Dragonlaird Gaming Studios

Design Diary: Azell Valley Campaign 1

(Originally posted on www.dragonlairdgaming.com on May 15, 2009)

At the beginning of 2009, my home group has lost momentum with our Serenity campaign due to nearly two months of cancelled sessions, holidays, etc. It seemed like a good time to start a new campaign. Huzzah!

I was ready to get back to helming a fantasy campaign and after consultation with the group, we decided to return to my Esterra Campaign World. This was done because everyone at the table had played in at least some games set in Esterra and they wanted to leverage their familiarity with the world. I chose to set the campaign about 300 years after the last “Big Thing” when the Dragon Throne was resurrected from underneath Ramal and the era of the Dragon Empire began anew. This kept it close to what they expected, eliminated the meddling of other player characters in the world and let me reset a lot of things.

One thing that I’m always working on is keeping the game focused, tight, and moving. Too often, my players will not maintain a good vision of what needs to be done, what the quest is, etc. Certainly you could blame that on our growing collective senility or the fact that gaming night occurs after a hard day’s work for all of us when we aren’t our freshest. We did finally move from a once every three weeks schedule to a once every two weeks schedule which seems to be helping continuity in the game.

The setup began like this. Each player character was a former apprentice of a scholar-wizard named Vells Gilroth in the Azell Valley. The Valley is in the same nation as most of the other games have been set but far away from Ramal, the capital and most visited location. They came from all different classes but seemed to be dwarves and elves. Each had spent some time at Vells’ manor house, learning all sorts of things like philosophy, history, ecology of monsters, etc. They’d each left Vells in the last year or so but now, based on a message from him, they have been summoned back to the valley.

Vells is important as he is the brother of Erik Gilroth, Lord of Azell Valley and resident of the small castle overlooking the town. Erik and Vells do not get along although both speak with their sister, Anna Gilroth, high priestess of the local temple.

Upon arriving in the valley, they run into two sets of monsters attacking travelers and locals, each set burdened with 300 crowns of gold minted in the Dragon Empire. When they reach the one town in the valley, Shammelvot, they find it draped in mourning banners. Vells Gilroth is dead. (FADE TO BLACK)

Further inquiry tells them that Vells was killed only the night before, his headless body appearing out of nowhere to crash down on his brother’s feast table. Vells’ manor is sealed in stone and covered in dangerous runes. His manservant was sent to Shammelvot a few hours before his death but the groundskeeper is missing.

Here I take the time to describe the death rituals of the predominant religion. One of the player characters also died in those early monster melees. He was dwarven, brother to the other dwarf, so we played out the dwarven rituals as well (somewhat modeled on Jewish traditions). The PCs attend the funeral and the wake being held at the town tavern, the Scarlet Fox.

Soon there is a reading of Vells’ will . The manservant also slipped each PC a piece of vellum, torn from the bottom of the will. Each piece is a symbol. A big hint in the will is that Vells lets slip that he has three siblings (Erik, Anna, and ???). His only inheritance to the PCs is the reference to a working song that he taught them back in their apprenticeship day called “The Pieces Will Go”. He ends the phrase with “99 days and not a moment more”.