The adventure ahead
The Verdant Vale—called Shangrila in old caravanserai tales—was a lush empire of mountain-sized trees, endless orchards, and river-cities of gold and jade. Three hundred years ago, everything changed in a single season. The rivers dried, the great trees turned to stone, and the valley became the Glasswaste: a desert where noon heat bakes stone and midnight cold cracks it. The party begins as hired caravan guards on the Marchant Expedition, a well-funded venture seeking the vale's fate and its fabled riches.
They soon learn the disaster was no natural drought. An ancient order, the Keepers of the Green Flame, bound a primordial spirit of desiccation—the Hollow Sun—beneath the vale's heart, and their binding failed. Now the Hollow Sun stirs again, its cult of ash-wrapped zealots working to free it fully, and the expedition's own patron has secrets of his own. The party must survive the desert, earn the trust of the vale's last descendants, race the cult to the Sunken Ziggurat, and choose whether to renew the binding, destroy the Hollow Sun, or claim its terrible power.
Share with your players
You are hired guards—sword-hands, scouts, and wardens—on the Marchant Expedition. Your employer, the scholar-merchant Aldous Marchant, has spent a fortune assembling camels, water-skins, diggers, and maps copied from caravanserai legends. The prize: Shangrila, the Verdant Vale, a lost empire between the Twin Rampart mountains where trees grew tall as mountains and river cities gleamed with gold. Then something happened—no legend says what—and the whole valley became the Glasswaste, a desert hot enough to bake an egg on stone by day and cold enough to freeze water by night.
Marchant wants to know what happened, and more importantly, he's promised every guard a share of treasure 'enough to set you up for life.' The expedition departs from the frontier town of Dunharrows Gate at dawn. Expect heat, cold, bandits, buried ruins, and things the legends were too frightened to write down. Bring water. Bring courage. The Vale does not forgive the unprepared.
Behind the screen
DM-ONLY OVERVIEW. Structure: Act 1 (levels 3-4) is overland survival and expedition intrigue—crossing the Glasswaste, discovering the petrified forest, and surviving a cult ambush that decimates the expedition, leaving the party leaderless. Act 2 (levels 5-6) is exploration and alliance—finding the oasis settlement of Last Root, learning the true history from the vale's descendants, and recovering the three ritual keys (Sun-Disk, River-Chalice, Seed of the First Tree) from three distinct ruins while the cult shadows them.
Act 3 (levels 7-8) is the descent into the Sunken Ziggurat beneath the Glass Flats, the confrontation with the cult leader Vessaria Ashbound and the treacherous expedition patron Aldous Marchant, and the final choice at the Hollow Sun's prison. SECRETS: (1) Aldous Marchant is a former cult initiate who hired the expedition to reach the ziggurat for his own redemption-or-power agenda; he betrays the party in Act 3. (2) The Hollow Sun is not evil by nature—it is a spirit of the dry season driven mad by three centuries of imprisonment; destroying it permanently ends the desert but also kills the vale's chance of rebirth, since its heat is the engine of the Seed.
(3) The correct ritual to renew the binding requires a willing sacrifice of 'a life freely given to the dust'—an NPC ally (or a PC) must volunteer. (4) The cult leader Vessaria believes freeing the Hollow Sun will restore the vale by burning away the 'corruption' of the binding—she is tragically wrong. CLUE FLOW: Act 1 clues (petroglyphs, cult survivor interrogation, Marchant's locked journal) reveal the binding existed and the cult is active.
Act 2 clues (Last Root oral history, three key-ruins, Vessaria's sermons overheard) reveal the ritual's shape, the three keys, and Marchant's past. Act 3 clues (ziggurat murals, the dead Keeper's ghost) reveal the sacrifice requirement and the Hollow Sun's true nature. FAILURE STATES: If the party loses all three keys, the ziggurat's inner seal can be broken by force (DC 25 combined checks, with a deadly guardian fight) but Vessaria reaches the heart first and the final fight is harder.
If the party never learns the sacrifice truth, the binding ritual fails at the climax and they must fight the partially-freed Hollow Sun's avatar. If Last Root is destroyed in Act 2, the party loses their resupply base and the descendant NPC allies, making Act 3 a desperate, resource-starved run. PACING: Sessions 1-3 Act 1, sessions 4-7 Act 2, sessions 8-10 Act 3. Milestone leveling at: surviving the ambush (level 4), securing at least two keys and Last Root's alliance (level 5), all three keys (level 6), entering the ziggurat heart (level 7), resolving the finale (level 8).
Hook 01
Aldous Marchant posts a notice in Dunharrows Gate offering guard contracts on an expedition to the Verdant Vale—pay in gold now, a share of treasure 'enough to set you up for life' on return. The party signs on as caravan guards and sword-hands.
Hook 02
A dying traveler stumbles into town clutching a clay token stamped with a sun split by a crack, whispering about 'the Hollow Sun's brides' and a ziggurat beneath the glass. The town watch won't investigate; Marchant will.
