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[Free] DMDave Adventure - Broadsword Guide to the Negative Energy Plane - Thirteen Nails in the Mouth of God Part 1. Last Laughter of the Dying Stars

Added 2025-02-13 15:44:20 +0000 UTC

This is the first part of an ongoing series of adventures featured in the Broadsword Guide to the Negative Energy Plane. Get the other parts using the links below:

Note: Parts 2 and 3 are in the same document.

Planar • Spelljamming • Undead • Horror • Travel

Adventure Level: 11th
GM Difficulty: Easy to Moderate
Player Difficulty: Extreme
Length: 2-3 Sessions (this part)
Campaign Setting: Traditional Fifth Edition (Second Edition Lore)

Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.

- Marcus Aurelius

This Fifth Edition adventure is designed to suit a party of three to five 11th-level characters but can be adjusted to suit parties as high as 19th level. Adjustment tables are included in the text to help you scale based on the characters’ Average Party Level (APL). This adventure takes place in the Negative Energy Plane, introducing the characters to the dangers of the plane and the horrors within. Make sure to review the details of the plane starting on page [x].

Adventure Background

The fiend Vhoraxx tasks the characters with locating the tower of Velkeron the Black Crown, a name spoken in whispers where death and power intertwine. The tower lies deep within the Negative Energy Plane, a place where time rots and the very concept of life is slowly peeled away. Vhoraxx provides them with a voidfaring ship, carved from the skeletal remains of something that once drifted through the void, silent and forgotten. The ship is imbued with protections to shield them from the plane’s endless hunger, but only until they reach the citadel. Beyond that, the players must rely on their own means to navigate the tower’s decaying labyrinth, where reality flickers and memories bleed into shadows.

Velkeron is no ordinary lich. He is a monument to corruption, a being whose sins have carved scars across countless lives and whose undeath should have been eternal. But Vhoraxx reveals that Velkeron, for all his power, seeks to break free from something greater than death—he seeks annihilation. Bound by a 1,000-year infernal contract, Velkeron has found a way to sever its chains: the True Death, a concept so final that even the Hells recoil from its meaning. Vhoraxx believes that Velkeron is working alongside the Unmade, those quiet devotees of the grave who believe death is not an end, but a truth that mortals refuse to accept. He suspects they are helping the demilich reach annihilation, but how remains a mystery. The Unmade are clever, and their methods are subtle, but their intentions are always the same—to erase everything.

There is urgency in Vhoraxx’s instructions, but his reasons remain cryptic. The fiend reveals nothing about why Velkeron’s annihilation would be so disastrous, only that it must not happen. He promises the characters rich rewards for retrieving Velkeron’s phylactery from the Negative Energy Plane, as if mere compensation could mask the dread woven into his words.

He cannot recover it himself. The truth is simple: Vhoraxx’s power is deeply tied to the Hells, and the cost of going too far into the Inner Planes would be too great. To untether himself from Hell’s hierarchy would risk far more than Velkeron’s rebellion—it could cost Vhoraxx his place among devils entirely. So instead, he sends the players as emissaries, like candles placed in a storm, their flickering light barely enough to illuminate the towering shadows of what awaits.

Before they begin the search for the tower, Vhoraxx directs them to the Unmade’s sanctuary—the Last Bastion, a place suspended between life and death within the Negative Energy Plane. There, they are to pry open the secrets of the Unmade’s involvement and learn how Velkeron plans to reach the True Death. The ship awaits them, but Vhoraxx’s parting words linger like an echo long after he’s gone: “Annihilation is a silence you do not understand. Don’t let it find him before you do.”