Background
As the party begins to uncover the truth behind the unnatural preservation of Vel Enweir, Queen Aelra Sylanthiel has been seen acting erratically, spending time in locked library chambers and disappearing into the woods at night. Following her (or perhaps being led by NPCs like Tilly or Velara), they descend into the hidden Verdant Reliquary, a subterranean sanctum tied to the life-force of the ancient druid groves.
Here, they witness firsthand how the Ring of Verdant Stillness draws power from the groves to feed the Heart Tree, which in turn sustains the forest and the capital in a state of unnatural beauty and stillness. While the Queen takes care not to drain the groves entirely, the cycle of natural decay has still been suppressed, and the druids would be furious if they knew.
Rooms
The Fountain of Myrlen’Thal (green)
This room is directly connected to Myrlen’Thal, The Grove of Morning. Located northeast of Balandel, this grove is always bathed in golden light, regardless of cloud or season. It is said the first sunrise after the First War broke here.
If a player touches the bloom or roots, they momentarily feel warmth spread through their fingertips—not heat, but a radiant kind of aliveness. Roll a DC 13 Wisdom save:
- Success: You experience a brief memory from someone long gone—a sunlit glade, children laughing, a sapling being planted after war. Gain inspiration.
- Failure: You’re overwhelmed with sudden longing or nostalgia and have disadvantage on initiative rolls for one week.
Description:
You step into a tranquil space bathed in a soft, verdant glow. Lush vines crawl up the stonework, and at the center sits a blooming flower of radiant green and gold. It smells like dew and fresh soil. You feel… alive.
The Fountain of Shael’Nareth (purple)
This room is directly connected to Shael’Nareth, The Grove of Twilight to the south. The grove hums with ancient fey magic, and the barrier between the Feywild and the mortal world thins beneath its trees. This is where the Queen is said to go when she needs solitude. This is the grove that will be corrupted during this scenario, causing Queen Aelra Sylanthiel to faint and ask the party to investigate it.
Touching this flower or its water sends a ripple across the mirror-like pool beside it. Roll a DC 14 Intelligence or Charisma save:
- Success: You see a future possibility—perhaps a flash of the grove burned and twisted, or your reflection whispering something cryptic. You can ask one question and receive a cryptic, poetic answer (think “Fey-flavored augury”).
- Failure: You momentarily see your reflection act differently than you are, sowing doubt. For the next week, you disadvantage on Insight checks (distrust grows).
If you speak aloud while touching it, your voice echoes back in a different tone or with altered wording—hinting at alternate selves or timelines.
Description:
This room hums with quiet magic. The flower here pulses with faint violet light, mirrored perfectly in the still pool beside it. Shadows flicker without cause. When you speak, your voice returns… slightly wrong, like an echo from somewhere else.
The Fountain of Telor’Augus (red)
This room is directly connected to Telor’Augus, The Grove of Fire. Near the eastern border, this grove contains crystalline springs and mirror-pools. Pilgrims often come here to meditate. This is where Archdruid Thalwen Myr resides and is considered the most formidable of the three.
The bloom is hot—not burning, but intense like a coal from a dying fire. A PC touching it must make a DC 14 Constitution or Wisdom save:
- Success: You feel your emotions or thoughts burn away—left with pure, focused resolve. Gain advantage on Constitution saving throws for one day.
- Failure: Your surface thoughts are “scorched”—for the next week, you cannot tell a lie or filter your thoughts (compelled honesty or bluntness).
If you whisper a question or name into the bloom, it responds with one word, spoken in your own voice—but it’s the truth (like a mini Zone of Truth or Commune).
Description:
This room pulses with warmth. At its center, a brilliant red bloom radiates a low, steady heat—not painful, but primal and intense. The air is thick with the scent of ash and blooming fireflowers. It feels like standing at the edge of a sacred forge.
The Central Fountain
The central fountain is the heart of the Reliquary. When Queen Aelra places her hand (wearing the Ring of Verdant Stillness) into its waters, the ring draws life energy from the connected groves, channeling it along the waterways to the Heart Tree at the center of the chamber. This infusion maintains the magical stillness of Vel Enweir, keeping the forest lush and ageless.
Though Aelra carefully limits how much energy she draws, the act is still extractive. It is a slow siphoning of nature’s cycles. The Queen has needed to use it more frequently in recent years as the groves weaken, and cracks in the system are beginning to show.