Hook 03
One party member has a dream of a white-wood staff and a voice saying 'the seal cracks, child of the Vale.' They wake with a faint green mark on their palm—the blood of the Keepers of the Green Flame stirs, and Last Root is calling them home.
Hook 04
The party owes a powerful creditor who accepts one form of repayment: a living cutting from the last true tree in the Glasswaste, rumored to survive in a hidden oasis. The expedition is the only safe way in.
The party guards the Marchant Expedition across the desert threshold, survives the deadly day-night cycle, discovers the petrified forest proving the legends true, and endures a cult ambush at the Dryfall ruins that shatters the expedition and leaves the party on their own.
Read aloud
The well at Dunharrows Gate is the last true water for a hundred miles. Around it, the Marchant Expedition assembles in the grey pre-dawn: forty camels laden with barrels and rope, a dozen diggers and porters, two rival scholars arguing over a map, and Aldous Marchant himself—a lean man in a dust-grey coat, checking lashings with shaking hands. Beyond the camp's palisade, the desert begins like a held breath: pale, flat, and utterly silent. Somewhere out there, between the Twin Ramparts, lies the Verdant Vale. Or what's left of it.
Introduce Marchant (secretive, kind but evasive about his past), the expedition quartermaster Sela Brant (pragmatic, becomes the party's key ally), and the digger foreman Odo (superstitious, knows desert omens). Give the party guard duties: night watch rotation, scouting ahead, and keeping the scholars from wandering off. A pickpocket attempt on Marchant's locked journal by a cult spy disguised as a porter gives the party their first clue opportunity. If they catch the spy, they find a clay token stamped with a sun symbol, split by a crack.
Read aloud
On the third day, the dunes break against something impossible: trees. Not living trees—columns of grey stone, each wider than a house, rising a hundred feet or more from the sand. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, marching toward the horizon like the bones of a forest that once held up the sky. Marchant dismounts and presses his palm to the bark-turned-stone. 'Three hundred years,' he whispers. 'It took three hundred years for a legend to rot.
Look at the rings.' The exposed face of a fallen trunk shows growth rings—and then, at the outer edge, a band of blackened, glassy stone, as if the tree's final year was burned into memory in a single day.
This is the wonder-and-foreshadowing scene. The petroglyph ledge nearby shows the vale's history in carved panels: orchards, rivers, a sun-disk held by kneeling figures, then the disk cracking, then figures fleeing. A DC 15 Religion or History check recognizes the sun-disk as a ritual seal, not a deity—the vale's people bound something. Night brings the desert's killing cold (DC 12 Constitution saves or gain one exhaustion level for unprepared characters; the expedition's braziers mitigate this for NPCs).
A lone ash-wrapped figure watches the camp from a dune crest at midnight—Vessaria's scout. If approached, it flees; if attacked, it fights as a cult zealot and carries a second sun-token and a scrap of map marked with Dryfall.
Read aloud
Dryfall was a waystation where a river once fell a hundred feet into carved basins. Now the waterfall is a curtain of wind-scoured stone, and the cisterns beneath it are the only water for fifty miles. The expedition makes camp in the basin's shadow. You wake to the smell of smoke. Above, on the rim of the dry falls, figures stand in grey ash-wrapped robes, a dozen or more, each holding a clay lamp that burns without flickering.
Their leader—a tall woman with a voice like cracking earth—calls down: 'The Vale belongs to the Hollow Sun. The water belongs to the dust. Spill your water on the sand and walk away, and you may keep your lives.'
This is Vessaria Ashbound's introduction and the expedition-breaking battle. Vessaria does not fight to kill the party—she fights to destroy the expedition's water barrels and camels, then withdraws, believing scarcity will drive the survivors out of the Vale. Run the battle with cult zealots and two cult fanatics (use SRD cultist/zealot-type stat blocks for rank-and-file; Vessaria acts per her forthcoming character sheet—she uses radiant-flavored fire magic and retreats at half strength, leaving a taunt).
Casualties: half the diggers, most of the camels, and Marchant wounded. Afterward, Marchant confesses he cannot lead and effectively hands direction to the party and Sela. The cistern beneath Dryfall still holds water (DC 13 Investigation to find the hidden catch)—the party's lifeline and reason to hold this ground.
Milestone: Party reaches level 4 after surviving the Dryfall ambush and taking command of the expedition's remnants.
The party crosses the salt flats to Last Root, the last living settlement of the vale's descendants, learns the true history of the binding, and is tasked with recovering three ritual keys from three ruins—the Sun-Disk from the Cliffside Temple, the River-Chalice from the Drowned Cavern, and the Seed of the First Tree from the Ash Orchard—while the Ashbound cult races them and Marchant's past comes to light.
Read aloud
After the blinding white of the salt flats, green hits you like a blow. A notch in the mountainside holds a spring, a grove of true living trees—small, twisted, but alive—and terraced gardens watered by stone channels old as the empire. People in woven reed-and-copper dress watch you descend the switchback path. At the gate stands an old woman with a staff of white wood and eyes the color of deep water: Yeva, Keeper of the Last Root.
