At the conclusion of yesterday’s thoughts, I floated the idea of Venomfang as a quest-giver, using the dragon’s knowledge of the nearby Neverwinter Wood as a bargaining chip to convince the party to destroy the Gulthias tree out at the Woodland Manse. For years, the tree has spawned blights, and now they are overrunning his lush woodland domain – to the point they’re starting to find their way to locations outside the Neverwinter Wood, like Thundertree.

It’s a plausible solution for getting around a potential TPK if your party takes on the Thundertree side quest before they’re strong enough to battle a CR 8 young green dragon. Thundertree’s infestation of twig blights is a symptom of a much larger problem going on in the Neverwinter Wood, and Venomfang knows he needs help to address it.

Green dragons are not brutes. They’re the smartest of the chromatic dragons, they think strategically, and use honeyed tongues to toy with foes, or to get others to do their bidding. If any dragon is going to enlist the aid of adventurers to avoid undertaking a dangerous task itself, it’s a green dragon.

So what does an encounter where Venomfang becomes a quest-giver look like?

My suggestion: Thundertree is overrun with twig blights. Replace the ash zombies with twig blights. The cultists too. Just load the place up with twig blights everywhere, and send them toward any sound of battle so they just keep coming and coming at the party in waves. If the characters are smashing through the twig blights with ease, add more.

As the characters fend off relentless attacks from the twig blights, Venomfang suddenly appears atop the town’s ruined tower, striking up a casual conversation with the characters as they fight for their lives on the ground below.

“Annoying, aren’t they” says what is unmistakably a green dragon appearing at the parapets of the town’s ruined tower. “It’s days like this I wish I was a Red, so I could just open my mouth and torch the whole lot of them, these vile twiggy pygmies. But the gods saw fit to give me more than one brain cell, so I couldn’t possibly be a Red, now could I?“

The twig blights should be doing their best to overwhelm the party, but they do so by using the help action to shove and grapple and restrain characters, with melee attacks used sparingly. As the characters attempt to stem the tide, Venomfang continues to chat away.

“That shrieking Karen out by Conyberry once told me they are the spawn of a Gulthias tree” Venomfang continues in a bored drawl. “Fascinating story, really. An evil tree that sprouts from a stake once driven through the heart of a vampire. Apparently, there’s only three of them known to the world, so of course one of them is in my precious forest.

Keep the players in the fight. Make things feel more desperate by using variant rules that challenge the characters, like disarming or using the break object rules to target shields, gear, armor, clothes, boots. Or strength contests to avoid being dragged away. Use these things and more to demonstrate to players there’s more to combat than a race to 0 hit points.

“Apparently, a single Gulthias tree can overwhelm an entire forest with these things” the dragon continues, tossing an axe (“HEW”) down among the combatants. “And I believe it. I see them all the time in my wood, and the tree that spawned these abominations is all the way out by Conyberry. Over 40 miles as the crow flies.”

Let Hew be a difference maker. Whoever wields the magic axe, be sure to utilize the variant rule for cleaving to allow the character to cut through multiple adjacent twig blights each attack. Venomfang’s offer of the magic weapon can help to build trust between the characters and the dragon when he makes the following offer:

“I’ll tell you what. If you’ll do me the favor of chopping that dreadful Gulthias tree into lumber, I’ll let you keep that axe. And…I’ll tell you where you can find other precious treasures as well.”

These locations that Venomfang will offer to the characters can be used as a bridge to other adventures at the conclusion of Lost Mine of Phandelver. Or if you’re feeling ambitious, you can create your own adventures around sites within the Neverwinter Wood such as Sharandar, Xinlenal or the Dread Ring. Venomfang isn’t really giving up anything by doing so, since all of the locations he’d share with the party contain dangers that the dragon is convinced the characters would never survive.

Venomfang would leave those thoughts unsaid, of course.

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