5e Adventure: A Wizard's Concern

The Setup

The party find themselves in a small town or village, drawn to the call for aid from the wizard Asboxes (he/him, human illusionist). The party might have been asked for by name, or spotted an advert on the local jobs board.

Asboxes is the picture of distress: crumpled robes, starry hat askew, braids in his beard coming undone... He explains the problem thusly: "A vile spirit of nature has overtaken one wing of my great abode, and begun corrupting it with primal magics. I had erected an arcane barrier to hold back the contagion, but the wards have faltered in my absence and I now fear the corruption shall soon run unchecked throughout the tower, and spill out into the surrounding lands! The spirit has employed some foul enchantment to prevent my entry, and conjured twisted creatures to guard my halls, and so I must turn to adventurers of good character to aid me for the good of all! You must circumvent the spirit's tricks and gain access to my tower, retrieving a sacred chalice with which I can conduct a ritual to bring the spirit to heel!"

The wizard offers a sum of 100gp to the party if they are successful in bringing him the sacred chalice. Asboxes also has full knowledge of the tower's layout, which he can share with the party, but he does not know what changes the nature spirit has made in his absence; he believes the chalice to still reside within the secondary laboratory.

GM Info

Asboxes is not telling the party the full story, but his offer of payment is genuine. The reality of his obfuscating language is as follows:

• "vile spirit": Gladys (she/they, dwarven druid), his housemate. She dresses in practical druidic garb, with thick gardening gloves, and their beard is artfully interwoven with flowers.
• "arcane barrier": a line he painted on the floor after a disagreement, to separate "her space" from "his space".
• "foul enchantment": Gladys changed the locks.
• "sacred chalice": their favourite coffee mug, artfully wreathed in vines.
• "secondary laboratory": the kitchen.

Gladys is fed up with Asboxes' alchemical get-rich-quick scehemes, and his inability to contribute towards rent on their shared tower for the past twelve months, so they kicked him out and changed the locks. Asboxes wants the adventurers to steal her coffee mug, which was a gift from her mentor in the druid arts, in the hopes he can use it to negotiate them letting him back into the tower. Asboxes also fully intends to betray the party, and the 100gp he provides them will in fact be magically-disguised silver pieces. If this occurs, consider making Asboxes the slightly comical antagonist of the party's early adventures in and around town as they work to oust him and his parasitic ways.

Should the adventurers meet Gladys, they are understandably upset that these adventurers broken into the tower, but their anger is quickly leveled at Asboxes when she discovers his ruse. If the party can convince Asboxes to start paying his rent, including the 120gp he owes for the year's missed payments, or convinces him to leave altogether, she will reward them in his stead; they cannot offer the same monetary reward, but she instead offers a free potion of healing for completing this task, and a 20% discount on any future herbal or alchemical concoctions they purchase from her in the future.

Adventure

Except for the Rookery and the stairwell chamber in the Entryway, all ceilings in Asboxes' tower are 10 feet high. The rooms are brightly lit by clusters of fireflies, and grass and moss cover much of the stone walls and flooring.

Rooms that are marked with "Asboxes" are on his side of the line, rooms marked with "Gladys" are on theirs, and rooms marked "Communal" are accessible to both.

Entryway (Communal)

The Entryway is a 10-feet-wide, 15-foot corridor that then opens up into a circular chamber roughly 10 to 15 feet in diameter. Characters with a passive Perception of 15 or higher will notice flaking and faded yellow paint beneath the natural carpet, forming a line that divides the chamber down the middle and continues up the stairs.

The corridor is lined with various shelves and wall hooks; on one side these are adorned with wizardly attire such as capes, cloaks, and thigh-high boots in various colours and patterns, while the other side has a few simpler woolen garments and a pair of muddy wellington boots next to the door. A key to the door on the Tower Exterior hangs on a small hook on its interior side.