Behind her, a young man with a bow and an open, weathered face: her grandson Tammas. 'Three hundred years,' Yeva says slowly, 'and the dust finally sends us visitors who are not wrapped in ash. Speak carefully, strangers. We remember what the last visitors wanted.'
Last Root is the campaign's home base. Yeva is the last Keeper of the Green Flame; her people maintain fragments of the binding ritual but lack the three keys, scattered when the order fell. Roleplay the trust-earning: the party must demonstrate they are not cultists (the sun-tokens help—showing one proves they've fought the Ashbound) and that they seek the Vale's restoration, not just gold. Marchant's ciphered journal can be decoded here (Yeva recognizes the cipher as Keeper-script; DC 14 Intelligence check with her help over a long rest): it reveals Marchant was a cult initiate forty years ago who fled before his final initiation, and he has spent his life seeking the ziggurat to 'undo what I helped begin.'
Confronting Marchant is a major roleplay beat—he confesses, begs to continue, and becomes either a penitent ally or a resentful one (his Act 3 betrayal is more sympathetic if forgiven, colder if condemned). Yeva gives the party the key-quest: Sun-Disk (Cliffside Temple, guarded by constructs), River-Chalice (Drowned Cavern, flooded and haunted), Seed of the First Tree (Ash Orchard, where the cult is already digging).
Read aloud
The orchard's trees are stone, but their branches still bear fruit—fruit of black glass, hanging motionless in the wind. Cultists in ash robes work the ground with picks and shovels, and a chanting circle stands around the largest tree, where the sand has begun to glow faintly gold. CLIFFSIDE TEMPLE: Stairs cut into the cliff face climb five hundred feet to a doorway shaped like a rising sun. Inside, dust lies undisturbed for centuries—except for a single set of footprints, bare, leading in and never out. Bronze statues of kneeling Keepers line the hall, and each one's eyes follow you.
Run these as two separate expedition scenes (one session each or combined if short). ASH ORCHARD: the cult dig is led by Vessaria's lieutenant, Korrag, a scarred zealot (use a veteran-style combatant per his forthcoming sheet). The Seed is a fist-sized stone acorn in a root-hollow beneath the First Tree. If the party delays more than a week, the cult extracts it and the party must raid the cult's camp at the salt flats (harder).
Combat: Korrag plus six zealots; the glass fruit explodes when struck by fire (1d6 fire damage in 10 feet). CLIFFSIDE TEMPLE: a guardian construct (use SRD animated-armor-type or golem-type stat block scaled for level 5-6) animates if the Sun-Disk is touched without speaking the Keeper's greeting ('The dust remembers the rain'), learnable from murals (DC 14 Investigation) or from Tammas. The bare footprints belong to a ghost—the Last Abbot—who, if spoken to respectfully (DC 15 Persuasion or a offering of water poured on the altar), reveals the sacrifice requirement early: 'The seal drinks a life freely given. That is why we failed—we grew too few willing to die.' This is the campaign's biggest secret; give it here or hold it for Act 3 depending on pacing.
Read aloud
The riverbed ends at a stone door standing open, and beyond it, impossibly, water—a black lake filling a vast cavern, still as glass. The Vale's last river didn't dry. It hid. Something beneath that water still holds the old current. LAST ROOT: You crest the pass at dusk and see smoke. Last Root's terraces burn on the lower levels, and on the ridge above the spring, ash-wrapped figures ring a bonfire. Vessaria's voice carries across the valley: 'Give us the spring, Keepers, and the Hollow Sun will let your children drink of the new world to come!'
a swimming/exploration scene. The River-Chalice rests on an altar island in the lake's center; the lake is home to a drowned Keeper guardian (use a water-elemental-type or specter-type SRD block) that tests rather than attacks—it challenges the party to 'give back to the water what the water gave.' Pouring a waterskin of genuinely shared water (or a heartfelt offering) satisfies it; attacking it makes a hard fight. A strong current (Athletics DC 14 per crossing) complicates retrieval.
DEFENSE OF LAST ROOT: the cult raid is the act's climax. Vessaria leads it personally but withdraws when reduced to half strength, now convinced the party are 'the false seal's dogs.' If the party skipped the cavern to defend Last Root, the chalice scene can be run after the raid (the cult, having failed here, sends Korrag's survivors to the cavern instead—a race). Failure state: if the defense is lost, Last Root burns, Yeva dies, and the party loses their base—but Tammas and surviving scouts carry the ritual knowledge onward, keeping Act 3 possible at higher difficulty.
Milestone: Party reaches level 6 upon recovering all three keys and securing Last Root.
The party crosses the Glass Flats—a desert of fused, razor-edged glass—to the Sunken Ziggurat at the vale's heart, descends through its trials and the cult's occupation, confronts Vessaria and the treacherous Marchant at the Hollow Sun's prison, and makes the final choice: renew the binding at a terrible cost, destroy the Hollow Sun and gamble the Vale's rebirth, or claim its power.
