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Given what we’re looking at today, it’s probably a good time to add this disclaimer. I love Norse myths and folklore. I love stories of giants and dwarves and weird, curse spewing, serpentine dragons. I love the idea that symbols have power, and that dovetails nicely with runes and runic magic. I’m also a white guy of Germanic heritage. I say all of that in prelude to this: white supremacists can f%@k right off. Odin and Thor think you’re an asshole, Loki is laughing at you, and you don’t even want to know what Freyja has in store for you.

Back to business. What are we looking at today? We’re going to look at Keeper of the Drowned, a 5e SRD adventure using the Black Flag rules via the ORC license. The adventure is part of the Thrones & Bones setting, a setting that originated in the Thrones & Bones trilogy of novels, Frostborn, Nightborn, and Skyborn. These books follow youthful protagonists, including a human, a half-giant, and a dark elf, in a world populated with elements from Norse folklore. There is currently a 5e SRD campaign setting that predates the Black Flag rules, along with an adventure anthology. In addition, one of the first adventures to come out using the Black Flag rules, months before the final release of the rules, was Banner of the Bull, which converts several of the races present in the campaign setting to the lineage and heritage rules of Black Flag.

Disclaimer

I received this adventure as part of backing the Kickstarter for the Tales of the Valiant Game Master’s Guide. While I did not receive this adventure as a review copy, I have received review copies from Lou Anders and Lazy Wolf Studios in the past. I haven’t had a chance to run this adventure, but I am very familiar with D&D 5e, both as a DM and as a player.

Thrones and Bones: Keeper of the Drowned
Art Director, Publisher: Lou Anders
Lead Designer: Brian Suskind
Additional Designers: Lou Anders
Editing: Misty Bourne
Cover Art: Florian Stitz
Interior Art: Margarita Bourkova, Ksenia Kozhevnikova, Dio Mahesa, Aleksa Stajsic, Florian Stitz, Bryan Syme
Cartography: Rob Lazzaretti, Heroic Maps
Initial Graphic Design, Layout Concept: Invisible Rocket
Norse Language Consulting: Trond-Atle Farestveit

Setting and Assumptions

While the Thrones & Bones novels feature younger protagonists, nothing about the setting material or the rules point players toward younger characters. Many Norse themed settings spend a lot of time on Vikings and raiding, and while they may include magic and monsters from folklore, it often feels like those elements are both exceptionally rare and out on the edges of society. Instead of focusing on Vikings and raiding, however, this is a setting where the northern humans live in settlements that depend on shipping and trade more than raiding and pillaging.

Instead of framing PCs as Vikings that get roped into bigger, supernatural events, the vibe I get from the setting is much more like Beowulf. There are some travelling heroes that go around the countryside solving problems that afflict communities. Sometimes weird magical things and monsters cause problems for people. While not all the lineages are common in the setting, it’s not strange for northern humans to trade with dwarves and giants. Monsters, curses, and spells are less folklore that turns out to be true, and more just the reality of life. It’s a more “D&D” friendly set of assumptions for the setting. Plus, I love Beowulf, so I’m here for it.

There are a lot of creatures from folklore, many filtered through how we understand them now, and how they have been shaded by RPGs over the years, but while there are creatures that serve similar functions, the traditional D&D monsters aren’t present. Your player character lineages are dwarf, elf, Frostborn (half-giants), Huldrafolk (Norse fey), and humans. Many of the low-level threats are fey creatures, and monstrosities, with some undead thrown in for good measure. Oh, and humans. Humans are jerks sometimes.

The Adventure

It is the wyrd of reviews to reveal spoilers, so now is the time to escape your fate, should you be planning on playing through this adventure, or if you wish to be surprised.

While this adventure can be run without the connection, this adventure shares a setting with Banner of the Bull, the settlement of Bense. This adventure is for characters starting at 3rd level, and Banner of the Bull assumes characters will reach 3rd level by the end. There are some notes on how different NPCs will react to the PCs if they took part in the previous adventure.

Bense has a statue of the god Njunn, The Keeper of the Drowned, which regularly falls into the water and needs to be retrieved. This time, however, the statue has been stolen by some merfolk. The merfolk aren’t happy with the local fisherfolk, and are using the statue to trick folks from the settlement to run a gauntlet that the merfolk have designed to help them complete a ritual that will summon weather that will wipe Bense off the map.

To further complicate matters, one of the jarl’s housecarls is conspiring with the merfolk to oust the jarl. The merfolk have told the housecarl that the magical rod they have given him will allow him to end the storms once he has overthrown the jarl and pledged to keep the fisherfolk away from the merfolk’s territory. In reality, the rod is part of the spell summoning the storm, and the massive wave that will wash away Bense is directed based on the location of the rod.

