Starhaven became the destination for the Isentia campaign after its starting phase, and a home for the modified version of Elemental Evil we were playing.
The party entered the region through the town of Firstlight, where they would receive their first quests pertaining to the Elemental Evil storyline. Hints of potential threats woul dlead them into the forest to the South, where they would find the first Elemental Cult base.
Eventually the party would find themselves on the road to the Capital City of Starhaven, which housed all the primary resources and factions for the adventure. This would offer them adventure hooks that lead to the other Elemental Cult temples, grant them a place to set up a guild hall, recruit followers, perform crafting and magic item identification, and serve as the focal point for the final battle of this phase of the story.
The climax of the storyline took place at the center of the capital city, where a great tower of elemental stone erupted, allowing the party’s foe, an enemy they had been contending with since the beginning of their story, to access the power of the elements and outer planes. As the party rushed to stop this foe, she would eventually tear more rifts in reality, leading to what would later be known as the Planar Warp, when all Planar Realities merged into one singular world. This set off a massive magical explosion, decimating the entire region and leaving nothing left but magically irradiated ash.
When designing this region, my first and primary focuses were on preparing the Capital to operate as a base of operations and provide a home for the major NPCs the party would be interacting with, and to house the Elemental Evil campaign locations that would be required to progress the storyline. Once these were in place, I began to add terrain to break up progress and enforce adventuring paths. At the time the party had no magical transportation, no flight capability, and would be required to trek through road and wilderness to reach their destinations. This allowed me to section off parts of the map and seed the party with critical quests that would lock them into certain locations. This also gave me time to prepare material for each session!
After terrain was down, I focused on adding interesting features, supporting locations, and locations that could serve as points of interest that developed the lore of the world. I had seeded the party with “personal” quests pertaining to their characters’ individual storylines, and set specific locations within the map that the party might encounter along the way, and then later would be driven to explore in order to progress those quests.
One such example is “Templar’s Hold”, located along the major river in the region. This was a quest seed location for the party’s Warlock. A group of demons had infiltrated the holy Templar order, and were using them to ransack and hunt down Devil worshipping enclaves which served the master of said Warlock. The party would be approached by a Devil in charge of one such enclave, and tasked with infiltrating the Hold to gain proof of demonic influence and drive them out. This lead to the party sneaking in via the river and disguising themselves as new recruits, working their way up through the ranks, and performing investigative work within the Hold to identify which members of the Templars had been replaced by demons.
The final battle of this quest would involve a heavy focus on the Warlock, as she became empowered by infernal magic to battle a demon-corrupted fallen angel on her own, while the party held back an onslaught of demonic hordes ripped from the deepest reaches of the Hells to stop them.
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