Tal'Dorei Campaign Guide PDF

Chapter 2: Gazetteer of tal’Dorei 75

throw an annual coming-of-age festival, in which the
tribe drinks and brawls the night before their young
warriors leave to cross the mountains on a pilgrimage to
the Shrine of the Ruiner in the Dreamseep Marshlands.
Those who brave the perils of the wilderness return as
true warriors.
The Frostweald is also home to a host of benevolent fey,
most of them pixies or dryads, using the forest as a safe
haven away from the Feywild. If pressed for answers on
why they have left the Feywild, their answers are always
cryptic and unsatisfactory, but always ominously suggest a
“Great Shadow” has descended upon their lands, perhaps
even a host of warriors from the Shadowfell? A nymph
named Arethusa (use mage statistics for her) watches over
a cluster of three mirror-like pools that form a pathway
into the Feywild, each to a different Archfey’s forest. She
is suspicious of all mortals, and both her trust and a favor
are required for passage.
Many forgotten obelisks of the Knowing Mistress also
lay buried under the ice and snow, half-lost beacons that
guide travelers to the Cavern of Axiom. If any living
creature knows why these ancient monoliths reside here
when no other ruins of the Knowing Mistress have been
discovered, they have kept the knowledge secret from
the other scholars of the world. Ten years ago, the half-
orc Emonian archaeologist Jorlund Vohr discovered a
cache of Ioun stones buried here and returned them to
the Alabaster Lyceum of Emon, but his research and
findings were stolen the week after he returned. Vohr has
since stated he “got over it,” and is back to work on new
research on Visa Isle.

Wrettis

A relic of the Age of Arcanum, Wrettis is the ruined
tower of a powerful mage driven mad by the seductive
whispers of beings from the beyond. What few leg-
ends survive of Wrettis’s master say he was known as
Clemain Astural, the Sight Shepherd, and that he was
a powerful arcanist who peered into a realm beyond the
planes in search of power to end the war that ravaged his
world. He found it, and thought it would serve him. He
was wrong.
Astural’s sanity crumbled, but his power only grew,
fueled by an foul entity he called the Sightless One. As
devastation crept across southeastern Tal’Dorei, heroes
of the land rode to Wrettis to end Astural’s chaotic reign,

destroy his tower, and bury his corpse in the rubble. Wret-

tis is now a moss-coated ruin, but some chambers within

and below the tower still hold secrets, as well as creations,

of the mad mage.

Ruhn-Shak

Small City • Population: 6,670

(92% Dark Elf, 5% Deep Gnome, 3% Other)

If you stumble upon carved arches and steel gates in the

mountain slopes, do not rest there, no matter the cold.

There are no welcoming dwarf-halls among these for-

saken peaks.

Deep below the surface world, countless caverns and

tunnels wind into regions where light finds no purchase.

It is here, beneath the Stormcrest Mountains, that the

largest subterranean society of dark elves maintains its

tyranny. Hidden entrances riddle not just the mountain

range, but the Dreamseep, and darker regions of the Ver-

dant Expanse, allowing hunting and raiding parties quick

and easy access to the surface under cover of night, slaugh-

tering many, enslaving the rest, and taking the spoils as

gifts to the Spider Queen.

This twisted network of tunnels are easily collapsed and

reopened through the use of “Pit Witches”, dark elf druids

who master the art of rock and dirt manipulation, making

it near impossible to give chase. Syngorn is ever alert and

seeking a way to find and destroy this center of dark elf

society on Tal’Dorei, but the sly and cunning ways of

Ruhn-Shak have yet to meet a match.

ruhn-shaK aDventures

sl av es of the spiDer-qUeen

For mid-level characters: While traversing the Storm-

crest Mountains, the party plunges into a deep pit as the

seemingly-solid stone all around them gives way. Badly

pummeled by the fall, they are set upon by a hunting

party of dark elves to be taken captive. If captured, the

adventurers are taken to the slave markets of the dark

elves’ city and must plot their escape, perhaps with the

aid of their fellow captives. If they overcome the dark elf

ambush, they must still find their way out of the maze

of underground tunnels created by the Pit Witches, who

have sealed off the way through which the characters fell

into the dark.

The aSTural SCrollS

Clemain Astural covered thousands of pages of parchment with his writings, ranging from alchemical formulas to

powerful spells to esoteric star charts... but his later notes descend into paranoid, half-crazed ramblings. One of the

heroes that killed Astural, a wizard named Atz Yuminor, took as many of the scrolls as he could find and brought

them back to his house in the Dividing Plains. Yuminor’s bloodline continues in Estella Ladimar, headmistress of the

Westhall Academy in Westruun, and many of the Astural Scrolls are kept secretly by the Scions of Yuminor in the

academy’s observatory.