Looking for people willing to do some light work on such an adventure. I give the outline, imagined encounters and situations, locales, and people give back feedback on ideas they have, pointers, roleplay opportunities they forsee, etc. Light stuff. It would of course be a pre-DS4 release for Dark Sun, unofficial, using 4E. Thus no muls, kreen, etc. In any case it works in the scheme I’m working with, and whatever monsters I don’t have I’ll create or convert using MM monsters.
I already posted a basic idea for a DS3 adventure over at WotC’s Dark Sun Forums, and this will be it actually. Done in 4E.
The only things I would use in the adventure that we don’t already have are a defiler, a few athasian half-elves and elves. No psions required at this time. Placeholders may be left for those temporary rules, and if finished before DS4 is out (dreadful if it’s not, meaning I’m a total failure! lol) then may actually be used by others to run a DS game and test the new temporary rules.
Any takers?

I am up for any kind of system questions, or research, I don’t do much in the way of storyline or creating RP situations, but I often have things to add to other people’s ideas. If you have a template already that just needs some fleshing out and or details by way of numbers that sounds rather like the thing I am good at, specific questions will get answer far more effectively than just randomly asking for fixes.

I’m game as well.

Tim

That would be interesting to work through…let me know what I can help with.

Hey pennarin, you said you already posted the basics of the adventure on the WOTC forums. I did not see it. Was this back before the merger of the forums into Other Worlds?

Could be keen. Run a couple of 4th ed homemade adventures and know the system OK.

band2: Yep, from a couple of months ago, before the merger.
Ok guys, here’s the very very basic outline, downloadable over at ENWorld’s: Legacies of War

Very cool adventure overview…I can envision your story as it is unfolding.
You definitely want to include a side note about the keep and its overall layout and how much is currently occupied and how much is currently covered in sand. Is the keep in ruins or relatively intact? My take on the keep is that after all these centuries that is has fallen into ruin and has been previously occupied by various raiding tribes, creatures, etc. This simply gives the keep some flavor of occasional marks on the walls or even a recently buried treasure horde that may hold some information about the previous inhabitants and anything they may have uncovered during their looting of the ruins.
Should the PCs start out simply on a trade route where they meet with a local NPC from the VA of the city who gives them the documents or should their meeting start in the city with the VA and they leave the city along the trade route? I think the adventure hook could start in the city where the PCs are contacted by the VA and told to attend a meeting. (Adventure Hook) At this meeting they are given the documents and told to take the trade route to the keep. This also allows you to add an encounter of local city Templars or brutes while they are trying to leave. It could also have the PCs followed out of the city where they have the encounter outside of the city…this could be a raiding tribe hired by the myrmeleon to steal the document(s).
In the synopsis…Do the PCs immediately come across the cache?? I think they should give the documents to the VA at the keep who discover the location of the cache based on the document and the tomes they have read. That night the myrmeleon tries to steal the document again using his agents. This is where the PCs can start trying to find out who is the agent in their midst…

Hi!
First time that I post on this forum…
I like your outline Pennarin! Very cool! I’ve some ideas already… maybe two myrmeleons working for two different SKs: one is only an observer but he could be an interesting wrong track.
I’m swiss french and not particulary comfortable with english… maybe we could communicate in fench.

Hi Pennarin. I read through the adventure outline once, and two questions stood out to me related to the plot. How does the Veiled Alliance know the murderer is a myrmeloen? and Why would the Veiled Alliance ask the PCs, (strangers to the camp) to investigate the murders? (Because they are the PCs of course.)
Here are some answers I came up with. The leader of this Veiled Alliance community suspected there is a myrmeloen infiltrator and told his subordinate of his suspicions but not who. The leader believed he was about to verify his suspicions but did not want to speak of them until he was sure, so as not to accuse an innocent man. The leader was then murdered by the myrmeloen in the library, leaving the subordinate in charge. Since the subordinate does not know who the myrmeloen could be, it is he that asks the PCs to investigate the murders and find the myrmeloen.
Hope that helps. A couple of other things stood out but I have not found answers for them yet.

