The Neverwinter Wood dominates the northern half of our regional map and is much larger than the city that gives it its name. It’s a classic Creepy Forest, where the canopies block out all sunlight and even in the safer trails it seems like someone is always watching you from the shadows. And that’s just the baseline mood - the Wood is also currently full of ill-intentioned outsiders.

Characters in a Neverwinter campaign might need to trek through this place for any number of reasons. This section of the chapter covers some of the Wood’s most notable places, but it’s large enough that you could run a full hex-crawling campaign on it.

The book actually includes rules for a “Creepy Woods” hazardous terrain type that can be included in exploration or combat maps. Anyone on this terrain when a fight starts must roll a save before rolling Initiative - if they fail, they’re surprised during the first round. They also gain a -2 to Will while on Creepy spaces and when they fail a Perception check there they always think they heard something that’s not there.

This first post covers the “smaller” areas and “standard” geographical features of the Woods. It also contains several faction strongholds that will each get their own post.

The Crags

This is a large mountain range that splits the Wood in two, running from NE to SW. Mount Hotenow is the most notable place in the Crags, as it’s where the Neverwinter River starts and also the source of the eruption that caused the cataclysm.

There’s a lot more besides the volcano though - this is a typical D&D mountain range full of monsters, caves, and hidden valleys and is also rumored to contain paths to lost Gauntlgrym. Whether those exist or not, the range does definitely contain a lot of old Delzoun outposts.

Those outposts will give the Heir of Delzoun something to marvel at even if they don’t find a path to the lost city here. They’re also targets for Netherese plundering in their unceasing quest for magic items to burn.

Iceless Waterways

All of the Wood’s rivers are warmed by Hotenow’s heat, so they never freeze even during winter, and generally act to keep the forest warm and untouched by the seasons. They teem with non-monstrous aquatic wildlife but never gave rise to monsters - except for the River Morgur, the northernmost tributary of the Neverwinter. It’s still iceless, but also has river monsters.

Bones of Thundertree

Thundertree used to be a logging village that produced a lot of quality timber. It was completely destroyed by the eruption, and all of its surviving inhabitants fled to never return. The place is now haunted by possessed plant monsters (take plant monster stat blocks of your choice and give them undead traits). Aside from them, only the dwarf Favria, leader of the more violent faction of the Ashmadai, calls this place home. She lives in an underground wine cellar.

I was given to understand her whole Ashmadai sub-faction used this place as a base, so it looks like there was a miscommunication between different authors here. I’d probably add them here if I ran a Neverwinter campaign. Maybe say those plant monsters are possessed by devils instead of undead. How do you like evil treants with 20 fire resistance?

The Tower of Twilight

There used to be a wizard’s tower built in the middle of a lake island. It, and the bridge leading to it, only appeared at night, becoming more solid as the sun set and fading out again when it rose. During the Spellplague, the tower vanished entirely and did not return until after the cataclysm. Now, it appears sporadically with no set schedule, and no one knows what goes on in there anymore.

One suggestion from the book is that the tower fades out of time when it’s not visible in the physical world, and the people inside only experience the passage of time when it appears. This mean that the tower’s wizard and their apprentices and staff might still be there, either absorbed in their studies as if this was still 3e or struggling with what is to them a very recent bout of “original strain” Spellplague.