Puzzling Behavior

The sea caves that lead to the stolen statue have areas that are completely flooded, with some air pockets, allowing the PCs to catch their breath as they swim between areas above the waterline, through the flooded areas.

There are puzzles included in this section, which have contextual answers. By that, I mean that they don’t require external knowledge, but rather, the answers are based on what the PCs know about the setting or based on clues in the environment in which the puzzle is found. One requires the PCs to “attune” various pillars to different energies/elements. The other, the Hall of Currents, is a labyrinth the PCs must navigate to exit. The pattern for escape is fairly simple, but the PCs can be pushed along the wrong route due to the flow of water in the area.

In addition to solving the puzzle and navigating the labyrinth, the PCs are beset by additional challenges. In this case, carnivorous fish swarms and sea trolls. The sea trolls are a good example of what I mentioned above, where they match some Norse depictions of trolls a little more than D&D versions of the monsters (although I think there is a law that no matter where your inspiration for trolls comes from, they now need to have some form of regeneration).

The Twist

The merfolk priestess needs surface dwellers to perform aspects of the ritual that will summon the massive wave to destroy Bense. That means this is an adventure where the PCs find out they are part of the problem. We’ll come back to that. Because the merfolk need the surface dwellers to complete their part of the ritual, we have a good reason for the PCs to walk (swim) into the other half of the ritual in progress.

Each round, if the priestess uses her bonus action to continue the ritual, the time until the killer wave hits is shortened. If she manages to use bonus actions for more than 8 rounds, the port settlement is doomed. The faster the PCs defeat the priestess, the longer they have to track down the rod and destroy it. The merfolk priestess is talkative and is willing to tell the PCs exactly what she did to trick the traitorous housecarl, letting them know about the rod.

If the PCs use the waterspout in the cavern to rapidly return to the surface, they have however much time they bought for themselves in the fight with the priestess to destroy the rod being carried by the housecarl. The town is already flooded by the initial lashes of the storm, and the housecarl has taken this opportunity to overthrow the jarl, which is where the PCs find the housecarl and the jarl when they catch up to them. If they don’t destroy the rod in time, much of the city is destroyed, along with about a quarter of the population.

Stormbreaker

One thing I noticed in this adventure is that at the beginning of the description of an area, there are a few traits of the area. Not physical dimensions, but more abstracted, thematic elements meant to be invoked by the area, for example—Dark shadows, Foreboding Monuments, Rising magic. I like this as a scene setting tool, and to communicate to the DM why this area exists in the adventure. The body of the adventure feels like an encounter with fey creatures, tricksters, or other creatures of fable. The motivation of both villains make sense and play to the strength of the narrative, even if both are fairly two dimensional threats. The puzzles are contextual, making it a little easier to provide clues or point players towards the solution without the story stalling out. There is a well-done, built-in reason for the PCs to show up in time to disrupt a ritual.

Stormbringer

I’ve mentioned before that one of my least favorite adventure tropes is tricking the PCs into unleashing the villains’ plan by making them think they are helping, and that’s exactly what’s going on for the body of this adventure. It’s mitigated a bit because the merfolk would still be summoning less effective storms without the ritual’s completion, and the PCs aren’t tricked into doing the secretly bad thing by an NPC that appears to be friendly, undermining their faith in NPCs in general. I still don’t love it, but it doesn’t hit quite as hard as it did in another recent adventure I reviewed.

Recommended–If the product fits in your broad area of gaming interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.

While Norrongard may not align perfectly with other 5e SRD Norse-inspired settings, it’s not hard to run this adventure as is, and just assume that these things exist in addition to standard D&D-isms. Weird versions of sea trolls and carnivorous fish aren’t particularly setting breaking, and I’m pretty sure merfolk work for most D&D settings where the setting is near a sea or an ocean. It manages to strike a nice balance between being a simple, comfortable narrative, and still providing compelling action and important stakes.

If you would like to check out some of the other Thrones & Bones 5e SRD products, and you don’t mind allowing me to raid a tiny bit of your purchase to line the longboat that hauls my electronic share around the internet, you can click through the affiliate links to them below:

https://whatdoiknowjr.com/2024/06/03/what-do-i-know-about-reviews-thrones-and-bones-keeper-of-the-drowned-black-flag-roleplaying/

#BlackFlagRoleplaying #DungeonsDragons #KoboldPress #LazyWolfStudios #NorseMythology #ThronesBones