Let’s continue exploring opportunities to deliver lore or story clues in your Lost Mine of Phandelver or Dragon of Icespire Peak campaign using the trinkets listed in the Player’s Handbook!

A small idol depicting a nightmarish creature that gives you unsettling dreams when you sleep near it: There are some horror-themed elements in both adventures that could be nightmare fuel for a character sleeping near this idol. However, I’d recommend placing this trinket in a loot drop rather than having a player select it from the list of trinkets at character creation. If discovered as treasure, it allows a DM to describe the item as a “small idol depicting a nightmarish creature” while conveniently leaving off the second half of its name, keeping the nightmare bit of it a fun little mystery for characters to puzzle out.

During a long rest, replace a random encounter with a nightmare instead, using it to deliver lore or a premonitions tied to either adventure through the nightmares they have.

Conyberry & Shrine of Savras. According to Lost Mine of Phandelver, “the town of Conyberry was sacked by barbarians years ago and now lies in ruins.” Dragon of Icespire Peak describes the Shrine of Savras’ destruction by briefly describing how “the barbarians eventually tracked the townsfolk to the shrine, besieged it, and slaughtered everyone inside.”

A deeper dive into Forgotten Realms lore reveals Conyberry and the Shrine of Savras were actually destroyed by werewolves of the Gray Wolf clan, an Uthgardt barbarian tribe unique for its embrace of lycanthropy. Some of Conyberry’s residents actually survived the night, but it was as captives assimilated into the tribe as lycanthropes. Why the authors of the adventure chose to leave out those details, I don’t know. But they make the lore of both adventure sites much more interesting, in my opinion.

By using a nightmare to allow a character to witness the town’s final moments and hint at the fate of the shrine as the scene fades to black, the idol could be used to deliver lore for both sites – perhaps sparking interest in the ruins of each beyond delivering a fancy comb to Agatha the Banshee or chasing down orcs at the behest of rat people.

There is a hush before the storm.

A blood moon rises in the summer night sky, casting cold silver light over a sleeping farming village. Thatched rooftops gleam like bone. The fields lie still. But the forest beyond the pastures stirs.

A howl slices through the night – long, mournful, answered by others in turn, forming a ring of sound around the village. Then, from the shadows beneath the trees, come savage snarls – low, wet, and hungry.

Suddenly, the air erupts.

An alarm bell. A call to arms. The hiss of arrows. The echoes of battle spill between the town’s small cottages, men shouting, blades drawn too late. Fire flickers in a barn. A woman screams. The cries become a chorus – pain and terror, helpless and rising.

The scent of blood floods the nostrils. Fresh. Hot. Thick. It pours over the tilled earth, mixing with hay and soil. Chickens flutter blindly. A child runs into the open and is gone.

Shadows stretch like fingers through the smoke. The wolves are not just wolves – too large, too fast, eyes glowing with unnatural light. They tear through the village like wind through grain, snarling as they leap, drag, devour.

The moon watches from above, cold and indifferent.

And then, as quickly as it began, it ebbs.

One last scream, distant. A final snarl.

Then – echoes. Dying. Fading between scorched beams and broken fences.

And finally… silence.

The village lies still.

And the moon still watches as the shapes of the wolves make their way south to the silhouette of a shrine in the distance.

I’ve been having fun sharing my random D&D thoughts over at Bluesky. If you’re interested in following, I’m at @ticklecorn.bsky.social. I’ll follow back.

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