The Demonplague in Published Campaign Settings
Last week The Demonplague went on sale in both PDF and print. If you’ve got a hard copy of the book, send me a shelfie on Twitter (because they make me so happy)! In this post, I’ll show you where you can set the adventure that takes characters from level 1 – 20 in several popular published settings!
The Demonplague takes place in the remote Luna Valley, a once-frozen landscape now hot and humid thanks to a supernatural comet striking the land. Now one village remains in the mud-soaked valley, Tomar’s Crossing, a place for refugees to gather, monsters to attack, and intrigue to hide! The Luna Valley is packed with adventure locations unveiled by the melt and a mysterious sickness which leads adventurers to dive deep into forgotten places. If you’re unfamiliar with story of The Demonplague, you can find out more by reading the introduction!
The Luna Valley can be dropped into almost any campaign setting with almost no adjustment. While there is an ocean, the Sardon Sea, on one side of the valley, the adventure’s plot does not depend on the body of water. Any remote, mountainous region will do. Here are some of the ways you can work the adventure into your favorite published setting.
Forgotten Realms
The Demonplague stream and podcast takes place in the Forgotten Realms. It is recommended the Luna Valley be placed in the Spine of the World, a mountain range in the northern region of Faerûn. The Sea of Moving Ice makes a great stand-in for the Sardon Sea.
Greyhawk
The Corusk Mountains in Greyhawk are dangerous, ice-capped, and surrounded by the Solnor Ocean. This mountain range is the perfect place for the Luna Valley.
Eberron
Several locations in Eberron feature icy, mountainous regions appropriate for the Luna Valley. The Bluespine Peaks and Dowron’s Shield of Xen’drik make good locations, but some of the best places for the Luna Valley are actually islands of the north coast of Khorvaire. Instead of mountains surrounding most of the region, you could have icy seas on all sides if you set your Demonplague game on Ice Shear Isle, Icewhite Island, or Icegaunt Island.
Nentir Vale
The fourth edition D&D setting of the Nentir Vale is a great place to set The Demonplague. The Luna Valley fits perfectly in the dangerous Cairngorm Peaks of the cozy setting.
Dragonlance
The world of Krynn has several mountain ranges, but the Icewall is the perfect place to put the Luna Valley.
Birthright
In the world Aebrynis the frozen lands of Thaele make a great home for the Luna Valley.
Mystara
In Mystara the Viking-inspired kingdom of Vestland has many mountainous regions the Luna Valley could call home.
Dark Sun
Despite being a mostly desert world, there is SOME ice on very tops of the Ringing Mountains in Dark Sun. The glacier that once sat in the Luna Valley is there for a special reason (read the adventure to find out), so it is entirely possible to place the Luna Valley in these dangerous mountains and have the region even more devastated when the glacier melts and the land’s source of water disappears.
Midgard
Kobold Press’ Midgard setting has a frozen mountainous region called the Northlands, which makes the perfect remote home for the Luna Valley.
Tal’dorei
The now-famous Critical Role campaign setting has a range called the Cliffkeep Mountains. The northern most part of the range extends into frozen lands that make a great place for the Luna Valley.
Pax Unplugged
By the way, if you’re headed to Pax Unplugged in Philadelphia this weekend, I’ll be there too with my pals Rudy Basso, James Haeck, and Hannah Rose. Come say hey!
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December 2, 2018 @ 10:38 pm
The email that Johnn Four sent out said that this was a list of 20 settings … I only see 10 :-} . Where’s the others? 🙂
Any thoughts about where to put it in the Dungeon Crawl Classics home setting of Aereth? (I don’t use it with the DCC game, but with their 3e adventures, which I will be running as 5e adventures). On the northern coast of the main continent, there’s an area called “The Frost Barrens”, right north of where that phrase is written on the map, that could work. Just slightly west of a town called “Wale Haven”.
Or, East of the Bay on which Wale Haven is at the mouth, there’s the Black Ice Mountains and Icenwastes. Just east of the words “Icenwastes” is a bay with a ruin … but the bay faces southeast and not north. Otherwise, it might work. or the area of coastline just north west of that ruin. But for that area to work, you’d have to be willing to accept that the Demonplague map is not “up is north”.
There’s some other areas near the Black Ice Mountains as well, that could be adapted. Maybe what the Aereth map shows as a north facing bay was actually a glacier and assumed to be a bay by the map’s (in-world) cartographer.
My favorite quick placement though is: assume the Demonplague map is oriented “up is north west”, and place it right around where the words “Frost Barrens” are, on the Aereth Map. The mountains to the “right side” of the Demonplague map are the northern extent of the Saint’s Blood Mountains. The ruin to the west of the word “Frost Barrens” is on a set of mountains that might somehow from the mountains on the “leftside” of the Demonplague mountains. Then you just have to decide what uncharted mountains form the “bottom of the Demonplague” map. Or adjust the Demonplage map such that bottom edge of the glacier is not mountains, but just a highland within the Frost Barrens.
DCC’s module 51 (Castle Whiterock) makes a good campaign area south of Demonplague (but, realistically, it’s 1000ish miles away), and DCC 12/12.5 and DCC 25 aren’t terribly far away from the Luna Valley, if you place it there. So there’s some hooks that could work.
Another possibility: Closer to Castle Whiterock (DCC 51), the eastern edge of the Morrain Valley is the Ul Dominor Mountains. As they run north, they start to veer off to the east, leaving a highland between them and Valfors Bay. If the southern and western edges of that highland are retconned to have mountains on them, then that works as a possible location of the Luna Valley as well. You may still need to rotate the Demonplague Map slightly counter-clockwise to make its upper edge match the Cliffs of Dyzan’s coastline, but it could work. And, again, this puts you in some proximity to other ready-written campaign material.