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The Labyrinths of the Lost is a 3-4 session, D&D 5e adventure set in the world of Taelgar, my homebrew setting.

Western Cymea is a frontier these days, a place of small strongholds, fortified market towns, and ancient ruins recalling a richer past. This part of the world is a land of rushing, rocky rivers between the Plataca Hills and the Western Gulf, of mild winters and warm summers, of cattle and wine. Historically, it was a place where piracy and banditry thrived, but over the past few generations, a series of campaigns by the powerful Tollender navy stamped out the worst of the piracy. Now, Western Cymea is functionally a protectorate of Tollen, sending aimless youth to work the Tollender ships that ply the Green Sea.

A few months before our adventure begins, rumors began to spread among the people of Western Cymea of travelers going missing in the hills. It was little things, at first. A trader bringing a cart full of barrels of wine south to the lizardfolk of the Latazaro Swamp never came home. A boy exploring one of the abandoned silver mines in the hills, hoping to find Drankorian treasure, disappeared. And then the search party that went looking for him didn’t come home, either. Now, as autumn turns to winter, people are worried, and rumors of evil beasts, tricksy fey, and more terrible monstrosities are spreading.

As our adventure begins, our heroes are imprisoned in an iron cage, in a dark room, underground. Who is behind these kidnappings? And what fate awaits our adventurers? We’ll find out over the course of this short adventure.

Creating a Character

Online Setup

You should create a 2nd level character for this adventure, using this D&D Beyond campaign. You’ll need a free D&D Beyond account to participate. We will either use Roll20 for battle maps, or the new D&D Beyond Maps feature, to be determined before the first session. We’ll use Zoom for voice and video chat.

Character Mechanics

Details on character creation can be found on the Character Creation Guide page. An introduction to the world of Taelgar can be found in the Player’s Guide.

Equipment

You will not start with any equipment beyond the clothes you are wearing (you’ve been taken captive, and searched). But you won’t need to play more than the first part of the first session without gear, so please send me a list of your starting gear so I can put it somewhere for you to find (best is to email me at timsackton at google dot com).

Since you are starting at level 2, you can supplement the standard starting gear from your class and background with one of the following choices:
- An extra 100 gp to buy mundane equipment with
- A common magic item
- A spell scroll of 1st level

Backstory and Lore

This is a short adventure and characters don’t need a lot of backstory for it. Taelgar has a lot of lore that has built up over the years I’ve been running games in this world, but the part of the world (western Cymea) is relatively untouched by previous games, and there is almost no lore needed to play this adventure. However, you are welcome to develop as much or as little detail about your character’s past life as you would like.

The only crucial details you’ll need to invent are:

  • How did you get kidnapped? Where you searching for trouble? Traveling somewhere? Just passing through western Cymea on a different adventure, and got unlucky? I can fill a bit of detail as needed here, so you don’t need to invent exactly how things went down, but a general sense of how you ended up in this iron cage is important.
  • Why are you an adventurer - what motivates you? You are only second level, so you haven’t been an adventurer for long, possibly as little as a few days. But still you must have been motivated to leave your old life by something. Maybe you are from western Cymea, and are searching for a friend who was kidnapped. Maybe you left your home in the lizardfolk swamp of Latazaro because you were bored and wanted to see the world. This does not need to be more than a few sentences.
  • Obviously

You are more than welcome to make up much more backstory if you’d like, and there is a lot of lore to help you place your character in the world if you desire. I’m available by text or email to help flesh out ideas, as well.

All backstories and characters must be shared with me and approved before the first session, please.

Alignment

I don’t really use alignment in my games. I mostly prefer to run games for heroic characters who are motived by virtuous, or at least neutral, aims. I am open to characters with a shady past, or who got caught in a bad situation and did things they regret. However, I don’t allow evil characters in my games - no secretly working with the kidnappers to betray the party, for example.

Sessions

We will do a short session 0 as part of the first session.

Session 1: November 12th, 2023, 7 pm Eastern Time, on Zoom
Session 2: November 25th, 2023, 8 pm Eastern Time, on Zoom
Session 3: December 10th, 2023, 7 pm Eastern Time, on Zoom