Adventures in Milmar #27 - The Spear of Arvildar the Golden Part 1

This post is the next episode in the continuing tale of an adventure I ran in Dungeons & Dragons a while ago.

In the last post, Adventures in Milmar #26 - Death by Dumbness I described how a combination of over-confidence and brashness led to the death of one of the adventurers in our party.

The players are traversing the Warmark, a battle scarred wasteland between the Grand Duchy of Enrieme and the Sidhiaran elves. They've already braved and (mostly) survived a number of hazards. Now, they are going to meet Sidhiarans for the first time as a party. One of the party, the warrior Khemed, had encountered one previously, but that had been more of a solo battle.

The Spear of Arvildar the Golden

In the exact centre of the Warmark is the Spear of Arvildar the Golden. It is a gigantic spear, some 150’ long, suspended in the air 10’ from the ground and angled as if it is about to strike. It appears to be made of blackened bronze with a gleaming golden spearpoint and butt.

To the Sidhiarans, it marks both the area they claim as entirely their own, and the site of the Battle of Shattered Wings, where their King Arvildar met his death.

The area around the spear is devoid of life; within a ring of shattered bones 750 feet in diameter the ground is smooth and hard, like black glass. This makes invisible movement much harder to spot ! The only feature is a line of four arrows planted into the ground at 3 foot intervals a short way this side of the spear.

The Nature of Sidhiarans

Now is probably a good time to tell you a little more about the mysterious Sidhiaran elves. All of this is information you'll now know, but the players hadn't yet discovered !

Although Sidhiarans look like High Elves, they are very different in a lot of ways, and are more creatures of spirit than mortal beings.

Every single one of them is considered a noble and bears a title of some kind, often incredibly pompous-sounding. Their life cycle is not typical of elves, either. They are effectively immortal, and cannot die of old age.

However, they undergo a series of what they call "mists". To achieve one of these, they have to die. The more glorious the death, the greater their increase in status when they return from it. The more mists a Sidhiaran has achieved, the more ethereal and unearthly they become. It is thought (but not confirmed) that eventually after a final mist, they become beings of pure ethereal spirit and are no longer connected to the world.

This means, of course, that Sidhiarans make dangerous opponents in battle because they are actively looking for an heroic death.

At one point, Sidhiara ruled much of the neighbouring landmass; what is now the Grand Duchy of Enrieme, the Principality of Tarak, and Filrath. The terrain was not conducive to their methods of warfare however, and a desperate human resistance led by Grand Duke Remiarth of Enrieme some 900 years ago was able to throw the elves back with huge bloodshed (mostly, it must be said, on the part of the humans).

Since then, The Grand Duchy and its allies have been in a state of low-level warfare against the Sidhiarans, punctuated by periodic more serious outbreaks of conflict. These rarely end with any form of diplomatic solution, the embassy being sent by Grand Duke Ossirian on his accession being a notable exception. At some point, the Eldren normally just pull back to their side of the Warmark, often for no obvious strategic reason, sometimes even if they appear on the point of a significant victory. It is suspected that this may be something to do with achieving some ritual objective of significance, or the war itself being fought to make some kind of mystic point.

The Guardians of the Spear

The Spear of Arvildar the Golden is guarded by a party of four Sidhiarans.

They are;

Sir Rubard Nieke of the Knights of the Blasted Land - 6th Level Warrior
Elelung Satask - 7th level mage (Evocation specialist)
Lady Neluthel Sopek - 6th level ranger
Baron Luroden Svya - 3rd level fighter (eldritch knight)

Image created by AI in Nightcafe Studio

These four are dispersed within the circle around the spear, and all four are invisible until they choose to act.

Sir Rubard has a supernatural ability to resume his invisibility 3 x per day, as well as a pouch which can grow 2d6 Seedling Warriors (first encountered by the players in Adventures in Milmar #8 - Trade and Trouble in Enrieme.

Lady Neluthel's weapons (two shortswords and the arrows for her longbow) are all coated in Drow Sleep Poison. In fact, she is probably the most skilled and dangerous opponent, despite not being formally the leader of the group.

As a note, I generated all of these characters in Fast Character which is an excellent site enabling you to create 5th edition D&D characters and NPC's incredibly quickly just by selecting a few options. I find the characters sometimes need a little tweaking (most of the NPC's come out with armour classes a bit low for my taste), but it's a godsend for DM's wanting to generate NPC's quickly.

I haven't posted the actual character sheets because I couldn't find a clear statement on their site that enables a commercial use license. I'm not going to post if I'm not sure !

Next time.... what happened when the party entered the Circle of the Spear.....