Read aloud
The sand ends at a shoreline of green-black glass that stretches to the horizon, smooth in places, jagged in others, throwing the sun's glare back up at you like a mirror of fire. Here, three hundred years ago, the Hollow Sun's first rage melted the earth itself. At the flats' center, half-sunk in the glass like a drowning temple, stands the Ziggurat: a stepped mountain of white stone, its summit just visible above the glare, its base swallowed. Ash-wrapped sentries stand at the causeway's head, and above them, on the first terrace, a bonfire of green flame burns upside down—the cult's inverted sign of the Green Flame.
The crossing is a survival gauntlet: heat (DC 15 Constitution saves every 4 hours or exhaustion), glass-shear terrain (movement halved, or DC 12 Acrobatics to move at full speed; failed saves cause 1d4 slashing), and no water sources (the party's preparation and Last Root supplies matter—reward planning). A cult patrol (six zealots, two fanatics) hunts the flats; ambush or evade. At the causeway, the party can fight through the sentries, infiltrate in captured ash-robes (Deception DC 14, advantage if they've kept tokens), or scale the sunken face (Athletics DC 15, three checks, falling into glass shards on failure).
Inside the first terrace, the ziggurat's murals tell the full history—including the panel the Keepers hid: the Hollow Sun was once the spirit of the dry season, driven mad by imprisonment, and its heat is the engine that would one day crack the Seed of the First Tree open and bring the new forest. Destruction is not clean victory.
Read aloud
The ziggurat's interior is cool—impossibly cool—and the walls weep a faint green light from veins of living stone. Stairs spiral down past murals of the Vale in life: rivers like silver ribbons, trees holding up clouds, a million lamps on festival nights. In the Chamber of the Sun, a bronze disk the size of a wagon wheel hovers over a dais, and beneath it, a dead guardian of bronze and the cultists it killed.
In the Chamber of the River, a dry channel waits for water that will never come on its own. And from below, from the Chamber of the Seed, you can hear chanting—and a voice you know. Marchant's voice. 'I brought them, Vessaria. The keys. Now let me touch it. Let me finally be forgiven.'
A dungeon descent with three keyed chambers, each a puzzle-encounter keyed to one of the party's keys. CHAMBER OF THE SUN: the cult's forced breach woke the bronze guardian (SRD golem-type, scaled); the party can fight alongside surviving cultists against it (temporary truce, Deception/insight-rich roleplay) or let it thin the cult first. Placing the Sun-Disk in the hovering wheel-slot (DC 12 Arcana or simple trial-and-error) calms the guardian. CHAMBER OF THE RIVER: the dry channel must be filled—the River-Chalice placed in the channel and filled with water from the party's own skins (costing precious supplies) or by a create/destroy water spell; the water runs uphill, impossibly, opening the stair.
CHAMBER OF THE SEED: Marchant is here, having betrayed the party's route to Vessaria in exchange for being present at the freeing—his 'forgiveness.' He stands with Korrag (if alive) and four zealots before the Seed altar. This is the confrontation: Marchant fights desperately and half-heartedly (per his forthcoming sheet); he can be talked down (DC 16 Persuasion, advantage if the party forgave him in Act 2), in which case he turns on the zealots and dies helping the party, whispering the ritual's final word Yeva never knew. Placing the Seed of the First Tree in the altar opens the Heart of Dust.
Read aloud
The stair ends in a hollow so vast the ziggurat above is merely its crown. At its center, suspended in a cage of green light, hangs a sphere of absolute brightness—a sun the size of a house, burning without heat, without sound, without mercy. It does not blaze. It waits. Around its cage, Vessaria and a dozen of her chosen kneel in the dust. She rises when she sees you, and her face is not hatred.
It is grief, worn like armor. 'You came,' she says. 'Good. Someone must tend the new forest when I am its first rain.' The green cage flickers—once, twice—and inside it, something turns to look at you.
THE FINALE, in three movements. MOVEMENT ONE—Vessaria: she can be fought (her sheet: radiant-desiccation magic, ash-wraps, retreats to protect the ritual) or talked down (Persuasion DC 20, or DC 15 with the Abbot's testimony or the mural truth: freeing the Hollow Sun will not restore the Vale—it will finish killing it, because the Seed needs the bound Sun's slow heat, not its rage). If talked down, she becomes a tragic ally and her zealots split (half fight anyway, led by Korrag if alive).
MOVEMENT TWO—Marchant's end (if not resolved above, he attempts the ritual himself here, either to free or to bind, and is consumed—his death can fulfill the sacrifice if the party has learned of it and he gives himself willingly: 'a life freely given to the dust'). MOVEMENT THREE—THE CHOICE: with the keys and the ritual, the party faces three options. BIND: renew the seal; it requires a life freely given—an NPC ally (Vessaria seeking redemption, Marchant, or even Tammas if present) or a PC must volunteer; the desert remains, but the Seed-engine continues, and in a century the Vale may be reborn.
