Deep in the Mournland is a nearly intact House Lyrandar storm tower, surrounded by a permanent deadly storm. Lightening still crackles around its upper reaches, but its base is encased in frozen ice.
For this short side-quest my players went on, I used a modified version of Gus L’s Dungeon of Signs module Lone Colossus of the Akolouthos Sink. In the original module, the dungeon is a destroyed colossus, but I made it work with the following modifications.
- The tower was destroyed by the Mourning, but it was the base of a powerful Lyrandar wizard/sorcerer who tried to transport it to another plane to escape, becoming bound to the tower as a form of lich. When the players meet him, he is much reduced, like a demilich, but hopes they can restore the tower so he can complete his ritual.
- The workshop has an intact control point where a House Lyrandar heir can attempt to use the tower, but this is a trap. In my game, pushing through with the attempt to activate the tower would either probably fail, in which case the player needed to save against Feeblemind, or suceed, in which case the entire tower would be transported into the hinterlands of Mabar.
- The Mana Shadows are simply shadows that target Intellignce instead of Strength, which is less of a death spiral for high-strength characters, but can still mess up optimizers who dumbed Int fast.
- The other main monster was a trapped Warforged Titan, bound to the tower by a control amulet, but slightly unstable and infused with elemental power. It was sentient, but reacted badly to my players and was blasted to bits from the window. I had its inner fluids also cause mutation to use the nice little mutation chart in the back of the module.
- For the mutated crew, I used the stat block of bearded devils but described them like black puddings and gave them the Amorphous trait. My players saw the danger of 8 of these blob monsters in their room, but forgot to seal them in again, so 5 of them emerged to hunt for food.
The map is presented without a grid since it’s more trouble than helpful in a VTT, but should be 40 x 40 grid squares across. You can download from the image, or from here.