I wasn’t able to read the adventure overview because the link sent me to a forum that required membership to read, and I have no interest in joining extra forums, if you could repost it here that would help, or I can just follow along others commentary and provide my advice.
First off never give the PCs documents in DS, most of them cant read, and even if one or two can, nobody is likely to assume reading is a useful way of transferring information in a largely illiterate society, just give them a briefing, at most a map with some pictures on it.
Also the question about ‘why these PCs’ is a very important one often ignored by caned adventures, it can be quite difficult to explain why any particular group of wanders comes in, but providing the ‘npc looking for outside specialists’ can’t be a bad start, also include a few VA spys around town who are likely to notice sympathetic individuals. Putting a link in for a PC who is a member of the VA is always a good plan, or even a way for a PC preserver to become a member of the VA.
In the not terribly unlikely case of a PC party devoid of arcane magic users there could even be a traveling VA NPC the PCs meet before they come into town, who helps them out, or they help on the road, and offers to put them in contact with some friends of his in return for there help/payment of the agreed on sum for saving him.

The keep itself is the cache. A giant dome sitting on the ground, with a score of flying buttresses (those stone fallanges that cathedrals have on the outside that prevent their walls from falling outward) jutting out from it. It’s intact because its magical. The outside is stone, but the inside is glazed ceramic of vivid colors (rather than being made of ceramic tiles, the entire inside space seems to be one huge glazed corridor and inner dome). Quite a change from modern day Athas.
Initially, I imagined the camp – dozens of huge tents – would be surrounding the cache, but the camp could be made to be elsewhere nearby, and the cache’s location might even be magically kept secret, meaning scouting parties can’t find it by chance. The secret documents could contain the one route that leads to it. In that case, entry in the cache itself might not even be difficult…just perillous once inside.
I don’t see it as occupied by anything or anyone. Would be cool otherwise, but it doesn’t seem to fit. It would still be filled with stuff that animates unless you have special passwords…which only the armies of the defiler warlord really knew, and those are not in the secret documents.
The inside of the dome is a series of circular passages, or a spiral, that leads to an inner dome that is the cache proper. Things were meant to be brought in and out of it using magic, like the Linked Portal ritual. The corridors are filled with traps, hazards, and a few traps that animate into statues that fight, etc.
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As for the myrmeleon thing, most infiltrators in the VA are myrmeleons, otherwise – let’s say…if they are warriors – they are never kept appraised of all the big stuff since they aren’t wizards to begin with. I like your explanation, band2, about the idea the leader did know who it was but never wrote it down, and was killed before revealing the person’s identity, but did mention to a subordinate his strong suspiscion that such a myrmeleon had infiltrated them.
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nefal, i’m better in english now, takes less time to type! Just keep doing what you’re doing and eventually it will flow as swiftly for you as in french :)
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kye_tyrad, the idea of keeping the keep intact is also partly based on the prospect of linking this adventure to one or two others, culminating in the resurrection of the defiler warlord in another secret keep of his. If the PCs fail to stop him, he’ll be able to beat the VA chapter and gain control of the cache and it’s contents, gain access to his other surviving holdings, and carve out for himself a domain on Athas, one other big bad to add to the lot.
Cool idea to make the adventure start at a city VA meeting. As a matter of fact, this could be the perfect “get together” excuse to assemble the party: you have all been selected to fulfill this mission because of your various skills, and we hope you’ll work well together. Instant PC party creation! The common thread between all is a willingness to oppose defiling and he SKs.
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I’ll start revising my outline right away!

