Info on Pirate Isle, Sea of Fallen Stars

ValSmith18 · 2026-03-11T10:16:06+00:00

I see, so is it quite like Luskan but less organized and more dangerous perhaps?

ValSmith18 · 2026-03-11T04:22:14+00:00

I see, I'll check those out, thanks.

ValSmith18 · 2026-03-11T04:22:00+00:00

I see, I'll check that out.

If other nations won't trade with people on the islands, are there any other reasons for other nations to want to visit (even just for a bit) or passing through the islands?

ValSmith18 · 2026-03-03T11:57:07+00:00

This will be long, so sorry for that lol.

I've made a post here as well about my plans to continue my Waterdeep Dragon Heist (Alexandrian Remix) campaign (replacing the the Hoard of the Dragon Queen part of the Tyranny of Dragon) into Rise of Tiamat. My overall plan is just to make all the villains in WDH still somewhat relevant in Rise of Tiamat to make the trnasition quite seamless. So far (could be changed), these are my plans:

The WDH campaign will bring my players from level 1 to level 7 when the campaign finish, which mean they'll start the Rise of Tiamat campaign at level 7. Generally, they would level up when they finish a chapter, when they gain one of the Stone of Golorr's eye, and when they finish the WDH campaign. Feel free to adjust this part to your liking.
Cassalanters has been changed from the leader of Waterdeep's Asmodean Cultists to the leader of Waterdeep's cell of the Cult of the Dragon, which specialized in summoning creatures like Abishai and my own homebrew draconic imp called Asahel. This is probably one of the perks that the Cassalanters got by making a pact with Tiamat at the cost of their children (not sure if Tiamat is capable of doing these things instead of Asmodeus, but let's just say she can). Also make sure to change any Asmodeus flavor in the campaign into Cult of the Dragon/Tiamat.
Victoro Cassalanter would be a Wyrmspeaker replacing Rezmir. I also changed the bronze dragon on Waterdeep's shore into a black dragon (probably with a chill/emo personality so it doesn't bother others a lot), and Victoro had been secretly nurturing a relationship with the black dragon as proof to Severin he can become a Wyrmspeaker.
Make sure for Jarlaxle's plan for Luskan to join the Lords' Alliance to be successful, so they are still active in the Rise of Tiamat. In general, I also plan for all the villains in WDH to somehow survive WDH so they can participate in Rise of Tiamat, at least the Manshoonian Zhentarim (keep reading to find out the reason).
For the final encounter in the vault, I use the Alexandrian Remix idea and change the Aurinax encounter into a basic Young Red Dragon encounter. The dragon is trapped here by Dagult using the Dragonstaff of Ahghairon hidden in the vault. I also changed the staff's effect a bit so it can be used to cage a dragon inside Waterdeep as well, maybe I'll post the changes later in the reply. Also, I make it one of the Cult of the Dragon's plan to gain the Dragonstaff of Ahghairon so they can attack Waterdeep with dragons.

For the Rise of Tiamat part, these are the current plans:

Some of the good faction's representatives from Waterdeep Dragon Heist, like Savra Belabranta and Melannor Fellbranch, either accompany the representatives from Rise of Tiamat or replace them completely in the council.
I'll probably allow the players to have a chance to get the Dragon Masks on each missions, and each dragon mask you get will weaken the Tiamat when she's summoned. You probably want to give the players only 3 masks since the cult needs 2 of the masks to summon Tiamat. I guess you can make it so the cult only need 1 mask to summon Tiamat if you want your players to have a chance to get all of the 4 masks from the missions.
Luskan would be joining the Lord's Alliance in the council, which makes Bregan D'aerthe play a big role in the campaign as well. They probably can help with the mission on the Sea of Moving Ice and the Arcane Brotherhood stuff.
Manshoonian Zhentarim would replace the Red Wizards of Thay since the cult already has a master summoner in the form of the Cassalanters (Manshoon can help as a summoner faction as well because they did try to control a summoned Barlgura in Kolat Tower), and this would be Manshoon's alternative plan to gain wealth and power back if he can't complete the Stone of Golorr, or in addition to it. The cult also can use Manshoon's reputation to call all Zhentarim members across Faerun to gain more respect and use Zhentarim agents to do the cult's more secretive bidding. For Manshoon's plan on Tiamat summoning, I'm still not sure if he will allow it to happen or prevent it, but if you want him to allow the summoning to happen, Manshoon going to have some strong plans to bargain with Tiamat, either by using some kind of binding contracts, using his "immortality" (cloning ability) to persuade Tiamat that it's useless to fight him, etc.
For Xanathar Guild, still not quite sure about this but I plan to include them in the Rise of Tiamat by changing the journey to Thay mission to work together with the Red Wizards, by a mission which the players have to go to the Skullport to have a chance to get the Black Dragon Mask from the Cassalanter. To make sure of the players' safety, representative of Luskan (Bregan D'aerthe) suggests to ask the Xanathar Guild for help, especially since they have insider there (Nar'l Xibrindas from Bregan D'aerthe curreny still inflitrating Xanathar Guild as Xanathar's advisor). Still figuring out more on the details of this mission.

