In yesterday’s blog, Lanar’s rumor mentioned Swallow Lake. You’d be excused if you’ve never heard of the place. For as much time as I’ve spent tramping around the hinterlands between the High Road and the Long Road, I hadn’t heard of Swallow Lake until recently, when I stumbled across In Volo’s Wake by accident. Which is wild, because it’s a Mithral bestseller on DM’s Guild with more than 2,500 copies sold.

I’ve never played a D&D Adventurers League module, which is probably how this one escaped my notice. Finding this adventure made me wonder what other Triboar Trail-adjacent adventures are out there waiting for me to discover.

There’s plenty of crossover between Lost Mine of Phandelver and In Volo’s Wake. The adventure takes place within the confines of the Sword Coast map included in El Mop, and several quests move through familiar locations such as Phandalin, Wave Echo Cave, and Old Owl Well.

But what really caught my attention were the places on the Sword Coast map I wasn’t previously aware of.

There’s Halfway, a tiny hamlet at the southern edge of the Sword Mountains, tucked between Swallow Lake and the Crooked Forest. Built atop the ruins of an ancient battlefield and military outpost, Halfway serves as a remote refuge for grieving families and wanderers. Despite its isolation, the town is lively, communal, and fiercely protective of its residents. It feels like a natural addition to the Phandalin, Triboar, and Leilon neighborhood.

For some reason, Halfway doesn’t have an entry on the Forgotten Realms wiki. Nor does have an entry for the Come Butte Inn, Halfway’s only public establishment, which serves as tavern, inn, gathering hall, and social center all at once. These oversights on the wiki need to be remedied!

Swallow Lake borders Halfway to the west. There’s no adventure tied directly to the lake, but I love that there’s an actual inland body of water on the Sword Coast map besides, you know, the Sea of Swords.

The lore around Swallow Lake is a little messy. It’s on the southside of the Sword Mountains, but it’s stated in the adventure that Phandalin residents use it as a swimmin’ hole. This matters, because Phandalin folk live on the northside of the mountains.

I don’t care if there are waterslides and wibbets. Nobody is scaling a mountain range for a day at the pool.

To the east of Halfway lies the Crooked Forest, which is a part of Kryptgarden Forest. It’s a twisting woodland where trees grow in unnatural shapes, seemingly guided by ancient magic or awakened creatures. The forest is home to goblin cultists, treants, gnolls, and signs of escalating supernatural corruption tied to beholder influence. Its shifting paths make navigation dangerous, which sounds like a lot of fun at the table.

The Crooked Forest also becomes associated with disappearances and the ill-fated expedition of Alana Hallwinter and her friends at the start of the adventure. The lore here is also messy, because it’s stated that the forest is “south of Phandalin,” without mentioning there’s a mountain range between the Crooked Forest and Phandalin. It also implies that a group of children have scaled the Sword Mountains to get lost in the forest for the first quest presented in the adventure.

Some people get paid to write sloppy adventures for Wizards of the Coast, while I get paid to stare at a spreadsheet and jealously guard my red stapler. Life really is not fair.

Anyhoo, some of you may have played this adventure previously, and therefore already know all of this, while others might shrug this off as whatever. But, for someone like me – someone who uses the box sets as a campaign setting, and whose adventures rarely stray beyond the borders of the Sword Coast map – I absolutely love discovering new places to pen onto the map!

Next time, I’ll dive into the fresh NPC faces that In Volo’s Wake adds to Phandalin and Halfway.

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