Kingdoms Of Amalur Re-reckoning Special Delivery Chest Scaling
Heron Mathis
This is a really niche offering- DM's notes best used by someone already familiar with Kingdoms of Amalur:Reckoning to DM a party that can't know the plot of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. That's why I drop the same disclaimer about 80 times on this page.
These are DM facing notes that work for my head, not for player readability. That's also why I drop the same disclaimer about 80 times on this page. Also GM Binder doesn't format correctly on Firefox. Use Chrome or Edge.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Videogameining is not a DnD module. It can not simply be inserted wholesale into a PDF without changes. Changes have been made to take the MMOesque quest giving structure and turn into a useable TTPRG skeleton.
Published and polished adventures are ostensibly complete and edited for mass usability. This is neither. These are rough notes that DMs will have to alter to their own style and their party's deviation from the planned path. Again, familiarity with the video game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, or its remaster Kingdoms of Amalur: Rereckoning, or its sequel 3 Fast 3 Reckoning is key.
The Faelands lies at the north of a large continent, separated in twain by a mighty river known as the Vein. The landmass is home to two types of humanoid immortal Fae: Summer Fae and Winter Fae. Neither is necessarily good nor evil. Summer Fae abound in the western Faelands, and Winter Fae live in the east. They stay out of human sight and their doings are unknown. They do not maintain a presence where humans can see them, mostly. All that is left in public of the mighty fae empires are ruins and old cairns. The main mortal races are humans, light elves, dark elves, and gnomes. The Almain are the hardy human ethnicity conerned with farms, kingdoms, and honor. The oft-tatooed Verani are more navally concerned, well-traveled, and nomadic. The Ljosalfar, the light elves, are considered haughty and proud, and hold the most political influence worldwide. The dark elves, the Dokkalfar, are stereotyped as cunning sharp-tongued thieves and assassins, but are the "native" political power in the realm. The gnomes are technologically advanced and weird.
The largest cities sit on the coast or the river, with only smaller realms and towns inland. The chaos of the war has caused these cities to have little influence on the realms outside their walls. On the east side of the divide, an alliance of humans/elves in the city of Mel Senshir has been besieged for over a decade by the Tuatha, a radical faction of Winter Fae, which have entirely conquered the rest of the Eastern Faelands up to the walls of Mel Senshir. The war is at an uneasy stalemate, and if Mel Senshir falls, its sister city of Rathir, and all of the Western Faelands, are in danger. Although the mortal alliance is mighty, the Tuatha resurrect in their home fortress when they die, meaning the onslaught will go on forever if something does not change. Magic as of late has gone very astray, monsters are roaming where they once were absent, many large settlements have disbanded, and rumor has is that the Tuatha Lord Gadflow's army intends to herald the birth of a new evil god. And then of course, the party died.
The players awake atop of a giant mound of rotting corpses with amnesia, all their starting gear intact. The pile sits on a small rock ledge surrounded on three sides by an impossibly large cavern, with mighty rock stalactites reaching down from the ceiling. Looking up, they can see a wide chute some 100 feet in the air from which they must have been deposited. Many enormous underground waterfalls pour off in the distance, and beneath the ledge is an endless drop to the realms below. On the fourth side of the ledge are the following things, which the players can examine after they slide or climb down the heap of bodies.
The players follow a long hallway, with more and more support scaffolding and magical wall torches appearing as they head away from the pile of bodies. Eventually they reach a bend where the wall gives way to a view of a far off skirmish on a long wooden scaffolding bridge over a long cavernous drop. Gnomes are being slaughtered by a mysterious group of humanoid individuals clad in grey, black, and red armor. A scant few gnomes dressed similar to Roman centurions are doing their best to fight back, performing impressive feats of acrobatic agility in combat despite their heavy armor, but they are not faring well. There is no way for the party to reach them, and indeed soon part of the cave ceiling gives way, crashing into the bridge and sending the combatants plummeting. The walkway the players are on, however, continues, and soon they find themselves in Room 2.
Three Giant Rats stalk a giant crematorium that fills up the entire cavern room. The players may recognize the floor here bears a resemblance to the pallet connected crematorium column in the previous room if they examined it. They can also hear the room they just passed through caving in, and so there is a feeling that they may need to hurry. The players have options here:
Passing through a hallway with strange glass columns filled with glowing green rocks, (DC15 Arcana check to reveal they are primed for some sort of resurrection magic), the party will hear a male cry for help up ahead.
