RHOD Sidequest - The Mad Mage's Manor

RHoD Masterpost

There's a throwaway line on page 52 that says "The razorfiend has done quite well for itself, having plundered a ruined wizard's manor not far off." That's a fine justification, but what's up with that manor? That sounds interesting! The first time I ran RHoD, this line inspired me to create a mini-dungeon, fleshing out that line, and since my players are about to head into the Blackfens I figured I would type it up and streamline it!

This is the first full homebrew mini-adventure I'll be posting on this blog, though not the first I've published - I hope y'all like it!

Reading This Adventure

Here is the document!

There are a few changes compared to my conversion post standards because this is meant as a whole adventure, rather than a document to be read alongside an existing adventure - this is my attempt to work around a lot of my criticisms of Paizo modules and make the adventure as easy to use for the GM as possible! Let me know in the comments how you think I did and if you think there are ways that could be improved.

In general, text that is not bulleted is immediately obvious to the players (unless there's an underlined Perception DC, in which case roll a secret Perception check for the PC with the highest modifier to see if they notice it). Often, this text serves as a general room description, aiming to have just enough detail to spark your imagination without bogging things down. 

I bold text to pull out important facets, and (italicize text in parentheses) to mark descriptive details of those main features that you can sprinkle in as the PCs look around. E.g. for "A broken door (metal, chipped blue paint) lies on the ground." you might start by reading out "A broken door lies on the ground" and then tell players that the blue paint appears to be flaking off the metal frame as they continue looking at it / the scene. This minimizes how much info they are bombarded with at once, and helps pull the PCs slowly into the scene as they learn more.

• Bulleted Text requires more interaction to uncover. The bolded text is meant to help the GM easily find which bullet points they need to parse - either an action, e.g. "Search the Nest." means "if the PCs search the nest, here are the relevant details." or as a general topic that might come up, e.g. "Plank of Wood." means "If the PCs look further at the plank of wood, here's what they learn."
• Nested bullets are somehow dependent on the bullet above. E.g. "Lannikar’s Body." is a sub-bullet because the body can only be found by first searching the nest.

Outside of those core room description, Italicized Text is usually used for some sort of non-actionable emphasis, e.g. in Area 2 the pedestal signs are italicized to differentiate them from the physical items present.

I keep underlined text for Room #s (e.g. Area 2) or for action items - checks to call for (e.g. DC 20 Perception), things the NPCs might do (e.g. "the monster attacks!"), or similar.

Whenever things get too unwieldy to fit neatly in a room description, I pull it out into callout boxes.

Integrating the Adventure

As the hook suggests, I added this as an optional sidequest after their first meeting with the Tiri Kitor. Rather than having two of the elves hang out like the module suggested (for a party with too many characters), I had the elves carry the fallen owl back to the forest and leave the PCs behind, telling them they'd return in a few hours.

I plan to:

• Track time pretty regularly (basically a 10 minute dungeon turn every time the PCs spend a significant amount of time interacting with things).
• Use the tension pool to check for things going wrong (probably nearby constructs or undead wandering into wherever the PCs are).
• And give the party 2 hours once they arrive at the manor before the elves find them (though if they want to convince the elves to let them have more time, they can certainly try).

Adventure Backstory

Who was Khasorin? Why was he out here in the swamp, and what happened?

I think there's a lot of room for you to tailor this to your game! However, here are some details that are implied by the text, so if you want to change these you might want to adjust aspects of the module:

• Khasorin was alive during the time of Old Rhestilor, but was not under their sway. Likely this means that he had a relationship with them that allowed him freedom - maybe he was a sort of contractor for them - but you could also say he somehow magically hid himself. He clearly expected guests, however, given the protocols in Area 2 and the way that the constructs interact with guests.
• His notebooks are from between 150 and 400 years ago, meaning he wasn't here for the founding of Rhest but survived past its fall.
• He was a researcher into both magic and alchemy, and was extremely skilled at animating objects to be his servants (even giving several of them sentience).
• He was killed in an explosion from his own experiments, and something about the combination of magic and alchemy caused him to rise as an undead.
• He then killed two crocodiles (and maybe an owlbear) and turned them into undead.

Khasorin's Notes

While a lot of the library is in shambles due to the proximity to the Laboratory, Khasorin's room is intact! Some of his old notes are on his table, and many more (centuries!) in the bookshelves.

