The next D&D campaign setting is Eberron: Rising from the Last War, and releases on November 19th, 2019 on D&D Beyond. This campaign setting describes the war-torn continent of Khorvaire, as well as other regions of the world of Eberron. Additionally, it contains monster statistics for dozens of new creatures unique to this world, as well as magic items, mystical Dragonmarks, and other supernatural elements that set Eberron apart from other D&D settings. Indeed, Eberron is a world where magic has been used to create technology somewhat analogous to the real-world era of the First World War—with some additional fantastical elements, like the living constructs known as warforged.

This encounter series, called Around Khorvaire in Fifty Days, is a whirlwind tour of Khorvaire, the thematic heart of the Eberron campaign setting. It’s a perfect place for new players to enter the campaign setting, as it introduces and highlights many of the elements that make Eberron stand apart from other campaign settings, like the Forgotten Realms. This series elaborates on all the immediate details you need to run this adventure.

The background of this encounter series is described in greater detail in the first encounter, Departure from Skydock Six. Captain Angelica Estrella d’Sivis, her dragonmark, and her purported mission are described there as well.

Progression

This is the fifth encounter along this journey, and a party of five characters should be 2nd level when they begin this encounter. The previous encounters are:

1. Departure from Skydock Six
2. Storm over the Howling Peaks
3. Friendship in the Wilderness
4. Espionage in Grellreach

Skill Challenge: Sabotage over Lake Cyre

This encounter pits the characters against the most frightful enemy that an airship’s crew can face: the airship itself—and a saboteur. This skill challenge, and the combat that follows if they succeed, is suitable for a party of 2nd-level characters.

The Celeste Noir has concluded its business in Grellreach (see the previous encounter in this series), and is now resuming its journey around Khorvaire. The crew is restless, as the journey has been stopped again and again, but Captain Angelica d’Sivis has assured them that the rest of the trip will be nothing but smooth sailing. A week passed uneventfully since the Celeste Noir departed Grellreach, and the mighty airship has blazed through the sky unhindered. The skies are clear, and everything is good.

Of course, things always go fine on an airship—until they don’t. A goblin saboteur from Darguun stowed away aboard the ship, and intends to destroy the vessel. This goblin is a former apprentice of Ziggy Arcingwind named Grixe Laddimoff, and is described below. Grixe laid undetected until the experimental Brelish vessel traveled over the Mournland, then enacted her scheme. She planted a homemade explosive device that disrupted the elemental ring which propels the vessel and keeps it aloft. Without the elemental ring, an emergency water landing might be the only way everyone gets out of this mess alive. 

This encounter begins just as the device activates, and everything goes to Khyber in a handbasket…

Grixe Laddimoff

The junior artificer Grixe Laddimoff is Ziggy Arcingwind’s former student. She is a grim-faced, single-minded radical who believes that House Cannith is planning to reignite the Last War using deadly new technology—and that such a conflict will wipe Darguun and the goblinoid people off the map.

Grixe studied with her tutor for several years in Grellreach, and learned about the dangerous work he did for House Cannith while in captivity. She left Grellreach for several more years and traveled in disguise to Breland, searching for answers—and found them. House Cannith is developing experimental warships, armed with powerful elemental spellcannons and overcharged elemental rings designed for lightning-fast travel. House Cannith, always trying to maneuver itself into a position of power, is doubtless trying to create weaponry that will allow it to win the so-called Last War’s inevitable successor. The Celeste Noir and her predecessor, the Ciel Rouge, are both experimental warships.

While in Breland, Grixe studied the art of sabotage and the crafting of explosives. Armed with this knowledge, she returned to Darguun just in time to see the jet-black frame of the Celeste Noir descend over the horizon. She hurried to stow away aboard the ship, and has secretly placed a set of explosives on the struts of the ship’s elemental ring. She has eyeballed the ship’s course, and will detonate them as the ship passes over the Mournland—all but ensuring that the vessel and its crew will never return to civilization, if her plan succeeds.

Encounter Summary

The characters feel a lurch as the Celeste Noir tumbles from the sky. They have only a scant few moments to discover the source of the problem, disable Grixe’s device, and try to reignite the ship’s elemental ring. If they succeed, Demetrius d’Lyrandar, the ship’s pilot, regains control of the vessel and stops the ship just before it smashes to bits on the ground below—and the characters can try to find and detain the saboteur.

