14. HOTDQ - Castle Naerytar part I

14. HOTDQ – Castle Naerytar part I

LiquidAnalog

March 1, 2024

This is part 14 of my guide for Hoard of the Dragon’s Queen campaign. You can read all chapters of this guide here:

Episode 6 – Castle Naerytar

This is a brilliant chapter, but it requires a lot of prep from you. It is a tense sandbox with competing powerful factions, which if done right by you and the players should lead you to success. Be sure to read the module to absorb the attitude of the different factions, their daily routine, and consider how you can pass this to the players as they advance through the episode.

Some tips and suggestions from great authors:

As usual, Sly Fourish has some interesting suggestions (which I did not incorporate, but you may)
Hack & Slash is sharp
Merric’s Musings has some good points to consider

The Episode Synopsis

This chapter is described as a dynamic sandbox – you need to decide how you want to approach it.

I suggest the following synopsis.

The heroes meet Snapjaw, and take him as a guide to his tribe.
The heroes absorb the slavery situation of the Lizardfolk tribe, and role-play to place themselves as champions, for getting the Lizardfolk’s help getting into the castle.
Once in, they learn the lizardfolk have stashed swords and are like a tight spring, waiting for someone to lead them
The heroes spy on the castle life, maybe do some light incursions into some sections (quite dangerous)
The heroes arrange a mass revolt, coordinating a nightly surprise attack
The castle is a blood bath – all factions are fighting each other, the heroes fight the cultists and Rezmir, that escapes into the caves
The heroes encounter Azbera Joss for a tense discussion
The heroes follow Rezmir into the caves – some encounters and mystery, eventually finding the portal and going through.

Following The Trail

The heroes should easily spot strange bare foot marks (Lizardfolk) and follow the tracks.

This is a great opportunity to get them into the spirit of the mere: Muddy terrain, puddles, overgrown vines, strange noises from all directions. Be careful with suggestions of Will-o-wisps, unless side tracking is something you want to happen.

This is a great opportunity to introduce a Giant Frog encounter – it could simply grab the smaller character and leap away while chewing. A very scary and unusual encounter, which also foreshadows the Giant Frogs in the castle.

Meeting Snapjaw

There is obviously a tense moment here for you as DM, where the party encounters a group of lizardfolk. Likely a fight starts (the lizardfolk are not friendly) – but one needs not only to be spared for questioning, but also has to become the party’s guide and ally. This could be challenging to pull off, depending on your players.

Snapjaw can do some things that single him out as a positive force – even as the battle starts. During the fight he could be less effective (maybe to the point of getting noted by the heros). When his buddies are slain, he raises his hands and shouts in broken Common “No Shoot! Me Help!!” and then “You help me, Me help you”…

His motives at this point are that he thinks he found a group of champions that can lead his tribe to salvation – and he should not waste time getting this point across. “You champions big, fight our enemies”.

The heroes know they want to follow the loot crates, so once he gets it he can say that he knows the way.

Once they are on the canoes, and they approach the Lizardfolk guards, he can volunteer to speak with the guards, point to the heroes and speak with passion, and persuade the guards that he found heroes. If any of the heroes understand Draconic, they can hear he speaks in high favor of the heroes.

The Scaly Death Tribe

Its important that once they reach the tribe, even before he gathers the elders, that he will start sharing whats going on. See below for some of the quotes I prepared for Snapjaw.

By the time he summons the tribe elders, the opportunity should be apparent for the heroes – this could be their way into the castle, with a friendly warrior tribe (albeit in slavery). This is a chance for the heroes to do their best with charismatic and powerful speech – persuading the tribe that they are indeed the champions. Spell effects could help greatly…

Approaching Castle Naerytar

Approaching the castle, hopefully with Snapjaw, the heroes should see for themselves the situation. You can have them see a few scenes:

A Black dragon flies far overhead (and all Lizardfolk cower and pray “Voaraghamanthar!”)
Bullywugs beat a Lizardman with a stick because he spilled a bucket
(from Hack & Slash): 4 Bullywugs dragging a man in cultist robes, screaming “I’m a cultist! Let me go you stupid beasts!” in terrified fear.
The ken of Giant Lizards is rattling, they are restless

Entering the Castle

My players masqueraded as cultists, and went with Snapjaw and a few other Lizardfolk, and simply entered the castle through the front gate, guarded by Bullywugs and a giant frog. This positioning (cultists + Lizardfolk) is fine by all factions, and makes it easy to get in. Some tense moments but they refrained from attacking.

Absorbing the Castle

Snapjaw can lead the heroes to the Lizardfolk barracks, and even show them the stashed blades when the time is right. As they hide in one of the rooms I made sure to have a window looking into the courtyard, so they can spy the basics of the castle routine without much risk.