One question I’ve been itching to ask: Could this be an adventure not unlike Keep on the Shadowfell, where PCs go from level 1 through 2 or 3?
Then, what level would you say the myrmeleon would need to be at to be a good challenge?
By the end of the Shadowfell adventure, in the final encounter the PCs battle Kalarel (Level 8 Elite Controller), a Deathlock Wight (Level 4 Controller) and two Skeleton Warriors (Level 3 Soldier), but they must also dodge the grasp of The Thing in the Portal (Level 4 Hazard), plus the room has an Evil Magic Circle that grants +2 to defenses and heals 5 hit points at the start of each turn the baddies are in the circle, and the Wight is close to a statue of Orcus that allows it to add 5 squares to the range of its area or ranged attacks.
All pretty beefed up IMO for a final encounter for 5 PCs of level 2 or 3. Has anyone run that adventure?
The myrmeleon could enter the cache with his retinue of lackeys, secretly in the camp with him, or he could send a signal to have his retinue – on standy in the desert – join him. Thus the PCs could possibly face any assortement of people and creatures the SK would have deemed ok to send in the hopes of gaining access to the cache.

I’ve updated the sketch for the Synopsis, albeit not in the Word file on ENWorld. That will come later when other stuff is added:
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ADVENTURE SYNOPSIS
PCs start at the secret meeting place for their VA contact, in a city of the DMs’ choosing. They don’t know each other. They are called in the bulding and are told they have served well the cause of the VA in the past, each through its own rights and skills. They are handed their mission: Deliever an ancient sealed scroll to a contact of the VA in the desert.
The PCs set out along the trading roads and before they slip away in the desert are confronted by a group of soldiers and a templar. They were observing the ins and outs of a supsected VA meeting place and followed the PCs on the trading roads. When they head out in the desert the soldiers know they have their men and catch up with them.
If the PCs heeded the warning of their contact they’ve hidden well the scroll and can talk and bribe themselves out of a fight, if not then they can only hope to fight and win for if they flee they could be followed to their contact in the desert. A skill challenge ensues, involving Diplomacy and bribery, or a fight.
They then head out again, and reach their destination, a special landmark, there they meet their contact. Instead of taking the scroll and thanking them, he’s anxious for them to follow him to the camp, for disaster has befallen the community. He leads them to the camp and they deliver the scroll not to the camp’s leader but to his subordinate, for the leader and several others were killed the night before. The PCs meet with the subordinate in private and are told that only they can help the camp, for the leader, before his death, had revealed to his subordinate his suspision that a myrmeleon agent had infiltrated them.
The subordinate enrolls the PCs, as an impartial outside agency, to sniff out this agent. He reveals to them his certainty of the presence of this agent because he attempted a Speak with Dead ritual on the leader and which failed, further investigation having revealed the body was eralier doused with an alchemical substance while in storage and which made the ritual yield no result. A list is drawn of all those who had access to the temporary morgue, and the PCs are given free access to the camp.
A skill challenge ensues, using Insight and Intimidate. Eventually they uncover that one person they interrogate is one of the myrmeleon’s lackeys. Another skill challenge ensues in which they attempt to find out who this person was associated with, and so on.
The agent learns of his imminent discovery, but he’s already succeeded at his own mission: gain access to numerous secret documents in the posession of the camp’s leader and decipher them. The documents reveal the secret path to be taken to reach a cache of weapons in an ancient keep magically hidden in the desert.
By the time the PCs find the agent’s identity, he’s already gone out to the cache. Reporting back to the subordinate, he reveals to them that his superior had asked the city VA to send any documents pertaining to the cache in the hope of finding more info for his research of its location.
Luckilly for the PCs, the one scroll they brought back is an original dating from the ancient wars, one that would have been used by soldiers of one of its armies to gain directions to the cache. The myrmeleon had to work with several partial documents from the royal library back in the SK’s city, the missing parts to solve the puzzle ending up being provided by those documents already in the camp’s hold and which he stole.
At the same moment of this realization, the camp is attacked from outside. The myrmeleon, knowing he would complete the puzzle, sent a secret message to soldiers and templars in wait in a nearby holding of the SK along the trade routes. Half of the force has met the myrmeleon before he went along the secret route to the cache, the other half creating a diversion for them by attacking the camp.
The camp’s subordinate orders them to go after the myrmeleon while they defend the camp.
Following the ancient scroll’s directions, the PCs arrive at the cache. Inside they face many encounters of traps, plus magical terrain coupled with attacks by animated statues. These appear to have lain undisturbed for a long time, meaning the myrmeleon had in his documents the passwords that would allow him to pass through unhindered.
The final confrontation takes place in the main room of the cache, where the agent has drawn a Linked Portal on the floor and encompassing the contents of the cache: massive defiling engines (magic items from DS3, converted to 4E). The PCs must attack now or risk the weapons falling into the hands of whichever SK is waiting on the other side of that Linked Portal.
The myrmeleon – the final boss – is an elite opponent (minimum level 8, because of Linked Portal) accompanied by any number of soldiers and templars (skirmishers, soldiers, controllers, and brutes) as necessary to make this a hard encounter. The myrmeleon might be rendered more powerful if he uses one of the engines against the PCs, making his spells that much more powerful, but requiring less soldiers and templars to be present.
After winning, the PCs can explore the cache, finding magic items appropriate for all of the encounters they’ve won in the adventure, and also find etched maps that indicate the location of other holdings built by the lord who erected the cache. These other holdings are not necessarily kept hidden by magic. Other adventure possibilities can ensue. The last adventure of the lot, when the PCs are in the paragon tier, culminates in the final and greatest holding, a citadel where the resurrection of the one who had it built – an epic tier defiler warlord that fought and died in the Preserver Jihad – can take place…unless the PCs intervene.
If the PCs fail, the myrmeleon’s master gains access to ancient weapons of mass destruction, and uses the Linked Portal to transport a detachment of his army through, crushing the nearby camp.

