Thorin is long dead, but the dogs have continued breeding and residing in the tower. Generations later, the descendants of the original dogs still have the same gifts. The dogs have an extremely limited vocabulary, with words such as ‘Good,’ ‘Bad,’ ‘Dog,’ ‘Cat,’ ‘Me,’ ‘You,’ etc.

Encounters at the Dog Tower

Local farmers complain that wolves have been killing their livestock. The PCs discover the dogs while searching for the wolves, and likely will believe the dogs to be the cause of the problem. The dogs don’t understand the situation and are not responsible for the killings, but their limited intelligence and vocabulary makes this non-obvious. They will not attack the PCs unless provoked, and might even be convinced to help.

The PCs are searching for Thorin’s tower to recover some ritual or artifact, and must convince the dogs to allow them entrance.

She lights up a candle for hope to be found
Captive and blind by the darkness around
Firm as a mountain, she never will mourn
Timeless, she waits for the break of dawn
-The Maiden’s Hymn

On the northeastern coasts, just below the frozen wastes of Nordica, a small town named Maiden’s Watch operates a small, but successful, port.

The town is named for a statue found on a rocky outcropping of a mountain overlooking the town and abutting the sea. The statue is of an amazingly-lifelike maiden carrying a candle, and legend holds that it was once a woman who refused to accept that she’d been widowed.

For many years after her husband, a sailor, failed to return home, every night she would walk up to the outcropping and light a candle so that he might find his way home.

She did this until she died, and the gods took pity upon her. They rewarded her vigilance by turning her into a statue, and now every night after the sun sets and the stars come out, the stony candle held in the statue’s hands ignites into a brilliant light visible for miles around.

The Maiden herself has become a symbol of fidelity, dedication and love, and the statue also serves as a tourist attraction. It stands in the center of a ring of dirt, serving as a clear demarcation against the grass. Anyone or anything which crosses this threshold simply disappears, which has certainly saved the statue from vandalism over the many years, but also has stymied any attempts to study it.

Encounters at Maiden’s Watch

One night, the statue fails to light, causing chaos among the sailors depending on it to find their way to the harbor safely. The PCs are hired to investigate what’s happened and restore the maiden’s light.

The PCs need a star to activate some ancient machinery, and surmise that the maiden’s candle is a star itself. They must find a way to retrieve the candle, never mind dealing with the townsfolk who won’t be happy if they find out what the PCs are doing.

The Maiden’s Hymn stolen (though slightly changed) from Kamelot’s A Sailorman’s Hymn

Traditional means of fighting the creatures, which have come to be called slivers, have failed utterly, and now the king is starting a new tack. The court’s alchemist, and the king’s closest adviser, Tarangus Blaque, has been tasked with researching the creatures to find out how to get rid of them once and for all.

Having worked with the PCs before, and knowing this job will require reliable people, Tarangus sends for them personally. His first quest is a simple one; they must only capture one of the creatures, preferably one of the smaller ones (a sliver drone).

After the PCs acquire one of them, Tarangus studies it for a while, before deciding he needs a more potent specimen and sends the PCs out once more. On the bright side, Tarangus has concocted a salve which, applied to the crest of the creatures, should incapacitate them.

This time, it seems as though the slivers were expecting the PCs and set a trap for them. When the PCs do manage to acquire one of them, if they tell Tarangus about the trap, he will be quite surprised. He does not believe such creatures are capable of such complicated tactics; there must be a more intelligent mind guiding them.

Eventually, he discovers that the slivers communicate and identify each other with a specialized gland. If the PCs can procure more sliver drones (one for each PC), he believes he can make a “disguise” which would allow them to enter the hive and explore further.

He gives them some more of the sedative he’d created to aid them and accompanies them in their task. This time, the PCs discover that the slivers have adapted and are no longer affected by the sedative, complicating the task once more.