DESTROY: shatter the cage with the keys as foci (each key wielder makes a check—Arcana DC 16, Religion DC 16, Nature DC 16, or attack the avatar); the Hollow Sun manifests an avatar (use a high-CR fire/radiant-themed SRD block scaled for level 8, such as a fire-elemental-type or solar-adjacent threat) and must be destroyed; the desert ends within a year, rain returns, but the Seed is cold and the great trees will never grow again—the Vale becomes ordinary green country.
CLAIM: a character can touch the cage and accept the Hollow Sun's bargain (Charisma save DC 18 or be dominated); success grants a fragment of desiccation power (DM-granted boon) and the desert persists under new management—set up for sequel play. FAILURE STATE: if the party never learned the sacrifice requirement and attempts the binding, the ritual fails, the cage cracks, and they must fight the avatar AND then attempt the binding again with a willing sacrifice or flee as the Vale's unbinding begins (campaign continues into a darker epilogue arc).
Milestone: Party reaches level 8 upon resolving the Heart of Dust and completing the campaign.
Vessaria Ashbound
Vessaria Ashbound is the High Priestess of the Ashbound, a tall, gaunt woman wrapped head to foot in ash-grey cloth, with a cracked clay su…
Korrag Ashfist
Korrag Ashfist is the Ashbound's fist: a broad, fire-scarred human in ash-wrapped chain mail who speaks rarely, obeys instantly, and kills …
Aldous Marchant
Aldous Marchant is a lean, grey-templed man of late middle years, dressed in a dust-worn merchant's coat of good cloth gone pale from road …
Ash Zealot
Completed
· CR 1/2
· Humanoid
The Ash Zealot is a gaunt, hollow-eyed human wrapped in sackcloth robes stained the color of old cinders. Coarse ash leathers its hair and …
Bronze Keeper Guardian
Completed
· CR 5
· Construct
The Bronze Keeper Guardian is a massive kneeling statue of polished bronze, its surface etched with ancient sun motifs and verdant vines th…
Drowned Keeper
Completed
· CR 5
· Elemental
The Drowned Keeper is a robed figure of black water and rotted vestments. Its body is made of living, flowing river water, dark as shadow a…
Avatar of the Hollow Sun
Completed
· CR 11
· Elemental
The Avatar of the Hollow Sun appears as a broad, shimmering column of ember-orange flame that hangs ten feet above the ground, its edges cr…
Vessaria was born at Last Root and cast out as a child for heretical visions. She sincerely believes the Hollow Sun is an imprisoned god of renewal whose freeing will 'burn away the false seal' and restore the Vale—she is tragically wrong, because the cult's scriptures were written by a mad Keeper who wanted the binding to fail. Her grief is worn like armor; she intends to be 'the new forest's first rain.'
Earnest, sorrowful, utterly certain. Speaks like cracking earth. Kind to children and merciless to the 'false seal's dogs.' Can be redeemed if shown the truth.
Act One: destroy the expedition's water at Dryfall to drive outsiders out without mass killing. Act Two: dig the Seed at the Ash Orchard, raid Last Root for its spring, and race the party for the keys. Act Three: prepare the unbinding at the Heart of Dust, keeping the party alive to 'witness the new world's birth.' In battle she fights from height or cover, targets supplies and morale over bodies, and withdraws at half strength to preserve the ritual. At the finale she can be fought or talked down (Persuasion DC 20, or DC 15 with the Abbot's testimony or the mural truth).
If killed, her zealots scatter and the unbinding loses its shepherd. If turned, she becomes a tragic ally, and her willing death can fulfill the binding's sacrifice.
A scarred former mercenary who found meaning in Vessaria's certainty. He does not share her theology—he worships her. Every atrocity he commits is an act of devotion, and he distrusts Marchant's conversion utterly.
Blunt, loyal, brutal, perceptive. Fights to the death. The only cultist who never believes the party's deceptions without hard proof.
Act Two: lead the Ash Orchard dig, hold the root-hollow, and hurl fire flasks to detonate the glass fruit over the party. Act Two climax: lead the final wave against Last Root's spring, dueling the party's front line. Act Three: if alive, guard Marchant at the Seed chamber and direct the zealot shield-wall. He always fights to the death and always targets the party's healer first if he can identify them.
Korrag cannot be turned while Vessaria lives. If Vessaria is redeemed at the finale, he leads the zealots who fight on anyway, dying as the cult's last true believer.
Forty years ago Marchant was an Ashbound initiate who fled before his final initiation. He has spent his life and fortune seeking the ziggurat to 'undo what I helped begin'—but beneath the penance is a starving need for forgiveness, and a flicker of temptation to claim the Hollow Sun's power as proof he was never a coward. In Act Three he sells the party's route to Vessaria in exchange for being present at the freeing.
Kind, evasive, shaking-handed, cipher-keeping. Confesses when cornered. Fights desperately and half-heartedly; breaks down when wounded.
