The last couple of posts have already covered all important locations inside Evernight, so now we leave town to look at its surroundings.

Burning Woods

Turns out the surroundings are mostly on fire!

The Shadow reflection of the Neverwinter Wood started burning when Mount Hotenow erupted and never stopped. The fire spread through the whole forest and the trees still smolder decades after any mundane plant would have been reduced to ash.

Travelers going from the city to the Wood first wade through a wasteland where they’re calf-deep in ash sprinkled with embers. The smoke in the air becomes thicker and thicker, with a color identical to that of the ash on the ground, resulting in very poor visibility all around. Sometimes they’ll get ambushed by burrowing undead jumping from the ash.

At the forest itself the road splits into several twisty forest trails that weave through the incandescent trees. Despite being a navigational hazard themselves, these trails are the only usable paths through the forest, and the many bandits and predators who somehow live here know this. Where the world has waterways, the Burning Wood has rivers of lava streaming from Hotenow.

Most of the Burning Wood has the extreme heat or pervasive smoke terrain features, often at the same time. There might also be some squares with more active fire-based hazards like cinder falls, caustic geysers, or the lava rivers. And there are stats for an Ash Tree hazard (har har) that will try to slam or grab passing PCs with its burning branches.

Den of the Hunters

Some sample opposition/dubious allies for the area. This band of erudite hunters has a temporary shelter in an earthen cave that’s protected from the heat and cinder falls. They’re made up of several mortal species, but their leaders are shadar-kai. They have a pack of “hounds” who are former humanoids corrupted by the Shadowfell, robbed of their sapience and reduced to walking on all fours.

The hunters welcome visitors, and would be happy to chat with the characters and provide them with shelter and a place to rest for a while. That peace is unlikely to last for very long, because soon it will be obvious that these hunters hunt people, and they’ll either invite the characters along or decide to hunt them. Either situation is likely to lead to violence.

Mount Hotenow

This Mount Hotenow is still erupting, making it much more dangerous than the one in Toril. Some of its caves are still navigable, and might contain portals to the middle world or the Elemental Chaos. These portals are usually controlled by elemental creatures from the same group that inhabits the mountain in Toril, but some of them also contain fire-themed undead.

Characters who have already fought and killed some of the elementals over in Toril’s Hotenow might find themselves having to fight their ghosts here. There’s also a small table with fire-themed heroic undead that could be found in the place.

There doesn’t seem to be much of interest here, despite all that. Most parties will only come here via a detour from the Toril version of the mountain as they descend to Gauntlgrym. Perhaps this detour is the only path forward, as the corresponding passages in the world are blocked by a cave in or some such.

Shadowfell Road

The Shadowfell Road is a ritual path. If you start at either end and follow the proper boundary markers (alleys, tree arches, mountain passes), the space-warping properties of the Shadowfell will carry you for a much larger distance than the one you end up walking. The Road starts at the Thayan outpost in Evernight, and ends in the Thayan city of Surcross.

Supplies for the Dread Ring arrive from Surcross via the Road, and then are taken to another Shadowfell portal just outside Evernight that leads directly to the fortress over in Toril.

To follow the Road you have so start at either Surcross or Evernight, otherwise the magic has no effect. Not all of the intermediate stops are in the Shadowfell either, or even located between the two physical ends. The Thayans usually travel in high enough number to discourage attack by monsters, but small parties of PCs won’t be so lucky.

The route along the road is not obvious. PCs who wish to follow it to Surcross will likely need to track a Thayan caravan that’s heading there to pick up supplies, or locate the next portal via applications of the Arcana skill. If they can’t find their way, they might need to travel back to the campaign area the hard way. This is an excellent opportunity to include Shadowfell-based side adventures, though I imagine your players might not be as happy about that as you.

The book presents some of the stops along the way, in the order one would find them when going from Evernight to Surcross.

Endless Alleys

The portals leading to this place are easy to spot, because there will be a bunch of empty Thayan wagons parked near them, probably guarded by undead. They keep them in reserve at both ends because this area has to be traveled on foot.

This is an endless series of alleys. The buildings on either side are tall and have no windows or doors. They go on forever - turning a corner leads only to more alleys. It’s possible to climb to the roofs, and the view from up there is an endless expanse of nondescript roofs with alleys between them.

After they’ve been here for a little bit, the PCs will start to see phantom children holding toys. Their faces are expressionless but they giggle in an unsettling manner. The ghosts will try to hug the characters, but their touch inflicts necrotic agony. When one is destroyed, the child vanishes and the toy drops to the ground, whining in disappointment as it dissolves. You can use any kind of level-appropriate incorporeal undead stat block for them.

Still Waters

This stretch of the Road is a swamp that looks exactly like you’d expect a Shadowfell swamp to look. The road is made up of a bunch of logs lashed together, and it branches off at points, going to gods-know-where.

There are small communities living here in small villages that can be seen off in the distance. Their inhabitants move around on pole barges and keep to themselves, but if you look closely you’ll notice they all wear blindfolds. That’s because if you spot your own reflection in the water it will animate and try to drown you.

Obsidian Ziggurat

This part of the Road goes through an abandoned village, cutting right through its center. The village itself is unremarkable, but the giant obsidian ziggurat looming just outside it is very noticeable. The platform at the top of the pyramid sometimes shows torchlight and moving shadows, though there are no shapes casting them. They dance to the beat of an unhread drum.

The shadows make an attack against the Will of anyone watching them. Those who are hit feel compelled to climb the steps of the ziggurat and join in their dancing. Those who end up dancing for a minute or more are teleported to a similar ziggurat in the world, in an area called the Lake of Salt. They’ll appear among the snaketongue cultists and were-snakes that were performing a ritual and are the ones actually casting those shadows in the Shadowfell. Hilarity will ensue.

Those who get trapped like this can return to the Shadowfell Road by destroying the altar in the Lake of Salt pyramid.

Village of the Mad Druid

This is a peaceful village full of people who are thriving as much as can be expected in the Shadowfell… except that they all wear hilariously bad undead disguises. You see, the village’s protector is an eladrin druid named Shalanka, with stats as a twilight incanter. She went insane and has come to believe that undeath is the natural order of things, therefore she must protect the undead and kill the living. She is aided in this by a menagerie of undead animals.

Shalanka’s grip on reality is tenuous enough that the amateur hour disguises of the citizens can fool her, and she does act as an effective protector for them. She lets the Thayans pass through unmolested because she doesn’t have the strength to oppose their large force, but she’ll feel pretty confident about her chances of killing the PCs. Shalanka isn’t really evil, tough, and PCs who don’t want to deprive the village of its protector might get bad disguises of their own to avoid a fight or perhaps even try to heal her mind.

Impressions

I love the idea of a ritual road, and I love that it seems to be a license to add surreal and bizarre locations to a campaign. While I wouldn’t call the other locations in the campaign “mundane”, the example ones here stand out for how evocative and weird they are.

I also really like the imagery of the ash-choked, eternally burning woods. The book really sells how dreary it is, and how hard it is to see anything. But there’s not much reason to go there unless the GM places an important objective somewhere in the woods. I wonder what Shandarar’s Shadow looks like.