Hey guys, I've been having a lot of fun building a campaign out of Candlekeep Mysteries, but I'm having trouble coming up with a main antagonist. I'm not well versed in Forgotten Realms lore, and could use some names that already exist in lore as a starting point to look up. Aside from that, feel free to post any other ideas that would fit well into the setting!
Currently, I am in need of an antagonist/organization, or sections of other adventures that would fit either of these main plots:
A) stealing the knowledge of Candlekeep for themselves (Possibly stealing the entire castle, à la Elturel in Descent into Avernus)
B) Making the information in the library available to everyone, to allow for more equal access. (Those stuffy Avowed have been hoarding information that could make the world a better place, but they keep it locked up)
One of the first homebrew monsters i ever made was a book golem called the Omnipaedia, which absorbed concentrated knowledge in an ancient library till it came alive and, as the name suggests, is trying to become a book of everything, absorbing as much knowledge and power as it can.
For some reason, reading your post made me think of it again as a good bad "guy" for a library themed campaign. Maybe it's lurking somewhere in the bowels of the library feeding off the knowledge of other books to make itself powerful, until it's strong enough to consume the whole library. Maybe it can even infect other books and get them to do its bidding, or possibly even mind control the odd mortal or two in search of the strongest, most ancient books it can find.
That's a fantastic idea. I knew this was the right place to post this lol. That sounds like the type of thing that the rogue Modrons in Candlekeep might get up to.
Two that I personally like are having scholars ambush the party on the road looking for entrance gifts to steal, as opposed to bandits.
The second is combining the crashed gnomish mind-flayer Nautiloid ship in Rime of the Frostmaiden into the Kandlekeep Dekonstruktion story.
The Nautiloid crashed into Candlekeep several hundred years ago, and the Avowed started studying it. Eventually, the mind-flayers held in stasis were able to exert some control and cause the Avowed to forget and build the Barn Door over the crashed ship, although it is still recorded in the diagrams in Kandlekeep Deconstruction.
The subtle psionic waves emanating from the sleeping mind flayers made local animals gravitate towards the Barn Door (giving it its name). Anyone whos pet runs away in Candlekeep knows to check The Barn Door first.
Recently, as life support systems began to fail and the gnome ceromorphs began to wake up, they reached out telepathically and found Stonky, and have been guiding him in the creation of his rocket-ship.
I'm currently leaning towards using the Harpers as an antagonist whose goal is to infiltrate the avowed and assume control of Candlekeep, in order to make the vast hoard of knowledge publicly available. Was doing some reading and saw this page. Faction -- The Harpers | Dungeons & Dragons (wizards.com)
They sound pretty perfect. I've always loved the Harpers, and it could make for some really interesting choices for my players, depending on who they choose to support. The Great Readers might end up the villains, with the players aiding the Harpers in overthrowing the Avowed.
Either that or a charismatic young upstart within the Harpers has gained a large following within the organization, pushing for the Harpers to put all of the information and influence they've amassed over the years to good use and start making some changes to the balance of power in the world.
I think I figured out the rough storyline for my campaign. Something is very wrong at Candlekeep.
The avowed lost control of Candlekeep some time ago to something that was contained within a book. The Keeper of Tomes and First Reader have been taken over by this entity, and the eight Great Readers will slowly disappear in strange accidents or be converted one by one over the course of the campaign, the ones who disappeared to be replaced with up-jumped members of the Avowed. The lower ranks of the avowed begin to get suspicious as the campaign progresses, and start to aid the players investigation.
Whatever entity is now in control needs a crucial piece of information (quite possibly contained within a Nether Scroll), in order to achieve it's own goal. Maybe it just wants to get home to its own plane, but whatever it's goal, the result is not going to leave Candlekeep intact.
It is using Candlekeep to consume information, and gets more desperate as the campaign progresses. It turns Candlekeep into a hive of information processing, ramping up the intake of books by creating a new rank of Avowed adventurers who are sent to investigate promising leads.
