So we've all probably DMed a rescue mission in the occasional one-shot, but what if the rescuee was a crowd of 100 people from the Underdark, specifically from the Drow city of Menzoberranzan? Any ideas on how this could be done?
So we've all probably DMed a rescue mission in the occasional one-shot, but what if the rescuee was a crowd of 100 people from the Underdark, specifically from the Drow city of Menzoberranzan? Any ideas on how this could be done?
It's hard to do because moving that many people without attracting unwanted attention is hard, and civilians are likely to be collateral damage if anything uses an AoE. If 5e allows teleportation in the underdark (3.5e heavily restricted it), a couple castings of Teleportation Circle will do the job, otherwise you're stuck with things like Demiplane or Gate.
Two ways to think it through. If you want the party to succeed, figure out how you'd do a magical/fantastical version of Operation Entebbe (aka Thunderbolt). That rescued over a hundred hostages with low casualties, of course the rescue forces by some account outnumbered the hostages 2:1 (and consisted of an assault team that did the "you're free" rescuing, a team securing the rescue aircraft, a team to secure the perimeter of the airport, and a fourth team that did away with any assets that could pursue the escape ... so basically you'll need allies. If you're open to castrophe, Operation Eagle Claw works.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The underdark is actually much easier to rescue someone from than an open air prison, because as soon as the prisoners are in a tunnel, nobody will know where they are. A heist, being far more complex than a 'smash and grab' will require you to do a lot of planning.
I'd build it in 'heist' stages:
You plan the city, and the prison out. Design a prison that functions effectively, but isn't impregnable. Fill it with traps, locked doors, guards and so on. Create a time matrix so that you know when the prisoners are being fed, watered, washed (if they are), exercised (if they are) and so on. If you have the prisoners move around sometimes, this will create a more dynamic feel and enable more plans later on. Go into a lot of detail in the design, it's what the adventure is all about.
Play. The PCs enter the city unnoticed/unsuspected
Scout out the prison, find the blueprints, learn the guard rotations, what magical defences does it have etc. Typical heist stuff. Plant NPCs in Menzo that the PCs can meet: the disgruntled former guard, the architect, the mage who laid the wards but wasn't paid etc. They will need ways to gain information and assistance.
During (2), discover the old underground stream that flows into the prison, probably from the plans or the architect, or the mage who put the magical wards on the stream's gate.
Provide the PCs with multiple potential ways to get inside: disguise, through back doors, even a frontal assault. Make sure that they have a lot of choice about how they tackle these things.
Put in at least one "impossible" challenge - something you have not planned a way for them to get past. Let the PCs find a way through creative puzzle solving. They can either know about it or not before they go in.
Require them to acquire some kind of doodad, like an access gem, from somewhere else in the city. Have them go there, combat or stealth to acquire it
The PCs enact their plan
Getting through the traps and guards, the PCs find the prisoners and lead them to the secret stream. They ideally prepped how the prisoners will survive its rapid flow and cold rush almost a mile underground. Have at least one area be different to the plans/info, which are out of date, to give them a bonus challenge
The alarm is raised and enemies pursue. The PCs fight the head warden and some cronies while the prisoners are boarding a boat at the underground river the stream leads to
So Heist 101 aside, where you find the vulnerability, exploit the vulnerability by hook or by crook, and make your getaway, the challenge not addressed by the template is that moving 100 people is the real challenge. I mean, run of the mill evacuations where there is no opposition to the movement are problematic movements. In this instance, if we're talking about a custodial/carceral environment where the unauthorized movement of 1 person is cause for alarm and possible site lockdown.
For how to play the crowd, if you want to play the crowd and just not deal with the encumbrance so to speak of their numbers, the first part of Horde of the Dragon Queen/Tyranny of Dragons gives some ideas for handling a panicked crowd.
Once you establish the disposition of your objective, your next step is to determine the security profile of whatever facility is containing your target. Is this a family/clan basically under house arrest (with monitoring/security being anything from light to non existent), that level is one end of the spectrum, the other would be something like a D&D Supermax. In the middle you might find some inspiration with what the Harpers et al or whoever did with the Fey'Ri in Hellgate Keep, though that's more. The population is basically dumped there and magically sealed inside with no further investment from the captors as far as security. Actually, that might work, like if Menzo had undesirables, why would they keep them in Menzo? So rather than having to invade Menzo and then tactically evacuate, maybe within a reasonable distance from Menzo they've set up a facility of caverns with a token security/monitoring presence, but it's the structure and enchantment of the facility itself that actually keeps the captors there. Maybe this is also where people go when the pull the Dunjon card in the Deck of Many. This sort of facility would require some sort of magical investigation as to how to disable the enchantment or stasis etc, of course allows the complication of making awakening entitites beyond your target group.
If you're set on invading/infiltrating and exfiltrating Menzo, or even if you have site within Menzo's proximity, after determining the conditions (personnel and mechanisms and architecture) securing your targets, your next step is to determine how would Menzo respond to a breach? Is there one House basically with responsibility and or pride in the prison and thus you're limited with contending with them? Are whatever is in custody so important to the city that they'll mobilize every means possible to throw at a breach?
Basically calibrate how secure your captives are to include conditions of confinement (are they magically in stasis, hard solitary confinement, congregated in one common area, more "house arrest" with some freedom of movement) security posture toward that confinement (magical and personnel). Then determine how whoever has authority over the captivity would respond to a breach. Finally seed some potential vulnerabilities to exploit (corruption, architectural, protocols and procedures easily infiltrated, head to toe stormtrooper armor where everyone looks the same so its hard to eyeball people who don't belong there), but also recognize how your players may take on this job will engage something you haven't factored.