Encel, a gnome in his early fifties with a powerful mustache dressed in gnomish worksmen gear, is being attacked by two Tuatha Grunts, warriors that resemble the strange soliders they saw killing gnomes in the previous room. These Tuatha are not wearing helmets, and so the party can see their grayish skin and pointed ears, a DC10 Intelligence check will reveal they are decidedly NOT elvish. A success here grants a permanent +1 to Intelligence ability checks. It is not possible to continue without intervening in this fight.
Three of those strange glass pillars glowing with green energy are throughout the room, some with skeletons with their hands wedged into broken glass, their bony fingers in direct contact with the large green shards. Shoving either Tuatha into the exposed green stone is an immediate kill. Strangely, the stone does not have this effect on player characters. Encel will throw a scene-ending rock at the skull of an attacking Tuatha if the battle starts to lean toward the possibility of a player death.
After being rescued, Encel thanks the party for rescuing him, and gasps when he realizes they were just dead bodies he had seen before, saying he had only just committed their corpses to the pile slightly earlier. Encel is apologetic about what he has done, saying he would never have done so if he knew they were alive. He says they must have been resurrected by the Well of Souls, and that they need to go find "The Professor."
Parties that probe further will discover that The Professor's name is Fomorous Hughes, a gnome inventor of grand but eccentric acclaim. If he is asked about the Tuatha, Encel will state that the Tuatha Deohn are an evil force that have sworn themselves to be the enemies of all the "young races." He is surprised to to see them "this far inland"
Any further questioning will lead Encel to insist on the party speaking to Hughes about it, and he takes off through the caves. As if to accentuate his urgency, the party will hear the cave-in approaching from behind them.
Running through the dungeon behind Encel reveals that the cave-ins are not natural: Tuatha are bursting in and blasting down walls with magical explosive devices. A DC10 Dexterity Saving throw is required for players to jump free of one too-close concussive blast. Failures result in 1d4 thunder damage. Successes result in a permanent +1 to Dexterity saves.
Outrunning the invading Tuatha becomes perilous, as the walls explode from all sides, and some Tuatha approach from the front. A DC10 Perception check is needed to eyeball the exact path needed to narrowly dodge the reach of the Tuatha's weapons as they pass their foes. Successes lead to a permanent +1 to Perception, failures lead to a slight cut on the arm or leg as the Tuatha swipe at the sprinting party, resulting in 1 damage.
Encel comes to the rescue of the first character blasted to the ground or cut by a Tuatha blade, picking them up or throwing a rock at their attacker while helping the affected character regain their stride.
The players chase Encel into a massive cavern with a ceiling stretching up so far that they realize they are far further underground than they may have thought. This room however, is walled entirely, except for where ancient stone has given way to the natural rock and dirt underneath. The floor is covered in 1 foot of shallow dimly glowing green water, which a DC10 Arcana or Investigation check will reveal to be harmless. Standing in the water will confer a one time heal of 5 temporary hit points to each party member.
On the other side of a large wall of fallen stone and rubble, there is an enormous multi-story stone column, adorned with gnomish stained-glass at each tier commands the center of the room. Inside the mighty structure is a smaller but still grand floating transparent pillar with blue magical light swarming around the inside, and a column of brewing green energy shooting forever upward into the distant ceiling of the grand cavern. This is clearly the Well of Souls.
It is at this point that the freestanding tower explodes. The players can only watch as the horror unfolds, with debris and dust raining everywhere, obscuring everyone's vision. When the dust settles, nothing remains of The Well of Souls, or of the gnomes. Encel is nowhere to be seen. A short hallway leading out of the room reveals a staircase leading upward.
The party ascends for a while, until they reach a study filled with books, chalkboards, strange magical doohickeys, and now-recognizable gnomish design. Inside they see a bespectaceld gnome, bald on the top but with pointed and fiery grey/red hair around the sides of his head. Seemingly unperturbed by the events outside, he is studying a large cauldron brimming with violet energy. He is the very image of a gnomish inventor.
c80f0f1006