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Lion's Vault Module for 5th Edition D&D & Pathfinder RPG

Created by 2CGaming

Lion’s Vault is the third chapter of the Fate of the Forebears Adventure Path, beginning immediately after the close of City of Sands module. The players must now venture out into the desert wastes of the Mirrored Steppes to uncover the secrets of an ancient city in ruins. Characters must withstand an ever-present corruption that feasts on their will, while they race treasure hunters and bandits through trapped-filled ruins to find the corruption’s source, an unspeakable horror protected by an ageless guardian.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

24 Hours and almost 20%!
over 6 years ago – Thu, Aug 03, 2017 at 04:40:59 PM

End of the First Day

We're sitting at a little over 18% funded, which is awesome for the first 24 hours. A huge thank you to everyone who already backed the project, told their friends, and generally been awesome. 

Before I let Chris Grey jump in and tell you all about his grand designs for this module, I'd like to share how much is already complete thanks to your generous support of City of Sands. All extra funding for each of these Kickstarters rolls over into the next adventure, and we've already had our awesome team create:

  • Cover Art and Title
  • Four Full-Color Illustrations
  • Two Original Tracks of Music
  • Four Custom Monsters with Tactics (Easy, Normal, and Hard)

We'll be spotlighting all of these over the course of the Kickstarter, but before our first spotlight, I want to clarify one of the reward levels.

The "Lion's Vault - Everything" Reward Tier at $37 includes a physical copy of the adventure. This was a slip-up on our part, and we can't edit the description now to add that. If you get the Everything Tier you will get a physical copy of the adventure (shipping will be charged in BackerKit, as usual). This is also added to the FAQ. If you have any questions about any part of this project, please don't hesitate to leave a comment or send us a message. 

With that, I'll step out of the way and let Chris tell you about the first of the four deadly monsters your players will face on their way to uncover the truth behind the Lion's Vault.

We Will Roc You

We are all very excited about the Roc encounter. It’s hard to explain why, except that I felt like a kid when I said, “Okay right and there’ll be this roc, right? But not just a roc, a corrupted roc!” 

One of the things I love about fantasy roleplaying games is fighting big monsters. But the roc always felt less like a monster and more like a very, very, very large animal. Because… mechanically it is. If a GM throws a roc at you, really your best recourse is to find a nearby sheep or cow and toss it up to the beast, and it’ll be happy. I’ve been in adventures where we did just that. 

But what if the roc didn’t care about sheep or cows?

The Corrupted Roc by Jason Strutz
The Corrupted Roc by Jason Strutz

An enormous airplane-sized bird of prey who just wants to kill you for the sake of killing you. Well, so we designed that. Like everything in the Mirrored Steppes, this roc has been corrupted by some sort of ancient disease. Its mind is gone. It’s wild. A rabid and ravenous, ruthless and reckless, and … extremely… massive beast. 

The encounter takes place in the middle of the desert where our heroes are traveling with a caravan of treasure hunters and adventurers. The roc comes out at night, attracted to the firelight, and begins ripping into people. Unlike the ordinary roc, this creature can grapple with both its beak and talons, so it can pick twice as many people up and throw them around with ruthless abandon. Tactically the roc is tough. It takes pleasure in picking people up and dropping them from terrifying heights. If the corruption doesn’t kill the victim first, then falling 120 feet will. 

Once it has become a bit bloody, it will finally stand ground and fight like a monster, but that’s only if the Game Master takes it easy on you. The harder tactics would include it never landing at all and will instead swoop in, pick up, and drop people from as high as it can. Such a lovable guy. We even made special tokens for Virtual Tabletop play—like we did with all our special monsters. So now you can take this stat block and matching virtual token and put him into any one of your games. 

The first draft of the Corrupted Roc is available now as a PDF for use in your games: https://public.3.basecamp.com/p/WNGuKhAdEpvoew6dgQmVUdbL It's formatted by the awesome John Cason, with art by Jason Strutz, and creature token by Natalie Kelly. It comes with a full stat block, a tactics write-up, and a bit of info on The Corruption which will be a centerpiece of the story of the Lion's Vault.

We are 24 hours in now, so let’s keep spreading the word. Help us out and tweet a link to this post so other people can fantasize about fighting a corrupted flying mountain with wings and talons.

Stay tuned, more to come from the Lion’s Vault!

Christopher Grey of House Grey, First of His Name, the Corrupted, Father of Giant Birds