If they fail, the pilot aims the ship straight into Lake Cyre on the edge of the Mournland and saves the crew from total annihilation, but the ship needs to be secured to stop it from flooding, all while an unbound fire elemental wreaks havoc across the ship’s deck. Unfortunately, the ensuing chaos allows the saboteur to escape. The only indication that a saboteur was ever present is the husk of her device, and graffiti in the engine room which hints at the Celeste Noir’s true purpose.

Falling from the Sky

As the Celeste Noir is soaring high above the desolate Mournland, read or paraphrase the following:

You are awoken in the middle of the night by an explosion—and then by a feeling of vertigo. A quick glance out the window shows the clouds streaking by, but not from right to left as you’re used to. They’re hurtling upwards. You’re falling out of the sky.

When the characters emerge onto the ship’s deck, they start to slowly float upward and the ship drops out of the sky. Four crewmembers are clinging to the ship’s burning struts. Without the struts to keep it in place, the ship’s elemental ring has begun to gutter and warp—it’s clear that the unstable elemental will collapse completely if it’s not stabilized.

Once the characters are on the deck, they see Angelica at the ship’s helm. She shouts down to them over the rushing of the wind. Read or paraphrase the following:

Angelica’s voice barely reaches you over the sound of rushing wind. She looks down at you from the ship’s helm. “All hands on deck! Whatever you can do to save our hides, do it now!”

The characters can engage in a skill challenge to save the ship. A player can propose a skill proficiency they want their character to use, and describe what kind of action they wish to take in order to make that ability check. As the DM, you can decide if a proposed course of action will help save the ship. If a player is stuck and has no idea what to do, you can give them some examples from the list below. Alternatively, you could require a character to succeed on a DC 10 Intelligence check to see the list of sample actions.

Goal	Example Check
Calm the panicking crew, setting them to work saving the ship.	Charisma (Persuasion) or (Performance). Succeeding on this check also gives another character advantage on a check to jury-rig a new strut.
Find the cause of the explosion.	Intelligence (Investigation) or Wisdom (Perception). Succeeding on this check also gives another character advantage on their check to jury-rig a new strut.
Create a makeshift strut.	Strength (Athletics) or an Intelligence check made with carpenter’s tools. Succeeding on this check also gives another character advantage on their check to stabilize the elemental ring.
Temporarily stabilize the degrading elemental ring.	Intelligence (Arcana). On a success, a character can also expend a spell slot to gain two successes instead of just one.
Help Demetrius d’Lyrandar pilot the ship towards Lake Cyre to avoid a crash landing.	Wisdom (Perception) or an Intelligence check made with navigator’s tools. Succeeding on this check also gives another character advantage on their check to activate the glide wings, as the ship’s flight becomes less turbulent.
Activate the emergency glide-wings, slowing the ship’s descent.	Strength (Athletics) or a Dexterity check made with thieves’ tools The Celeste Noir is equipped with retractable wings made of canvas and wood, which helps it glide to safety in a disaster like this. Pulling a heavy lever at the helm can activate them, as can using thieves’ tools to disassemble the latching mechanism that keeps the wings retracted, causing them to spring forth.
Go belowdecks to find and activate the ship’s landing gear.	Wisdom (Survival) or Intelligence (Investigation). The character must follow directions to go into the maze-like lower decks and find the lever that engages the ship’s experimental landing gear. Doing so will help the ship make a safer landing.

The DC of this skill challenge is 12. If a character makes an ability check to progress the skill challenge and it doesn’t meet or exceed this number, their check is a failure. Otherwise, it is a success. On a failure, the character’s actions have no immediate consequences.

Success and Failure

The characters have three rounds to save the ship before it crash lands. If the characters succeed on a number of ability checks equal to the number of characters in the party (not counting NPC allies) before three full rounds have passed, they successfully stabilize the ship long enough to make a gentle landing on the banks of Lake Cyre. The number of failures they accrue during the skill challenge doesn’t have any bearing on their success, as long as they earn enough successes in time. In this case, advance to “Success: Apprehending the Saboteur,” below.

If they fail to earn enough successes before time runs out, the ship crashes into Lake Cyre, at the edge of the Mournland. Advance to “Failure: Crash Landing,” below.