Immediately out on his table are:

• An account of the subjugation of the brutal cannibal nomads and the defeat of Urikel Zarl, the powerful druid. It was a months long campaign with several heroic battles, where their cavalry advantage was key. Note: this account accurately calls them cannibals, but this detail is missing from other, more modern histories.
• A separate account of the losses suffered by the army of Rhestilor during that campaign - DC 20 Warfare / DC 25 Society - truly worrying numbers. Either their army was massive beyond belief or they didn't have much left after this.
• An recent account from a scholar on an artifact called the Shield of the Hidden Lord, said to be a sentient shield with centuries of ancient knowledge. It's made of silvered, vanadium steel embellished with bronze decorations suggesting the horns, eyes, and fangs of a pit fiend. The scholar had not seen it personally, but had heard it was present for the fall of Rhest and is speculating on where it might have ended up.
• Rumors of a powerful lich in the Thornewastes, possibly the source of the ghosts that tore apart the Hellriders.
• An account from a Hellrider on a hunt for a majestic lion in the luscious plains to the south. A noble from Rhest wanted its pelt for his collection. The hunt was long and glorious, but the locals have been acting secretive and strange ever since.

In my head, he'd been trying to figure out where the Shield of the Hidden Lord ended up so he can ask it questions to advance his research, and his running theory was that the Ghostlord ended up with it. In reality, it was partially responsible for the fall of Rhest, and was secreted out by the cult that was working for it. They recently gave it to Lady Kaal, calling it "The Shield of Silvam".

Feel free to change this up to tailor to your own campaign!

Adjusting This Adventure

Encounter Math

If you have more or less than 4 players, you might wanna adjust some things! If you are only playing with 2 players, I'd recommend having them at level 8 instead of adjusting things, and this dungeon isn't designed for 1 player.

Room by room:

• 3. Waiting Room: For 3 players, remove the elite template from the statue. If you have more players, you can either leave it alone (esp. if they struggle with high level foes) or add a mimic for each additional player (you can have these be the couches - you can even remove the elite template and add 2 extra mimics to start if you want the comfy couches to actually be sinister.
• 5. Laboratory: For 3 players, remove the elite template from the mage and add the weak template to the crocodile sulfur zombies. For more than 4 players, add a zombie owlbear for each additional player.
• 6. Kitchen: For 3 players, remove the cleaver, or add another one for each player beyond 4.

If your players are higher level (it's not unlikely they'd be level 7), you can treat them as if they have  more player than they actually do and the math will be pretty close (e.g. make the adjustments listed above for having 5 players if you only have 4). If they're lower level, something's gone wrong, but you can treat them as 1 party member smaller.

"Ancient Secrets"

What's with the dwarven rune for "N" carved onto a tile in Area 1 (the Display Room)? It can totally be nothing if you want! Just a little mystery for the players to wonder at but never solve. I think it's healthy to have things that the players never figure out, it helps make the world seem bigger.

If you do want to turn it into something though, there's a post from Mindstorm Press I read a while back outlining a world with tons of ancient dwarven tombs and treasure vaults that are locked by basically large scrabble tiles, and you have to collect the right tiles to answer the riddle. This setup, and a lot of the surrounding friction (adventurers collect and fight over them like blue-star bottle caps in New Vegas, and the main goal is to plunder the treasure inside) works better for an OSR game than a heroic game like PF2, but you can still use this setup to hide some ancient dwarven secret or relic!

You can also change it up! The first time I ran this, I had this stone tablet as a section of a map leading to an ancient dwarven treasure. My players got very excited about finding all the different sections, but - just like the scrabble thing - including either idea requires building in a a bunch of clues and new pieces! You can also just have the stone be a map, or be some cool magic item, or just be a cool piece of history with some text on it for folks who spend the time to translate.

Treasure

Go nuts! If a wizard or alchemist could have it, it's fair game. Some specific considerations:

• If you change any of the Razorfiend's treasure, or the display room, you may want to change the words on the pedestals as well - I used this translator to bastardize some cool names from Old English, since Old Rhestish is an older variant of common.
• The decanter of endless water is actually very valuable when using my travel rules! I really like letting the PCs choose between trading it for lots of value with the elves or keeping it for travel (and unknowingly trivilaize some of the Thornewastes)
• You might consider swapping in a spacious pouch if your party hates inventory management, though I personally find it interesting with overland travel. 
• A crafter's eyepiece probably fits the wizard, but my party's crafter already had one.

That's all for now! My full sidequests doc on the Blackfens is still WIP, I'm pretty close to done but still working as I go - that'll probably be next as far as RHoD goes. After that, we'll have to see where they go! Will they visit the endless plains to recruit the tribes (and the Hellriders in them)? Will they follow up on the Hammerfist Holds? Eventually I think it's pretty likely they'll go see the Ghotslord, who probably doesn't need a ton of fleshing out, though there's definitely room for ancient serpentfolk dungeons if the PCs want more stuff to do - up to them though! Honestly, at this point I'm unlikely to flesh out places they don't go.