Description:
A round chamber hums gently with arcane energy. A shallow pool glows at its center, veins of light stretching from it into the surrounding hallways. The waters are unnaturally calm. It feels as though time itself hesitates here.
The Heart Tree
In the center of the Reliquary, but in a separate room from the fountain, stands the Heart Tree, a lush, green tree with glowing roots that thread through the underground and out toward the land above. It is the final recipient of the power drawn by the ring, a living engine that radiates peace, stability, and timelessness across Vel Enweir.
In Faeren’s natural order, life and death must flow in a sacred rhythm. But the Queen’s reliance on the ring has broken the cycle: instead of power cycling through growth, decay, and renewal, it funnels from the groves into the tree and stays there, holding everything in a suspended, ever-blooming state. Though beautiful, this stasis is unnatural, and the Heart Tree has begun to show subtle signs of imbalance, as magic lingers in it with no return.
Description:
You enter a serene chamber where a magnificent tree rises from a circular garden. Its roots glow softly, threading through the stone floor like veins of light. The air here is heavy with stillness—not silence, but the weight of something sacred, paused mid-breath.
The players can try to eat a fruit from the tree of life.
Fruit From the Tree of Life
As an action, a creature may eat the fruit. The fruit immediately heals all wounds, restores the creature to maximum Hit Points, and cures all diseases afflicting the creature. The creature cannot gain these benefits again for the next 24 hours.
If the fruit is removed from the The Verdant Reliquary, roll 1d4. On a 4, it loses all magical properties becomes plain spring water. As long as the magical properties remain, the roll is repeated every 12 hours.
Mechanics
After the party finds and confronts Queen Aelra Sylanthiel, she will eventually tell them about the Ring of Verdant Stillness and that the groves are losing energy. It’s growing more and more difficult to sustain everything. As she’s talking to them, she will faint and say “they are under attack!“. In each of the rooms, shadows will start to spring from the grove portals. The players need to go through the portals to the different groves to save the life tree.
Depending on how the players approach Queen Sylanthiel, she will respond differently. Eventually, though, she will tell the players the story of the Ring of Verdant Stillness.
(She stands at the edge of the central pool, one hand trailing just above the glowing surface. Her voice is quiet—reverent, haunted. There is no grandeur here. Only memory.)
Queen Aelra:
“The ring was born in the ashes of the First War.
We had just driven back the Black Architect. His machines fell silent, his skies cleared—but the cost was… immeasurable. The forests were shattered. The rivers ran black. Whole cities vanished beneath poisoned roots. The land screamed in its silence.
The druids—what remained of them—came to me. They brought with them a shard of Faeren’s will, drawn from the deepest grove. A temporary focus, they called it. A vessel, to cradle the land’s life while it healed. It was meant to last a season. Perhaps two.
I bound it to my soul. Willingly. The pain nearly broke me. But the forests began to bloom again. The rivers cleared. Crops returned. People called it a miracle… and so I let them believe it was.
Seasons passed. Then decades. Then centuries. And each year, it became harder to let go. The people didn’t want change. The court begged me to keep the peace. Even the druids… they stopped asking questions. They thought Faeren had blessed us.
But it wasn’t a blessing. It was a bargain.
And I kept paying the cost, year by year. Feeding the ring from the groves—carefully, always carefully. Just enough to hold it together. To delay the decay.
Until now.”
(She turns to you then. Her gaze is not accusatory—but tired. As if she’s aged a hundred years in a single breath.)
Queen Aelra:
“The ring is failing. The groves are dying. And I don’t know how to stop it… without letting everything fall apart.”
(Queen Aelra has just finished telling the story of the ring. For a long moment, there is only the quiet hum of magic in the chamber. The central pool ripples once—gently, like breath—and then again, more violently. A faint pulse of black light flashes along one of the glowing channels.)
(Aelra stiffens. Her fingers twitch. Her breath catches.)
Queen Aelra:
“…No.”
(Her voice is barely audible.)
”Not now. Not yet.”(She stumbles back from the pool, clutching at her chest. The ring flares with green-gold light, then flickers—interrupted, unstable. From the north wall, the bloom tied to Shael’Nareth withers in an instant. Its petals curl into black veins, and a burst of shadow bleeds into the room like a sigh.)
