes sense to have a druidic presence within the city to act as natural disaster relief. At least one order of knights exists within the town.

Novilar: it is a town on the Iron Frontier, but it either split off or is made from former citizens of Everwillow who left for an unmentioned reason. It has an aging prince with no heir, and a druid nearby. Novilar has been the target of various raids in the recent past. They don’t seem to have much in the way of physical might(their recent clash took a great toll).

The Old Crystols: There are two city states in The Old Crystols: Untala and Strafferburg. They have a treaty together, and a system of quick communication. If threatened I feel like they would group together. There is mention of dwarves and elves living in and around The Old Crystols. There is also mention of rangers and druids in the area as well. Generally The Old Crystols feel safer than The Dark Mountains, I think this would be due to having more cities and such around/underneath it.

Stoutwall: Stoutwall used to be ruled by a king who was killed by the dark wizard Cabilar four years ago. The prince escaped and the adventure The Dark Tower of Cabilar(Ashton and Sperry) is about retrieving the prince’s crown from Cabilar’s tower. Cabilar now rules Stoutwall. I’m thinking that Cabilar is the BBEG of the mini-setting. As to why he would attack Stoutwall and not Everwillow, I’m unsure. I think that there are extensive caverns/dungeons underneath Stoutwall that contain something that Cabilar wants badly.

Mormek: Mormek is an invention of my own. It felt natural that there would be some sort of settlement between the two rivers coming off of The Tears. I’m thinking some dour dwarves, maybe more militant than the dwarves found in The Old Crystols. I’m liking the idea of an exile dwarven queen ruling Mormek.

The Swamp: There is a swamp mentioned in Guardians of the Tomb(Smith). I’m fond of swamp dwelling halflings (in general I find swamps to be interesting biomes). I’m thinking the swamp on the map is a small section of a much larger swamp.

Misc. : On top of all this, there are a variety of monsters listed in these adventures either as parts of the dungeons or as random encounters.

Total list(in chronological order):
The Dark Tower of Cabilar: Vampires, firedrakes, lava children, mimics, ettin, cat/guardian familiars, shriekers, orcs, dire wolves, trolls, chimeras, wraiths, skeletons.
Assault on Eddistone Point: bandits.
Grakhirt’s Lair: norkers, bandits, huge centipedes, flinds, leprechauns, cave bear minimals, huge spiders, dire wolves, brown mold, rot grubs, scum creepers, kampfult, mud-men, ghouls.
The Elven Home: treants.
Into the Fire: pirates, dragons, deep gnomes, giant eagles, trolls, ogres, ogre mage, bandits, giant owls, ice trolls, storoper, mountain lions, wraiths, haunt, will-o-wisps, ghouls, ghasts, gray elves, galeb duhr, fire giants, hell hounds, wolfwere, winter wolves, crocodiles, giant crocodiles.
Guardians of the Tomb: shadows.

side note: speaking of map size, I did neglect to add a scale onto my map. I will have to fix that in the future. For reference the map covers roughly an area of 320*300 miles.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading, this has just been a lot of organized brainstorming. While not the most glamourous article, it is necessary so that we know where we’re going for the upcoming articles.

I hope you have a nice day 😀