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An adventure jigsaw is the pieces you need for an adventure . . . but unassembled. It’s not a full adventure, but it’s got a lot of pieces that you can put together for your own game. We provide an inciting event, a friend, an enemy, a treasure, and some parameters. You provide the players and the action to finish the adventure!

This adventure jigsaw is based around a walker leaving the Wastes for more populated areas.

Inciting Event

A few weeks ago, a minor walker—a gargantuan, otherworldly creature that roams the Wastes (see Wastes of Chaos)—made the unusual choice to exit the Wastes. It plodded along the border between the Ghostlight Forest and Pytonne Mountains. Then it took a turn toward civilization.

Barsella (see Midgard Worldbook) is the jewel of the west or a refuge of last resort, depending on who you ask.  The unknowable wanderings of one of the vast entities of the Wasted West have brought it closer to civilization than any time in recent history.

Somewhere to the southwest of the road to Maravahr, it stopped and began excavating, drawn by the psychic emanations of a crop of living glassfire bombards growing in a cavern deep underground. The walker broke open the chamber and accidentally activated them, getting sprayed badly. Fleeing the discomfort, it left several undamaged bombards in the cavern, a burning area of fiery glass barricades, a massive landslide into the hole it dug.

A passing caravan heard the noise but didn’t go check it out. However, the driver reported it to the Sons of the Arch when they reached Barsella.

Now there’s an opening in the ground below the churned and twisted landscape, leading into a previously unknown underground complex. At night, an electric blue glow radiates into the sky from within. Something has been unearthed.

The journey in total covers about 160 miles from Barsella into the foothills of the Pytonne Mountains, taking the coastal road through Maravahr, turning inland and eventually leaving the road entirely. The approach is 45 miles of rough terrain crossing the Howler’s Path ley line midway through the journey. All manner of adventure lies just in getting to the hole in the ground.

Friend

Redguard Grissomblossum is a dwarf with keen brown eyes, and long chestnut hair and beard. He has a taste for all sorts of adventure. Redguard is quite the explorer and currently works for The Sons of the Arch, an exploratory group in Barsella that is organizing an expedition to backtrack the creature’s trail to find this rumored underground complex.

Enemy

Sasha is a human with long, red hair and cornflower blue eyes. She is perceptive about everything, and a key part of an organization known as the Rovers, who might be involved in piracy in the Western Ocean (hint: they are). Sasha is sending one of her trusted underlings, Neales Underroar, a young minotaur, to be a part of the expedition and bring back information about what is hidden in the depths, including any samples. Sasha will be his backup in case of trouble.

The Treasure

These plant-like items grow only underground in certain cavern systems. They resist transfer to any other habitat, but do not die if attuned to a creature within two weeks of removal. The effects of a bombard are horrible, turning a target’s flesh to shards of glass with a burning sensation and assaulting their minds with mental images of a plague.

Living Glassfire Bombard

Wondrous Item, Rare (Requires Attunement)

This coiling, two-inch-thick trumpet-belled plant grows out of a deep blue carapace with an oily sheen. Its mouth opens like a blooming flower, and its tail sports dozens of ghostly small tentacles which merge into your arm when attuned. The tentacles attune through armor, clothing, or any other worn barriers.

Once attuned, twice a day as an action, you may use it to fire a jet of glowing, fiery, brilliant blue ooze at a target. On a successful hit, a target is coated with an ooze and takes 3d6 fire and 3d6 slashing damage. This ooze burns any material it touches except the bombard itself. Where it burns, the ooze rapidly cools into shards of glass.

Affected targets must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or suffer 1d6 slashing damage when removing the glass from their burn wounds and 1d6 psychic damage from strange linked visions of other affected creatures.

Alternatively, you may expend both uses of the bombard at once and hit all targets in a 15-foot cone, forcing them to make DC 12 Dexterity saving throws. On a failure, the target takes 3d6 fire and 3d6 slashing damage, and must immediately succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or catch glassfire. A creature on glassfire takes 1d4 fire, 1d4 psychic, and 1d4 slashing damage each round as the ooze turns their flesh into glass while evoking mental images of an all-consuming plague. A successful saving throw ends the effect, or dowsing the target in wine. Aberrations make these saving throws with disadvantage. On a success, a target takes half damage and does not catch glassfire.

Although the bombard has only two charges per day, you recharge the bombard by expending 3 Hit Dice at the end of a long rest. You regain these Hit Dice normally.

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