D&D 5E 5th Edition and Cormyr: Flexing My Idea Muscle and Thinking Out Loud

7 Uktar - The Rotting
Seventh day of the first tenday
1500 DR - Year of the Sea's Secrets Revealed

Archendale expels adventurers. Hluthvar freed of hobgoblins. Snow blankets East Reaches. Blue Diamond makes for Marsember. Knightshield rescued by goat herder. Mindflayer corpses missing.

THE HIGH DALE - Members of Lightheart’s Bloody Hammers arrived in the High Dale today. The adventurers were forcibly exiled from Archendale a tenday ago after farmers observed them digging into the western slope of Arkhen Vale. Reportedly, the Lightheart’s insistence that they’d found a map detailing a secret back entrance that leads to the lost hoard of mighty Arkhenthus the White, as well their promise to share with the folk of Archendale any treasure they found, were not enough to keep them from being manacled by soldiers and forced into wagons sporting cages with heavy crossbows mounted at the corners. The Hammers were dumped unceremoniously on the border and told to return to Cormyr from whence they came–sans their map, which a Ride captain had confiscated. The dwarves and one human that comprise the Bloody Hammers are said to be furious over their treatment and the “theft” of their map, and are plotting to sneak back into Archendale.

HLUTHVAR - A bloody battle was fought under roiling Uktar clouds in the vicinity of Hluthvar. A snarling horde of orcs charged the town as lightning and thunder rocked the sky overhead. So large was the orken army that its leading edge crashed through the first rank of hobgoblin shields before the last of the orcs cleared the hills to the east. The battle turned into a muddy melee on blood-soaked ground as rain drenched the combatants. The presence of a pair of red dragons did nothing to turn the orcs back. Indeed, they answered the dragons’ raking fire with magic born of battle shamans who cut the throats of one hundred captured hobgoblins to fuel a roiling blood magic that shot forth into the sky and flew down the throat of one dragon, causing it to explode in the air. Boiling hot dragon parts rained down, scorching the earth and melting through flesh and armor. The remaining dragon gave a defiant roar before fleeing north from whence it came. The hobgoblins remained disciplined and each rank fought to the last, their lines slowly crumbling under the endless orken onslaught. For the first time since the hobgoblins invaded the region, battle mages among their ranks brough spells to bear. They unleashed a torrent of flaming meteors and enormous bolts of lightning that felled orcs by the tens and hundreds. Where fire exploded, orcs and the ground they stood on were flung into the air and then crashed down to earth, slaying more of their kindred. The swords of fallen hobgoblins raised up to hack, stab and slay unwitting orcs, while shields born on magical hands bashed their heads and smashed their faces. The sky darkened as the sun descended, and for a time it appeared as though the titanic forms of a pair of gods were clashing among the wind-tossed clouds in the sky. Maglubiyet and Gruumsh seemed to trade mighty blows as black, swirling clouds crashed into each other and the wind howled and thunder roared each time a god struck a blow. The fall of night did nothing to slow the battle. Orken and hobgoblin eyes glowed red with rage, the surviving hobgoblins finally giving in to battle lust and fighting individually, the mightiest of their number earning great piles of orken corpses before the sheer weight of their foes overwhelmed them. Great howls erupted each time a hobgoblin champion was overcome, and the sky slowly calmed overhead. Sunrise saw no sign of the hobgoblin battle mages. The hungry orcs feasted on their foes while the battle shamans made offerings to Gruumsh. The orcs swept into Hluthvar proper, not raiding or pillaging, but hunting for hobgoblin survivors and hidden traps.

JUNIRIL - A thin layer of snow has blanketed the lands east of the Thunder Way as far as the Vast Swamp. Merchants stopping in Juniril were seen to give thanks to the gods that the snowfall was minor and the roads remain open. By late afternoon the sun shone through the clouds and much of the fallen snow had melted.