Act One: hire and shepherd the expedition while hiding his past; break down at Dryfall and hand command to the party. Act Two: confess if the journal is decoded; if condemned, he disappears in the night and travels ahead to bargain with Vessaria. Act Three: at the Seed chamber he fights defensively beside Korrag's zealots, protecting the altar; he can be turned (Persuasion DC 16, advantage if forgiven in Act Two), dying against the zealots and whispering the final ritual word, 'Remember.' If not turned, he attempts the ritual himself at the Heart of Dust and is consumed—and his willing death can fulfill the sacrifice.
Marchant's redemption is the campaign's most achievable mercy: he wants forgiveness more than power, and a single kind word at the right moment can turn him.
Recommended party: 4-5 players; balanced party strongly recommended. A character with survival skills (Ranger, Druid, or Outlander-background) is essential. A healer, a front-line fighter, and a character with investigation or lore skills (Wizard, Cleric, Sage) round out the ideal group. Any class works, but at least one character should be able to produce or locate water.
Cover the survival themes: extreme heat and cold, resource tracking (water matters), and the possibility of a PC's willing sacrifice at the finale (permanent, unresurrectable within the Vale). Establish table comfort with cult fanaticism and a tragic, redeemable antagonist. Confirm the party has at least one water-capable character and one survivalist.
Each module encounter includes per-encounter scaling notes. Globally: for 4 players, use listed rosters as written; for 5 players, add one Ash Zealot or one cultist per combat and grant the finale avatar its full legendary-style action suite. For weaker or smaller parties, cut zealot quantities by 25% and let Vessaria withdraw at two-thirds strength. Milestones (levels 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) keep the party on pace regardless of combat outcomes.
Pacing: Sessions 1-3 Act One, sessions 4-7 Act Two, sessions 8-10 Act Three. Milestones: level 4 after Dryfall, level 5 with two keys and Last Root's alliance, level 6 with all three keys, level 7 on breaching the ziggurat, level 8 at the finale. Track three things on a whiteboard: water supplies, the party's knowledge of the sacrifice requirement, and whether Marchant was forgiven—these three variables drive the finale's shape. Vessaria and Korrag always act from their character sheets, never from monster stat blocks. The sun-tokens are the campaign's connective tissue: introduce one in Session 1 and let the players learn to read them.
Buy and sell at Dunharrows Gate or the Broken Compass: water, gear, and rumors.
Requirements: Access to Dunharrows Gate or a trading contact.
Rewards: Standard prices, plus one rumor per 10 gp spent on drinks (roll on the rumors table).
Time: 1-2 days
Location: Dunharrows Gate; Harsk of the Broken Compass gives two rumors for the price of one if the party completed the Missing Water-Runner side quest.
Best used before Act One and between acts.
Study the binding ritual, Keeper-script, and the vale's history with Yeva at Last Root.
Requirements: Last Root's trust.
Rewards: Advantage on one History or Religion check per study week; learning the ritual's opening words early.
Time: 5 days
Location: Last Root, the grove-shrine.
Grants advantage on the finale's ritual checks once.
With Odo's help, refine the Ash Orchard's black glass fruit into alchemist's fire and sellable gemstones.
Requirements: Ten intact glass fruits and a proficiency with alchemist's supplies or Odo's aid.
Rewards: 3 vials of alchemist's fire and 200 gp of gemstones per batch.
Time: 3 days
Location: Last Root's workshop terrace.
A rare source of fire damage the party can stockpile—risky near the fruit itself.
Stone trunks wider than houses, a hundred feet tall, half-buried in dunes. A fallen trunk shows a final year burned into glassy black stone.
The petroglyph ledge records the vale's history and the Keeper's binding seal.
A ruined river-way station beneath a dry waterfall; carved cisterns hold the only water for fifty miles.
The hidden cistern catch (Investigation DC 13) is the expedition's lifeline after the ambush.
A petrified orchard whose stone branches bear fruit of black glass. The First Tree's seed is buried in a root-hollow beneath the largest trunk.
Cult dig site in Act Two; glass fruit explodes for 1d6 fire damage in 10 feet when struck by fire.
A Keeper monastery carved into a cliff face, its doorway shaped like a rising sun. Bronze statues of kneeling Keepers line the dust-filled hall.
Home of the Last Abbot's ghost and the Sun-Disk. The Keeper's greeting ('The dust remembers the rain') pacifies the bronze guardian.
A flooded Keeper undercroft beneath a dry riverbed; a black lake, still as glass, hides the vale's last living water.
The River-Chalice rests on the altar island; the drowned guardian tests visitors rather than attacking.
A processional causeway climbing the sunken face; murals inside the first terrace tell the vale's full history, including the panel the Keepers hid.
Entry by force, infiltration (Deception DC 14 with robes and tokens), or climbing the sunken face (Athletics DC 15 x3).
A bronze disk the size of a wagon wheel hovers over a dais; a dead bronze guardian and the cultists it killed lie beneath it.
The cult's forced breach woke the second guardian; a temporary truce with cornered cultists is possible.
A dry channel waiting for water that will never come on its own; the water runs uphill when the Chalice is filled.
Costs three waterskins or a create-or-destroy-water spell—precious supplies in the glass.
The lowest keyed chamber, where the Seed altar opens the Heart of Dust. Marchant waits here with Korrag and four zealots.
Marchant can be turned (Persuasion DC 16, advantage if forgiven in Act Two); if turned, he dies whispering the final ritual word: 'Remember.'
A vast spherical hollow at the vale's root. A cage of green light suspends a sun the size of a house, burning without heat or sound.
The finale: bind, destroy, or claim the Hollow Sun.
Vessaria Ashbound
Vessaria Ashbound is the High Priestess of the Ashbound, a tall, gaunt woman wrapped head to foot in ash-grey cloth, with a cracked clay su…
Korrag Ashfist
Korrag Ashfist is the Ashbound's fist: a broad, fire-scarred human in ash-wrapped chain mail who speaks rarely, obeys instantly, and kills …
Aldous Marchant
Aldous Marchant is a lean, grey-templed man of late middle years, dressed in a dust-worn merchant's coat of good cloth gone pale from road …
Ash Zealot
Completed
· CR 1/2
· Humanoid
The Ash Zealot is a gaunt, hollow-eyed human wrapped in sackcloth robes stained the color of old cinders. Coarse ash leathers its hair and …
Bronze Keeper Guardian
Completed
· CR 5
· Construct
The Bronze Keeper Guardian is a massive kneeling statue of polished bronze, its surface etched with ancient sun motifs and verdant vines th…
Drowned Keeper
Completed
· CR 5
· Elemental
The Drowned Keeper is a robed figure of black water and rotted vestments. Its body is made of living, flowing river water, dark as shadow a…
Avatar of the Hollow Sun
Completed
· CR 11
· Elemental
The Avatar of the Hollow Sun appears as a broad, shimmering column of ember-orange flame that hangs ten feet above the ground, its edges cr…
Vessaria was born at Last Root and cast out as a child for heretical visions. She sincerely believes the Hollow Sun is an imprisoned god of renewal whose freeing will 'burn away the false seal' and restore the Vale—she is tragically wrong, because the cult's scriptures were written by a mad Keeper who wanted the binding to fail. Her grief is worn like armor; she intends to be 'the new forest's first rain.'
Earnest, sorrowful, utterly certain. Speaks like cracking earth. Kind to children and merciless to the 'false seal's dogs.' Can be redeemed if shown the truth.
Act One: destroy the expedition's water at Dryfall to drive outsiders out without mass killing. Act Two: dig the Seed at the Ash Orchard, raid Last Root for its spring, and race the party for the keys. Act Three: prepare the unbinding at the Heart of Dust, keeping the party alive to 'witness the new world's birth.' In battle she fights from height or cover, targets supplies and morale over bodies, and withdraws at half strength to preserve the ritual. At the finale she can be fought or talked down (Persuasion DC 20, or DC 15 with the Abbot's testimony or the mural truth).
If killed, her zealots scatter and the unbinding loses its shepherd. If turned, she becomes a tragic ally, and her willing death can fulfill the binding's sacrifice.
A scarred former mercenary who found meaning in Vessaria's certainty. He does not share her theology—he worships her. Every atrocity he commits is an act of devotion, and he distrusts Marchant's conversion utterly.
Blunt, loyal, brutal, perceptive. Fights to the death. The only cultist who never believes the party's deceptions without hard proof.
Act Two: lead the Ash Orchard dig, hold the root-hollow, and hurl fire flasks to detonate the glass fruit over the party. Act Two climax: lead the final wave against Last Root's spring, dueling the party's front line. Act Three: if alive, guard Marchant at the Seed chamber and direct the zealot shield-wall. He always fights to the death and always targets the party's healer first if he can identify them.
Korrag cannot be turned while Vessaria lives. If Vessaria is redeemed at the finale, he leads the zealots who fight on anyway, dying as the cult's last true believer.
Forty years ago Marchant was an Ashbound initiate who fled before his final initiation. He has spent his life and fortune seeking the ziggurat to 'undo what I helped begin'—but beneath the penance is a starving need for forgiveness, and a flicker of temptation to claim the Hollow Sun's power as proof he was never a coward. In Act Three he sells the party's route to Vessaria in exchange for being present at the freeing.
Kind, evasive, shaking-handed, cipher-keeping. Confesses when cornered. Fights desperately and half-heartedly; breaks down when wounded.
Act One: hire and shepherd the expedition while hiding his past; break down at Dryfall and hand command to the party. Act Two: confess if the journal is decoded; if condemned, he disappears in the night and travels ahead to bargain with Vessaria. Act Three: at the Seed chamber he fights defensively beside Korrag's zealots, protecting the altar; he can be turned (Persuasion DC 16, advantage if forgiven in Act Two), dying against the zealots and whispering the final ritual word, 'Remember.' If not turned, he attempts the ritual himself at the Heart of Dust and is consumed—and his willing death can fulfill the sacrifice.
