The wide-open nature of this adventure, the optional setups provided in the “Adventure Length” and “First Things Last” sidebars, and the options in the “Meeting Kwalish” section give you the opportunity to run Lost Laboratory of Kwalish in a number of different ways. But if you’d like to customize this scenario even further, consider any of the following options.
The Cartophile
The starting point for the adventure has a big impact on establishing the full identity of the Cartophile. In Waterdeep, Anaxi Zephries might be a member of that city’s Surveyors', Map-, and Chart-makers' Guild. But if the adventure is tied to Chult and Tomb of Annihilation, he might instead work as a merchant prince in Port Nyanzaru. And either way, no matter how genuinely you portray him, the Cartophile might fall under suspicion by the characters in the manner of so many too-helpful NPCs. You can opt to run with such suspicions by giving the Cartophile a secret agenda.
He might be a criminal agent working for the Monastery of the Distressed Body, sending party after adventuring party to become new prisoners of the Grand Master. He might even be a construct sent from the monastery for that purpose—or his body might be such a construct, and the brain in a jar from the monastery’s treasury is actually his. As such, the Cartophile wishes to have it returned at all costs, and any hirelings accompanying the party attempt to complete this secret agenda over any others.
Even if his goals are legitimate, the Cartophile’s desire to trace the original expedition of his ancestors might offer further connections to be developed. If one of the brains in jars belongs to one of those relatives and is provided with a new body (see below), it might return to civilization with the characters. The Cartophile will be keen to meet this ancestor, perhaps leading to a new family business. Or considering that they’re both gnomes, perhaps Kwalish is the ancestor the Cartophile sought all along!
Mary Greymalkin
A number of options present themselves for using the deck of several things within the adventure. As written, Mary already carries the deck, and no matter how many cards are drawn from it, the complete deck reappears magically in her possession at the conclusion of the adventure. But if she remains as an NPC in your campaign, or is first placed in an earlier adventure, consider modifying the cards' effects to more broadly fit the campaign.
You might also decide that the cards' effects are as closely tied to the adventure as they are because they are really a set of clockwork-controlling punch cards from the crashed planar craft. Whether Gearbox is with the party or not, the cards might be used to connect to any of the technology in the adventure that the modron can interface with. You might also add additional possible effects, such as inserting the correct card into the sphinx’s enhanced brain in order to issue it commands. Even if used in these ways, though, a card must first be formally drawn so that its primary effect can play out.
Additionally (and especially if the characters don’t choose to take Mary as a hireling), the deck of several things might not be in her possession. Instead, characters can find the cards scattered in various locations throughout the adventure, allowing them to be collected, then used.
The Enhanced Sphinx
Plenty of additional options can be used during the process of resolving the sphinx’s riddle, including working with the idea that because the enhanced sphinx gains much new knowledge from outlaws crossing into the monastery, asking about good-aligned topics might negate its advantage on the Intelligence check it makes to answer. Alternatively, you might decide that the dock the sphinx sits on magically fuels its enhanced abilities, and that by tricking or forcing the creature off the dock, it has disadvantage on its Intelligence checks to answer.
Another obvious option is to allow the characters to trick the sphinx with a logical conundrum, perhaps along the lines of asking: How can we cross to the monastery without paying the toll? The answer to the question is to ask the question, pressing the sphinx into a strange loop of logic that forces her to let the characters pass. It’s also possible that the characters might wish to use the enhanced sphinx to ask a question they truly need to know the answer to, perhaps from some other mystery in your campaign. The sphinx always answers truly, and so can be used to provide rare knowledge or lore if the characters are willing to pay the price.
Seeker of Knowledge
As a custodian of rare knowledge, the sphinx might have long coveted the knowledge of the monastery’s brains in jars—all of them creatures with advanced intellect and a unique perspective on the world. She might strike a deal with the characters if they agree to find the brains and bring her one, allowing them to summon the ferry without paying her toll.
Restoring Old Debts
If the sphinx is slain, the mechanical items that circle around her (functioning as
The Grand Master
As the leader of the monastery, the Grand Master is meant to present a difficult but not impossible challenge. You might wish to modify his capabilities depending on the relative power of the characters.
Vorpal Shards
Even while keeping the idea that the grand master’s claw shards are from a
Another option is to allow decapitated characters to have their heads magically reattached and their life restored at the leather works, through the advice of the control room brains or Kwalish’s notes. Similarly, you might have notes and technology found throughout the adventure that allow the characters to recreate the
Cloak of Faces
If an added threat is needed, you might have the Grand Master’s cloak fly apart into its various faces during battle, attacking as a swarm of bats.
Throne Gate
The Grand Master might have long ago figured out how to activate this gate. If things go bad for it in combat, it might choose to do so in order to escape (if you wish to preserve the Grand Master as a future villain), or to summon an ally (if the fight against it proves too easy).
