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A Verdant Tomb
Decades ago, a powerful wizard from a distant plane of existence came to the Sword Coast as an explorer. Here she adventured as an explorer, toiled in study, and eventually departed with her young son, back to their home plane of Ravnica. She was called Sylvene, and she left behind memories of beloved allies she met and befriended in the lands of the Sword Coast. Many of those memories were celebrated and commemorated with the construction of a grand crypt in a verdant landâwhere she hid valuable treasures. Now, those treasures attract not only adventurers but the attention of her grandson, Tyreus, whose greed for power knows no bounds.
This short Dungeons & DragonsÂź adventure is written to suit four to six characters of 9th level. With this text and the core D&D manuals, you have everything you need to play.
Part of a Series
This adventure is written as the third in a five-part series. Whether you're playing this as part of our adventure series or weaving this adventure into another campaign, read "Part 3: What's Next?" to get an idea of where some of these threads lead and how you can change those threads to accommodate your campaign.
This adventure involves a recurring villain named Tyreus. More about his plans and powers can be discovered in future adventures. If you prefer not to wait, or if you want to substitute another villain in for ours, you can adapt this adventure to refer to a villainous NPC of your own.
By combining the immediacy of the players' choices with the mysterious histories and ambitions of key NPCs, this scenario explores themes of secrecy, hindsight, and loss. Future adventures in this series expand on other themes, to explore both the origins of these situations and the consequences of the players' choices along the way.
Background
A powerful mage is at work enacting a villainous plan near the Sword Coast. He is a trespasser from another plane. He is here in pursuit of legends and lore, in the footsteps of forebears who came here long ago. He is called Tyreus, though few here know him by name.
In Previous Adventures
Tyreus sought out the Wizard's Barrow (prior to the adventure In Scarlet Flames) after discovering a reference to it in a book that cited his grandmother, Sylvene. He tore into the Wizard's Barrow while looking for an arcane secret that might make him powerfulâand worthy of his own prideâthen had his minions burn the barrow's library in his wake. Tyreus found what he was looking for: a planar key that took him to a secret demiplane refuge Sylvene had created decades before. There Tyreus plundered more books (prior to the adventure in The Hidden Page), in hopes of discovering how Sylvene had created her demiplane.
Now he's found what he was looking for.
Tyreus the Trespasser
Tyreus has been busy. This might not all become known to the characters in this adventure but can be useful for you to know when portraying Tyreus: he's been searching for the hiding place of Sylvene's unused artifacts, called keystones of creation. In her diaries and journals, he found the answers he sought and the sigils he needed to access a teleportation circle in her final secret location. Sylvene buried her keystones of creation with the man she loved, Tyreus's grandfather. Years later, she was buried there, too.
Bent on recovering the keystones for his own use, Tyreus has ventured to Sylvene's tomb, recovered the artifacts, and set traps to harrow whoever ventures to the tomb next. (And that almost certainly means the characters.)
Sylvene's Tale
Sylvene was a wizard of the distant city-world of Ravnica who came to Faerûn to explore the possibilities of magic across the multiverse. During her time in the Realms, she met and fell in love with a human named Waltarn Everlake, a shepherd from the village of Secomber, on the verge of the High Moors. He left his mundane life to travel with Sylvene and become an adventurer, but he didn't get very far. While exploring the High Moor in pursuit of an artifact called the Stone of Creation, Waltarn perished.
He was interred in a lavish addition to his familial tomb, created by the only survivors of his adventuring party: Sylvene and a dwarven fighter called Artura Dwaircalis. They designed Waltarn's crypt to be accessible by teleportation circle in later years, so Sylvene might eventually be buried next to him.
Sylvene and Artura told almost no one else, but the expansion they built into the tombs was also created to house a treasure they plundered from the High Moors during the very adventure that got Waltarn killed: keystones of creation.
Adventure Synopsis
The adventure is set in motion when the adventurers learn where they can find the tomb of Sylvene and Waltarn and why it is important to get inside. The adventure truly begins when they arrive at the tomb's riverside sepulcher. Getting inside and exploring the site makes up the heart of the scenario, during which the adventurers face several monsters and traps. Their venture likely culminates in a meeting with Tyreus himselfâor what seems to be him. Tyreus has prepared much of the crypt as a trap to thin the ranks of adventurers who might oppose him, lording over the tomb through an illusory manifestation. In the end, the adventurers likely learn what Tyreus has stolen from the tombâpowerful fragments of an artifact called the Stone of Creationâand get a sense of his heartless plans for the future.
How the scenario ends is up to the adventurers, but they may well escape with their own piece of the Stone, called a chip of creation.
Adventure Hooks
The adventurers can become involved in this scenario in several ways, whether they're continuing along from previous scenarios or entering into the fray with this one.
A Visitor in Secret
Adventurers looking into the origins and history of Sylvene's prior adventuresâor dealing with the fallout of their ownâattract the attention of Durow Dwaircalis, a dwarven veteran who has retired from the adventuring business and become a pacifist. He is the brother of Artura, who adventured with Sylvene and helped to build her tomb. Durow explains that Artura is gone on some adventure but word is spreading about Tyreus gaining power and growing careless. Durow is worried about Sylvene's secret tomb and cannot protect it himself.
(In truth, Durow is the victim of a modify memory spell cast by Tyreus, who "confessed" his plans for Sylvene's tomb to Durow as a means of flushing out rivals and other enemies. Tyreus has already been to Sylvene's tomb.)
A Treasure Lost to History
If the characters have not played prior adventures in this series, they might be asked or hired to find and access Sylvene's tomb by a sage or scholar who has worked with other adventurers in the aftermath of the Wizard's Barrow discovery. Perhaps that sage has even been approached by Durow but is unwilling or unable to go to the High Moors himself. The sage wants to know the fate of the mysterious wizard, Sylvene, and any knowledge she had gathered about the Stone of Creation. The adventurers are his agents in the field.