The Knitting Club Heroes

## The Beginning

This prequel campaign begins in Oakhurst, a village with 900 residents. The village is run by Mayor Vurnor Leng, a human, and has limited resources such as a general store owned by matrilineal noble Kerowyn Hucrele, an old inn run by Garon, a male human commoner, a small town guard operated by Felosial, a half-elf veteran with elven sign language who serves as the warden, and Rurik Lutgehr, a dwarven blacksmith.

A group of friends--a human druid named Maerad Dawnshard (and her pet wolf, Fox), a gnomish illusionist named Grampus Twizzlebotten, a half-orc ranger named Daisy Pertbottom, and an elven monk named Erla--are vacationing in the town. They're all low-level adventurers with a shared interest in knitting. They call themselves the Knitting-Club Heroes.

One day, Dem "Corky" Nackle, a cleric of Pelor, arrives and informs the group that something terrible has happened to the cattle herds. They all have needle wounds. The heroes decide to follow Corky to the general store to investigate. Corky mentions that some other heroes, including a fighter, a wizard, a paladin of Pelor, and a ranger, have all gone missing recently in pursuit of this mystery. The fighter and wizard are both Hurcreles, and the ranger is Caticus Ketterwin's last descendant.

The group learns about disturbances the old road to the Ashen Plain and the presence of goblin traders. They surmise that the goblin traders might give them leads, so they offer to help for a price and get dubbed goblin ambassadors. Garon, the inkeep, has noticed the goblins have started to sell weird white apples. The group is given the task of investigating the situation.

When they travel at night, they're attacked by strange twig blights--misshapen plant monsters with needle-like fingers. They believe the twig blights are likely connected to the attacks on cattle and the disappearance of the previous adventuring party. They also find a farmer--stabbed to death by the twig blights.

The group forges ahead to a huge rift in the earth. At the road's closest approach to the cleft, several broken pillars jut from the earth where the ravine widens. Two of the pillars stand straight, but most lean atop sloped earth. Others are broken, and several have apparently fallen into the dark depths. A few similar pillars are visible on the opposite side of the ravine. A sturdy, knotted rope is tied to one of the leaning pillars on this side of the ravine.

The party descends into the darkness, where they encounter and defeat giant rats on a lower platform. Grampus, proud of the team's success, leaves some graffiti on the platform commemorating their victory. Fox notices some apple cores on the ground, suggesting the goblins might be found in the ravine. Instead of pressing forward, they return to town, bringing the farmer's corpse. It was Garon's dear friend. Corky helps lay his body to rest.

The next day, the group returns to the ravine--where they see a goblin. The goblin gets captured and interrogated about where the apples come from and if they have anything to do with the twig blights. The group gets him to say there's a human outcast at the lowest level of the ravine who makes them sell the apples and turns people into tree monsters if they don't comply.

As the group decides what to do, Grampus gets bored and breaks the goblin's neck--horrifying Maerad and mildly perturbing the others.

## The Sunless Citadel

The group descends into the ravine, discovering an ancient citadel at the bottom. They notice the citadel is dedicated to the worship of Ashardalon the Calamity, a great fire dragon worshipped as a demigod.

They disarm traps and battle their way through ancient undead in the citadel. Erla gets a new title ("Erla Dickpuncher") for her extreme skill in punching through the genitals of giant rats.

As the group proceeds, they find more goblins--whom they immediately and brutally kill. One of the goblins is caught unawares as he torments a little kobold--a small humanoid lizard-dragon--named Meepo.

Meepo, free from the goblins, describes how the kobolds (who see themselves as the blood of the dragon and descendants of Ashardalon the Calamity) have taken refuge in the citadel and are fighting with the goblins (the servants of a human druid who came from the outside) over territory. They even stole the kobolds' pet dragon, a white wyrmling named Calcryx.

Meepo takes the group to Yudrasyl, the kobolds' imperious leader. Yudrasyl is inclined to punish Meepo for his inability to hold on to their dragon. The heroes earn her favor by knitting fingerless gloves for her and attacking each other for her amusement; she gives them a key to a new area of the citadel and assigns some of Meepo's cousins (including Sleepo) to assist the "monkeys" who want her aid. She also describes how the Outcast, the goblin leader, has been growing the apples in the bottom-most part of the citadel.

They venture forward, realizing how impressive this citadel likely was in his heydey. Sleepo is ripped in half by a trap. Yudrasl refuses to give them another guard (except Meepo, who she's fine with killing), so they take a corpse instead as a trap-springer (it works).

