Two weeks ago, an asteroid crashed about a dozen kilometers east of the town known as Garen’s Well. Since then, strange crystalline monsters have roamed the area, attacking people and wildlife, chopping down trees, and dragging them all back to the crash site. Can the party rid the countryside of this menace, or will the Crystal Horde overrun this region and spread into the world beyond?

The Crystal Horde

Ever since the asteroid crash-landed, strange creatures made of blue crystal have been seen prowling the area. Below, there are two descriptions for each creature: One is a fairly objective description, meant for the Dungeon Master. The other is how a panicked witness would describe the creature. The creatures are all vulnerable to piercing damage, making things like pickaxes very useful against them.

Crystal creatures occasionally drop dead wildlife or felled trees beside the Heart, which absorbs them. The creatures are all vulnerable to piercing damage, making things like pickaxes very useful against them.

Garen’s Well

Garen’s Well is a fishing town on the southern coast, located between a gulf and a mountain range. A long pier stretches out into the gulf, providing a place for people to fish and boats to moor. The first floor of each building is made of stone, and the higher floors are made of wattle and daub.

The people of Garen’s Well mainly eat fish, which they also trade with other settlements. They have a few small boats moored to the pier, but nothing that could last long in the open ocean.

Two years ago, a new noble was installed in Garen’s Well to gather taxes and… Well, that’s mostly it. Gather taxes and stop annoying everyone in the royal court. This is Reginald Cole the Third, a weasel of a man who feels that living in such a low-class area is beneath him.

Garen’s Lodge

Garen’s Lodge is a wooden hall on top of a hill. This is the administrative center of Garen’s Well, where its records are stored and its lord resides. It was not built to survive a siege, but the guardsmen are currently hastily erecting palisades around it.

Reginald cares about nothing but his own safety, but his guards are torn between their duty to the people of the area and the orders from their local lord.

The Slapping Salmon

The Slapping Salmon is Garen’s Well’s tavern. As is standard for fantasy taverns, it has a few rooms for rent upstairs, none of which are particularly nice. When the weather is too rough for fishing, The Slapping Salmon is packed with locals eager to have some fun and drink away the stress.

The signature dish of The Slapping Salmon is the Salmon Skewer, a grilled skewer loaded with salmon chunks, mushrooms, and bell peppers. It tastes alright and goes well with the only beer the tavern has.

Skewers cost two silver for three skewers, and beer is five copper for a mug.

The Forsaken

Two years ago, Reginald Cole the Third came to Garen’s Well as its new lord. One of the first things he did was cut the size of the local guard regiment by a third. Many of these men were young, single, and desperate. These men banded together into a bandit group called The Forsaken. Now, they make their living robbing travelers.

The Forsaken are competent fighters and could be enticed to aid the party if they were promised their old jobs back. Otherwise, they’ll stick to banditry, leaving the crystal horde to somebody else.

The Forsaken have a small camp out in the woods, built out of tents and wagons.

The Old Byury Mine

The Old Byury Mine is an abandoned gold mine in the foothills north of Zahriel It was exhausted decades ago, and the small town around it has mostly been retaken by nature. When the mine was abandoned, some equipment was left deep inside at a supply cache, determined to be too deep to be worth recovering. A few mine carts sit at the entrance, but they are in need of repair.

The supply cache sits about a mile into the mine. The cache sits right under one of the mine’s air shafts. Racks of shovels and picks line one wall, and benches made of old crate parts and other scrap wood are strewn about the area. This place was commonly used for lunch breaks, back when the mine was in use.

A small group of goblins lives in the old mine. They have found the old supply cache and made that area their new home. Simple barricades have been set up near the cache, made out of old mine carts and crates.

The goblins want a safe place to live and thrive. They have seen what the crystal horde can do, and have very little interest in doing anything to attract their attention. Getting them to take the fight to the crystal horde would be difficult, but if the party can arrange for them to have a place to live without fear of being attacked, they might be willing to help. At the very least, persuading them to sell the old pickaxes shouldn’t be too hard.

Average Goblin: Aside from the named goblins, there are a dozen others in the area around the supply cache. Some are on the improvised barricades, but most are lounging around on the crate benches. These goblins use the standard 5E goblin stats. Click here for some free goblin tokens!

Flaming Cart: The goblins have filled a mine cart with various flammable materials, and broken the tracks so that it will derail when it hits the section of rail just before the southern thermal pools. When the party reaches this point, a nearby goblin will light the cart on fire and give it a shove, causing it to hit that area and flip, spewing flaming material in a 15-foot cone. Anyone in this cone who fails a DC 15 Dexterity check takes 1d8 fire damage.

The Intended Sequence

This article is meant to be used as a side-story as the party journeys between other locations. As such, I have done my best to keep it self-contained. All this adventure needs is some foothills, a fishing village, and some woods.

The intention is for the party to stop for the night in Garen’s Well and hear about the sightings of strange crystal monsters, either from the guard captain (Ollie Henderson) or the folks at the tavern. From there, they can either attempt to verify this information for themselves by bumbling around in the woods and running into either the Forsaken or some Crystal Drones, or immediately start trying to figure out what to do about it.

Allies would be quite helpful, and there are three possible options: The town guards (busy protecting Reginald Cole the Third), the Forsaken (more concerned with immediate survival, IE, food and shelter), or the goblins of Byury Mine (paranoid, and hoping everything will blow over.)

Weapons would also be helpful. While it is not necessary for the party to go to the Byury Mine and load up on pickaxes, it would be quite helpful in fighting the Crystal Horde, but don’t force them to go there if they really don’t want to go mess around in an old mine.

Afterword

Thanks for reading! I hope you and your players enjoy this little side adventure with alien monsters terrorizing the countryside.

Please shoot them with lasers for me.

-Garm

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