Extra Action #2: Vor Kragal, City of Ash

"The hellish masters of Bael Turath once held control of large portions of the world—both above and below the surface. Their enemies shuddered at rumors of extraplanar holdings that dwarfed even their sprawling empire in the world."

This is our introduction to Vor Kragal, the City of Ash and the subject of our second Extra Action.

Before I get started, I'll just put this out there right now: this is a great article. You could just pluck this out of Dragon Magazine and throw it into your game. It's originally set in the Points of Light setting, the WotC default setting, but there isn't anything that you can't scrub the serials off of and put it into your campaign.

With that said, let's dive into the meat of the article. Before we're introduced to the current situation and inhabitants, we get a little history lesson. The three houses that ruled Vor Kragal before it was obliterated are outlined. Although the story is pretty cool in itself, my favorite part about this is that each one is very flavorful and gives a different spin on your standard tiefling. In addition, each has a reason to still be alive; though it's never specifically mentioned, I expect that's what the author had in mind. The first, House Barikdral, were basically necromantic masters. This gives an obvious solution, especially since the art (consistently wonderful, by the way) depicts the matron as a tall, almost skeletal tiefling. The second are the vampiric and bloodthirsty Kahlir House. While they're a little disgusting (they've dispensed with clothing altogether and feed off of hundreds of victims a day, I can definitely see them having a place in this long-lost city. The third are named House Zolfura, who were elemental mages, and the two heads of the house had become embodiments of fire and ice. The cool speaks for itself. Then the city was destroyed by the Arkhosian Empire, and that leads us to today, when Vor Kragal has again resurfaced through the ashen plain.

The remaining majority of the article outlines the interesting features of the city. Some are fairly generic (the exsanguination maze of the Kahlir), but nevertheless, each has a handful of unique hooks that could all lead the adventurers to this lost Turathi city. Although all of them are interesting, my favorites are the Pyramid of Lost Tales, which holds the entire history of the world (even after the city sunk under the earth) and could hold very interesting prophetic/future-telling possibilities, and the Charspire, the home of House Barikdral. Rumors are that it can teleport around the city, and it shows up in different places every day. Why is it doing this? That's a great adventure hook in itself. Also interesting are the Hellforge Crucible, a large crater-turned-forge run by a deranged pit fiend, and the aforementioned Vein Maze, filled with sacrifice alters and the like. It's also filled with Kahlir vampires (which are provided in the end of the article and feel very vampire-y) and various other scum. Another intriguing idea is that of "Bliss", an arboretum where exotic plants and animals roamed before the destruction. Now, the arboretum has been destroyed and everything is running wild in the district. Imagine New York City or London overrun by D&D monsters, plants, and add some fire. Very inspiring. The locations conclude with Yazadoun's Folly, a large marble fortress that got struck by a meteor. Now it's inhabited by a large, jaundiced tiefling that sells teas and provides a base camp of sorts for exploring the city. Perfect. This is just scratching the surface, too, of the great ideas in this article.

Finally, near the end of the article, we receive our meager player options (an improvement from last time, which contained NO player options, but that's a rant for another time). There was a little magic item, a shard of a spear thrown down to crush the city, which has a pretty nice at-will power (increase reach by 1 and deal lightning), but otherwise is rather standard. All of them together form up into an artifact whose story is rather basic (wants to kill the gods and conquest), but whose powers run the gamut from granting a 4 fly speed and +4d8 thunder damage on a crit, to, at low concordance, makes a melee basic attack once per day against an authority figure. The "Moving On" is also rather spectacular, with it exploding into a large battle if it's happy, and wreaking natural disasters on your hometown if it's not. This isn't an artifact that you want to get mad.

The other item, which I think is more interesting but isn't expanded upon, is the Black Tongue of Mabberaj. It's basically the oral equivalent of the Eye of Vecna, with necromancers and their ilk wishing to replace their tongues with it. It allows them to speak to undead with words of power and can even strangle people in their sleep. I wouldn't like my PCs getting hold of it, but the villain? Definitely.

So, to close:
Keep This! Pretty much everything you like about this article. You can grab the whole thing if you like and stick it into your game.
Errata This! Make it longer! I especially would have liked to see more monsters, such as the ones in "Bliss", or stats for the Black Tongue. I guess it gives more creative authority to the DM, though, which is good if you're just looking for inspiration here.
Retrain This! Nothing! Keep it all; this article is the best I've done (which to be fair, is only two).

Before I'm done, I'd like to note that this article is also great because it gives lots of places for the DM to expand on things. I also enjoy how they use "rumors" as a way to tell the reader, "This is our idea, but if you have another one, feel free to stick it in."

Tune in next time for another Extra Action, Playing Warforged!