Dragna's Blog: Finding the Sunsword

Last time, we discussed my experience reworking Patrina’s RAW storyline into something more coherent. In short: I concluded that Patrina had tried not to become a vampire, but to become a lich; that Kasimir had killed her for doing so; that Patrina had used the Sunsword’s broken hilt as her phylactery; that her soul had rebounded into the Sunsword’s hilt when Kasimir killed her; and that she hoped to trick Kasimir into recovering the Sunsword from the Amber Temple so that she could return to life once again.

The first question was, of course: Where’s the Sunsword?

In RAW, the Sunsword, if placed in the Amber Temple, can be in one of three places: inside the model of Castle Ravenloft in X20. Architect’s Room; inside the head of the nameless statue in X5. Temple of Lost Secrets; or lying in a pile of treasure in X40. Sealed Treasury. 

The original Reloaded had already gotten rid of the first option, X20. Architect’s Room, which seemed fairly silly (and raised far more questions than it answered, like—how did Strahd’s architect get the Sunsword’s broken hilt while he was preparing to build Castle Ravenloft several years before the original Brightblade was even broken?). The revised Reloaded also eventually trashed X5. Temple of Lost Secrets as a treasure location as well—if the Sunsword was to be the climax of the Amber Temple’s arc, it couldn’t be five feet away from the front door.

That left X40. Sealed Treasury. But by now, that made no sense either; in both RAW and the original Reloaded, Strahd had given the Brightblade to Khazan, who broke it in half and destroyed the blade, whereupon Khazan’s apprentice stole the hilt and ran off. It was possible that, in the intervening centuries, Strahd had once again found the broken Brightblade’s hilt and placed it in the Amber Temple’s sealed treasury for safekeeping . . . but if Patrina had placed it there, this suddenly no longer worked.

Why? For starters—why would Patrina leave her half-finished phylactery in a random pile of treasure? Beyond that, if Strahd hadn’t placed it there, wouldn’t he eventually recognize it and take it to K41. Treasury in Castle Ravenloft for safekeeping? And if Patrina needed Kasimir to come and retrieve the hilt for her to manifest, why couldn’t she just manifest in X40. Sealed Treasury and do it herself?

(There was also a Doylist issue as well: Even if it’s locked behind an arcane lock, the Amber Temple’s sealed treasury is far from the “climax” or “final chamber” of the Temple. Those honors go to X42. Amber Vault and X27. Lich’s Lair, respectively. If I placed the Sunsword in X40. Sealed Treasury, the rest of the Amber Temple’s “secret section” would be a denoument at best, and a flabby, pointless dungeon crawl at worst.)

That meant I had to put the Sunsword in X42. Amber Vault or X27. Lich’s Lair (or perhaps X28. Hidden Phylactery, if I wanted to feel clever about it). From the beginning, however, I had always fantasized about hiding Re-Reloaded’s Sunsword in a demiplane created within the Vampyr’s amber sarcophagus. In my original conception, this demiplane had been crafted by Strahd; to reach it, the players had to refuse the Vampyr’s dark gift—an offer that Strahd, ever-fearful of death and mortality, believed was too tempting to turn down. The idea was easily repurposed to make Patrina the mind behind the scheme; if anything, it made even more sense, since only one person in the Patrina-Strahd relationship was a bonafide archmage.

(It worked to my advantage, of course, that the original Reloaded had previously fleshed out the amber vestiges’ “telepathic links” as demiplane-esque “mindscapes.” Since Re-Reloaded began, I had an image in my mind of the Vampyr as a giant bat—or perhaps a snake—wrapped around a dead, black tree, tempting players into biting a single red apple of vampirism that hung from its boughs. This played into that scenario beautifully—though now a bit ironically, since the Vampyr was no longer protecting Strahd, but accidentally and unknowingly keeping Strahd from the Sunsword.)

How to keep Strahd from finding the Sunsword himself? That one was easy—as I’ve mentioned, Strahd’s sharpest canonical trait is his fear of mortality and death. Recalling the River Styx in Disney’s Hercules, I envisioned a pavilion floating amidst a river of damned souls; if the players swam to the bottom of the river, they would find themselves emerging into a mirror image of that same pavilion—but where the Vampyr’s tree had stood, the players would find instead a pedestal holding the Sunsword.