Brains in Jars
Depending on your campaign, you might wish to identify some or all of the monastery’s brains with other figures from D&D lore. Perhaps the monastery has long been home to obscure or lesser-known figures such as Quaal, Queen Ehlissa, Keoghtom, Nolzur, and Tuerny the Merciless—all of them known mostly for the magic items that bear their names. If you use Nolzur, the creator of
The New Body Problem
Every brain in a jar is desperate for a new body, and a brain immediately agrees to aid the characters any way it can if they promise to restore it to life. Any number of possible options might be available to characters wanting to achieve this end. Most easily, the brains can guide characters through the process of transferring their intellect into a host such as a slain monk, or a mechanical entity such as Ctenmiir’s coffin or Gearbox. This process requires a successful DC 14 Wisdom (
The characters might also attempt to craft an entirely new mechanical body as a brain host—either individual bodies for each brain, or a single body that houses all the brains at once. Doing so requires a suitable amount of time, access to materials, and a successful DC 16 Intelligence (
You could also establish that the process of returning a brain to a new body might require knowledge available only from Kwalish. In this scenario, one or more brains will secure a promise from the characters to return with this knowledge—or they might seek to accompany them onward. The brains can go mobile by attaching their canisters to Gearbox, Ctenmiir’s coffin, the merrenoloth’s skiff, one of the treasury floating disks made mobile—or even to the characters themselves.
Conflict with the Sphinx
If you work with the idea that the sphinx seeks the knowledge held by the brains in jars, the brains know this—and greatly fear that outcome. They might strike a deal with the characters to use their control over the monastery to aid the party—but only if they agree to first go back and slay the sphinx. Once the sphinx is slain—or if the characters killed it before coming to the monastery—any ability checks made to deal with the brains are made with advantage.
More Monastery
The original Expedition to the Barrier Peaks mapped out six levels of the adventure’s crashed ship: “a large exploration-colonization expedition of human origin.” This adventure focuses on only a cursory exploration of a similarly crashed planar craft, but you can easily expand the adventure by allowing characters to discover portals in the monastery that lead to lower levels of the vessel.
A secret entrance might be concealed behind the Grand Master’s throne in area M3, opening to reveal a spidery contraption resembling an iron golem, and operating as a climbing elevator down into the lower decks. Another entrance might be concealed within one of the immured ones' cells at area M6. Opening the cell could reveal the entrance standing open, with the prisoner gone and residing somewhere below.
Any such entrance might need to be accessed with one of the deck of several things' clockwork control cards (see “area Mary Greymalkin,” above). But however they are reached, these lower levels might contain any number of threats and mysteries: escaped biological specimens, advanced technologies, or even the planar craft’s original pilots trapped in stasis. The means to reignite the craft’s engines might also be found there if the monastery is in imminent danger of dropping from the sky.
As an added challenge to the task of rescuing characters captured by the monks (including those who fall to the valley floor below the monastery), such prisoners might be outfitted with teleportation-field devices around their necks, so that their bodies and heads are separated and imprisoned in two different locations. Characters are fully conscious and ambulatory while in such a state, their heads operating independently of their bodies until both are reunited. See the “Teleportation-Field Devices” sidebar for more information.
High Priest
In the ooze-flooded city of Daoine Gloine, the high priest in area O5 might negotiate with the characters for a new physical body. She readily agrees to deactivate the clockwork kraken if the characters open her coffin and help her, suggesting that they drop her into the gelatinous ooze covering the city so that she can sink down and use one of Kwalish’s armatures for a new body. However, you might decide that if this is done, the priest’s still-potent magical power allows her to merge with the great ooze and control it—effectively using that titanic creature as the new body she seeks.
Baubles
As the characters search through the endless baubles of Daoine Gloine, you might want to distinguish the single bauble leading to Kwalish’s lab from the other crystal baubles by having it composed of diamond. A successful DC 18 Wisdom (
In addition to crafting new options for the encounters inside the baubles, you can set up each bauble so that leaving its extradimensional space requires some sort of victory condition. Such conditions might include killing the wraith in bauble 1, finding a special item in the market in bauble 2, and so forth. You can also increase or decrease the number of decoy baubles throughout the city—or even have baubles taken from the city and hidden throughout the world!
Abyssal Throne Gate
Opening either of these devices (in the central abbey or the tomb of the medusa) creates the effect of casting a
Additionally, the extradimensional portal Kwalish used to open a gate to the Abyss from Daoine Gloine might be reversible. If the characters meet descendants of the city’s original inhabitants, they might be asked to free the city of the ooze, perhaps in exchange for valuable lost lore. Kwalish might also ask for their aid in restoring the city to its former state.
If the undead medusa guarding area O4 is overcome, the crown and scepter recovered from the monastery can be used to open the temple gate, as noted in the adventure. A follow-up successful DC 15 Intelligence (
To raise the stakes for characters attempting to activate or reverse the abyssal gate, you can also require that the character wearing the crown and holding the scepter must be in physical contact with the standing arch—making it impossible to activate the gate from inside the
Kwalish
The legendary arcane inventor is presented as an obsessed, distracted, but basically benign figure in the adventure. However, you might choose to present him as a much more sinister villain. Instead of preserving the brains of his fallen comrades in the hope of one day reviving them, Kwalish might have worked with the sphinx to arrange their deaths in order to harvest their brains for his research. Any of the brains in jars in the Monastery of the Distressed Body can detail those events.
Likewise, instead of flooding Daoine Gloine with ooze in order to save himself from the city’s evil cultists, Kwalish might simply have wished to drive away the population and seal off the city for his own use. Descendants of Daoine Gloine’s original inhabitants met on the way to the city (see appendix A) can detail these events, as can any revived statues, or even the medusa if the characters use
If used as a villain, Kwalish should be presented as a final opponent to overcome in his laboratory. Any knowledge required to complete the party’s quest can then be found within his journals and personal notes.