There sure are a lot of banshees around the Triboar Trail.

Let’s see, there’s Agatha out by Conyberry. There’s Vyldara haunting the halls of Axeholm. And there’s Miraal at the Tower of Storms. Seems like you can throw a stone in any direction from Phandalin and hit a banshee.

What if one of those banshees was actually just your plain old garden variety ghost at one of these locations, but has been mistakenly regarded by legend as a banshee?

That’s what I did with Vyldara at Axeholm.

In yesterday’s thoughts, I discussed making tweaks to Axeholm in order to run this side quest as a one-shot adventure for Dungeons & Drafts. These events take place at breweries, and because there’s a three hour time limit, folks choose from pregenerated character sheets to play through the adventure. There’s just not enough time to sit down and create characters. Initially, I worried people wouldn’t like playing with pregenerated characters. But so far, it has yet to be an issue.

Anyhoo. All of the pregen character sheets I have are first-level, and I thought a banshee might be a little too tough for the table, so I transitioned Vyldara’s role in the story from a banshee to that of a sympathetic ghost who is the only soul who knows what really happened at Axeholm.

This was the lore the characters had before their arrival at Axeholm.

Axeholm has been abandoned for a century because it is haunted by the spirit of an Elvish wizard named Vyldara, who once advised the King and educated his children. Legend has it that Vyldara attempted to foment civil unrest, sparking a conflict within the halls of Axeholm, forcing the royal family to flee.

Weeks later, there was an attempt to reclaim Axeholm, only to find the shrieking spirit of Vyldara now haunting its halls as a banshee. Attempts to rid the fortress of this forlorn spirit met with failure. And so the Axeholm was abandoned, with its people eventually resettling in the Star Metal Hills.

Since I needed lower level monsters for a first-level one-shot, I decided to make it so that the lore around the fall of Axeholm was misunderstood, and never corrected until the day this adventure takes place.

What really happened at Axeholm (my version), according to Vyldara:

Vyldara was once a wizard in the service of the King of Axeholm. She educated the children of the royal family and served as the advisor to the King.

One child of the royal family was particularly gifted, and so Vyldara instructed him in the arcane arts, never comprehending the ambitious nature of her pupil. Unbeknownst to Vyldara, her pupil discovered a dark spell among the wizard’s bedroom library capable of summoning fiendish creatures with otherworldly knowledge.

In secret, Vyldara’s pupil cast a summoning spell to a disastrous effect, conjuring bearded devils, which killed their summoner and rampaged through Axeholm, catching its inhabitants completely by surprise.

Noncombatants were hastily evacuated from Axeholm in the middle of the night, unaware of the nature of the threat lurking in their halls. The fiendish foes were slain and driven back to the planes from whence they came, but most of the defenders lost their lives in the battle.

It was a pyrrhic victory. But a threat still remained.

Unnoticed among the fiendish invaders was a single vargouille, which attached itself to one of the bearded devil marauders, hiding in the shadows of Axeholm until the sounds of battle abated.

Greatly weakened by their battle to drive back the bearded devils, the vargouille emerged from the shadows and made short work of the remaining survivors. Vyldara remained as the last survivor, only to be overcome by the vargouille’s stunning shriek before receiving its ghastly kiss.

Weeks later, during an attempt to reclaim Axeholm, the ghostly figure of an elvish woman was spotted by those who re-entered Axeholm. With the unearthly shrieks of the undetected vargouille echoing throughout the halls of the fortress, the (incorrect) belief that a banshee now haunted Axeholm took root, based on accounts of what happened at Axeholm relayed to Dwarven clergy, who had some knowledge of Elvish lore.

Axeholm’s portcullis was lowered and its doors were barred in order to contain the threat. As the decades passed without a more plausible explanation, Vyldara was unjustly portrayed as the treacherous, power-hungry usurper who brought about the ruin of Axeholm.

Today, Vyldara lingers in the world of the living as a ghost haunted by the knowledge that, while she did not summon the fiends that brought about the downfall of Axeholm, she brought the knowledge that made such a thing possible. Weighted down by this guilt, Vyldara will not rest until the book which contained the summoning spell is destroyed.

In summary, Vyldara was an important member of the community at Axeholm. She was vital to its defense, which allowed for many to escape the fortress while she stood with Dwarven allies to the last in a battle that claimed her life. Weeks later, when the royal family tried to reclaim their ancestral home, Vyldara’s ghost was spotted and the halls of Axeholm, accompanied by unearthly shrieks echoing through the halls.

Both of these observations led to the incorrect conclusion that Axeholm was now lost to a banshee. As the dwarves struggled to comprehend the events that made their home uninhabitable, the narrative around Vyldara as the villain who stole their ancestral home grew.

In my one-shot, Vyldara reveals the truth about the fate of Axeholm to the character, provides them with valuable information about the threats lurking within its halls, and promises to reveal the location of the artifact the party’s benefactor has tasked them with recovering – if they will destroy the spellbook first.

Both times I ran the adventure, this helped to keep the party focused, and we finished within the allotted three hours for each event. I considered that a success.

If I have time to write this week, I’ll finish up my thoughts on turning Axeholm into a three hour one-shot with how I tweaked the adventure hook and threats lurking within this Dwarven ruin. Be sure to check back this week.

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