This is part 13 of my guide for Hoard of the Dragon’s Queen campaign. You can read all chapters of this guide here:

• LiquidAnalog’s DM’s Guide to Hoard of the Dragon Queen
• 2. HOTDQ – Lore, Clues and Secrets Reveal
• 3. HOTDQ – Before you begin
• 4. HOTDQ – Episode 1 – Greenest in Flames, part I – The Dragon Attack
• 5. HOTDQ – Episode 1 – Greenest in Flames, part II – The Long Night
• 6. HOTDQ – Episode 2 – The Raiders’ Camp
• 7. HOTDQ – Episode 3 – The Dragon Hatchery
• 8. HOTDQ – Episode 4 part I – The Road to Elturel
• 9. HOTDQ – Episode 4 part II – Elturel
• 10. HOTDQ – Episode 4 part III – A boat ride to Baldur’s Gate
• 11. HOTDQ – Episode 4 part IV – Baldur’s Gate
• 12. HOTDQ – Episode 4 part V – The Death house
• 13. HOTDQ – Episode 4 part VI + Ep 5 – The caravan to the Carnath Roadhouse
• 14. HOTDQ – Episode 6 – The Mere and Castle Naerytar – part I
• 15. HOTDQ – Episode 6 – Castle Naerytar part II – NPCs
• 16. HOTDQ – Episode 8 – Skyreach Castle – part I
• 17. HOTDQ – Episode 8 – Skyreach Castle – part II

Episode 4 – Onto The Caravan!

The most major change I did in the entire campaign is here. Its a three day caravan trip, and not as the module suggests, a 60 day ordeal.

As written, the caravan to the Mere should take the heroes on slow wagons from Baldur’s Gate to north of Waterdeep. If you make the calculation with wagon speed, this will take about 2 months. Personally I think this design is not practical – mainly because I tend to run the game in an immersive way, and spending two months of mostly boring travel basically asks you to either spend this time (day after day), or instead, break the immersion and speed-run this section (“the first week had passed…”). Not my thing, but you might be OK with that.

The other really challenging design decision with the above route is that this path leads the heroes straight to the gates of Waterdeep – the capital of the Sword Coast. Not only did you just spend countless hours making Baldur’s Gate alive and worthy for your players, but now you are expected to describe another huge city? The module hand-waves that the characters don’t have time to visit it, but players are stubborn. IMHO this is a huge pitfall that I wanted to avoid at all costs. So not going near Waterdeep.

The module supplies a very long list of slightly detailed NPCs – but contrary to good NPCs in other sections of the module, that have motives and agenda, none of these NPCs have anything beyond thin veneer of first impression, and are completely irrelevant to the campaign or plot in any way.

So. I think this entire section is a complete waste of your energy as DM, and should be scraped to its bare essentials.

I recommend you make the trip from Baldur’s Gate to the Carnath Roadhouse only three days. This is enough time for several important caravan encounters – but don’t require you to play 20 shallow NPCs, and allows you to place some important or fun events throughout this short trip before the heroes reach the real action that advances the story – in Carnath Roadhouse.

Obviously, this decision requires the most drastic hack of the module – and is to decide where to place the Mere. I placed the Carnath Roadhouse near the Trollclaw Ford at The Trollclaws, and the mere at the northern part of the the TrollClaws. There isn’t a lot of information on the TrollClaws in general in the Forgotten Realms canon – here is what the Forgotten Realms wiki has gathered. So IMHO placing even a big swamp (half the size of the Mere of Dead Men) at the northern part of the hilly area will not break much of the canon. Who knows? It could have undiscovered swamps – after all, this hilly area is rarely travelled. I also took care not to call the mere in the iconic name “Mare of Dead Men” – its easy, as the inhabitants just call it “The Swamp” or “home”.

So I took the same story as in the book, and simply made it a Baldur’s Gate one, instead of Waterdeep/Neverwinter: The swamp, that was in the past farther north, recently started expanding south, and reached the curve of the road near the ford – which forced construction crews from Baldur’s Gate to protect the road around this curve. Hence the Carnath Roadhouse.

