Overview

A coastal city-state is besieged by a strange phenomenon: doors that seal themselves, forming new, self-contained rooms wherever rooms would not normally exist. These Lockbound Rooms trap memories, guardians, and dangers alike. Designed for 4–5 adventurers of levels 1–12, this campaign blends puzzles, social intrigue, and 5e combat as players unravel a network of sanctified crypts tied to a vanished Archivist.

Setting

Calderis, a trade hub where scholars, smugglers, and guilds cross paths. The rooms appear in a library, a manor, a lighthouse, and a shipyard chapel—each room a microcosm with its own rules and guardians. The mystery centers on the Archivist’s missing diary, which supposedly explains how the rooms are powered and why they choose their victims.

The Main Quest

Seek and recover four Shard Keys from the trial rooms to unlock the Corridor of Echoes. The corridor reveals the Archivist’s motive and offers a fateful choice: seal the rooms forever, or free the memories trapped within—at a cost to the living. Each shard comes with a trial that tests a different facet of the party (arcane wits, political leverage, physical endurance, or moral courage).

Side Quests to Investigate

• The Murder in the Observatory: a locked room reveals a conspirator among Calderis’s ruling circle; players must decipher a memory echo to expose them.


• The Drowned Manuscript: recover a counter-spell from a survivor who recalls a ritual that could destabilize the room’s wards, granting a rare artifact when solved.

Central Events & Triggers

• New moons spawn a fresh room; inside, time runs at half-speed, and clues drift in and out of memory.


• A memory echo forecasts possible futures depending on choices; altering the outcome reshapes later rooms.


• The Archivist’s presence grows stronger as the party collects shards, culminating in a dramatic confrontation in the final chamber.

Hooks

• A noble offers gold to end the room’s spread before Calderis sinks into panic.


• A scholar pleads for aid to translate the diary’s cipher, hinting at a betrayals in the Council.

Challenges

Puzzles solving Arcana, Investigation, and Insight; warded traps with escalating DCs; and encounters with sentient guardians and spectral entrepreneurs who bargain with the party.

Rewards

Shard Keys as relics of unlocking power; items like the Ring of Unsealing, Cloak of Quiet Escape, and utility spells; XP to advance to mid-campaign levels; and a lasting choice that will shape Calderis’s future.