Queen Aelra (sharply):
“They’ve found it. The groves… they’re under attack!”(A dull thrum rolls through the floor like a heartbeat faltering. The glowing veins that run from the pool stutter with fractured light. A second flower trembles.)
Queen Aelra (now panicked):
“The ley-lines are splintering. I can’t hold them! The corruption—it’s inside the system now.”(She staggers forward and drops to one knee, hand outstretched toward the pool, but the ring no longer responds. Her image flickers faintly—translucent, ghostlike. The air grows cold.)
Queen Aelra (weakened, pleading):
“You must go… through the portals… defend the groves. If they fall, the Life Tree will follow—and with it, all of Vel Enweir.”(Another flower dims. The portal to Shael’Nareth pulses open with a low, keening sound. The scent of rot and burning magic spills through the air.)
Queen Aelra (final whisper as she collapses):
“Tell the land I’m sorry… I tried to protect it the only way I knew.”
Portals to the Groves
A Shadow demon now guards portals in each of the rooms to the different groves. Each of the groves has different bosses/mechanics:
Myrlen’Thal, The Grove of Morning
The grove is under siege. Two hulking Barlguras rampage through the golden woodland, their limbs bound by glowing, rune-etched chains. Each demon is controlled by two Cultist Fanatics, who shout incantations in a harsh, guttural tongue. Nearby, a terrified young Elk of Myrlen’Thal is cornered against a tree, its antlers lowered but trembling.
The chains tethering the Barlguras are magical constructs (AC 17, HP 25, immune to psychic and poison damage). If a chain is broken or either of the controlling cultists is slain, the Barlgura it restrained will go berserk and attack the nearest creature, be it friend or foe (even the other Barlgura). While both cultists remain alive and actively holding the chains, the Barlgura obeys their commands.
If the players manage to protect and free the Elk, it will approach the one it believes saved it. With a soft glow and a rumble of ancient magic, it will form a permanent bond with that character. This is one of the sacred Elk of Myrlen’Thal, a guardian beast imbued with the grove’s blessing.
Telor’Augus, The Grove of Fire
This once-serene grove now churns with violent energy. Scalding springs have turned into boiling traps, and Steam Mephits swarm across the battlefield, harassing wounded druids and setting foliage alight. Atop a towering geyser platform, a Giant Fire Elemental rages, seemingly drawn through the geysers from a planar breach.
The pools themselves have become hazardous. If a creature ends its turn or spends any part of its movement in a pool, it must make a DC 15 Constitution saving throw, taking 4d10 fire damage on a failure, or half as much on a success.
Charred druid bodies lie scattered, evidence of the elemental’s ferocity. The mephits continue to emerge as long as the elemental lives.
Once the Fire Elemental is defeated, the magic destabilizing the springs collapses. The mephits vanish in bursts of steam, and the boiling pools begin to cool. A moment later, Archdruid Thalwen Myr emerges from a scorched alcove, visibly wounded but alive. She offers the party heartfelt thanks and vows to restore the balance, if they can hold the line elsewhere.
Shael’Nareth, The Grove of Twilight
The twilight grove is dim and tense, warped by a growing sense of imbalance. Three dark crystals rise like thorns across the battlefield, each surrounded by a spectral haze. At each crystal, a druid desperately fights a wight, attempting to prevent the corruption from spreading.
If a druid dies, the crystal they fought to protect pulses with shadow. At the start of its next turn, it raises the druid as a Shadow, now bound to its will.
Above the grove, a swirling void portal crackles into existence. With each passing round, it expands and reveals more of the horror trying to break through:
| Round | Effect |
|---|---|
| 1 | A massive dark portal opens in the sky, seething with unstable energy |
| 2 | DC 18 Perception: A player sees the faint outline of a massive dragon’s head |
| 3 | DC 15 Perception: The dragon’s presence becomes clearer, the eyes glow faintly |
| 4 | DC 10 Perception: The full silhouette of a Shadow Dragon looms behind the veil |
| 5 | Unless stopped, a Shadow Dragon enters the battlefield through the portal |
If the party destroys at least one crystal before Round 5, the portal destabilizes and becomes too small for the full-sized dragon to enter. Instead, a Juvenile Shadow Dragon bursts through, still dangerous, but less devastating. If all three crystals remain intact, the full Shadow Dragon emerges.