Caravan to the Keep

Keep on the Borderlands Campaign

It had been a long, boring journey from the civilized lands to the Keep on the Borderland. Over that time, four plucky individuals, hired as guards to protect a small caravan, have grown close.

Aldric, a fighting man, Corvin, a mystic, Rook, a rogue, and Lothariel, an elven pathfinder. formed the core of the guard. They were led by a drunken veteran named Scar and two inept fighters, Mutt and Geoff.

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It is morning. The caravan is camped by a small lake, about a day and a half from the Keep.

Our heroes hear a cry from a servant girl drawing water from the lake. A giant grab emerged from the waters and tried to nab her with its massive claws. She ran, screaming for help.

Lothariel unleashes an arrow, but it ricochets off the hard carapace. Aldric and Rook rush past, interposing themselves between the crab and the girl. The crab strikes them, wounding them with its claws.

Lothariel drops her bow, draw her blade, and rushes into the fray. While Aldric keeps it busy, she ducks underneath it, striking upwards into its vitals. Again and again it plunges deep, until the crab shudder and collapses. Lotahriel barely escapes being crushed.

The Campaign Begins

As I mentioned previously, I'm beginning a new dungeon crawl campaign using the classic D&D module, Keep on the Borderlands.

Reading through it, I noticed that the player characters must first find the Caves of Chaos before delving into the dungeon. So I decided to create a "hex crawl" (although I'm using squares). Along the way, they might encounter wandering monsters and other denizens of the region.

Here is my hex crawl map.

The party begins in square A4. I rolled randomly for terrain and it came up as fens. I also rolled for a wandering monster. I used the table in the module and got a giant shrew. That seemed silly so I changed it to something more water-related - a crab. I also changed the terrain to a lake to fit the story of someone going for water.

The Characters

The characters may seem similar - I initially created them for my experiment with Order of Eventide. I just converted them to Swords & Six-Siders stats.

I decided to create the caravan backstory to give a reason why they end up in this isolated outpost. I thought that a guard of 4 seemed a bit light, so I added some NPCs. I made them somewhat useless so that the party needs to do the heavy lifting.

And with that, they're off!