Goblins ambush the players, intent on taking revenge for their killing spree, but the heroes give them the slip. They knit shoes for Fox to help with traction and mobility. Soon, they find the corpse of the old adventuring party's ranger in a rat den. Finally, the goblins capture them--and they're introduced to a prisoner named Erky Timbers, who saw the three surviving adventurers taken from the prison to the hall of the goblin chief. The group stages a successful prison break; Grampus, growing more spiteful towards goblins, begins to yell, **"Stab the fuckers! Stab the goblin fuckers! Stab the sleeping goblin fuckers!"** As he kills goblins, he delights in how many there are to murder: **"Wait, do I get to keep going?"**

They take Erky with them (who, despite his imprisonment, is surprised by their brutality towards goblins). Grampus attacks sleeping goblins in their cots, mocking them before delivering the killing blows: **"Oh, no! Run away!"**

The party encounters Calcryx, the dragon. His icy breath kills Erky. The dragon, not happy at being kept captive, tries to kill the heroes--but is distracted when they lead him towards other kobolds (recently freed from the goblins as bait (**"No, please! We were imprisoned for months! We don't know what Meepo did!**").

Finally, the group pushes through to the throne of the goblin king--interestingly, not a real goblin. Durn, a hobgoblin, has conquered the goblins and forced them into a partnership with Belak the Outcast. The goblin shaman, Grennl, doesn't want to fight the heroes; she'd rather be rid of the hobgoblin invaders. As soon as the hobgoblin king is slain in battle, Grennl turns on the other hobgoblins and provides the party with as much information as they desire. The hobgoblin leader neutralized, the party returns to Yudraysl with an unconscious Calcryx (and saves Meepo from being killed for his ineptitude, bringing them along with him).

Meepo worships the heroes as gods and eagerly accompanies them back to the goblin village. They keep two goblins--Bollock the Traitorous, who wants to reclaim his property from the hobgoblins, and The Spider, who just wants to be a hero. Daisy dares The Spider to eat a sapling gifted to the hobgoblins from Belak the Outcast; within a few hours, it poisons him from the inside out, killing him.

The rest of the party sees the goblin village--children, a handful of soldiers, a few adults--and realizes they may have some innocents to protect. They learn the hobgoblin king met the previous adventuring party; he slew the fighter and sent the other two to the Outcast on the bottom level (the Grove). They descend to the Grove.

## The Grove

On the bottom level, Meepo is killed by reanimated skeletons of Ashardalon's cultists (the party opines, **“We don’t have allies; we have martyrs"**). The group learns that the Outcast has been experimenting on rats and goblins using druidic magic.

A bugbear brute kills Erla and is murdered in turn by Maerad and Fox. Erla, in Daisy's eyes, has been martyred and will be remembered as a Paladin of Dick-Punching (A Bastion of Dick-Punching. A Squire. A Prophet. A Procedural Dickpuncher. A connoisseur of Dickpunching.). Maerad, becoming a hyena, tears through investigating goblins on this lower level.

The group follows the Outcast's trail into the deep recesses of the lower level, encountering vestiges of Ashardalon's cult. They destroy a demonic shadow and find a dwarven cleric of Pelor named Murky Waters who followed the now-dead Erky Timbers into the citadel (and was captured by the Outcast). Murky and Erky followed the call of their god, the Lord of Light, because of rumors of vampirism swirling around the Outcast's experiments.

When the group goes through an old library, they find several helpful scrolls--and a tome of old lore about places of power (including a passing reference to dark powers being bound in a temple made of Amber).

Finally, they reach the Twilight Grove, where they encounter Belak the Outcast and the two adventurers (Sir Braford of the Order of the Silver Dragon and Sharwyn Hurcrele)--who have been transformed into bark-skinned servants. Belak tries to get the group to willingly join his worship of what he calls the Gulthias Tree. When the group refuses, the tree, speaking through Sir Braford, tries to grab them by force. The group escapes back to the goblin villages, with Belak, the two transformed adventurers, and an army of twig blights behind.

## The Battle for the Citadel

The party scrambles up to the citadel's first level. They meet several goblin adults who are persuaded to fight back against the Outcast to take back their village, including Spindlelegs, Rotgut, and Sklonda.

Maerad persuades Bollock the Traitorous to help gather supplies. Rotgut gets the group alcohol. Sklonda helps them trap the passage from the second floor--and shares an intimate moment with Daisy, understanding they might die in the following attack.

As the twig blights (many of whom are caught in a trap) pour out of the passage, Daisy tries to get the goblin children to fight, as well, but they're too young. One goblin child named Drigglezub is torn apart by a twig blight while the others are ushered to a barricaded room with Fox.

The Gulthias Tree, speaking through Sir Braford, attempts to persuade the goblin adults to turn on the heroes--honestly recounting their brutality with the goblins. Daisy and Maerad cast themselves as liberators, enlightening the goblins of the experiments Belak has been running.