Note sure how to quote.
pennarin in response to your post earlier (2 posts up).
A level 8 controller would be on the high end of a difficult challenge butin 4th ed its probably doable as it doesn’t have alot of support to help it out (1 Deathlock and 2 skelitons). Its not like 3.5 where a level 8 whatever could probably mop the floor with the PCs.
Encounters are designed for a 5 memeber party and if they are level 3 its probably not to bad. I haven’t seen the module but from the sounds of it, its a level 6 encounter (ignore the lvl 8 part of the elite controller). A hard encounter is 2-4 levels higher than the party so if you have 5 players who are 3rd level it should be about right.

Yeah, I reread the encounters section of the DMG and saw that last night. You can make any kind of mix of XP until you spennd all of your XP budget, as long as no individual component of that budget is either too low or too high in levels.
What I’m missing right now are new possibilities that would allow for more encounters in this encounter-poor adventure. Keep on the Shadowfell has 23 encounters…with a number of 4, 5, and 6th level encounters, the rest being 3rd level or lower.

Th theory i it takes around 8-10 encounters to level up and theres room for the DM to hand out additional xp as well. I’ve heard Shadowfell isn’t a particuly great adventure though but I haven’t seen it to say anything about it. I found the new DMG to be brilliant when it came to designing encounters. I like the xp total rules for desiging an encounter and how you fill it up until its around the xp you need.
Deathlock Wights are great. I gave my PCs an encounter on the fly and I used 4 Deathlock Wights (in 3.5 they were just called Deathlocks). Didn’t realise how nuts the animate dead as a minor action was as each time the PCs destroyed one the other 3 would just reanimate it. The fight lasted close to 15 rounds as Deathlocks don’t deal that much damage. Haven’t had a 15 round fight for a long time (2nd ed?).