MARSEMBER - Work all across Marsember halted today so that folk could take in the sight of a flying ship that descended from the skies over the Dragonmere and landed gracefully in the waters just beyond the City of Spices. The Blue Diamond made port and began unloading goods from lands far, far to the south. Among the wares are rumored to be gemstones and exotic perfumes, and even minor magic items! Noteworthy was the presence of no less than six Wizards of War at the Diamond’s berth. Several interested merchants lined up to board the Diamond, whose captain and crew remained aboard ship, to inspect its wares and make deals. By sunset Marsember was awash in rumors about the mysterious ship and its crew. Some claim the Diamond is guarded by unseen magical creatures that instantly suck the life out of trespassers and turn their bodies to ash, while others say the ship’s captain and every third crewman is a wizard. One dockhand swore to have seen a cat-faced, fur-covered crewman walk the Diamond’s deck, “It climbed the mainmast without aid of a rope or ladder and gave me a long, hard stare too!”

MINROE - A goat herder found a member of the Knightshields of Dhedluk half dead and wounded. The adventurer had apparently collapsed from his wounds while on a trail used by herders moving their flock from one slanted pasture to another. A disused fork off that same trail cuts up into the Stormhorns, where miners once delved into caves and carved gems out of the cave walls. Before falling unconscious, the adventurer begged help for his fellow Knightshields, “Aid! We need aid! They are still fighting it. It slays all who stand against it. More swords, please…” No one from Minroe has yet dared travel into the mountains.

TYRLUK - Villagers were treated to a gruesome find made by novice adventurers: a trio of mindflayer heads, each freshly hacked away from their bodies. Calling themselves the Ten From Tyrluk, the adventurers made no claim to slaying the mindflayers, only finding the heads. According to one adventurer, “there were no bodies present, but there was plenty of blood.” Another adventurer described the walls of the cave where the heads were found: “Deep, narrow gashes layered in threes were in the walls and the ceiling. I fit my sword in one and found it to be half a sword length deep. The gods only know what made them.” The display of the heads was cut short by a Purple Dragon officer, who pointedly reminded the Ten that their exploits have not gone unnoticed by the Crown and a trip to High Horn could be made in one of two ways, either of their own accord to purchase an adventuring charter, or in a jailer’s wagon to answer charges of unlawful adventuring. A smiling Chancepriest of Tymora then offered to accompany the Ten to High Horn, provided they would allow him to join their adventuring band and pay a portion of the charter fee.

8 Uktar - The Rotting
Eighth day of the first tenday
1500 DR - Year of the Sea's Secrets Revealed

Early snow blankets Cormyr. Halfjack's Basilisks assemble. Ruldragon plots revenge.

CORMYR - Today, all of Cormyr received a preview of the winter to come. The Forest Kingdom was blanketed in rain and wind on the coast, and snowfall inland. Thunder cracked over the Stormhorns and the Thunder Peaks remained cloaked in ominous clouds. Merchants and peddlers pressed on against the cold and the wet, while folk who didn’t need to be outside wisely remained indoors.

KNIGHTSWOOD - A new adventuring band has formed inside the Old Owlbear. Led by the aging mercenary Halathor “Halfjack” Baerobuld, the Black Basilisks are comprised of veteran caravan guards, a forester, and a pair of hulking daughters of the local sawmill owner who’ve become tired of “life in a place that’s hardly a village” and wish mightily to see all of Cormyr and the lands beyond. The Basilisks have made plans to travel east to Immersea and then south, with the hope of arriving in Suzail before winter blankets Cormyr in impassable snow. After purchasing a charter, Halathor plans to lead the Basilisks west to find adventure in the Gritstone Moorland.

MARSEMBER - The Blue Diamond remains docked in the City of Spices. Hardhands and dock watchers have concluded the Diamond’s hold must be enormous; its crew spent a rain soaked day offloading crate after crate of goods to waiting merchant wagons.

Elsewhere in Marsember, dead barge cremations have resumed after a lengthy pause owing to the discovery that someone, or someones, had been poisoning Marsembians, robbing them of their possessions, and then dressing them in beggar’s clothing and dropping them off where the bodies could be picked up by the Watch and disposed of. Until the arrival of the Blue Diamond, talk in Marsember had focused on the near death of the merchant Ruldragon “Ruldo” Sammurth, who’d been poisoned and shaved of hair and beard before being dumped within a stone’s throw of the Tankard of Eels tavern. As folk tell it, Ruldo, still heartily sickened but not quite dead, was awakened by the sensation of fire creeping up his rotting breeches and managed to throw himself into the freezing water and then swim back to Marsember. The corpses he’d been stacked with burned to ash and sank with the barge before the authorities realized there might be more victims among them.

