The Approach
As characters approach Greenest, they see that a blue dragon and its Cult of the Dragon allies are attacking the town. The cultists seek to collect treasure that they hope to present to Tiamat upon her arrival in the world. The cult has assembled a powerful force for this raid by gathering bandits, kobolds, sellswords, and other mercenary types into a small army. A monk named Leosin Erlanthar was also in town. Through diligent research and interviews conducted during his travels between Berdusk and Candlekeep, Leosin became convinced that the cult is engaged in a big operation, but he doesn’t yet know what it is. Leosin uses the raid as an opportunity to infiltrate the cult so that he can learn more about the cult’s plans. He is discovered and captured, however, and needs the characters’ help to escape from captivity.
Characters can engage in several encounters while cultists and kobolds rampage through Greenest.
For the past several days, you have been traveling a road that winds lazily across the rolling grasslands of the Greenfields. Sundown is approaching when you top a rise and see the town of Greenest just a few short miles away. But instead of the pleasant, welcoming town you expected, you see columns of black smoke rising from burning buildings, running figures that are little more than dots at this distance, and a dark, winged shape wheeling low over the keep that rises above the center of the town. Greenest is being attacked by a dragon!
General Features
The sun has set by the time characters reach the edge of town (the area shown on the Greenest map).
Light. Burning buildings and a half moon provide dim light throughout the town. The inside of the keep is brightly illuminated.
Fires. The cultists tried to set buildings ablaze as they moved through town, but thatch isn’t as flammable as it looks. When characters arrive, most of the flames come from haystacks and barns, not from homes or shops.
The Stream. The stream that flows past Greenest is shallow (seldom more than 3 feet deep) with a gravel bottom, so characters can move along it without difficulty. Where the banks are clear, the stream is easy to get into or out of. Brush by the stream is dense, and the banks are steep where brush grows. Characters can move only 5 feet per turn through the brush.
Light. Burning buildings and a half moon provide dim light throughout the town. The inside of the keep is brightly illuminated.
Fires. The cultists tried to set buildings ablaze as they moved through town, but thatch isn’t as flammable as it looks. When characters arrive, most of the flames come from haystacks and barns, not from homes or shops.
The Stream. The stream that flows past Greenest is shallow (seldom more than 3 feet deep) with a gravel bottom, so characters can move along it without difficulty. Where the banks are clear, the stream is easy to get into or out of. Brush by the stream is dense, and the banks are steep where brush grows. Characters can move only 5 feet per turn through the brush.
Seek the Keep
Without warning, five humans dash out from between two buildings on your left. A limping man and three young children race across the street into more shadows, and a woman carrying a round shield and a broken spear turns and faces back in the direction from which they came. Eight kobolds stream out of the alley on the family’s heels and fan out around the woman, who looks determined to delay the creatures for as long as possible.
The woman is Linan Swift, and her husband is Cuth. Linan is a commoner. Her husband is injured from an earlier fight. The children move at speed 20. They can be carried, but a character carrying a child has disadvantage on attack rolls and cannot wield a two-handed weapon.
Linan explains that they must make their way to the keep (at area 1 it’s the only safe place in Greenest. The raiders haven’t set up an effective cordon around the keep, so it’s still possible to move through the front gate—but not for long.
At the keep, the characters are the last group through the gate before it is closed and barred. After characters enter the keep, raiders encircle it in increasing numbers.
Rewards
Show spoiler
Besides earning experience points (XP) for raiders fought on the way to the keep, characters earn a bonus of 50 XP per nonplayer character (NPC) brought alive into the keep. Divide this bonus equally among the party members.
Important Characters
Governor Nighthill. The man who runs Greenest is Tarbaw Nighthill, a human male of sixty years.Castellan Escobert the Red. Escobert is a shield dwarf with knotted, tangled, bright red hair
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