Act I · The Alliance Campaign
Crown of Ash
Something is dying inside Teldrassil. The leaves don’t fall — they crumble. And whatever is killing the tree knows you’ve noticed.
Teldrassil — “Crown of the Earth” — was grown by the Circle of the Ancients just a few years ago, a second World Tree built to restore what the night elves sacrificed at Mount Hyjal. The plan was to receive the blessing of the dragon Aspects and so restore the Kaldorei’s lost immortality. The blessing never came. Ysera and the others refused, sensing something wrong in how the tree was shaped — too quickly, too proudly, without the patience of ten thousand years.
And so Teldrassil stands: vast, ancient in appearance but young in spirit, its canopy brushing the clouds, the city of Darnassus glittering among its upper boughs. Beautiful. Proud. Unconsecrated.
You were born under this tree. You have lived in its shadows your whole short life — short by night elf standards, which means you may be two hundred years old and still considered a youth by the elders of Darnassus. You know the bark, the roots, the deep gullies between the enormous exposed root systems. You know when something is wrong.
Something is wrong.
Before beginning, decide: are you a Druid (you hear the tree’s pain as a low hum at the edge of sleep), a Scout (you noticed the dying patches of bark while on patrol), or a Warrior (you found a dead sentinel outside Shadowthread Cave, her wounds not made by any beast you recognize)? Your class changes your entry point into Scene 1 — all three paths converge at the same place.
A Survival check (DC 12) allows the character to determine the rot spreads from a central point roughly 200 yards deeper into the dead zone, toward the cave entrance. A Nature check (DC 14) reveals this is not blight, not drought, and not natural decay. The tree is being drained.
A Listen check (DC 10) — even without trying — catches it: something moving in the dark patches between roots. Low to the ground. More than one.
Difficulty: Moderate
These are not normal cave spiders. Their carapaces are mottled grey-black, veined with faintly glowing purple lines — the same unnatural color as the sap weeping from the bark. They move wrong, too deliberate, as if guided rather than hunting. Killing one releases a burst of that burnt smell.
Poison: Corrupted venom. On a failed DC 12 Fortitude save: 1d3 Strength damage initially, 1d3 Strength damage 1 minute later. Successful save negates secondary damage. This poison has an odd side effect — characters who fail both saves find their vision temporarily tinted violet for 1d4 hours. They can see faint purple threads in the bark that others cannot.
Tactics: The spiders do not behave like predators. They form a loose perimeter, as if guarding something rather than hunting. If the player retreats, they do not pursue beyond the rot boundary. They are sentinels.
After the fight, the character can search the area. A Search check (DC 10) finds: a single night elf leather bracer, partially crushed, still buckled as if torn off an arm rather than removed. Inside the bracer, tooled into the leather: the sigil of a Sentinel of Darnassus. Someone official was here.
A Search check (DC 15) finds something worse: a thin channel carved deliberately into the root, barely a handspan wide, filled with the same grey sap. It runs inward, toward the cave. It was carved, not grown.
Follow the carved channel into Shadowthread Cave immediately. You go in now, alone, without backup. Skip to Scene 2.
Return to Dolanaar to report what you’ve found and find help. You lose half a day. When you return in Scene 2, there will be two more dead zones and the carved channel will be wider.
Follow the channel from the outside, circling the cave to find where it leads on the far side. Agility-based scout option. DC 14 Survival check to track it without entering the cave — success reveals an exit point leading to Scene 3 directly.
50 XP — Found the bracer
75 XP — Identified the channel
This is Sentinel Aeyri Moonshadow, one of three sentinels who went missing four nights ago. A Heal check (DC 10) determines cause of death: total Strength drain — every muscle in her body simply stopped working. A Spellcraft check (DC 16) on the body identifies traces of a necromantic effect, but twisted, hybridized with something the checker has never seen before.
The cave has three chambers. The channel runs through all of them. Each chamber deeper is worse.
Found in the second chamber, barely conscious, bound to a root with a cord of what looks like crystallized sap. A night elf male, older, his robes torn and stained. His antler-staff is broken. He is not corrupted — but he has been here two days and is badly dehydrated and down to 3 HP. He was investigating the same thing you were.
“Don’t go into the third chamber alone. What’s in there — it isn’t a creature. It isn’t a spell. I don’t have a word for what it is. But it hears you thinking about it.”
Vaelithar can be freed with a Strength check (DC 13) or by cutting the crystallized sap (Hardness 4, 6 HP). If freed and given water from a waterskin, he regains 4 HP and can walk, though not fight. He knows the following:
- What he saw A satyr, but not like any satyr description in any druidic text. Its horns were crystallized. It was placing something in the root — he couldn’t see what before it knocked him unconscious.
- The channel It’s a conduit. Whatever is in the third chamber is pulling energy from Teldrassil’s root network, slowly, like a parasite. At the current rate, this patch will be dead wood in a week. The whole island in perhaps two months.
- Why no one knows He went to the Elder Druid Fandral Staghelm’s circle three days ago. They dismissed him. That fact sits on his face like an old wound.
Difficulty: Hard — Consider Retreat
It is in the third chamber when the player enters. Humanoid, roughly 7 feet tall, goat legs, but every joint and extremity is encased in the same grey crystal as the channel — as if the thing is slowly being consumed and petrified simultaneously. It turns when you enter. Its eyes are violet. It does not speak. It reaches.