Once the players hit level 16/17 and finish the content supplied in the adventure, this entity will get the Nether Scroll, (either from the players, or a rival NPC adventuring party), and uses it to transport itself and Candlekeep to another plane.
The ending would involve penetrating the defenses of Candlekeep, getting past Miirym, taking out the ghost pirate ship, defeating the Readers/Keepers (hopefully without killing them, because the players will probably need help returning Candlekeep to the material plane), and engaging all of the other crazy mechanics in Candlekeep.
I am also going to combine the Book of Cylinders into the Tortle Package - (the cylinders are impressions of tortle shells that had these future events depicted in the patterns on the shell). A tropical volcanic tortle island sounds way more fun to run than a swampy fish village. The Snout of Omgar is also quite close to Tashluta, so I can drop in some tie-ins with the Canopic Being.
The story in the Book of Cylinders could easily take place on the Snout of Omgar - the crab maze would look deceivingly safe on tropical blue waters, and seems like the kind of defensive structure a Tortle might come up with to protect their clutches of eggs, and the Yuan-ti temples can be combined.
Once the Book of Cylinders is solved, they have the rest of the island to explore. It could also span a couple of levels to replace one or two of the less appealing books.
I am enjoying this thread, and appreciate absorbing some of these ideas to play with as I try and adapt a version of Candlekeep for my own campaign. Presently I am planning to run the adventures as one shots, but would like there to be little things which tie them together for the players who will likely take part in each one, even if they are not playing the same characters each time.
(They have agreed to start with me giving them pregen characters for the first adventure and then if they want to continue with that character they can or they can design one that fits the campaign style & story for the second one...)
This will be my first in person games since the pandemic started and I will be running for my wife and a couple she works with.
I was also debating starting with an adaptation of the Adventurer’s League adventure “Tales Trees Tell” to help provide for the character’s starting village and the source for the curse/difficulty said village is afflicted with.
I actually just figured out another pretty good story that makes better use of the material provided - It's hard to settle on any one idea. Each one I settle on and start researching just makes more ideas.
This one uses Miirym for the main storyline, and involves a string of clues left by the Archmage who bound Mirrym to Candlekeep 1500 years ago, and foresaw these events in the Prophecies of Alaundo.
Candlekeep mysteries claims that Miirym invaded Candlekeep intent on adding it's "riches" to her hoard. (an odd thing for a Lawful Good Silver Dragon to do, considering they tend to prefer antique and beautifully crafted objects more than dusty old books.) I believe this is a false story that is told to visitors to Candlekeep who inquire about Miirym. Those who dig deeper might uncover that Miirym was in fact a Mist dragon, who consider knowledge to be the most valuable treasure.
The second key fact is that the reason no one has been able to break the spell on Miirym is that Torth never cast an "unbreakable" spell on Miirym - He stole Miiryms hoard and hid it away. Perhaps he cast a spell to physically prevent Miirym's body from travelling beyond the walls of Candlekeep, but I'm thinking that she has been "free" of Torth's magic ever since her transition to undeath.
"Long, long ago, Miirym was a silver dragon who dwelt near Candlekeep. In her playful hunting, she devoured several scholars and destroyed a score or so irreplaceable books on their way to the abbey, so a mage attached to the abbey bound her to service: She was to defend the monks, buildings, and books of the abbey for some twenty years.
Unfortunately for Miirym, the spellcaster was the archsorcerer Torth, whose spells were so mighty that when he died -- fifteen years along in Miirym's sentence of twenty -- no one could break the bindings. The monks apologetically wrote up a tome describing the situation and all that was known of Torth's spells, then set a copy of it in a crypt beneath the keep, in a casket with the sorcerer's bones and staff.
Eventually worn out by advanced age and the attacks of foolish would-be intruders -- notably several bands of Calishite wizards, who planned and then tried to carry out elaborate spell attacks on Candlekeep in the Year of the Shieldtree (1181 DR) and the Year of the Tomb (1182 DR) -- Miirym "died." That is, her body rotted and fell apart, losing flesh before bones, and then bone after bone crumbled away to dust, while the spells that bound her animated her still, keeping her sentient . . . if not entirely sane."