Marchant's redemption is the campaign's most achievable mercy: he wants forgiveness more than power, and a single kind word at the right moment can turn him.
Yeva's grandson; a young archer with an open, weathered face. Serves as the party's guide in Act Two.
A barefoot ghost in Keeper's robes, endlessly kneeling at the temple altar.
The last Keeper of the Green Flame; an old woman with a white-wood staff and deep-water eyes.
Digger foreman; superstitious, reads desert omens, knows caravanserai lore.
Expedition quartermaster; pragmatic, capable, becomes the party's key ally.
Suggested Level: 6-7
The hovering bronze wheel-disk (rotating hazard, blocks line of effect each round), the dais, and cultist barricades of broken tools.
The cult's breach tools and a partial map of the lower chambers.
Seating the Sun-Disk (Arcana DC 12) calms the guardian; a temporary truce with the cornered cultists is possible (Persuasion DC 14).
Suggested Level: 6-7
The Seed altar (radiant green light), living-stone veins (difficult terrain), and the descending stair behind the party.
The final ritual word ('Remember') if Marchant is turned, and Marchant's decoded journal pages.
Persuasion DC 16 (advantage if forgiven in Act Two) turns Marchant, who dies fighting the zealots.
Suggested Level: 3-4
Tent ropes, stacked barrels, and the well-head provide cover and improvised obstacles.
A clay sun-token split by a crack, 15 gp, and a scrap of the expedition's route map.
If the spy escapes, the Dryfall ambush gains a surprise round.
Suggested Level: 3-4
Loose dune sand (difficult terrain), darkness, and the camp's brazier light.
A second sun-token and a map scrap marked with Dryfall.
The scout flees if approached; it fights only if cornered.
Suggested Level: 3-4
The dry waterfall's rim (30-foot cliff), cistern basins (half cover), and burning barrels (fire hazards).
Two sun-tokens, a captured cultist's testimony, and the hidden cistern catch (Investigation DC 13).
Vessaria retreats at half strength; cultists target barrels, not people (Perception DC 15 to intercept).
Suggested Level: 4-5
Stone trunks (full cover), black glass fruit that explodes for 1d6 fire damage in 10 feet when struck by fire, and the glowing dig pit.
The Seed of the First Tree (ritual key) and Korrag's orders naming Vessaria's deadline at the Glass Flats.
Stealth DC 14 grants a surprise round; fire spells near the fruit are dangerous to both sides.
Suggested Level: 4-6
Narrow kneeling-statue hall (difficult terrain in ranks), a collapsed stair (Athletics DC 13; failure activates a second guardian), and the altar dais.
The Sun-Disk (ritual key) and the Last Abbot's revelation of the sacrifice requirement.
Investigation DC 14 on the murals yields the greeting and avoids the fight entirely.
Suggested Level: 5-6
Black lake water (swimming; Athletics DC 14 against the current, failure pushes 30 feet and deals 1d4 bludgeoning), the altar island, and total darkness below the surface.
The River-Chalice (ritual key).
An offering of genuinely shared water (Persuasion or Performance DC 15) satisfies the guardian without a fight.
Suggested Level: 5-6
Terraced gardens with stone channels (barricade points), the switchback path (chokepoint), and the burning lower terraces.
Vessaria's sincere conviction revealed by Insight DC 15—the lever for the finale's Persuasion DC 15.
Skill-challenge terraces (Athletics DC 13, Perception DC 14, Persuasion DC 13) reduce civilian casualties; Vessaria withdraws at half strength.
Suggested Level: 7-8
The spherical hollow's sloping dust floor, the green cage's flickering light (radiant glare; creatures within 60 feet have disadvantage on attacks against the cage's defenders), and kneeling-circle positions.
The Hollow Sun's bargain (CLAIM path), the Sun-Boon, and the fate of the Vale.
Persuasion DC 20 (DC 15 with the Abbot's testimony or mural truth) turns Vessaria; the avatar manifests only if the cage is broken or the binding fails.
Clay Sun-Token (Split Sun)
Completed
Act I - the cult spy 'Tam' at the Dunharrows Gate camp, and on fallen cultists throughout the campaign
no
Chalice of the Last Rains
Completed
Act I - the hidden cistern catch at Dryfall, in a Keeper's cache beside the water
no
Dustwalker's Band
Completed
Act I - the petroglyph ledge cache at the Petrified Forest, left by a dead Keeper
yes
The Sun-Disk
Completed
Act II - the altar of the Cliffside Temple
yes
The River-Chalice
Completed
Act II - the altar island of the Drowned Cavern
no
Seed of the First Tree
Completed
Act II - the root-hollow beneath the First Tree in the Ash Orchard
yes
Keeper's Vestments
Completed
Act III - the Causeway of the First Terrace, taken from the sentry commander
yes
Abbot's Blessing
Completed
Act III - granted by the Last Abbot's ghost, if contacted in Act II or via the temple murals' echo in the ziggurat
yes
The Sun-Boon
Completed
Act III - the Heart of Dust, on the CLAIM path only
yes
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