Our adventure opens on our heroes recieving word in a fortified village that the neighboring town was under intermittent seige from automatons which emerge from the nearby forest. The heroes travel to this neighboring town and investigate the tracks left by the automatons returning to the forest. The adventurers come upon an old temple eminating sounds of hissing steam and of grinding gears. The sounds are faint but noticeable. Inside the temple, our adventurers discover the temple to have functional automatons on guard inside, with traps set throughout the hallways. All of the heroes have persistant nightmares every night they sleep in the temple, each one progressively impairing their constitution. Finished with their exploration, they stumble upon a door in the foyer that was not previously seen, and charge through, not knowing what lays ahead.

I wanted to try a heavier “theatre of the mind” campaign, so I didn’t show the players any maps at all. Instead, I focused my efforts towards the environment and interesting effects that the environment could have on the players. For this, I also created pre-built characters so that my players could try role-playing a bit more and could get more into the characters.