I’ll be rewritting the synopsis once again, with the following changes:
The PCs are enrolled by the city’s VA to explore an ancient ruined keep near the VA desert camp. They are also given a scroll to deliver to the VA’s leader.
After delivery, the PCs are given directions to the ruins and encounter ancient undead on the ruins’ grounds, still battling and haunting the place. Some corpse dispatching later, they get inside and meet fiercer undead enemies, who end up being controlled by Dark Spiders led by a Queen (they will have a few defiling abilities, and psionics, and some of them will have undead-controlling abilties, mostly the queen). This would be the second toughest encounter of the adventure. They find the documents stored in the ruins, bring them back, then the leader has time to analyze them, and the rest of the adventure (the leader’s murder, the suspision of a myrmeleon, the discovery of a magically-hidden cache, pursuit and confrontation of the myrmeleon) ensues. The myrmeleon is someone working closely with the VA’s leader, and the leader is a great researcher, so the myrmeleon is piggybacking on his research. Once the leader comes to the conclusion there is another ancient keep nearby, this time a cache of ancient defiling weapons…the myrmeleon strikes. The PCs find the location of the cache through the original scroll they brought the leader and which he never had time to look at.

No other suggestions? With the core synopsis done soon, I’ll draft up sketches for the encounters (type and difficulty of skill challenge, monster mix and levels) and present them here for feedback. The very last thing that will be done will be to create the monsters themselves, as I don’t want to have to modify them needlessly aftwerwards because of a change of scenery.

I like the changes you have made. Fixes some of my unanswered questions.
Now, I would focus on the myrmeloen’s motivation. What is his goal? Was he sent just to infiltrate the VA so he could report their identities to his S-K? Or was he sent to infiltrate to learn the location of the weapon cache? It seems like the second. If he was an ordinary myrmeloen, only there to learn who the VA members were he would already have completed this and could order their arrests. Also he would be in deep cover and would not take chances on his identify being given away, by having so many minions around who could reveal his identify.
So it seems like he is sent to find the weapon cache. If so, then he has his followers there in the nearby strong hold to help him. But I think the first encounter where a band of templars tries to stop them does not fit. If the myrmeloen is to succeed the templars would want to leave the VA alone so that the appropriate research can be conducted. I do not think you need to remove that encounter, maybe just change the reason the templars stop the PCs. Instead of suspicion of being VA members, the templars are a surprise group set to crack down on smuggling. They are conducting surprise searches of people leaving the city and the PCs get dragged into it. If the templars find the scroll from the VA they would still be arrested (and maybe later released by templars who want the myrmeloen to succeed) if they have not hiden it well.
Some other suggestions, the soldiers who raid the VA camp when the myrmeloen flees – instead of being city soldiers they could be mercenaries hired by the templars/ myrmeloen from a merchant house (say Stel or Tsalaxa) that has a fort nearby. Thus the VA was never suspicious as to why there are so many heavily armed soldiers there.
As I was reading the other posts, I saw the suggestion that the ruins be occupied by others and your reason for rejecting this idea. But it gave me an idea that perhaps the ruins could be inflitrated from below when the myrmeloen unlocks the magical entrance. So dark spiders could have come up from below as the PCs enter from above. But you have already found a way to work dark spiders into the adventure. )
For the first ruins, (the ones with the dark spiders) why not have more than undead. An encounter where they PCs stumble upon a DS animal that has just made a kill. The animal tries to defend its meal from the PCs. Not sure how the DS animals will transfer over to 4th edition, so I am not sure on a suggestion, but maybe a tembo or 2. If not in the ruins, could be used during the desert journey.

Thanks for all that input, band2! :)
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The myrmeleon is a regular infiltrator. After infiltrating some other VA chapter, he followed document transfers pertaining to subjects of his interest (and that of his SK), and the document transfers led to the secret VA camp. There he found it’s leader and ingraciated himself to him, becoming a kind of assistant.
His motivation is to bring the weapons back to his SK and get rewarded with even more power.
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...or, he could have gone rogue when he discovered all those appetizing mentions of super weapons, and intends to teleport the cache’s content into his own secret getaway place. In this instance the myrmeleon would only use hiered help, the templarate would not be involded.
And, if the PCs fail to stop him, he can come back later as a recuring villain. And if the defiler warlord does get resurrected in a later adventure, the warlord will be able to use rituals to track down his super weapons and either convince the myrmeleon to give him the weapons and join him, or will kill him and repossess the weapons.