The Sunsword now felt sufficiently hidden from Strahd. But that raised a new question: How could I make sure that the players found it?

As I wrote the first draft of Arc S - A Sword of Sunlight, I expected to include three clues that the players could find. First, Kasimir would tell them (for free) that Patrina hid the weapon “in the one place where Strahd feared to tread.” (Players who had previously read the Tome of Strahd would recognize “death” as Strahd’s greatest fear.) Second, the group of spirits in X22. Northwest Annex, if befriended, could tell the players that Patrina used magic to hide the weapon inside Vampyr’s sarcophagus. Third, the flameskulls in X17. Upper West Hall, if befriended, could tell the players that Patrina had brought the weapon into X42. Amber Vault. 

This was a start—but as playtesters consistently reminded me, it was far from enough. Fortunately, I had been developing my own theoretical approach to D&D puzzles and mysteries (which I’d now boiled down to the same thing—a “puzzle game”), and had just finished testing it in my home campaign, Chult: Shadows of the Serpent. 

Here’s how it works. A “puzzle game” is a scenario where the players have to take a specific correct action—such as pulling the right lever or accusing the right suspect—but don’t know what that action is. To get there, the players have to find, and then interpret a series of “clues,” where a “clue” is simply a factual proposition conveyed through environmental storytelling (or other means of exposition). Once the players have found enough clues, they can use deductive reasoning to deduce the “correct action” they’re meant to take. (Shout out to the Alexandrian’s three-clue rule for serving as the initial inspiration for this design strategy.)

Here, I started by listing every proposition and deduction the players needed to make:

• Patrina hid the Sunsword in the Vampyr’s amber sarcophagus.

• Patrina hid the Sunsword in a secret demiplane reachable from the Vampyr’s telepathic mindscape.

• To reach the Sunsword, the players need to swim to the bottom of the “river of the damned” in the Vampyr’s telepathic mindscape.

Kasimir’s clue cryptically hinted at #3. The flameskulls’ intel hinted at #1; the spirits’ intel confirmed it. This was clearly insufficient.

So, I started adding more clues, such as:

• a dream in which the roc of Mt. Ghakis led a player to a black tree amidst a bog filled with skeletons, with a radiant light buried beneath the bones (suggesting #1 and #3)

• a set of research notes left by Khazan that call out the Vampyr’s sarcophagus as having an inverted, reflected demplane hidden within it (suggesting #2)

• a clue offered by the nothic Meda, who can share (in exchange for the players solving her riddle) that “the thing they seek is drowned in blood” (suggesting #3).

Importantly, almost every single clue was easy to find: 

• Kasimir would give them his clue for free.

• The spirits were willing to deal with the players and relatively easy to please.

• The flameskulls were somewhat more difficult to befriend, but their clue was fairly low-value anyway.

• The roc’s dream was guaranteed if the players used the upgraded keeper’s whistle to summon it (which Strahd’s third trial made extremely likely).

• Khazan’s research notes were hidden in the false bottom of a trunk that the players were all but guaranteed to search and find

• The Mountain Folk in the temple asked the players to help them find Meda, and Meda’s riddle was tricky, but solvable if the players were paying attention to the Temple’s lore

This meant that I could reliably ensure that most of the clues wound up in the players’ hands. On the off-chance that the players missed a few, I’d tried to add in enough redundancies that the players would still be near-guaranteed to solve the puzzle, and so find the Sunsword.

And when they did? Patrina, finally freed from her own secret vault, would strike—forcing the players to exorcise her spirit from the hilt or have their souls devoured as an angry semi-lich’s first victims.

But what implications did Patrina’s story (and the Sunsword’s) have for the Amber Temple’s lore? What did making Patrina the Amber Temple’s villain force me to turn Exethanter from a lich into an affable old ghost? We’ll talk about that next time, in our final article in this Amber Temple series. Stay tuned!