Failure: Crash Landing

If the characters fail, Demetrius d’Lyrandar is still able to navigate the plummeting ship into Lake Cyre. The landing is rough, but not deadly. Each character must make a DC 12 Constitution saving throw, taking 14 (4d6) bludgeoning damage on a failed save or half as much on a successful one. One minute after the water landing, the destabilized elemental ring explodes, blasting apart the rest of the craft’s ring struts and covering its main deck in burning debris. Like all elemental rings, this ring was made from a bound fire elemental. This elemental spirit materializes in the middle of the ship’s deck and lashes out wildly, attacking the characters. It is disoriented and infuriated by its forced servitude, but is also in a severely weakened state.

• The elemental’s AC is reduced to 10
• The elemental’s hit point maximum is reduced to 51
• The elemental’s speed is reduced to 25 feet
• The elemental can’t take the Multiattack action

These changes reduce the elemental’s challenge rating to 3 (700 XP).

Once the elemental is defeated, Angelica dismally assesses the damage made to the ship. The Celeste Noir is in no shape to fly, but they should be able to sail the ship slowly across Lake Cyre to Gatherhold on the other side, where hopefully they can find a way to make the vessel airworthy again.

If the characters search the ship for the saboteur, they find no trace of her. However, they do find a message scrawled in paint on one of the walls. It reads: “Death to the Cannith warmongers. The Last War will not be reignited.” Grixe wrote this message as the ship was falling, fully prepared to die for her cause. When she survived, however, she snuck out of the ship’s hold during the battle with the fire elemental, and used her homemade cap of water breathing to escape below the surface of the water. She emerges on the south bank of the lake twelve hours later, and slowly makes her way to the city of Gatherhold on the lake’s eastern bank over the next week.

Success: Apprehending the Saboteur

If the characters succeed, Demetrius d’Lyrandar is able to get the ship under control long enough to land safely on the banks of Lake Cyre. One of the ship’s engineers is able to reinforce the binding on the bound fire elemental enough to keep it from breaking free of its binding and going berserk. Though the ship is stable for now, it’s not in flying condition. Demetrius suggests sailing across Lake Cyre to reduce stress on the elemental ring’s fragile struts. Nevertheless, the damage to the ship necessitates a stop in Gatherhold for repairs. Angelica reveals that she has a House Cannith contact who could help repair the Celeste Noir, hopefully while keeping her on-schedule to complete her journey around Khorvaire in fifty days.

With no chaos to cover her escape, Grixe Laddimoff simply hides in the ship’s hold, hoping no one will find her—though the graffiti she scrawled in the (see above) is a dead giveaway that a politically motivated stowaway is aboard. A character that searches the ship’s hold and makes a successful DC 15 Wisdom (Survival) or Intelligence (Investigation) check finds Grixe. A character can only make this check once every 12 hours. If Grixe isn’t found by nightfall of the next day, she escapes and makes her way to Gatherhold, as described above. If apprehended, she refuses to cooperate with the characters unless Ziggy Arcingwind vouches for them. Even if this is the case, she doesn’t reveal any salient information if Angelica is present.  

Grixe is a goblin artificer that uses mage statistics, with the following changes:

• She can’t cast spells of 4th level or higher
• She only has one 3rd-level spell slot

These changes reduce her challenge rating to 3 (700 XP).

Conclusion

The city of Gatherhold is the next destination for the Celeste Noir and her crew. If the characters have interacted with both Ziggy Arcingwind and Grixe Laddimoff, it’s clear that Angelica d’Sivis and her magnificent vessel aren’t on the level. Ziggy continues to advise caution; playing along with Angelica may lead them to House Cannith’s secret construction facility, allowing them to shut down their warmongering operation in full, rather than simply scuppering a single experimental warship. Grixe reluctantly agrees.

However, if the characters are ready to mutiny now, consider placing a map to the secret Cannith Airship Development Compound within Angelica’s quarters, allowing them to take things into their own hands after their pit stop in Gatherhold.

Treasure and Progression

In the week of travel between this encounter and next week’s encounter, the characters receive their weekly stipend of 2 gp each. Completing the skill challenge, whether or not they succeeded or failed, is worth a total of 1,500 XP. If the characters have played every encounter in this series, they will likely all advance to 3rd level by this point.

This adventure will continue next week in Encounter of the Week: Gathering in Gatherhold. Where else do you want to visit along this journey? Let us know in the comments!

Eberron: Rising from the Last War releases on November 19th, 2019. Preorder it now on the Marketplace!