Caravan Events

The book spends 7 pages to describe the NPCs that are in the caravan, and many many encounters. IMHO most of those events are flatly non interesting – or more importantly, don’t drive the story forward – or worse, are a waste of time and focus.
From the huge list of events provided, here are the events I recommend.

Fields of the Dead

The road twists and wanders through hills dotted with ancient battlefields, dolmens, and barrow mounds.
This is a chance for your heroes to roll History or Arcana, to remember that around the mid–9th century DR, before the founding of Amn, this land was a favored battleground for control of the lands north of Calimshan.

And indeed they can see that bones still litter the fields, and cairns of the dead are everywhere. with the occasional turned up skeletons in rusting armor, weapons, and other detritus.

Spider Woods

A night encounter – 3 Ettercaps and 2 Giant Spiders attack the horses and the guards… The ettercaps are actually trying to free the horses and take them so they can eat them – if they succeed the heroes need to chase the ettercaps into the woods. A chilling encounter by gruesome creatures, with chance to be poisoned.

Contraband

The cultist cart ahead of the heros turns on a sharp bend and the wheel breaks. One creat tumbles free and smashes open – revelaing dozens of beatuful jewlery wrapped in wool. Everyone stops and the cultists jump and start to collect the loot…

A chance for the heroes to “help” and maybe be more creative (the priest marked one of the crates on the cart which he later located in the workshop room in Castle Naerytar). Tense conversations with angry cultists (“our instructions from Rezmir were to keep this secure and secret!”), a witness that gets curios and starts to ask questions (too bad he will be found dead in the morning). Overall a great encounter that provides both role-play, tension, and also proves a point that the treasure is indeed here.

Recognized!

One of the heroes is recognized by one of the cultists they spoke with at the camp (I guess its the ugly one with the scar).
This might lead to an accident – a loose wheel – where a connector was clearly taken out.

Major NPCs along the trip

The Cultists

In my run, the heroes chose to join the caravan as independent wagon, masquerading as two guards for two female aristocrats (with full makeup and wigs). However you can present the option of joining as guards to other carts.

However half of the caravan carts are cultists in disguise, and a few others. You can use the list of NPCs to give some color to the caravan (some of them could be fun to add). My players were so focused on the cultists that most of their encounters were with the cultists themselves, which led to tense chats, trying to gather information and rumors, and almost getting recognized.

Rumors are actually very important here. When talking to, or eavesdropping on the cultists, you should introduce some rumors of a new ally (A Giant? A Troll?), Rumors of getting help from another dragon? Or rumors that are completely bogus (“devils?”).

Jemma ?

I am fond of Jemma, as depicted in the book. However the module requests you to suddenly introduce a mysterious feisty female character that knows everything about what the heroes are up to, saves them from danger, and disappears into the night – not to be seen again for the rest of this book. (Returning in the next book does not count). I suspect this could be a frustrating experience for the players, and think that this is not good enough – this character has a lot of upside, but I could not figure out how to incorporate her better into the story within this campaign. So instead of getting to a frustrating experience for players (and myself), I simply cut her off script. I could be wrong though – you can also make it into a mystery that will never be solved. Decide for yourself.

The Red Wizard ?

IMHO this is another place where introducing the red wizard is not really worthwhile, nor does it make sense. The encounter with him in Naerytar Castle is so much more impactful. So I left him out of this caravan.

Episode 5 – Carnath Roadhouse

Episode 5 is a great one. Everything is solid here as described. This is a spy story, where the heroes try to blend in while opening sharp eyes on what is happening with the loot crates, to discover the next phase of the journey.

There is some tension with Bog Luck – I also introduced guards that patrol both inside and outside. I would assume that the Cult operation will not allow a random traveller to get to the loot, and also don’t forget that this is in a hostile area (both in the original and also in my placement, now in the center of the TrollClaws).

So overall – distracting guards, sneaking, stealth and invisibility bring great moments to this chapter.

Next: 14. HOTDQ – Episode 6 – The Mere and Castle Naerytar – part I