Sharwyn, trying to resist the tree with her last semblance of consciousness, dies--this prompts SIr Braford to also attempt to resist (less successfully). The delays allow the kobolds, who decided to take advantage of the hobgoblin leader's death and invade the goblins, to arrive. Yudrasyl and the heroes kill Belak. As the kobolds reclaim their territory from the goblins (only Spindlelegs, Rotgut, and the children are still alive), Yudrasyl demands to be taken to the Gulthias Tree itself. Rotgut joins the party.

Spindlelegs takes the surviving goblin children: **"I'm your dad, now! Let's go! Now we will go as vagabonds on the road of life. The world shits on us! The world doesn't care about us! But we care for each other! Let's go!"**

## The Gulthias Tree

The group arrives on the lowest level. Yudrasyl is killed by the final skeletal cultists.

The party, including Rotgut, faces the Gulthias Tree. Its blackened, twisted limbs reach upward, like a skeletal hand clawing its way out of the earth. The Tree has a semblance of consciousness; it tries to mentally dominate the heroes and force Daisy to become its confidant.

Daisy realizes the tree wants her to feed Erla's corpse to it--there's something significant about Erla's remains, but she doesn't know why.

Grampus and Murky, in a battle of wills with the tree, break free and burn it down. Its last words: **"The blood of Dydd would have tasted so sweet."**

The group finds Sir Braford's sentient weapon, Shatterspike. The weapon describes the late Sir Braford as a noble knight of the Silver Dragon, and proudly describes how it was forged centuries ago under the auspicies of Arvynvostholt, a fortress dedicated to a noble dragon in a land called Barovia.

## Ichabod

The party, having learned what they came to the Citadel for (the twig blights killed the cattle, the goblins were selling cursed apples from a vampiric tree, the tree was being tended to by Belak the Outcast, the adventures were turned by the tree), starts to leave--but not before using Yudrasyl's key to access the final area of the citadel, a tomb of a dragon priest of Ashardalon.

They see a raven trapped in the tomb named Ichabod. Ichabod is effusive in his praise for the party in accessing the tomb.

When they let their guard down, Ichabod escapes.

The party, not realizing the implications of setting Ichabod free, returns to the surface. Daisy attempts to unsuccessfully hit on Garon (who's gay). Murky takes news of the vampiric tree back to her dwarven court. Maerad and Fox, disturbed the harrowing adventure, retire to a grove. Grampus, excited by the possibility of killing goblins, remains in the mercenary business.

Rotgut stays on the lower level of the Sunless Citadel and enters a passageway to the Underdark.

Spindlelegs shepherds the goblin orphans--Bogtooth, Pyrite, Pix, Trix, Tremble, and Glyn--to find respite in the surface's forests.

Erla, the blood of Dydd, is buried in the Sunless Citadel.

## The Knitting Club Heroes' Song

* The adventure begins ! We were all round the table.  The Knitting Club heroes, starting out in our fable  .
* We think we are good   but we have no evidence . We call ourselves heroes, but that don’t make sense.
* We killed Erky and Meeps and your best friend The Spider . We found a flayed rat --something’s growing inside her.
* And we murdered the kobolds  'cause we think it’s funny . Then we ransacked the goblins  and took their money.
* Now the Shadow is near  and there’s plenty to fear , b ecause Erla ain’t here  and our future’s unclear!

*Sing this to the tune of Critical Role's YOUR TURN TO ROLL.*

## NPCs

1. Vurnor Leng, Oakhurst's mayor
2. Kerowyn Hurcrele, Oakhurst's noble
3. Garon, Oakhurst's barkeep
4. Felosial, Oakhurst's warden
5. Rurik Lutgehr, Oakhurt's blacksmith.
6. "Corky" Nackle, a cleric of Pelor
7. Meepo, kobold dragon-tamer
8. Yudrasyl, the kobolds' leader
9. Sleepo, Meepo's cousin
10. Calcryx, white dragon wyrmling
11. Durnn, hobgoblin leader
12. Grennl, goblin shaman
13. Bollock the Traitorous, goblin scavenger
14. The Spider, goblin hero-aspirer
15. Spindlelegs, goblin adult
16. Sklonda, goblin adult
17. Rotgut, goblin adult
18. A Gulthias Tree
19. Shatterspike, sentient sword
20. Ichabod, a normal raven

## Guest NPCs

1. Erky Timbers, gnomish cleric
2. Belak the Outcast
3. Sir Braford, paladin of the Order of the Silver Dragon
4. Sharwyn Hurcrele, Kerowyn's daughter