When the PCs capture the requisite slivers, Tarangus creates their “disguises.” Essentially, he takes the gland of each sliver and puts it in a small phial filled with a preserving compound. These phials are hung as pendants from each PCs neck. Finally, he warns them of two things:

1. Even preserved, the glands will not last for more than about an hour.
2. If, as he suspects, a more intelligent creature leads the slivers, it will likely be able to see through the disguises. They should be careful if they discover the leader and avoid being seen by it.

Tarangus gives the PCs a large barrel filled with a special blend of his own explosives. Their final task is to find somewhere within the lair to detonate it which will cause the most damage to the hive, and to determine if indeed there is a leader. If there is, the PCs should not allow the vile thing to escape.

Something happened recently, though. The ogres have formed a new raiding party, but this one has otten much farther. They’ve already sacked 3 villages and fought off two militias and a unit of the king’s best. The king hires the PCs to find out what’s gotten into the ogres.

The catalyst of these events is a blight on the ogres’ crops– specifically, on their hops and other plants important in the production of their alcohol. When the alcohol supply dried up, it enraged the ogres. On top of that, without the constant inebriation dulling their senses and judgment, it turns out that they’re amazingly skilled fighters and tacticians, taking full advantage of their size, the terrain, and other factors to defeat any who challenge them.

Alton Murdoch and Fuller were soldiers in the Cormean army whose unit had been all but destroyed. Stranded deep behind enemy lines, the two were the only ones left, and had vital information. It took all their talent and ability, but they eventually managed to make it back to friendly territory, only to be ambushed as they were escorted to the capitol.

Alton prefers not to talk much about exactly how it happened, saying only that some “peculiar circumstances” allowed his life to be saved by being transplanted into Fuller. In thanks for making the sacrifice, Alton adopted Fuller’s name as his own. Fuller and Alton share control of the body equally.

After debriefing, they were judged no longer fit for duty and honorably discharged. With nowhere of his own to go, Fuller did not resist when Alton wanted to return to Kettlebrook.

It was slow and hard at first to win people over, even Alton’s family, but over the years Fuller’s become fully integrated into the small town. The tireless and resilient warforged body is excellent for working fields and performing other farm work, and every evening they entertain the local children with stories or war and heroics.

Encounters with the Warforged Lifeboat

Given the sleepy agrarian community he resides in, both Fuller’s race and his combat prowess should prove quite a surprise. Depending on the circumstances, he could be friend or enemy to the PCs.

Fuller seeks help from the PCs, as he worries about Alton. Lately he’s felt as if Alton’s grip is loosening, and fears that he might be fading away. The reverse could be intriguing as well, Alton worried that he’s fully supplanting Fuller and not wanting his old friend to fade away.

Baron Obarof, the lord of the area, is not terribly concerned about the welfare of his missing subjects. In fact, as tax day is fast approaching, he suspects that the worthless worms are hiding so that they can avoid his collectors. To show them the folly of their plans, he intends to reclaim and redistribute any farmsteads which don’t pay in full on tax day. Oberaf nonchalantly explains that anyone who disappears and then miraculously reappears will be put to death for tax evasion.

The truth is that the Gray Wolves, a secret militia dedicated to the eradication of evil and defense of the innocent, has been sequestering the families in hidden save havens. They are preparing to overthrow Baron Obarof for his gross negligence, greed, and contempt towards his subjects. They do not know how long the coup will take, and want to ensure that Obarof can’t harm the innocents in retaliation to the Wolves’ actions.

As soon as the PCs try to help him, kobolds pop out and attack. If they’re going to save the man, they need to do it fast. He’s already lost consciousness and he’ll suffocate to death soon. Once they can clear his airways, he’s not out of the woods yet. The arrow has pierced through the side of his neck, narrowly missing his windpipe, but any healing magic would prove ineffective until the arrow is removed. Making matters worse, the arrow is firmly stuck in place by the same gluey substance.

