SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one. REMEMBER you have been warned.

It’s been a morning of digging out stat cards for NPCs that the party could run into.

Ideally I’d be able to afford the Ptolus pdf and get the 5e stat blocks for the NPC cards I’m using.

But I don’t so the generic D&D stat blocks will have to suffice.

As the following description shows, the tower should be alive with magic users of all kinds.

“…archmage Savandra Thricecursed and her four mage apprentices administrate the tower, opening it up to sages, historians, wizards, sorcerers, and warlocks who seek knowledge of the world” City of Arches

Naturally the party if they do go to Kartan, Tower of the Arcane will meet at least one of the four mage apprentices, and most definitely Savandra.

Savandra will tell the party about the “Key of Choul” that is hidden deep in the towers vaults. The party will also learn that it’s also possible to “conduct sacrifices required to open the Gate of Choul”.

I think that the party will also find out that in The Endless Warrens is a “forgotten colossal undead cairn” that can be used to open a gateway to the realm of Choul if enough sacrifices are made.

Apart from the magic users, I want to populate the tower and the vaults and laboratories with appropriate creatures to encounter. I’m thinking rats (all sizes and numbers), various spiders, maybe the odd ooze.

Then I remembered that I have the Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. If I treat those vaults and laboratories as some sort of Frankenstein setting I can use the bestiary from that.

I like the idea when they enter that location with the hanging cages that contain skeletons that the threat actually comes from the boneless remains out side the cages. Or in the labs there are brains in a jar. Maybe some Gremishkas are running feral down there, or strigoi.

How cool would it be to have a swarm of zombie limbs come towards the party? These definitely make a change from the crawling claw. Which might make an appearance along with an animated sword.

A magic users lab is not a safe place.

Right time to get ready for work. Tomorrow it’s game day!