The castle itself is alive – here are some important cycles and events you can see in the castle:

The Bullywugs announce the daily routine with their big drum – breakfast, lunch, dinner – this could also coincide with guard shift changes
A lizardfolk hunting party returns with the daily catch only to be greeted with anger by the cook (“Crocodile again? How many times did I say not croc?!”)
The kitchen preps meals to the castle – everyone eats both inside and outside in the courtyard. A chance to see the cook, his human and Lizardfolk helpers, who comes to eat and when
The cultists of course eat as well – make sure to decide how many are there in every building, as your players will definitely keep count
Rezmir commanding the cultists, meeting Azbara Joss for a discussion, getting to and from her quarters to the entrance to the caves
Azbara Jos can also be seen, probably talking with Rezmir
Borngray could be glimpsed training his squad of honor Lizardfolk guard
A lizardmen could be seen riding or leading a giant lizard outside

Sneaking within the Castle

As a word of advice, the module does a poor job in the castle information organization front. The maps in the module are oriented 90 degrees sideways to the others (not confusing at all), and also contain some inconsistencies (The links I placed above contain some clarifications).

Additionally, the book describes each floor from start to end – but the castle is designed as 4 or 5 loosely-connected towers – so traversing a single tower floor by floor becomes a frustrating experience for the DM, to find the right page and number. SAD.

My suggestion – prepare a PDF with a page for each floor, oriented correctly, and annotate the inhabitants and major items on each room and section. This will make it much easier for you to answer “how many Bullywugs do we see” without getting to the module every time.

Very important note: The passphrase to the Portal is a secret you need the heroes to find, even before they understand what it means. In my game, the heroes sneaked invisibly to Rezmir’s chambers when they know she was away in the caves, and found the following cryptic note on her desk:

“Circle: Giant Wings”

This of course hints of the magic circle, and the passphrase hints of the flying castle.

Another important note on the various monsters and traps in the castle: I dumped the Specters on the NE tower, and also trimmed down the number of Gargoyles protecting the telescope. I think there are very well defined NPCs and groups here, and you need to be careful not to throw too many distractions or random encounters – the real battles are ahead.

The Great Revolt

So what would the heroes do? In my game, once the heroes figured out where Rezmir resides, they conspired to assassinate Rezmir in her sleep, and let that be the ignition of the great Lizardfolk revolt. This did not go smoothly for the heroes, as they did not anticipate how strong Rezmir is (and almost died in the process). However she managed to dimension door out of her room using a Bracelet of Spell Storing she had, and escaped to the caves to teleport through the portal. This was a very tense encounter which added more urgency to the heroes to follow her through to the caves and find where she went.

Once the great revolt starts, make sure to spend most of your play time on the players and their choices. This is a major cross-site battle, with tens of skirmishes across the map. It helps that the heroes have constrained field of view – in the castle, they can maybe see whats going on the court, and only hear what is going on on the fields outside.

For the courtyard, describe vividly encounters as the heroes battle or sneak their way through. You can pre-roll them, decide on the outcome before the session – or roll a single die in real-time:

Smoke rises from the Bullywug barracks, pain shrieks sound from there
A group of lizardfolk fights a Bullywug in the courtyard with their shiny blades (they are great at it)
Two Bullywugs beat a Lizardman
An angry giant lizard is running amock in the courtyard and eating bullywugs

However they can also hear what is going on beyond the castle walls:

Bullywugs hurl boulders from the upper barbikan down at lizardfolk below
The barbican alarm drum is banging frantically – and then a sudden scream and the drum abruptly stops
Sounds of battle raging outside – metal clings, pain shrieks of Bullywugs
Angry grawls of giant lizards tearing things apart

The Caves

The heroes follow Rezmir into the caves, and discover some Bullywugs that are unaware of the carnage upstairs, a crane and pulley system, a huge pool with frogs (nope, not getting in there), and a dead end. Where does this lead?!

The Portal

The portal room with the floor covered in mists is great. The players have to think, and actively search this room to find something.

In my game only when they used Detect Magic on this room the wizard got struck with the immense magical aura of this spell, and could see the outline of the runes beneath the fog. However if the heroes search a lot and fail to find it, you can also have the high perception character spot some shape beneath the mist as they search the room.

As I wrote above, the portal is activated with a secret phrase, that the only way the heroes can learn it is if its written as a note somewhere – likely at Rezmir’s desk. Without plating this clue ahead of time, the heroes will have a hard time activating the portal – or, alternatively, you can wing it in case the heroes did not find the note – that the circle can be activated with some hidden switch nearby.

Activating the portal and getting through it should be your chance of magnificent storytelling. As they activate the portal, the runes light up for everyone to see (not only the mage), and a shimmering wall of rainbow colors springs forth from the floor all the way to the high cave ceiling. They can see vague shapes through the colors that are clearly not there.

As they gain courage to step through the portal, a bright flash, darkness and light again, coupled with a grip of cold wind and a smell of pines. If the wizard is passing through the portal still under detect magic its likely he will be temporary blinded for a minute from the experience of passing through a major spell…

The heroes should find themselves at the center of a stone circle, old runes carved on the floor, pine trees all around, view of mountains, and a path that leads west!

Follow on part 2 of Castle Naerytar: 15. HOTDQ – Episode 6 – Castle Naerytar part II – NPCs