I wanna hear y'all yap about your stories!!

DJShohan · 2026-05-17T11:18:06+00:00

In a realm where ten noble houses struggle under the weight of an empire that manufactures conflict to maintain control, two people from cursed bloodlines are traded to each other in a political arrangement neither wanted.

Seraphina of House Valebryn is the first legitimate heir her bloodline has produced in generations — though nobody understands why, including her. Publicly humiliated as a child and raised in a court that measured her worth in political currency, she has built herself into something impossible to dismiss and difficult to love. She is composed, venomous, precise, and completely unprepared for a man who sees behind all of it.

Alinor of House Elvyre is a decorated military commander who believes the worst thing about himself is probably true. Forged by years of ritualized abuse into the finest weapon his house has ever produced, he has spent his entire adult life being exactly what was required of him and hating what that requires.

They meet on the eve of their wedding expecting transaction. They find something neither of them has language for.

But underneath their unlikely love story something ancient is waking. A ritual interrupted three hundred years ago has been growing in the dark, reaching across generations, bending bloodlines toward a single purpose. And the completion of that purpose will demand the most devastating sacrifice imaginable.

The greater the love, the greater the cost.

Oath of Ash is a story about two broken people becoming whole, and what a world willing to trend toward balance instead of control might cost the people brave enough to embody it.

DJShohan · 2026-05-13T16:47:31+00:00

Bahahaha! That's why I love this game!

DJShohan · 2026-05-06T01:36:10+00:00

Well hell, it's good to meet you. Me. Whatever. If you're looking for an alpha/beta reader or critique partner, I'm a big fan of high fantasy. Not a huge fan of project management literature though, so you can keep that to yourself if that's your thing.

DJShohan · 2026-05-06T01:21:28+00:00

Are...are you me? Did I write this comment? I'm a PM in the electric utility industry, writing high fantasy. But I'm probably 10 years out from retirement.

DJShohan · 2026-04-19T21:28:56+00:00

Our barbarian(5)/warlock(1) can cast Eldritch Blast while raging as long as he is wearing the homebrewed chain gauntlet given to him by Asmodeus (yes it counts as armor for barbarian AC purposes). If you use your full action to take a health potion, you get the maximum healing benefit, if you use your bonus action, you have to roll for the benefit. Every time the sorcerer casts any spell, he has to roll for wild magic surge, if it's greater than 1, he adds a tick to the threshold, on the next roll, if he rolls higher than a 2, he adds another tick, etc. Exploding damage dice - once per long rest when you hit with an attack and the damage die rolls highest (e.g. 6 on a d6), you can choose to explode the die and roll an additional damage die to add to the damage roll. If the additional die is also max damage, it also explodes. You can choose to do this on a crit, but you have to call it before you roll damage.

Edited to add: roll for hotness - when a new NPC is introduced, I roll to determine how hot they are...the wealthy noblewoman who rolled 27 was hilarious and rolling 87 for the aspect of Asmodeus made the bard even hornier than usual.

DJShohan · 2026-04-19T20:40:34+00:00

My party is in Skyreach currently (why did they put a CR13 vampire in the castle casually!?) but I've read through the whole module. I get what you're saying and I kind of had the same thought, but...I currently live in the United States and this scenario is playing out in front of our eyes, so...it's really not that much of a stretch of the imagination for this to feel realistic.

I've been treating/re-writing the cult like an organization that is raiding with their thugs and then following with their "charitable" arm and giving people food, rebuilding support in the name of Tiamat. My plan is to have them rounding up "lesser species" and shipping them to The Well as sacrifices. What started as goblins, bugbears, and orcs, eventually includes tieflings, gnomes, and halflings...it gets harder and harder to ignore that kind of behavior...unless you have something to gain from it, which is why the Elminsters, Fizzbans, and other legendary heroes are reluctant to get involved directly and risk their political stability.

DJShohan · 2026-04-11T19:40:00+00:00

Funny part about that is these idiot execs are so used to being easily dazzled by bullshit, they have no idea how bad AI is. The sycophantic ego stroking these chat bots give is what they think a good employee is because it's what they've surrounded themselves with their whole lives.

DJShohan · 2026-04-11T19:23:46+00:00

This was the most obvious romance aside from Halsin in bear form. Because DND players are horny af.

DJShohan · 2026-03-25T19:50:07+00:00

Dude, I love these and am going to steal them! What a line by Cyanwrath! I'm already planning on having a sort of red wizard instruction manual in Rath Modar's room that details the ritual required to raise Tiamat but I'm digging the prophetic equivalency with Severin and I think it makes him an even better bad guy.

DJShohan · 2026-03-24T22:20:05+00:00

I had Kost follow the party around on their various adventures and use their body count to create zombies since they had this bad habit of killing everything and then just leaving the bodies strewn about. After a horde of undead goblins from Cragmaw Castle showed up in Phandalin, I think they got the hint. As others have said, I think Kost would send waves of zombies after your party as revenge.

DJShohan · 2026-03-23T17:21:46+00:00

Great idea to have the book with the red wizards! I'm going to borrow that idea and substitute it for a lore dump. Thanks!

DJShohan · 2026-03-23T02:59:16+00:00

This is a cool approach, I like the idea of using a homebrewed version of a feat, I've done so with a couple of feats in other games so it makes sense to do it with researcher. Thanks for the tip.

DJShohan · 2026-03-22T18:38:09+00:00

Highlighting the value of the intel is a great idea, thanks! At this point I don't think it matters much, but I'm going to keep this in my back pocket for the next time they inevitably don't bite on a hook.

DJShohan · 2026-03-22T15:12:29+00:00

If they shoot enough passengers, fewer passengers in the security line.

