GM Guide (GM only)
Player Handout for Ruins of Adventure (New Phlan) · D&D
“The Moonsea breeds hard people. Every city has walls. Every stranger is weighed. Mercy is sold by the ounce.”
Where You Are
The Moonsea is a cold, deep inland sea in the north of Faerûn. Rival city-states ring its shores and trust one another no farther than a crossbow bolt flies. There is no king here, no empire: only walled ports, merchant gold, mercenary spears, and the long shadow of Zhentil Keep.
Phlan was once a modest and prosperous town where the caravans of the north met the ships of the south. Fifty years past, dragons and the humanoid hosts at their backs burned it in a single day. The survivors fled. The ruins filled with orcs, goblins, kobolds, and worse things still. Now a new Council, made up of heirs to the old merchant houses and upstart speculators with fresh coin, has retaken a walled strip by the docks. Men call it Civilized Phlan, or simply New Phlan. The Council pays adventurers well to win back the old city, block by bloody block.
You are such folk. You are not heroes yet. You are contractors.
An elf scout out of Elventree, asked why the ruins worry her, spat and said: “Kobolds hate orcs. Orcs hate goblins. Goblins hate everyone, including themselves. They cooperate with one another about as readily as your kind do, which is to say they do not, save when gold or fear is thick upon the air. Yet in Old Phlan they march in order, share watches, and answer to one will. That is not nature. That is leash and lash, and something at the other end of it that I do not care to name.”
The Neighborhood
Zhentil Keep (west): The great power of the region. Seat of the Zhentarim, the Black Network: slavers, spies, and peddlers of all wares honest folk will not touch, with the church of Bane at their back. They watch the rebirth of New Phlan with keen interest and no goodwill.
Mulmaster (southeast): Rival to Zhentil Keep. Proud, cruel, and pleased whenever Phlan stays weak.
Melvaunt and Thentia (east, along the north shore): Cities of smoke and trade. Melvaunt is known for its forges and its slave markets. Thentia holds to a rough independence and tolerates wizards it probably should not.
Hillsfar (south shore): A rich and open trading city. For now.
Elventree and Cormanthor (south): The great elven wood yet stands, keeping its old watch near the sealed and fiend-haunted ruins of Myth Drannor. Elves are respected on the Moonsea, and resented in equal measure.
Thar (north): The Grey Land, a cold moor where ogres, orcs, and worse live and raid. Much of what prowls Old Phlan came down from Thar.
The Ride (northwest): Wind-bitten plains where the Eraka range on horseback. They call themselves Eraka; merchants and militia captains call them the Riders, or the barbarians of the Ride. They are not one nation but many tribes, and they bow to no city wall. Of the tribes nearest Phlan, the Varm are counted peaceable and given to spirit-talk and old oaths; the Vaegould are warlike and feuding, and best given a wide berth. The Council watches both, for fear the Boss might buy what steel and horseflesh cannot take.
The Dragonspine Mountains (north and northwest): Dwarfholds, kobold warrens, and the peaks whence the dragon armies came.
The Times You Live In
The gods walk far from these parts, but their churches walk here in force. This is decades before the upheavals your bard’s grandchildren may sing of. Bane the Black Lord, god of tyranny and fear, lives, ascends, and is worshipped openly in Zhentil Keep. His clergy are a political power, not some hidden cult. Tymora, Tempus, Waukeen, and Ilmater find quieter followings among honest Moonsea folk.
Magic is real, rare, and looked at askance. Wizards exist; villages fear them. A man who shows his art gets respect, suspicion, and inflated prices in about equal parts.
The frontier is dominated by humankind. Dwarves, elves, gnomes, and halflings are known and, in the civilized quarters, mostly welcome. Stranger sorts draw stares, closed doors, or naked steel. In the monster-held ruins, any who are not orc, goblin, or their like are taken for enemies on sight.
Life in New Phlan
The Council posts missions on the door of the council hall: clear a block, retake a keep, recover what was lost. Pay comes when the work is proved. Read the fine print.
The Stockade Wall divides the living town from all else. The gates stand open by day to pass-holders. At night they open for no one.
Inns: the respectable Cracked Crown; the dockside Bitter Blade, where the exits are fast and the company bad; and Nat Wyler’s Bell in the slum quarter, where none ask questions and all hear answers.
Beyond the wall lie fifty years of ruin: the slums, the old marketplaces, the mansions of dead families, the graveyard wise men visit but once, and far off, behind the poisoned river, Valjevo Castle, where something rules the monsters of Old Phlan. They name it only the Boss.
The Stojanow River once ran clean through the city. It runs black and caustic now. Do not touch it. Do not drink of it. Do not ask the boatmen to row upstream; they will laugh in your face.
What Everyone Knows
(Rumors. Reliability not guaranteed.)
- The island keep in the bay held longest when the city fell. They say its defenders never left.
- The old families hid their wealth when they fled. Most who go looking for it feed the ghouls.
- Something upriver poisons the Stojanow. A mad wizard, the humans say.
- Zhentil Keep wants Phlan. On that all agree. They argue only over how soon, and at what blood price.
- The Varm, an Eraka tribe of the Ride, camp within a few days’ ride of the ruins. They have not sworn to the Boss. Zhentil Keep and the Council both bid for their spears.
- Whatever holds Valjevo Castle has bound orc, goblin, gnoll, and kobold to one will. None of them will speak its name.
Character Guidance
Species: Human is the Moonsea default. Dwarves of the Dragonspine clans or stranded shipwrights, elves of the Quivering Forest or Cormanthor, gnomes, and halflings fit the place naturally. A character of orc blood who can pass for human, or the rare tiefling, is possible with a tale to tell; expect suspicion. Dragonborn and aasimar are unknown in this time and place. In a city dragons laid waste, be glad of that.
Backgrounds that suit the campaign: soldier, sailor, guard, merchant, guide, criminal, acolyte of a Moonsea faith, refugee descendant with a family claim in the ruins.
A good hook answers one question: Why are you willing to bleed for a city that is not yet yours? Coin, a family name, a grave to find, a debt to the Council, a grudge against the Zhentarim, or a god’s quiet push: choose one and bring it to the table.
Print single-sided. The DM keeps regional and system notes in the conversion documents.
GM Guide (GM only)
Orthanc 