Ruldo is known for his hearty smiles, loud voice, and jovial way. Yet there are whispers he has contracted with professional assassins–out of Westgate, some folk claim–to find his attackers and slay them as slowly and painfully as possible. Other folk claim Ruldo’s demeanor is merely a facade, and that he is really a cunning dealer of poisons himself. If so, these persons claim, Ruldo was most likely the victim of a poison crafted right under his very nose! Inside the Drowning Flagon, hardjaws (barflies) have shared names of Ruldo’s known associates and made plans to volunteer to load corpses when the next dead barge goes out. Loading corpses onto decrepit barges is dirty, sometimes disease-spreading work, that not even Marsember’s proud watch members will do if they can avoid it, yet bets have been laid by the hardjaws over which of Ruldo’s associates betrayed him and so must be fated to suffer the same misfortune they’d planned for their master.


More about Halathor and his companions:
Halathor was a mercenary captain who practiced his bloody trade in the Sword Coast lands and further south in Tethyr. Most folk know he settled in Knightswood after arriving too late to be of use in Cormyr’s battle with the dark forces of Shade. Halathor has lived a quiet, peaceful existence in Knightswood, and found ready listeners to the stories of the battles he participated in among the Old Owlbear’s clientele. Halathor’s cottage, relatively new and built with Crown permission alongside a handful of other structures in a trio of former woodlots a handful of years ago, has already been rented out to a member of the Lionsyn noble family.

It was Halathor’s battle tales that sparked a desire for adventure in the hearts of Calaumdra and Belyndra Hardspike. Expert woodcutters with calloused hands capable of picking up the most splintered piece of wood without suffering injury, Calaumdra and Belyndra grew up in a twice expanded woodshed that has grown to overshadow a small pond filled with irascible ducks. Calumdra keeps a matched pair of razor sharp axes on her belt and wears a leather apron that has become supple with age and use. Belyndra wears a similar apron, but wields a splitting maul whose hammer end has been carved to resemble a dragon’s maw. Their plans to depart Knightswood have been met with warm wishes by their family. Their father, Halliard, oversees the family’s increasingly busy sawmill alongside his wife Tethmra, which is staffed by their five remaining children (Stornara, Tamphrae, Whelandra, Trystarn, and Torm) and six additional helpers.

Halathor readily made friends with the forester Torstram Harbrow, the later an experienced forester who’s spent his life tending the woodlots of Knightswood and violently dissuading unscrupulous woodcutters from illegally harvesting choice trees in the deeper parts of the forest. Torstram is well acquainted with the other foresters of Knightwood, and communicates with them by using trail markers and leaving signs the others can read. (In the forest he can go for days at a time without speaking.) In Knightswood proper, Torstram is known to be a voracious reader and avid listener to minstrels. He can be depended on to show up whenever a true bard arrives at the Old Olwbear and always has coins at the ready to pay for their food and drink in exchange for the latest news of wider Cormyr.

Of the three caravan guards, only Belgrin is native to Knightswood. Belgrin has spent five years guarding caravans and seen much of the Heartlands. Arlthrave Daerskult, a native of Amn, joined on with a caravan in Scornubel and so met Belgrin early in his career. Esmara Harthcloak, of Baldur’s Gate, joined the same caravan out of Scornubel but remained aloof from its guards. Only later did the three become inseparable.

10 Uktar - The Rotting
Tenth day of the first tenday
1500 DR - Year of the Sea's Secrets Revealed

Diamond takes on cargo. Dead Sembians arrive in Minroe. Cutthroats invade rooming house. Servant reveals Abeir.

MARSEMBER - The Blue Diamond is taking on cargo. In addition to crates of mustard, barley, and oats, and casks of ale and berry wine, six thimdrors (a kind of small oxen) and four Cormyrean-bred horses were taken aboard ship. Additional coffers and crates bearing Cormyrean foil tax stamps were loaded (most folk think these held weapons, trade bars, and gemstones) and narrow, horizontal crates that likely housed paintings or possibly tapestries. A rotating squad of Marsember’s watch plus a trio of war wizards have remained at their posts near the Diamond’s berth since its arrival two days ago.

MINROE - The unexpected arrival of the Company of the Dead Sembian has spurred a handful of Minroe's villagers to accompany the adventurers up into the mountains after one of the Dead Sembians revived an unconscious member of the Knightshields of Dhedluk who’d been under the care of the villagers ever since he collapsed on the outskirts of the village.

The Knightshield, hight Maxsarl Orthwood (of the Orthwood noble family), described a frightening encounter with a creature “wide around at the base as a wagon that looked like one more stalagmite in a cavern filled with them. We didn’t see its tendrils until they erupted out of the cavern floor. I felt their touch on my arm and it went instantly limp. I thought us all doomed until dark elves attacked! They aimed not for us, but the creature we fought. It spared us its attention to focus on the Drow—Tempus forgive me but they’re terrifying up close! The dark elves unleashed spells and hacked at tendrils, but the creature seemed unbothered as it strangled them and yanked their limp bodies into a maw filled with what must have been crystals for teeth. We Knightshields acquitted ourselves well in battle, skewering the thing’s one eye and giving it a dozen bleeding wounds, but it was not enough. Once the drow fell we were no match. I desire to visit that wounded monstrosity and slay it once and for all. Should my companions yet live, I beg your aid in rescuing them.”

SUZAIL - Copies of Abeir Revealed, A Chapbook of Continents, Races, and Rulers are being sold as fast as they can be printed. Penned by Elgorn Rhauligan, a retired palace servant, Abeir Revealed is a slim chapbook detailing the lands of the world of Abeir, a place some folk claim is the twin of Toril and the source of the mighty dragonborn peoples. Elgorn admits in his writing to perusing documents and maps of Abeir that were “meant for trusted courtiers and Royal eyes,” but does not apologize for sharing that information with the wider world. Of note to the reader is the chapbook’s dedication, “To Dhalkh Marrowsar, a far-traveled adventurer who has come to know two worlds better than most folk know one.”

SELGAUNT (SEMBIA) - Tavern talk at the Drum and Mirror tavern has centered on the fate of the mage Lingalade. Last night a band of cutthroats broke into the rooming house one door over from the Fish Market and turned the place inside out. Several boarders were wounded, but none were killed. The cutthroats escaped through the back entrance to the Market, where ropes and pulleys hang over the High Bridge that straddles the River Arkhen. To hear the hardjaws tell it, everyone was accounted for in the rooming house (several of its tenants are Drum and Mirror regulars), leaving only the cutthroats to lower themselves down to a waiting boat that sailed off into the night.

13 Uktar - The Rotting
Third day of the second tenday
1500 DR - Year of the Sea's Secrets Revealed

Basilisks arrive in Stagsteads.

STAGSTEADS - The Black Basilisks, a newly formed adventuring company out of Knightswood, found lodgings among the cottages that flank the tree-girt, built-in-a-hill hunting lodge that gives this tiny village its name. Of the seven adventurers, only Torstram Harbrow has previously visited Stagsteads, where he received formal training before assuming his duties as a forester. Folk took the time to visit Torstram to hear the latest clack from Knightswood, while an elderly pair of locals took advantage of his fellow adventurer’s woodworking skills. Indeed, the warrior sisters Calaumdra and Belyndra Hardspike brought their mauls and axes to bear on felled wood and made short work of it. Their woman-high log piles were finished by midmorning. “I’m happy to split wood as there are no handy goblin heads nearby,” a smiling Belyndra said to an elderly cottage dweller, the two taking in the forest while sharing tea served in clay cups. Later in the day, the Basilisks took their meals from the Stagsteads serving window, and were seen to rinse their stamped platters(1) with cold water and stuff them into bags.

The Basilisks are not expected to tarry long, and presumably won’t be exploring the nearby adventuring destinations. These include the Mushroom Dell, the ruins of Goldfeather Manor, and Oadal’s Stand.


1. Such platters sport an antlered stag’s face stamped into its surface. Several decades ago the design of the stag changed, and has changed at least five additional times since then. Collectors and social climbers caught on, and ever since there has been an increase in demand (and a corresponding increase in value) for the older platters.