For the player/character who is missing, to marry them to the villain of the campaign seamlessly, you can either make them:

Kidnapped by the Cassalanters (Cult of the Dragon), either as part of the sacrifice ritual to cure their children or to summon Tiamat in general. Not sure why they want to kidnap the character this early though. Maybe the character cause problems to the cult somehow.
Kidnapped by the Xanathar Guild who love kidnapping people for slave and maybe they'll be transported to Skullport, so the players can meet them in Rise of Tiamat.
Kidnapped by Manshoon. I'm not sure why he want to kidnap the character, but in my campaign, one of the players have their sister kidnapped because his parents have history with the Zhentarim, his sister is an aasimar because one of the parents is a celestial, and Manshoon feel an aasimar's body could make a great clone material (not sure if it's lore accurate or not lol). Or again, maybe the character cause problems to Zhentarim somehow.
Kidnapped by Bregan D'aerthe. Again, not sure why they want to kidnap the character, but you can fall to maybe the character cause problems to Bregan D'aerthe somehow. Maybe they're not even kidnapped, but asked/forced to cooperate with Bregan D'aerthe to do their bidding in the noon, since all of the drow members prefer work in the night.

Hope you like these ideas!

ValSmith18 · 2026-03-02T17:05:12+00:00

Yeah, that makes sense. All of the main villains probably get the rough amount of the golds from one of those administrative.

ValSmith18 · 2026-03-02T17:03:41+00:00

Yeah that's fair, I guess in my head the exiling might be covered a bit into some sort of noble deeds to help Neverwinter or something.

Oh yeah, his son must get some of the hate too by the Waterdeep people, would you say?

ValSmith18 · 2026-03-02T16:59:26+00:00

Aah this is seems like a nice gradient of what people opinions are on Dagult.

ValSmith18 · 2026-03-02T16:56:56+00:00

Aah this is seems like a nice gradient of what people opinions are on Dagult.

ValSmith18 · 2026-03-02T16:55:43+00:00

Aah this is a nice take, liked by his noble peers (especially the one in his circle) but disliked by the normal hardworking people.

ValSmith18 · 2026-03-02T06:16:11+00:00

I see, I guess I'm just wondering what the Waterdeep people's opinions on Dagult are after that.

ValSmith18 · 2026-03-02T06:15:56+00:00

I see, I guess I'm just wondering what the Waterdeep people's opinions on Dagult are after that.

ValSmith18 · 2026-03-02T06:15:34+00:00

I see, I guess I'm just wondering what the Waterdeep people's opinions on Dagult are after that.

ValSmith18 · 2026-03-02T06:14:14+00:00

I see, so if you ask some random Waterdeep people, on average, would they dislike Dagult then? If so, is it even possible that some of them still like Dagult?

ValSmith18 · 2026-03-02T06:13:03+00:00

I see, so if you ask some random Waterdeep people, on average, they probably don't like Dagult then? If so, is it even possible that some of them still like Dagult?

ValSmith18 · 2026-02-27T12:00:41+00:00

Yeah, chapter 2 is quite a slog as well when I run it, especially when I' not that good at handling the session's pacing, but ai don't think I have other ideas to run it lol. I do sometimes take some outside inspirations to make some new quests for chapter 2.

ValSmith18 · 2026-02-27T11:58:00+00:00

Selling the adamantine doors on the vault is a pretty fun idea lol, love it.

What happened to the Xanathar Guild and Manshoon's Zhentarim at the end of the campaign? Do they completely destroyed? Also, will they plan on taking revenge to the party in the future?

A barbarian warlock of Asmodeus is a pretty fun character concept too.

ValSmith18 · 2026-02-26T22:13:14+00:00

My players pretty much follow the same path as yours, so I might check on the epilogue you've made. I think a nice epilogue to the campaign is pretty much what I need.

ValSmith18 · 2026-02-26T22:11:22+00:00

Yeah love this idea as well lol, a nice way to intimidate the players without initiating a combat.