According to older Forgotten Realms lore, a dragon's hoard serves a purpose. When a dragon reaches old age and their life naturally comes to an end, a dragon must eat its treasure horde as a form of payment into the afterlife. Specifically the hoard must be worth at least 120,000 gold and in the possession of the dragon for at least 200 years. The dragon and its treasure then vanish - presumably to whatever afterlife dragons have. If a dragon does not have a treasure horde, its spirit will be unable to depart from this life until it manages to procure a new hoard, or a stolen horde is returned to it. Either way, it must consume a treasure horde that meets the requirements.
1500 years is a long time for a dragon to plan, and Miirym is finally setting hers in motion. She is going to steal Candlekeep itself, and the vast treasure horde of knowledge stored within. Once its hers, she just needs to hold onto it for 200 years before she can consume the books and be free of her tormented existence. She wants the Nether Scroll in Alkazar's Appendix, so that she can use it to transport Candlekeep to an alternate plane (or turn Candlekeep into a flying castle with a Netherese Proctors Move Mountain spell) - where she can wait for the end in peace and quiet with her books.
Players, with the help of the Prophecies of Alaundo, have to follow a trail of clues scattered in apparently random books to track down Miirym's stolen horde of knowledge and return it to her, before Candlekeep is utterly consumed by Miirym. (Miirym will gladly accept her old hoard, she only wants to depart as soon as possible)
According to older Forgotten Realms lore, a dragon's hoard serves a purpose. When a dragon reaches old age and their life naturally comes to an end, a dragon must eat its treasure horde as a form of payment into the afterlife. Specifically the hoard must be worth at least 120,000 gold and in the possession of the dragon for at least 200 years. The dragon and its treasure then vanish - presumably to whatever afterlife dragons have. If a dragon does not have a treasure horde, its spirit will be unable to depart from this life until it manages to procure a new hoard, or a stolen horde is returned to it. Either way, it must consume a treasure horde that meets the requirements.
Source on that please? I've seen a couple people mention this in different threads on different sites, and I find the idea super intriguing, and I'm toying with doing this whole Miirym thing in my campaign as well. I'm just wondering where it comes from exactly.
Hey guys, I've been having a lot of fun building a campaign out of Candlekeep Mysteries, but I'm having trouble coming up with a main antagonist. I'm not well versed in Forgotten Realms lore, and could use some names that already exist in lore as a starting point to look up. Aside from that, feel free to post any other ideas that would fit well into the setting!
Currently, I am in need of an antagonist/organization, or sections of other adventures that would fit either of these main plots:
A) stealing the knowledge of Candlekeep for themselves (Possibly stealing the entire castle, à la Elturel in Descent into Avernus)
B) Making the information in the library available to everyone, to allow for more equal access. (Those stuffy Avowed have been hoarding information that could make the world a better place, but they keep it locked up)
One of the first homebrew monsters i ever made was a book golem called the Omnipaedia, which absorbed concentrated knowledge in an ancient library till it came alive and, as the name suggests, is trying to become a book of everything, absorbing as much knowledge and power as it can.
For some reason, reading your post made me think of it again as a good bad "guy" for a library themed campaign. Maybe it's lurking somewhere in the bowels of the library feeding off the knowledge of other books to make itself powerful, until it's strong enough to consume the whole library. Maybe it can even infect other books and get them to do its bidding, or possibly even mind control the odd mortal or two in search of the strongest, most ancient books it can find.
Just spitballing.
That's a fantastic idea. I knew this was the right place to post this lol. That sounds like the type of thing that the rogue Modrons in Candlekeep might get up to.
Two that I personally like are having scholars ambush the party on the road looking for entrance gifts to steal, as opposed to bandits.
The second is combining the crashed gnomish mind-flayer Nautiloid ship in Rime of the Frostmaiden into the Kandlekeep Dekonstruktion story.
The Nautiloid crashed into Candlekeep several hundred years ago, and the Avowed started studying it. Eventually, the mind-flayers held in stasis were able to exert some control and cause the Avowed to forget and build the Barn Door over the crashed ship, although it is still recorded in the diagrams in Kandlekeep Deconstruction.
