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

“Rumor has it that a small number of Ironstar dwarves have a secret cave hold on Mintarn.”

That is the adventure hook I took from Mintarn Page on the Forgotten Realms Wiki.

The seed for it starts in the imminent (this Saturday) session 1 when possibly the adventurers discover a scrap of paper with a mysterious emblem on it (see below) on the desk of whoever is running the pirate group they have stumbled upon.

In session 2 once on Mintarn if they enquire about the emblem they will hear the rumour this post started with.

The adventurers will also need to learn about who the Ironstar Dwarves are, and given a reason why they would want to find this secret cave.

The Ironstar Dwarves were renowned for having mastered instilling magic in items. Their Darksteel maces were said to shatter armour in a single blow.

“Armour and weapons made form darksteel were resistant to acid and had the unique property of absorbing all magical and mundane electrical energy, including lightning, without transferring a charge to its bearer. In fact, the energy that effected weapons in this manner could be directed towards the target of the wielder.” (source Forgotten Realms Wiki)

So the prospect of magical equipment, or a way to make magical equipment is hopefully enough of an enticement to have the adventurers take the bait from this hook.

The plan is to use a D&D Beyond Encounter Of The Week as inspiration to cover the wilderness travel the party will have to undertake to find and reach the secret cave. Naturally the random encounter stuff triggered will use the tables I talked about in the previous post.

We then once at the secret cave enter a classic dungeon crawl. I haven’t decided if the secret cave will still have Ironstar dwarves living there, or we have a mines of Moria like scenario where the dwarves were all killed by orcs and goblins controlled by an unknown darkness. Or more in keeping with the campaign maybe Sahuagin instead.

That’s my thinking for that hook. It’s probably my most advanced at the moment. In my next planning post I’ll share my thoughts on the adventure hook that ties into a couple of the characters backgrounds.