There's a two or three parter of Star Wars Clone wars that's a pretty good impregnable prison heist, though it's only two real targets with a handful of clones who could help the escape. It's like a lava planet or something but the geography could easily be transferred to an Underdark scenario.
100 people moving through caves? I mean that could be a getaway but 100 folks who didn't train for a stealth exfiltration has cavern acoustic and disturbed earth to give them away. You might even see if the Drow have some sort of tracking creature, maybe something that has an ants sense of smell that can sort of bloodhound for a tracking party. subterranean water ways are an option, but the logistics of providing watercraft for 100 (and the liberators) will need some sort of cool mass invisibility work. In the Entebbe raid I mentioned earlier, Israel relied on Kenya for initial safe harbor, maybe there's an enclave of friendlies or at least "enemies of the Drow are my friends" community that can receive the freed captives before moving on to really repatriating them. OotA might be useful inspiration for a potential actor on that front.
Hi all,
So we've all probably DMed a rescue mission in the occasional one-shot, but what if the rescuee was a crowd of 100 people from the Underdark, specifically from the Drow city of Menzoberranzan?
Any ideas on how this could be done?
pls and thnx
It's hard to do because moving that many people without attracting unwanted attention is hard, and civilians are likely to be collateral damage if anything uses an AoE. If 5e allows teleportation in the underdark (3.5e heavily restricted it), a couple castings of Teleportation Circle will do the job, otherwise you're stuck with things like Demiplane or Gate.
Two ways to think it through. If you want the party to succeed, figure out how you'd do a magical/fantastical version of Operation Entebbe (aka Thunderbolt). That rescued over a hundred hostages with low casualties, of course the rescue forces by some account outnumbered the hostages 2:1 (and consisted of an assault team that did the "you're free" rescuing, a team securing the rescue aircraft, a team to secure the perimeter of the airport, and a fourth team that did away with any assets that could pursue the escape ... so basically you'll need allies. If you're open to castrophe, Operation Eagle Claw works.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The underdark is actually much easier to rescue someone from than an open air prison, because as soon as the prisoners are in a tunnel, nobody will know where they are. A heist, being far more complex than a 'smash and grab' will require you to do a lot of planning.
I'd build it in 'heist' stages:
So Heist 101 aside, where you find the vulnerability, exploit the vulnerability by hook or by crook, and make your getaway, the challenge not addressed by the template is that moving 100 people is the real challenge. I mean, run of the mill evacuations where there is no opposition to the movement are problematic movements. In this instance, if we're talking about a custodial/carceral environment where the unauthorized movement of 1 person is cause for alarm and possible site lockdown.
For how to play the crowd, if you want to play the crowd and just not deal with the encumbrance so to speak of their numbers, the first part of Horde of the Dragon Queen/Tyranny of Dragons gives some ideas for handling a panicked crowd.
Once you establish the disposition of your objective, your next step is to determine the security profile of whatever facility is containing your target. Is this a family/clan basically under house arrest (with monitoring/security being anything from light to non existent), that level is one end of the spectrum, the other would be something like a D&D Supermax. In the middle you might find some inspiration with what the Harpers et al or whoever did with the Fey'Ri in Hellgate Keep, though that's more. The population is basically dumped there and magically sealed inside with no further investment from the captors as far as security. Actually, that might work, like if Menzo had undesirables, why would they keep them in Menzo? So rather than having to invade Menzo and then tactically evacuate, maybe within a reasonable distance from Menzo they've set up a facility of caverns with a token security/monitoring presence, but it's the structure and enchantment of the facility itself that actually keeps the captors there. Maybe this is also where people go when the pull the Dunjon card in the Deck of Many. This sort of facility would require some sort of magical investigation as to how to disable the enchantment or stasis etc, of course allows the complication of making awakening entitites beyond your target group.
If you're set on invading/infiltrating and exfiltrating Menzo, or even if you have site within Menzo's proximity, after determining the conditions (personnel and mechanisms and architecture) securing your targets, your next step is to determine how would Menzo respond to a breach? Is there one House basically with responsibility and or pride in the prison and thus you're limited with contending with them? Are whatever is in custody so important to the city that they'll mobilize every means possible to throw at a breach?
Basically calibrate how secure your captives are to include conditions of confinement (are they magically in stasis, hard solitary confinement, congregated in one common area, more "house arrest" with some freedom of movement) security posture toward that confinement (magical and personnel). Then determine how whoever has authority over the captivity would respond to a breach. Finally seed some potential vulnerabilities to exploit (corruption, architectural, protocols and procedures easily infiltrated, head to toe stormtrooper armor where everyone looks the same so its hard to eyeball people who don't belong there), but also recognize how your players may take on this job will engage something you haven't factored.
There's a two or three parter of Star Wars Clone wars that's a pretty good impregnable prison heist, though it's only two real targets with a handful of clones who could help the escape. It's like a lava planet or something but the geography could easily be transferred to an Underdark scenario.
100 people moving through caves? I mean that could be a getaway but 100 folks who didn't train for a stealth exfiltration has cavern acoustic and disturbed earth to give them away. You might even see if the Drow have some sort of tracking creature, maybe something that has an ants sense of smell that can sort of bloodhound for a tracking party. subterranean water ways are an option, but the logistics of providing watercraft for 100 (and the liberators) will need some sort of cool mass invisibility work. In the Entebbe raid I mentioned earlier, Israel relied on Kenya for initial safe harbor, maybe there's an enclave of friendlies or at least "enemies of the Drow are my friends" community that can receive the freed captives before moving on to really repatriating them. OotA might be useful inspiration for a potential actor on that front.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.