The subtle psionic waves emanating from the sleeping mind flayers made local animals gravitate towards the Barn Door (giving it its name). Anyone whos pet runs away in Candlekeep knows to check The Barn Door first.
Recently, as life support systems began to fail and the gnome ceromorphs began to wake up, they reached out telepathically and found Stonky, and have been guiding him in the creation of his rocket-ship.
I'm currently leaning towards using the Harpers as an antagonist whose goal is to infiltrate the avowed and assume control of Candlekeep, in order to make the vast hoard of knowledge publicly available. Was doing some reading and saw this page. Faction -- The Harpers | Dungeons & Dragons (wizards.com)
They sound pretty perfect. I've always loved the Harpers, and it could make for some really interesting choices for my players, depending on who they choose to support. The Great Readers might end up the villains, with the players aiding the Harpers in overthrowing the Avowed.
Either that or a charismatic young upstart within the Harpers has gained a large following within the organization, pushing for the Harpers to put all of the information and influence they've amassed over the years to good use and start making some changes to the balance of power in the world.
I think I figured out the rough storyline for my campaign. Something is very wrong at Candlekeep.
The avowed lost control of Candlekeep some time ago to something that was contained within a book. The Keeper of Tomes and First Reader have been taken over by this entity, and the eight Great Readers will slowly disappear in strange accidents or be converted one by one over the course of the campaign, the ones who disappeared to be replaced with up-jumped members of the Avowed. The lower ranks of the avowed begin to get suspicious as the campaign progresses, and start to aid the players investigation.
Whatever entity is now in control needs a crucial piece of information (quite possibly contained within a Nether Scroll), in order to achieve it's own goal. Maybe it just wants to get home to its own plane, but whatever it's goal, the result is not going to leave Candlekeep intact.
It is using Candlekeep to consume information, and gets more desperate as the campaign progresses. It turns Candlekeep into a hive of information processing, ramping up the intake of books by creating a new rank of Avowed adventurers who are sent to investigate promising leads.
Once the players hit level 16/17 and finish the content supplied in the adventure, this entity will get the Nether Scroll, (either from the players, or a rival NPC adventuring party), and uses it to transport itself and Candlekeep to another plane.
The ending would involve penetrating the defenses of Candlekeep, getting past Miirym, taking out the ghost pirate ship, defeating the Readers/Keepers (hopefully without killing them, because the players will probably need help returning Candlekeep to the material plane), and engaging all of the other crazy mechanics in Candlekeep.
I am also going to combine the Book of Cylinders into the Tortle Package - (the cylinders are impressions of tortle shells that had these future events depicted in the patterns on the shell). A tropical volcanic tortle island sounds way more fun to run than a swampy fish village. The Snout of Omgar is also quite close to Tashluta, so I can drop in some tie-ins with the Canopic Being.
The story in the Book of Cylinders could easily take place on the Snout of Omgar - the crab maze would look deceivingly safe on tropical blue waters, and seems like the kind of defensive structure a Tortle might come up with to protect their clutches of eggs, and the Yuan-ti temples can be combined.
Once the Book of Cylinders is solved, they have the rest of the island to explore. It could also span a couple of levels to replace one or two of the less appealing books.
I am enjoying this thread, and appreciate absorbing some of these ideas to play with as I try and adapt a version of Candlekeep for my own campaign. Presently I am planning to run the adventures as one shots, but would like there to be little things which tie them together for the players who will likely take part in each one, even if they are not playing the same characters each time.
(They have agreed to start with me giving them pregen characters for the first adventure and then if they want to continue with that character they can or they can design one that fits the campaign style & story for the second one...)
This will be my first in person games since the pandemic started and I will be running for my wife and a couple she works with.
I was also debating starting with an adaptation of the Adventurer’s League adventure “Tales Trees Tell” to help provide for the character’s starting village and the source for the curse/difficulty said village is afflicted with.