The last encounter of the ruined keep, midway in the adventure, will take place in a partially ruined Morg Birth chamber used long ago by the defiler warlord to create morg lieutenants.
Now a days its Gray energies are uncontrolled, causing the dead within its limits to rise as Zombie Rotters, and dead dark spiders to rise as Chitin Rotters.
The Queen was corrupted by the chamber’s energies and became Grayfouled. She gains command of all those who die within the chamber’s bounds. As the PCs will kill dark spiders, they will rise as Chitin Rotters (Minions).

Pennarin,
I like the myrmeloen ideas. Just a suggestion, if he does go rogue do not let the PCs know. Make them think they are trying to stop him from delivering the weapons to his master. I think it would be more intense.
So both ruins are from the same defiler warlord? I was thinking that the hiden one would be his fortress while the second one would be the one he laid siege to so many years ago. But I guess he could have conqured the second one and set up the chamber within afterwards, to raise some of his dead troops.
I was starting to think of the Dark Spider Queen’s modivation. What is she doing in the ruins? What does she want? Unless you have that figured out already.

The warlord had many fortresses over the land, only one – the cache – was magically hidden, no use having your enemies get their hands on your weapon supplies.
The ruined keep would have been destroyed by an enemy army during the Jihad. It’s why there are so many undead surrounding the outside of the ruins, and why they will rise to fight the PCs once they stumble into their battlefield resting place.
The Queen’s motivation…I have no idea. Her own tribe, plus their reanimated dead, cleared out the inside of the ruins years before. She was intrigued by the Gray energies of the chamber and setup her nest there, hence her eventual corruption into Grayfouled.
As far as I know dark spiders are not so deep, as monsters go, so as to have great motivations. If you can think of one, go ahead!
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I’ve also been thinking about the myrmeleon. What if, during his years studying in the king’s library, he became obsessed with records about the defiler warlord and how he used to bestow eternal unlife unto his lieutenants, and how long ago he setup his own ressurection. The myrmeleon’s intervention in bringing the warlord back to life, he could tell himself, would earn him eternal unlife from his new master. Thus the myrmeleon, or former myrmeleon in this case, would attempt to find out as much as possible about the ancient holdings of the warlord….and the map engravings found in the cache would be just what he needs to locate the ressurection keep where his dead master could be brough back to life. The PCs could earn their XP defeating the myrmeleon but not before he escapes, making him into a powerful recurring villain with a grudge against the PCs. If they don’t follow up on his pursuit over the following years he will succeed at ressurecting his future master.

If you have a template already that just needs some fleshing out and or details by way of numbers that sounds rather like the thing I am good at, specific questions will get answer far more effectively than just randomly asking for fixes.
hendell, I would need any feedback you have on the Dark Spiders, which will be major encounter monsters for the adventure, if you can.
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redwulfe & band2: Would you like to share your emails with me so I can send you the latest write-up, which pretty much contains all the background info and context and encounter info to begin writting the adventure. A few discrepencies might have slipped in, and I’m too close to see, I’m afraid. I need any feedback you two can provide. My email is pennarin@gmail.com

I don’t have access to that form your link sent me to, nor do I plan to join another random forum just to view one link, and I don’t remember seeing dark spiders in any of the 3rd ed material to comment on them, if you a book and or page reference for where I can find the info on them I will see what I can whip up for you, if I have one of the books or PDFs for it lying around.

I don’t have access to that form your link sent me to, nor do I plan to join another random forum just to view one link, and I don’t remember seeing dark spiders in any of the 3rd ed material to comment on them, if you a book and or page reference for where I can find the info on them I will see what I can whip up for you, if I have one of the books or PDFs for it lying around.

hendell, send me a mail and I’ll attach a Word document to it.
Dark spiders were from DSMCII (2e) and Terrors of Athas (3e).