Drain Touch (Su): On a hit, the target must make a DC 13 Fortitude save or lose 1d4 Strength. This damage heals the satyr for 2 HP per point drained. A character reduced to 0 Strength falls unconscious and begins taking 1 HP per round as their life energy is channeled into the root.
Crystal Shard (Ex): When the satyr takes 10+ damage in a single hit, it shatters shards in a 10-foot burst. DC 12 Reflex save or 1d4 piercing damage and –1 to all rolls for 1 hour (sharp crystals lodged in skin).
The Object: Embedded in the root at the satyr’s feet is a black stone roughly the size of a fist, carved with spiraling runes. This is the conduit device. If it is destroyed (AC 10, 12 HP, no DR) while the satyr is still alive, the satyr immediately screams and attacks at +2 to hit for 2 rounds before collapsing — the connection was feeding it too. Destroying the stone ends the drain. Without it, the satyr is just a wounded, confused creature.
A 1st-level character should consider this fight genuinely dangerous. The Str drain can incapacitate quickly. If Vaelithar is with the player, he can use the last of his energy to cast Entangle (DC 13 Reflex or the satyr is held for 1d4 rounds) — but it costs him 6 HP and leaves him unconscious. Running with the stone is a valid option — take it, seal the cave entrance with a DC 14 Strength check to collapse loose rock, buy time.
150 XP — Defeated the satyr
75 XP — Destroyed/retrieved the stone
✦ The Conduit Stone (quest item)
✦ Vaelithar as ally
You are made to wait two hours.
Old, even for a night elf. He receives you in a garden where nothing is dying. He listens to everything you say with absolute, patient stillness. Then he sets the conduit stone down on a wooden table, looks at it for a long moment, and says: “This is a matter for the Circle. We will investigate.” He will not say when. He will not say how. He thanks you for your service.
“Teldrassil has withstood worse than corrupted beasts in its few years. The tree endures. As do we. As will you — if you rest and leave this to those whose wisdom is equal to the task.”
This is a social encounter. The player can make the following checks against Morvaelis:
| Approach | Check | DC | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Present the dead sentinel’s bracer | Diplomacy | 14 | He agrees to inform her family and “look into” the missing sentinels officially |
| Show him the carved channel from memory | Knowledge (nature) | 12 | His composure cracks — just slightly. He knows what a conduit channel is. He didn’t expect you to. |
| Ask about Fandral Staghelm directly | Sense Motive | 15 | Something crosses his face. Not anger. Fear. He ends the meeting two minutes later. |
| Threaten to take the stone to the Alliance in Theramore | Intimidate | 18 | He laughs. Then he stops laughing. He tells you to leave. Two junior druids appear to escort you out. |
Whatever happens, Morvaelis keeps the conduit stone. You leave empty-handed, officially dismissed. But Vaelithar, as you walk the bridge back to the city’s lower level, says something quietly:
“The stone had a twin. I saw two channels in the cave before it knocked me out. The second ran north — toward the shore. Toward the boat docks.”
Morvaelis is not the villain. He is a bureaucrat protecting something he doesn’t fully understand. The actual problem is that someone in Darnassus commissioned the conduit stones — not from outside but from within, as part of a failed ritual to finally consecrate Teldrassil that went catastrophically wrong. That someone is connected to the next act. The cover-up is not malice. It is shame.
Bonus 25 XP per successful check
✦ Lead: the second channel, the shore
There are multiple ways to handle this. The two figures are a night elf male — not a druid, his bearing is wrong, too hunched, too quick — and a goblin wearing the livery of the Steamwheedle Cartel. The goblin is here for trade. The night elf hired him. The chest contains the second conduit stone — and three others the player didn’t know about.
Confront them directly. The night elf runs. The goblin surrenders immediately — he was just hired for the boat. Chase sequence: Athletics DC 14 to catch the elf before he reaches the water and dives. Failure: he escapes. Success: you catch him and learn a name. The name leads to Act II.
Watch and wait. Let them load. Follow the boat. The boat goes to Darkshore — the rocky coast south of Auberdine. Act II starts on that coastline instead of in Darnassus, which changes the next chapter’s terrain significantly.
Sink the boat before it leaves. You destroy the stones but lose the trail and gain an enemy — whoever sent the elf will know someone interfered. Act II becomes about being hunted rather than hunting. Harder. More interesting.
Regardless of choice, before the scene resolves the player finds a document dropped during the night elf’s flight — a folded paper, ink smeared but legible: a receipt, written in Common, for “services rendered regarding the Nordrassil alignment study, paid in full, Felwood office.” Felwood. The corrupted forest. The one where the Shadow Council hides.
This is bigger than a satyr in a cave.
Bonus 75 XP — Captured the night elf
✦ The Receipt (lead to Act II)
✦ Level Up — Reach 2nd Level
The player is now a 2nd-level night elf who has uncovered a conspiracy that the official druidic establishment of Darnassus is either unaware of or actively suppressing. Someone inside the Kaldorei power structure had contact with agents in Felwood — possibly the Shadow Council. Teldrassil is being drained by conduit stones. There are at least four of them. And a goblin knows a name.
Act II takes the campaign off Teldrassil and onto the Kalimdor mainland — to Darkshore, then the road through Ashenvale, toward Felwood’s corrupted edge.