I actually just figured out another pretty good story that makes better use of the material provided - It's hard to settle on any one idea. Each one I settle on and start researching just makes more ideas.
This one uses Miirym for the main storyline, and involves a string of clues left by the Archmage who bound Mirrym to Candlekeep 1500 years ago, and foresaw these events in the Prophecies of Alaundo.
Candlekeep mysteries claims that Miirym invaded Candlekeep intent on adding it's "riches" to her hoard. (an odd thing for a Lawful Good Silver Dragon to do, considering they tend to prefer antique and beautifully crafted objects more than dusty old books.) I believe this is a false story that is told to visitors to Candlekeep who inquire about Miirym. Those who dig deeper might uncover that Miirym was in fact a Mist dragon, who consider knowledge to be the most valuable treasure.
The second key fact is that the reason no one has been able to break the spell on Miirym is that Torth never cast an "unbreakable" spell on Miirym - He stole Miiryms hoard and hid it away. Perhaps he cast a spell to physically prevent Miirym's body from travelling beyond the walls of Candlekeep, but I'm thinking that she has been "free" of Torth's magic ever since her transition to undeath.
This old quote by Ed Greenwood from a Dragon Magazine sounds more like the truth. Wyrms of the North: Miirym, "The Sentinel Wyrm" (nobl.ca)
"Long, long ago, Miirym was a silver dragon who dwelt near Candlekeep. In her playful hunting, she devoured several scholars and destroyed a score or so irreplaceable books on their way to the abbey, so a mage attached to the abbey bound her to service: She was to defend the monks, buildings, and books of the abbey for some twenty years.
Unfortunately for Miirym, the spellcaster was the archsorcerer Torth, whose spells were so mighty that when he died -- fifteen years along in Miirym's sentence of twenty -- no one could break the bindings. The monks apologetically wrote up a tome describing the situation and all that was known of Torth's spells, then set a copy of it in a crypt beneath the keep, in a casket with the sorcerer's bones and staff.
Eventually worn out by advanced age and the attacks of foolish would-be intruders -- notably several bands of Calishite wizards, who planned and then tried to carry out elaborate spell attacks on Candlekeep in the Year of the Shieldtree (1181 DR) and the Year of the Tomb (1182 DR) -- Miirym "died." That is, her body rotted and fell apart, losing flesh before bones, and then bone after bone crumbled away to dust, while the spells that bound her animated her still, keeping her sentient . . . if not entirely sane."
According to older Forgotten Realms lore, a dragon's hoard serves a purpose. When a dragon reaches old age and their life naturally comes to an end, a dragon must eat its treasure horde as a form of payment into the afterlife. Specifically the hoard must be worth at least 120,000 gold and in the possession of the dragon for at least 200 years. The dragon and its treasure then vanish - presumably to whatever afterlife dragons have. If a dragon does not have a treasure horde, its spirit will be unable to depart from this life until it manages to procure a new hoard, or a stolen horde is returned to it. Either way, it must consume a treasure horde that meets the requirements.
1500 years is a long time for a dragon to plan, and Miirym is finally setting hers in motion. She is going to steal Candlekeep itself, and the vast treasure horde of knowledge stored within. Once its hers, she just needs to hold onto it for 200 years before she can consume the books and be free of her tormented existence. She wants the Nether Scroll in Alkazar's Appendix, so that she can use it to transport Candlekeep to an alternate plane (or turn Candlekeep into a flying castle with a Netherese Proctors Move Mountain spell) - where she can wait for the end in peace and quiet with her books.
Players, with the help of the Prophecies of Alaundo, have to follow a trail of clues scattered in apparently random books to track down Miirym's stolen horde of knowledge and return it to her, before Candlekeep is utterly consumed by Miirym. (Miirym will gladly accept her old hoard, she only wants to depart as soon as possible)
Source on that please? I've seen a couple people mention this in different threads on different sites, and I find the idea super intriguing, and I'm toying with doing this whole Miirym thing in my campaign as well. I'm just wondering where it comes from exactly.
Scroll Mummy from 4ed would be interesting.