Additional Information
Rise Of Tiamat PDF
By
Wizards RPG Team
Tyranny of Dragons:
Tyranny of Dragons: The Rise of Tiamat PDF is a Dungeons & Dragons adventure for characters beginning at 8th level, and the continuation of the first volume, Hoard of the Dragon Queen. By the time the adventure runs its course, the characters should reach 15th level (or be close to it). Four characters is the ideal party size. If your group is smaller than that, consider removing a few opponents from combat encounters. If the group is bigger, consider adding opponents to the fights. Consider altering encounters for smaller groups to avoid overly tough battles.
Introduction:
Tyranny of Dragons is set in the Sword Coast region of the Forgotten Realms, a thin strip of civilization stretching down Faerun’s western shore. The widely spaced cities of the Sword Coast are arranged on a single great road like beads on a string. The road goes by several names as it winds over two thousand miles from Luskan in the north to Calimport in the south, passing through Neverwinter, Waterdeep, Baldur’s Gate, and other great ports along the way.
The first volume of Tyranny o f Dragons took place largely on the stretch between Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter. This second volume takes the adventurers farther afield across the Sword Coast, preparing them for the final showdown against the servants of Tiamat. Adventure Supplements.
You can play this adventure with just the Dungeons & Dragons basic rules and the Tyranny of Dragons online supplement, which contains all the monsters and magic items not described in this book. This adventure uses the milestone experience rule. Under this rule, completing certain events in the campaign causes the characters to level up.
Background:
The Cult of the Dragon has been active in Faerun for centuries. For most of that time, its focus has been on undead dragons, but that’s changed. Now the cult seeks to act more directly and more boldly by summoning Tiamat out of the Nine Hells and bringing her bodily into the world.
So far, cultists and their leaders have gathered great stores of treasure, forged an alliance with Thay to assist with learning and performing the required summoning ritual, gathered up the five dragon masks central to the ritual (see “Dragon Masks,” below), and persuaded or cajoled many of the oldest and strongest evil dragons of Faerun into supporting them. However, not everything has gone according to the cult’s plans.
The discovery of an alliance between the Cult of the Dragon and the Red Wizards of Thay has shaken the various factions aligned against both organizations. The Harpers view any such alliance as an abomination, as does the Order of the Gauntlet.
The Lords’ Alliance recognizes the obvious threat to the lands and rulers of the Sword Coast and the North, while the Emerald Enclave suspects that anything Thay promotes is likely against the natural order.
Even the Zhentarim fear the union of two such powerful forces. News of the alliance has thus brought the various factions of the Sword Coast together. The leaders of those factions understand that they must gather and rally forces to fight the cult, even as the situation in Faerun grows more dire.
Abductions and raids undertaken by the Cult of the Dragon increase daily, and refugees are fleeing from burned-out regions under cult attack to major cities and fortresses. Villagers have abandoned their crops and herds, fleeing the constant predation of dragons. In many cities, all-out panic has created a growing movement in favor of agreeing to the cult’s demands in the hope of winning concessions in return.
It is difficult to muster troops when people are afraid they will be burned by dragonfire. This is a time for heroes to inspire the people of the Sword Coast with a great victory or two. Fortunately, the Forgotten Realm s has just such a group of heroes.
Dragon Masks:
The new leader of the cult is a Calishite named Severin Silrajin, who believes that real draconic knowledge and power belongs to living dragons, not undead ones. Severin’s ambition amused Tiamat, so she revealed the existence of five dragon masks to him—one for each chromatic dragon color.
Individually, these ancient masks allow wearers to communicate with dragons. More importantly, a character who is erudite in draconic lore becomes a wyrmspeaker while wearing the mask, which allows the wearer to think like a dragon, gain favor among dragons, and subtly influence their behavior. When all five are brought together, they magically merge into a single Mask of the Dragon Queen.
With the assembled mask, the cult can release Tiamat from her prison in the Nine Hells. After Severin (subtly guided by Tiamat) discovered that secret, he bent all the cult’s resources to finding the long-lost dragon masks in their secret hiding places. When he recovered the red mask, Severin became the first of the wyrmspeakers, but others soon followed.
Secrets:
In the first volume of Tyranny of Dragons, the Cult of the Dragon gathered up a hoard for Tiamat then lost a portion of that hoard when Skyreach Castle fell. All the while, the cult kept secret its goal of bringing back Tiamat and its alliance with an exiled group of Red Wizards of Thay.
The cult now needs only to gather enough sacrifices to power the ritual by which the dragon masks will open a portal to the Nine Hells, allowing Tiamat to travel to the Material Plane. These plans continue to move ahead as the Thayan exile Rath Modar and his Red Wizards bring expertise in summoning magic to the cult, preparing a tremendous blood sacrifice to empower the ritual.The alliance between wizards and cultists is fragile, however, since neither side entirely trusts the promises of the other.
Allied Forces:
This second volume of Tyranny o f Dragons assumes that the factions of good-aligned adventurers and the people of the Sword Coast are aware of the threat posed by the cult. W hat’s unclear is how to deal with it. Depending on the nature of the characters and their relationships with the factions, different groups might recommend different courses of action to the heroes. It falls to the players to figure out how they want to proceed.
Overview:
At the start of this adventure, representatives of groups and factions from across the Sword Coast meet to discuss their concern about the Cult of the Dragon, and to draw up plans for opposing the cult. The adventurers are summoned to Waterdeep for a summit that will come to be known as the Council of Waterdeep (see episode 1 for details).
Four council sessions take place over the course of the adventure, naturally dividing events into four stages. Between the council gatherings, the characters undertake missions to thwart the cult’s plans.
Some of these missions will be proposed by N P C s (nonplayer characters) during council sessions. Others can be proposed by the characters. The adventurers understand that thousands of lives depend on their actions. The characters are among the greatest heroes of the Sword Coast, and the Council of Waterdeep looks to them for wise guidance and swift action.
Many of the power groups represented on the council don’t trust each other, and some even have conflicting goals. Over the course of the council’s four meetings, the players and characters need to forge this disparate, feuding group into a coordinated force. Only with all factions working together and contributing to the overall effort can enough power be brought to bear against the cult to prevent Tiamat’s return.
The more successful the characters are in their actions against the cult, the more esteem and influence they gain with the council. Events are arranged in this book in a logical sequence for staging The Rise o f Tiamat, and the episodes are numbered for ease of reference. You can even add more episodes of your own devising, or which expand on ideas the players generate.
Outline of Episodes:
The events of Hoard of the Dragon Queen lead directly into The Rise of Tiamat PDF. The shape of this adventure is defined by the meetings of the Council of Waterdeep, which divide the adventure into four stages.
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