The Sea of Fallen Stars connects the eastern and western sides of Faerûn. Many nations that border shorelines along its vast expanse also maintain major navies and trade fleets. A plethora of creatures and humanoid races typically found in the ocean depths live there, including sahuagin, sea elves, merfolk, and locathah.
This is a story about what happens when a normally peaceful species is pushed to the point of open conflict. As elemental forces threaten the safety of the nearby locathah communities, heroes rise from among their number to strike back and defend their homes and families. Locathah Rising is a DUNGEONS & DRAGONS adventure designed for 9th-level characters. You can run this adventure for as few as three or as many as six players. Depending on your play style, this adventure may take several game sessions to complete, but by its conclusion the characters should advance to 10th level.
Running the Adventure
To run this adventure, you need the D&D fifth edition core rulebooks: the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual. The Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide is helpful but not necessary. The Monster Manual contains stat blocks for most of the creatures found in this adventure. All the necessary stat blocks are included there or in appendix A. When a creature’s name appears in bold type, that’s a visual cue for you to look up the creature’s stat block in the Monster Manual, unless the adventure’s text instead refers you to the monster appendix in this adventure.
Spells and equipment mentioned in the adventure are described in the Player’s Handbook. Magic items are described in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
At various places, the adventure presents descriptive text that’s meant to be read or paraphrased aloud to the players. This read-aloud text is offset in boxes like this one. Boxed text is most commonly used to describe locations or present bits of scripted dialogue.
Adjusting Encounters
This adventure contains advice for adjusting encounters based on the number of characters in the party. You are empowered to modify the number of enemies in an encounter and their hit point totals as you see fit. If you need to adjust the difficulty of an encounter during combat, you can alter hit point totals without the player characters ever knowing and have enemies retreat or reinforcements arrive as needed.
The Adventure Begins
The adventure begins as the characters, a stalwart band of locathah, seek answers to the disturbance of wind and wave so close to their homes.
What they discover is a new risen node of elemental evil, pulsing with a power harvested by Gar Shatterkeel, an interloping surface-dweller who has become a prophet of Umberlee, the Queen of the Depths herself.
It’s up to these normally quiet fish-folk to seal a rift Gar opened to draw power directly from the Elemental Plane of Water and put an end to his machinations.
Adventure Background
A few years ago, four elemental prophets led their respective cults in a quasi-unified effort to rain unprecedented destruction down upon the Sword Coast.
Gar Shatterkeel was one of these prophets. Dour and morose, Gar became the prophet of Olhydra, the elemental Princess of Evil Water, and the leader of the Crushing Wave cult. He was embittered by a life of suffering at the hands of others: pirates killed his family when he was young, he was forced into servitude aboard a merchant ship, and then another band of pirates left him to die on the open sea, where he lost his arm to a shark. Gar saw the elemental power of water as the only thing of value in his life and gathered others who felt similarly.
Gar wielded the elemental weapon Drown, a magical trident of great power, and his missing arm was replaced by an artificial limb in the shape of a crab’s claw. As the leader of Olhydra’s cult, he could channel her innate magic, which inspired awe and fear in the other Crushing Wave cultists.
Fortunately for the denizens of the Sword Coast, heroes discovered the collective plots of the elemental prophets and put an end to their machinations, defeating each of them in turn, and sending each prophet back to the evil elemental being they revered and served.
On the Elemental Plane of Water, Gar raged in protest. Drown had been broken, and the Crushing Wave cult sundered. He faced Olhydra’s displeasure, expecting to be destroyed by her wrath, and was astonished to awaken several years later, floating off the coast of Turmish in the Sea of Fallen Stars. He gripped a trident in one hand, though it was not Drown.
Gar discovered that the ancient weapon had been gifted to him by the sea goddess Umberlee who, in conjunction with Olhydra, managed to reinstate the prophet with power even more formidable than he previously enjoyed. The seas and the storms that raged above now heeded his commands, and—free of the original compact made with the other prophets—Gar could seek success unburdened by any past commitments.
Gazing upon the trident, Gar looked for signs of the power that he felt surging within and was shocked when the trident spoke to him, “I am WAVE, and we are ONE!”
With Wave in his possession, Gar Shatterkeel discovered and unlocked a node of elemental power deep beneath the waves, directly under the shipping lanes of those who transport themselves and other valuables across the Sea of Fallen Stars. There he opened a rift, drew on its power, and created a place where ships would be destroyed and dragged beneath the waves.
As ship after ship has been destroyed by wind and wave, they have come to rest in close proximity to where Gar has encouraged the preternatural growth of the coral and other such sea life to create his new lair. From his aquatic home, Gar Shatterkeel foments his plans to seek out and destroy all who dare to cross these waters without paying the proper tribute to Umberlee and Olhydra.
Unfortunately for Gar, his newfound power has drawn the attention of wizards of both Turmish and Thay. More fortunately for Gar, these two great nations are so embroiled in their own conflict with one another that neither has the resources to devote to exploring this newly charted area of danger. Instead, their ships choose to chart a course around the area, avoiding it altogether for the time being.
Who might stand against the might of the elemental prophet? Perhaps new heroes will come to surface and seek out the source of these calamities. Coming from a quiet race of fish-folk, the locathah are indeed alarmed at the violent turn the waves have taken so near their home. Even now, champions rise from their ranks to seek answers and make the Sea of Fallen Stars safe once more for their people. This adventure includes the use of locathah as a playable character race, presented here for your enjoyment.
Olyhydra Vs. Umberlee
While it’s clear that Olhydra is an evil entity, and Umberlee, while destructive, isn’t always seen in an evil light, for the purpose of this adventure the character of the sea god Umberlee is biased toward her more evil aspect by the nature of her “Chosen,” Gar Shatterkeel.
Gar is most definitely evil, and his plans target other creatures and NPCs as victims in this scenario, despite the fact that they’re also evil. Because of this, the NPCs who come to understand the threat that Gar poses to them and their interests see the characters as an opportunity to strike back at their diabolical host, and will cooperate to the best of their ability.