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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!
When the City of Wheels pauses its travels, the population and their wagons spread out in a pattern of bustling activity. The trading complex of the City of Wheels hosts some of the most prominent horse clans of the Northlands. Each trade house has an area of tents and wagons, their horse yards stretching out into the plains about the City Encampment. A temporary avenue, decorated with clan banners, extends from the center of the City, passing between the largest Houses and ending at the Pavilion of the Horses at the outer edge.
Inciting Event
The Khurgan Cup is a Tupkashi tournament where teams of riders chase a competing team about a circular track laden with visible obstacles and unseen traps. The annual event is held within an arena built about the entire Pavilion of the Horses, where the great Trading Houses bargain and scheme.
The PCs can be hired to ensure that Peviv will not sabotage the tournament. This can be via any of the three Protagonists:
- Liriy overhears Nonde sharing Peviv’s plans with Brai and seeks assistance to foil Peviv’s plan without suspicion falling on Nonde for she values her husband’s friendships
- Bari learns of Peviv’s plans from Nonde and finds or hires someone to help so Liriv won’t be involved, potentially leading to an escalation of the feud between the Trading Houses
- Nonde discovers the bridle and figures out Peviv’s plan. Realizing the consequences to their Trading House if he is discovered, she seeks to subtly thwart his plan.
- In addition, the PCs might learn Peviv has wagered heavily on the tournament, betting his livelihood that the Bridle will bring him victory.
The PCs must identify, steal, replace or disable Peviv’s means to win the Khurgan Cup. The timeframe to complete the request can be shortened to heighten the tension as the day of the race fast approaches.
Friend
Liriy Runebranch, a human in her late thirties is a renowned horse trader. She is of medium height and has arresting blue eyes and short auburn hair. She adores horses and runs a side business as a saddle maker. Last year, she married Brai Runebranch, and business really picked up. Her House’s Tupkashi team is the favorite of local oddsmakers to win the Khurgan Cup. Unknown to Liriy and Peviv, Nonde Stedz is secretly friends with Brai.
Enemy
Peviv Stedz, is also a famous horse trader. He is human, in his thirties, tall, broad-shouldered, with a wonderful mustache and straight black hair. He wears a saber on his belt and dresses in colorful clothes that are fitting for full days in the saddle. He is married to Nonde, and they have two young children.
Peviv is passionate about horses and has been raised to hate the entire Runebranch family for some slight that occurred years ago. Peviv will use the bridle of Boreas’s herald to win the Khurgan Cup—the yearly Tupkashi tournament. This game of riding prowess, described below, determines which trading house, by dint of exhibited skill and prestige, might be invited to provide horses for the leaders of the City of Wheels.
Treasure
The bridle of Boreas’s herald is an embroidered silk sash that hangs from shoulder cross-body to waist. A set of braided cords hangs over and under the arm at the shoulder, threaded with strands of mithril and gold. The broad sash shows scenes of stylized winds, angry storm clouds, and bolts of lightning.
BRIDLE OF BOREAS’S HERALD
(Rare Wondrous Item, Requires Attunement)
When attuned, you may activate this item as a bonus action to increase your movement rate by 30 feet per round for 15 minutes. As a free action, you may pull the sash from your shoulder, magically fitting it to the head of a Huge or smaller creature you are riding. It adjusts to the creature’s head, and they may gain the benefits of the sash worn this way as if they were you.
Once per long rest, you may ignore the effects of difficult terrain, vertical, inverted, or even missing terrain for two rounds of movement, so long as you begin and end your movement on solid ground. This allows you or a mount benefiting from the bridle to run across open chasms, up walls, on ceilings, or over the spiked ground with no consequences from that movement.
In addition, you gain advantage on any saving throw required from passing through a magical barrier or area of effect spell, such as a wall of fire or blade barrier, but not instantaneous effects like a fireball. If you succeed on such a saving throw, you automatically take half damage and take no damage if the effect would normally do half damage on a successful save.
 The bridle grants advantage on Dexterity (Animal Handling) checks to ride, guide, or otherwise affect mounts and offers an additional +2 bonus if the mount is a horse.
When you attune to the bridle, and each day at sunrise, you may magically adjust the color of it as you wish. It remains this color until you change it the next day or someone else attunes to it. The bridle cinches or expands magically when worn by a Tiny- to Huge-sized attuned creature.
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