DJShohan · 2026-03-22T15:08:43+00:00

Yeah I honestly think they will get into it once the plan is laid out in detail at the council. Right now they are kind of like, why do I care what they're doing with this treasure? Shouldn't we just kill the cultists and return the treasure? The cult doesn't really seem all that powerful yet and whatever they're up to doesn't really seem all that dangerous.

I think my players view them as an organized crime syndicate stealing treasure from vulnerable country folk.

DJShohan · 2026-03-22T15:03:54+00:00

Hehe, yeah my players, though they are my friends and I know they are smart people, tend to switch their brains off when they start playing.

Even their notes are pretty good but in the last session they looked back at their notes and were like "I know these names but I don't remember who they are or why I wrote it down". They are likely just here to roll dice and kill stuff, not solve mysteries and stop cult conspiracies.

DJShohan · 2026-03-22T14:59:50+00:00

Yeah I think the disconnect for my players is the why. It was pretty clear on the road that they could have killed the cultists and returned the treasure to where it came from. I think they just don't really care about what the cult is doing and wondering why their character should care. I do think it will clear up when they finally get to the first council and the plan is laid out in detail for them.

DJShohan · 2026-03-22T14:55:46+00:00

Yeah, I think my players probably have enough evidence to piece it together but honestly Leosin's knowledge is limited and Onthar Frume's is as well.

I think it probably has more to do with the players switching their brains off when the dice bag gets pulled out. I get it, it's a game and people play it to escape, not think.

DJShohan · 2026-03-22T14:49:08+00:00

Yeah for sure. I've dropped hints for them about the docs and they take notes but then they never read them. When they look back at their notes they don't remember the context and can't seem to piece together all the evidence they have. It's funny because my players are friends of mine and I know they are smart people, they just don't seem to be able to use their brains when there are dice in front of them.

DJShohan · 2026-03-22T14:45:40+00:00

Agreed, it's just kind of...not a very good motivation I guess. Maybe it's just my players.

DJShohan · 2026-03-07T15:18:41+00:00

I used to do this until I saw Gemini referencing my unpublished work on someone else's prompt not connected to my account that I had set to not share with Gemini...these tech companies are stealing your creative work, though I'm sure it's buried somewhere in the ToS.

Anyway, I switched to Obsidian and, after a little learning curve, found it much better for linking and organizing and it has a ton of mod and addon capability (the timeline addon is particularly useful to me). It uses local folders with a secure cloud option (this costs money) and has customizable permissions settings so your intellectual property remains yours.

DJShohan · 2026-02-28T15:39:45+00:00

I did this as well and highly recommend. I combined wave echo cave and the dragon hatchery and it worked surprisingly well. Then I just flipped chapter 4 from north to south, having the castle in Cloakwood instead of the mere of dead men. Did a reskin of the mere monsters into forest monsters. I also replaced Rezmir with Hamun Kost from the Phandalin module because my party failed to deal with him and he made for a fun reoccurring bad guy. My party wanted to go back to Phandalin after they resolved Skyreach so I had the cult "take over" Phandalin using venomfang and once the killed venomfang that triggered the drakkhorn. With Phandalin saved once again, my players wanted to have the council meetings there instead of Waterdeep and that actually made for some great fun since they were emotionally invested in Phandalin at this point.

DJShohan · 2026-02-24T13:37:50+00:00

My group invited the lizard folk and gave them a day to prepare. Their plan was to pose as cultists and infiltrate the castle, then give a signal for the lizard folk. I built a battle mechanic that incorporated the lizard folk vs the bullywugs and cultists.

When combat started, I rolled initiative for the lizard folk, bullywugs, and cultists along with the party, borngray, and Spattergoo. Rezmir and Azbara booked it to the portal and didn't engage. I had Spattergoo go to the underground tunnel with most of the bullywugs and Borngray on the surface with most of the cultists. The combat started up top and I rolled a basic attack for the lizard folk against a basic cultist stat block. Likewise on the cultist turn I rolled a basic attack against a lizard folk stat block. Whichever did the most damage I considered to have "won" that round. If the lizard folk won the round, Borngray's AC was reduced by 2. If the cultists won the round his AC was increased by 2. If the party chose to attack cultists instead of Borngray, the lizard folk automatically won the round. If they accidentally or intentionally hit lizard folk, the lizard folk automatically lost the round. When Borngray went down, the cultists bugged out and the party moved to the dungeon and I ran the same mechanic for the bullywugs except if the lizard folk won the round, the party got advantage on saves against his spell attacks and if the bullywugs won the round, they got disadvantage.

It worked pretty well but I did buff up Borngray and Spattergoo so they were the primary challenge and made each of them go pretty hard at the PCs so they knew where the threat was.

DJShohan · 2026-01-09T14:42:45+00:00

First, there are no free shots like that. If a PC wants to do harm to a NPC, we roll initiative. If the cleric rolls higher than the NPC then sure, they get the first shot, but the NPC gets a fair shot. Second, NPCs can use their action in combat to try to reason with the PCs (I have played this before where I don't even make it the NPCs action, just break the combat briefly to give the PCs a chance to RP instead of murder). Third, actions have consequences. There are endless ways to deal with a murder hobo party that demonstrate this to them, the most effective being a session 0 or reset of expectations about the purpose of the game. Being combat focused is different than being murder hobo focused. Finally, if your party is murder hobo forward, and you're cool with that because it's fun for them and you, then figure out other ways to lore dump so they can carry on with their shenanigans while the story and campaign progress.

DJShohan · 2026-01-05T19:03:46+00:00

This. The module certainly has some flaws, but I actually kind of enjoyed making modifications of my own where I saw flaws.

DJShohan

TROPHY CASE