The kobolds have a couple special arrows with pots of the glue on the end, which they use to try and immobilize the PCs. One of the arrows hit the man in the neck, leaving him in his current predicament. If the PCs can save him, he’ll explain that he’s a traveling merchant, and was attacked. He saw some of the kobolds make off with his horse and cart, and the rest hid when they saw the PCs coming.

Many years later, when he had to start thinking of such things, Sir Glorious decided that he could not entrust the Glorious Blade to anyone, for the forces of evil had hounded him since he first received it. They wanted it back, and they wanted to redeem its foul past.

After communing with his goddess, Sir Glorious thrust the blade into the stump of an oak tree cut down long ago. In but three years the stump regrew to its former majesty, and the Glorious Blade was trapped permanently inside the tree.

Today, the small hamlet of Valorvale has sprung up around that tree. Each year, the tree produces a few golden acorns which heal those who eat of them. Some in the town would monetize the nuts, but it is jealously guarded and they are only given to those who live there. The caretaker of the tree is an old man named Emmit Doxan, a surprisingly fit old man in his late nineties. Emmit is also the only one in the town who knows the tree’s history, a secret passed down from caretaker to caretaker.

Encounters with the Hamlet Under the Tree

One of Sir Glorious’s old nemeses is attempting to resurrect itself, and only the Glorious Blade can stop it. Needless to say, the townfolk won’t allow the tree to be chopped down, and even if they did losing the golden acorns would ruin the town. To add some pressure, the same foe the PCs are trying to defeat discovers the location of the Glorious Blade and sends minions out to get it for him.

Approaching the PCs, the man steps down from his horse and nearly falls over, but catches himself on the stirrup. He produces a thin package from his pocket. “Please,” he says, “you must get this to the city.”

If the PCs question him, he will say only that “they” will not be far behind and the PCs must hurry, for “it” cannot fall into “their” hands. When he’s convinced the PCs to do this task for him, the man takes a signet ring off his finger with a symbol of a hammer over a shield, telling them to bring that along with his package to Malleus Hall and find Gregor Teuber.

At some point, perhaps midsentence, the soldier falls to the ground. His burden transferred, he’s finally allowed himself the peace of death.

The Brothers in Exile are a group of “monsters” which seek to live peacefully. The brothers include lycanthropes, intelligent undead, intelligent beasts, and others whose mere appearance is enough to get “normal” people up in arms.

They were founded by a minotaur named Zortago. Zortago actually had a home, once. He’d been secretly sleeping in a barn to wait out a terrible storm, when he heard people shouting for a lost child. Zortago snuck out to search for the boy, and found him at the same time as the townspeople; the boy was pinned under a tree in a small depression which was rapidly filling with water. He lifted the tree, allowing the boy to slip free just in time to avoid drowning, and he was allowed to stay in the town ever since.

Things were okay for a while, but peoples’ memories can be short, and soon some of them grew to distrust him. Eventually, the family which had put him up found themselves at odds with the other townspeople, and though the boy and his parents implored Zortago to stay, he left so that they could find peace.

Through his travels, Zortago eventually met a wereboar named Lysander, who’d been thrown out of his village after contracting his condition, and a ghoul called Jhourgmand who took pains to only eat the carrion left behind by the kills of other creatures.

Today, the Brothers in Exile operate three monasteries. Zortago and Lysander each head one, and the third is headed by a vampire named Kelstas. Zortago’s monastery is located in a valley and provides aid to several nearby villages. Lysander’s is located near the summit of a mountain, far from any civilization. Kelstas’s is located in a forest replete with wildlife and caters to those with special dietary requirements, like Jhourgmand and Kelstas himself.

Encounters with The Brothers in Exile

The PCs’ benefactor tells them of a haven of evil not far, where horrendous creatures congregate and terrorize the hillside, lead by a ferocious minotaur.

A PC’s loved one is dying of a disease which can only be cured by a mummy, and he learns there may be one at Lysander’s monastery.