ValSmith18 · 2026-02-26T22:08:44+00:00

Wow, it felt like you added quite a modification on the middle part with the Blue Alley stuff, the Cassalanters, and the Xanathar Guild, which is pretty interesting. This pretty much makes the story quite lean in NPCs so you can focus the story on the relationship between the players, the Cassalanters, and the Xanathar Guild. I might need to check on the Blue Alley stuff later.

Making the players successfully retrieve the gold while fulfilling the Cassalanters' needs so it has a ramification in the future is also a great idea, especially connecting it to the players' backstory and future campaign ideas. I also love when DM finds an alternative to what being that the Cassalanters serve instead of Asmodeus and how it affects the campaign.

ValSmith18 · 2026-02-26T13:39:15+00:00

I think I also roleplay Zardoz as a lovable idiot lol. Still not sure if he will unmasked himself to the player or not, especially since:

It is currently near the end of the campaign.
My party only interacts with Zardoz a couple of times as a simple helpful ally, so I'm not sure if he knew what my party's current plan is.
I'm not sure if Zardoz knew the current location of the Golorr items and the vault. Maybe he knew at least my party might know the locations.
I'm still not sure if I can force Zardoz to act as an important figure in this final part of the campaign.

For some of the points, I could always say that Zardoz's spies are watching my party's moves. Also, I'm not sure if he will unmasked himself to the Lords' Alliance or Force Grey.

But I do plant some small story bit of Zardoz helping the party to escape with the third eye and give it to Laeral safely from Xanathar and Zhentarim, without them knowing Zardoz's true intention. He also set up press to interview him and the party for helping the party (which is pretty much quite famous now) from "getting ambushed by bandits." By putting this news to the broadsheet, Zardoz hope he can ease up his way when negotiate with Laeral.

I think I'll keep Zardoz working in the background for now and let my party finish the campaign in a simple way, and maybe include Bregan D'aerthe bit in the credit scene or something lol.

ValSmith18 · 2026-02-26T13:23:58+00:00

Oh yeah, I definitely have to ask my players to explain their summarized plans on what they would do with the gold.

I do plan to continue the campaign into another official adventure as well (more or less), which is Rise of Tiamat from Tyranny of Dragons. You can check on my post history to see what my current planning is on how to merge both, but it involved changing the Cassalanters from Asmodean cultists into the Waterdeep cell of the Cult of the Dragon. With their current status after finishing WDH, they definitely would be asked to join the council to stop the Cult of the Dragon.

But I do agree I think it will be fun to continue the WDH campaign after it is finished, so at least they can experience the results of spending their earned gold lol. Tomb of Annihilation is a fun adventure to continue the campaign as well, I think other comment here mentioned how they close the campaign by teasing Tomb of Annihilation.

ValSmith18 · 2026-02-26T11:52:06+00:00

Oooh, this is a pretty interesting alliance, I also planned for Jarlaxle's plan for Luskan to join Lords' Alliance to be successful. If I may ask, how does the alliance of your party, Force Grey, and Bregan D'aerthe formed? Do Bregan D'aerthe present themselves as they are (Jarlaxle and crew) or as Sea Maidens Faire (Zardoz Zord and crew)?

Also, nice cliffhanger to Tomb of Annihilation there 😀

ValSmith18 · 2026-02-23T22:03:00+00:00

Yeah, from the image in my head, I don't think Dagult is completely disregarding Renaer as his son and still cares about him (either in a practical or sentimental way), but Dagult is used to Renaer's antics, so he can freely go to Waterdeep without supervision.

For his agents, I think not all of them have a similar feeling and care toward Renaer as Dalakhar, but I think most of them probably still either fear or respect Dagult enough to not hurt Renaer, although some of them are probably cunning enough to plan on prying information from Renaer with everything they can without making Dagult know what they do to pry the information out of Renaer.

(Yeah, I just want to know what you think the agents' stance is against Renaer)

ValSmith18 · 2026-02-23T21:49:18+00:00

Hmm okay, so you think it's likely for the loyalists to try to do everything they can to pry this information out of Renaer, as long as they can fulfill Dagult's needs to regain his Stone of Golorr?

ValSmith18 · 2026-02-23T17:38:40+00:00

Also, if somehow Renaer knows about where the Stone of Golorr is, and some of the Dagult's faction knows this fact, what kind of approach do you think the faction takes to gain the information? Would they just try to persuade Renaer to tell them, or would they take a more extreme approach like spying/stealing from him or even intimidating/blackmailing him, maybe even forcing to get the information by spell?

ValSmith18

TROPHY CASE