Flamerule Caverns & The Onyx Charm (Patreon)

The Flamerule Caverns are three cave entrances at different elevations on a rough hillside about a day’s travel northwest of the city, near the coast. The caverns lead deeper underground, but the real point of interest currently is the three devil swine and their charmed bandits that are using it as a hideout until their githyanki contacts show up to retrieve the Onyx Charm (a unique but relatively minor magical artifact) they have stolen. The bandits and devil swine are using the structure and small cavern at the northeastern end of the caverns as their base until their employers show up to get the charm. Of the three swine, one prefers to remain in hog form at all times and there’s a 50% chance that one of the others will be in hog form also (especially important if there should be a daylight raid on the caverns, as they cannot change forms between their human and swine forms except at night).

The caverns have three entrances. The left entrance is a narrow cleft between two rocks about sixteen feet up on the near-vertical face of the hill here. The central entrance is at the level of the ground in front of the hill, about three feet above the water level. Finally the right hand entrance is a sinkhole going down in a series of 5-6 foot dirt embankments to a rough hole leading into the main cavern directly. The main cavern is multi-tiered, with a high ledge on the left side that is over 40 feet above the floor level of the cave, and the each tier on the north side of the cave being roughly 7-9 feet above the tier before it.

The bandits keep two watchmen in the cave entrance on the left – one will remain on watch while sending the other back to alert the camp. The bandits and swine used the central entrance and then the long descent along the left side of the caverns to the main cave. Access via the sinkhole will likely be loud enough to get the camp’s attention as rocks and dirt spill down the sinkhole when disturbed.

The Onyx Charm is a chunk of carved onyx set in a green copper setting that is meant to be hung from a necklace. It has a single charge and recharges every night at midnight. A charge can be used (as a reaction in D&D5e, or as a free “action” whenever the appropriate event is triggered) for one of the following:

After a blow is landed by the wearer of the charm to make that blow “vampiric” (healing the wearer of the same amount of damage dealt by the blow).

- To counter a single spell of level 3 or lower being cast.
- To prevent a single channeling of divinity (turning undead) attempt.
- To act as a rod of negation against any one magic item that is used to strike the wearer (this last effect destroys the onyx charm as well).

The devil swine in possession of the charm will not use the last effect as the whole point of stealing the charm was to sell it to their githyanki allies instead of destroying it.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 14,400 pixels (48 squares) wide. To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for 10′ squares) – so resizing it to either 3,360 pixels wide or 6,720 pixels wide, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2021/07/26/flamerule-caverns-the-onyx-charm/