Spies Below the Moonsea: Introduction

Spoiler Note: This post contains no spoilers for the Spies Below the Moonsea storyline. It does contain spoilers for the original Swords Below the Moonsea trilogy.

Welcome to Spies Below the Moonsea, a new, seven-adventure series set in the Underdark city-state of the Zethlentyn Protectorate! First mentioned by the scheming Shintyrr Vith'tyl during the opening of Six Summoned Swords and then briefly, frantically visited in its two follow-ups, Zethlentyn is now ready to receive - if not quite welcome - visitors.

In this brand new storyline, characters have the opportunity to learn about the different houses of this new drow city and to serve as allies, spies, enemies, or all three in the process.

Is it a sequel to the Swords trilogy?

The answer is both no and yes.

No, because the story of Six Swords is that of the three characters at its core. That story had a natural ending and is finished. Absolutely no familiarity with the first trilogy is required or expected for the players and characters coming into the new series. Given the ultimate fates of those characters, this should come as no surprise! Yet...

Yes, because technically, it's the events of Six Swords Unbound that set the new storyline in motion. At the end of that adventure, characters return to the surface only to discover that they had been slipped a mysterious note. This note leads - either the same or new - adventurers to a mysterious meeting. From there, a new journey with a whole new cast of characters awaits the curious. The adventure detailing this meeting and what happens after is the first adventure in the series - House of Moonlight.

So it's seven adventures? It was hard enough organizing three!

Yes, there are seven adventures in the series! This series is structured very differently from the first. Each adventure focuses on letting characters learn about a different drow house in Zethlentyn - their mindset and goals. The way this is approached varies - sometimes the characters act as allies, sometimes as enemies, and most often as covert operatives.

House of Moonlight serves as the characters' initial introduction, but after it, every adventure has been designed to make perfect sense when played stand-alone or out of order. This is not to say that there isn't an over-arching storyline, there are actually several! The difference is that progress in the greater storyline is something that happens on the way to a satisfactory resolution in each individual adventure.

Given the nature of premiering these adventures at conventions, most players that I got to run these for so far have experienced them in just this way - one or two at a time, often out of order. This has very much helped make sure that each stands on its own. So go ahead - play 3 out of 7, or play 1, then 4, then 3. It'll work fine and still make sense. I'll be putting up a separate (somewhat more spoilery) post to further help DMs plan different ways to run the series or its parts. The general chronology of the series looks something like this:

A drow city? Don't they hate everyone? Won't they kill us on sight?

The key aspect that makes the Zethlentyn Protectorate different is that it is not - in its entirety - dedicated to the evil spider goddess Lolth. Instead, it is a creation of drow refugees who left their own cities to settle here. Make no mistake - the worship of the Spider Queen and the rest of the Dark Seldarine is still very much present. It's the rules of engagement that are different. Within Zethlentyn, each house is given the autonomy to pursue whatever they wish, including worship of different gods. This is how a house worshipping the good goddess Eilistraee can exist openly and thrive. Additionally, because every one of these houses comes from elsewhere, most have secrets and reasons why they had to flee. The latter makes some of these houses much more apprehensive about "throwing stones" so to speak.

In addition to the general disposition of the Protectorate, there is also the matter of recent events. Not too long ago - as detailed in Six Swords Unbound - a major drow house was destroyed with the help of surface mercenaries (was it you?!). This has now created an interest in such mercenaries among the other houses. They may revile surfacers, but the drow are still willing to do whatever it takes to achieve their own goals.

Level, length, etc.

All seven of the adventures will be AL-legal upon release. All the adventures in the series are Tier 2 and intended for characters of levels 5 to 10. The intent of leaving everything at Tier 2 is to allow future adventures exploring the different houses to be added as "concurrent" to the timeline during which these ones take place. What happens chronologically after this series will be Tier 3 (I hope!).

The kick-off adventure House of Moonlight has a runtime of 4 to 6 hours. The core story is 4 hours, with two bonus objectives of 1-hour each providing a lot of additional flavour and information. I highly recommend playing this one at its full length. While you will not miss out on any critical story events if you don't, the bonus objectives tend to dive deeper into the lore and world-building aspects.

The remaining 6 adventures all have the same runtime of 2 to 4 hours. They're typically structured to have at least one bonus objective at the very end, so as to give DMs maximum flexibility to drop it if the rest of the adventure runs longer than expected.

Format, art, and maps, and stuff

All these adventures were approved during AL Season 8 and use that format. This was a transitional season and the format has now changed once again. While there were certainly challenges with the format, these adventures were conceived with it in mind and I think work well in it - especially taking advantage of the opportunity to present different pillars play. I hope you check them out regardless of whether you like the format. I promise that it's worth it.

The beautiful drow art adorning the covers was done by James Austin. I found James through the D&D Fantasy Art FB group, only to quickly learn that we're actually in the same city! He undertook the massive project of drawing all these drow, as well as some of the cover elements over several months. I hope you love his work as much as I do.

As I did with the Swords series, I'm including "portrait cards" for major NPCs that DMs can use to help players remember who's who - not to mention to help them pronounce those drow names. That's right, say it with me: "Tor'Erhyl = tor-ay-hill". I hope you find these useful.

I've done something different with maps. I've included a number of maps made with Inkarnate, these include both regional reference maps as well as individual location maps. They're a bit graphics heavy, so I'll be including b&w-friendly versions in the adventure packages. I've also purposely left out maps for some of the encounters where I thought that either theater-of-the-mind or a DM's own interpretation would be better suited for the map.

What's next?

House of Moonlight has now been uploaded to DMsGuild and will be up as soon as the powers-that-be click the magic button to make it appear to the public. I'll be putting up a second part to this post that talks about how to best run the series. It'll have a spoiler for House of Moonlight, but nothing else. So if you're a player, you're safe to read it after you've played it.

It terms of how soon the rest will be released, here's what I know now: the first 3 adventures are approved for posting. They'll be up within the next 2-3 weeks. The next 4 have all premiered and have been sent in for final approval to post. They'll go up as soon as I'm allowed to put them up, with maybe a week between the installments.

Feel free to shoot me any questions via FB messenger, by tagging me in any of the 5e/AL groups I'm in or on twitter @JaysNDragons.

I've spent the better part of a year working on these adventures and am incredibly excited to finally be able to share them. The series would not be possible with the support of a number of events and the people behind them. The three community events/organizations that have supported these are Unite the Factions Toronto (Chris, Jeremy, Wayne, and others), Montreal ComicCon (Matt, Alex, and others) and HalCon (Sussie). All the AL admins have also been awesome in helping get these through the CCC process and out.

These adventures are very much a labour of love for me and I hope you like playing and running them.

Andrew

p.s. You don't need it to enjoy the new adventures, but if you want to pick up the original trilogy in the meanwhile, you can find it here: