Continuing our exploration of the minor factions at play here, we’ll now look at those whose presence or attention are centered on the Neverwinter Wood.

Gray Wolf Uthgardt

The Gray Wolves were just another typical Uthgardt tribe of no particular distinction until a few hundred years ago, when they took in human refugees from Gauntlgrym who had been fleeing their captivity by the mind flayers who lived there. Some of those had been afflicted by lycanthropy. Time and primal magic made this condition the tribe’s main power and badge of honor.

In the context of the Neverwinter campaign, this is kinda bad for the PCs because the Gray Wolves have been captivated by the Shadovar’s honeyed words and recruited as their agents and shock troops. They expect to be citizens of their new world-spanning empire, and to be given dominion over all of the North’s wilderness in exchange for their service.

Fortunately, not all members of the tribe fell for this. Those that didn’t were cast out and banded together into a group known as the Forsworn, who work to oppose the works of the Netherese. The Forsworn avoid fighting their own kin, but the Grey Wolves do not return the favor and try to kill them on sight.

The book recommends using existing werewolf and shifter stat blocks when building encounters against Grey Wolves, and gives us stats for a Werewolf Stormcaller (level 6 Artillery) that fulfills a niche not usually covered by those blocks. It also has stats for Ethraniev Marrowslake, a particularly bloodthirsty Gray Wolf pack leader (level 7 brute). Both work as you’d expect for werewolves, with the ability to change shape and both weapon and infectious bite attacks. The stormcaller has ranged spells that do lightning or thunder damage.

The Pack Outcast PC was among the first of the Gray Wolves to be exiled, since they didn’t agree to join the Shadovar right at the start. The Forsworn were exiled after that, as the tribe’s tactics became more and more violent. As the campaign start, dissidents are being executed instead of exiled. The Outcast has an easy in with the Forsworn as written, because the group will likely recognize the PC as being right all along.

The book says the GM is free to make the Forsworn still be evil if they don’t want the PCs allying with them, though I probably wouldn’t do that. It leans too much on the “savage barbarian” trope.

PCs who become friends of the Forsworn might be granted an utility power named Primal Surge as a blessing or reward. It’s an encounter power that triggers when you use one of your other encounter powers. It lets you roll a d20, and on a result of 10 or higher the other power is not expended.

Iliyanbruen Fey

This is the group the Iliyanbruen Guardian PC belongs to. As we saw earlier, they’re descendants of eladrin who fled to the Feywild to survive the destruction caused on their kingdom by the fall of Xinlenal. When the barriers between worlds started thinning, they sent expeditions back to the place where they crossed, and found it occupied by evil fey. They drove those out, and built an outpost named New Shandarar on both sides of the portal. Then they explored their old ruins in the middle world and discovered that they had been ravaged by more than time and disuse - many of their sacred relics and cultural treasures had been plundered.

The expeditionary force made it their mission to recover what was stolen. All of them are pretty angry about this: the main difference is some of them are angry just at the people responsible for the looting, while others are angry at All The Mortals and want to genocide/conquer the region on principle.

Whether moderate or extremist, the fey of Iliyanbruen are likely to respond with violence to anyone trespassing on their territory now, unless the Guardian PC is with them.

The expedition’s commander, Merrisara Winterwhite, is a moderate and the main reason they haven’t started attacking the region. Several of the community leaders under her, however, are extremists, and spend all of their time agitating for more bloodshed. One in particular, a dude named Addemios Three-Dawn, is a secret worshiper of Asmodeus and in league with the evil fey the expedition drove away from the portal. He’s the assistant to one of the city’s priests of Corellon, and his influence is responsible for a lot of the recent upswing in violent sentiment among the eladrin.

The encounter table for New Shandarar is made up of heroic-tier fey creatures: elves, eladrin, dryads, unicorns, treants and lots of trained fey beasts. Addemios is statted up as Level 5 Artillery with ranged and area spells. He’s far from the most powerful individual in this faction, so I’m guessing that getting them to back off would involve more than defeating him. That’d still be an important step, though.

Should the extremists win out, the fey could move to “major faction” status relatively quickly, as they are a significant military force with some pretty powerful creatures. They certainly believe they have what it takes to conquer the region and kill everyone they dislike, but they are probably unaware of the true extent of the Thayan, Netherese, and Aberrant presences here.

Cult of the Dragon

Unlike the Ashmadai, these cultists have a lot of trouble passing as typical citizens. The local cell was busy with the usual Cult of the Dragon activities, which are sucking up to evil dragons and trying to convince them to become dracoliches. This changed when Valindra (the lich leading the Thayans) took their leader’s Ring of the Dragon.

Now they work for her as muscle and are also tasked with finding a way to raise the dead Lorragauth as a dracolich. Their leader, Adimund Kroskas, is working on that as slowly as possible while he tries to figure out a way to recover his ring. He hasn’t made much progress in that either and desperately needs something to change in his situation. He’ll probably try to make a move when a significant setback occurs in Valindra’s plan - likely one caused by the PCs.

Their encounter table includes humans, genasi, dragonborn, and other “typically playable” stat blocks.