The circular chamber contains a spiral staircase of polished wood which leads up to the other floors. Two carved ravens adorn the banisters, their gazes turned to one of the doors, which can animate to cause a loud ruckus and fend off intruders; they have the statistics of ravens but are Constructs, not Beasts. The chamber also contains three doors which lead into the Greenhouse, Storeroom, and Basement Stairs; messing with the door to the Storeroom animates the ravens, which will likely make enough noise to summon Gladys.

Basement Stairs (Communal)

This chamber takes up just under a quarter of the ground floor, and is mostly empty save for a set of stairs which lead to the basement level. A smell of dank decay wafts up from below, as well as the sound of Gladys humming away to themself.

Greenhouse (Gladys)

This chamber spans almost half the ground floor, and is filled with soil and hanging baskets in which a plethora of medicinal plantlife grows, irrigated by streams which flow between miniature portals to and from the Elemental Plane of Water. Large windows of magically-reinforced glass span the exterior wall, letting in an abundance of sunlight. The Greenhouse can only be accessed via the Entryway.

By spending 10 minutes and making a DC 15 Intelligence (Nature) check, a character can harvest enough herbal materials to satisfy 15gp of the materials cost for brewing a potion of healing. If this is the first time a character spends at least 10 minutes in the room, two shrubs will animate into twig blights and attack non-lethaly.

Storeroom (Asboxes)

This room takes up just under a quarter of the ground floor, and contains a variety of wizardly paraphernalia. The room has no windows, and can only be accessed via the Entryway. By spending 10 minutes and making a DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation or Arcana) check, a character can find one of the following items at random:

• 1. The ritual components for the find familiar spell.
• 2. A scroll of detect magic.
• 3. A wand of pyrotechnics.
• 4. A nonmagical gemstone worth 8gp.

Landing (Communal)

The first-floor landing is accessed via the central staircase, and has a partially mezzanine layout where parts of the ground floor Entryway can be viewed below. It contains doorways to the Lounge and Kitchen, which each take up roughly half the level.

Kitchen (Communal)

The Kitchen is where Asboxes points the party to first, calling it a "secondary laboratory", believing the sacred chalice to be held here. It has a locked window (DC 10), and a variety of cupboards, chests, and work surfaces for the storage and preparation of food. Notably, two of the chests are inscribed with magical runes of evocation, which keep the contents cold or even frozen.

Investigating the kitchen reveals two sets of cutlery and crockery, one far fancier than the other, but nothing matching the chalice's description.

Landing (Communal)

The first-floor landing is accessed via the central staircase, and has a partially mezzanine layout where parts of the lower floors can be viewed below. It contains doorways to Asboxes' Bedchamber, Gladys' Bedchamber, the Alchemy Lab, and the Study, which each take up roughly a quarter of the level. The faint cawing of ravens can be heard from the level above.

Alchemy Lab (Gladys)

This room contains no windows, but instead has small funnels leading to external chimneys to provide ventilation. It was clearly used for alchemy, containing a full set of alchemist's tools and a herbalism kit, as well as neatly-kept cupboards with various alchemical reagents.

Characters can take 10 minutes to search this room, making a DC 10 Intelligence (Investigation) check; on a success, they find a potion of climbing tucked behind the reagents in one of the cupboards.

Asboxes' Bedchamber (Asboxes)

The wizard's bedroom contains curtained windows (locked, DC 13) and a massive four-poster bed. Gladys returned (via leaving them in a pile on the doorstep) most of Asboxes personal effects when she kicked him out, so this room is rather bare. It is also completely untouched by the signs of nature magic spreading throughout the rest of the building.

A DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation) or Wisdom (Perception) check reveals the key to the Study door under the bed.

Gladys' Bedchamber (Gladys)

This room is completely overtaken by the nature magic suffusing the building; perceptive characters may deduce that the wild growth must have begun before Asboxes lost control of the tower. It is more like a forest grove or cave than a bedroom, with a big leafy nest at the centre and a few items of practical woolen clothing strewn about, as well as a shrine to a nature deity in one corner. The window is currently closed and locked (DC 13). A wolf is currently sleeping at the edge of the next; she will growl and otherwise act hostile to the characters if she spots them, but in combat will attempt to find Gladys to alert her, rather than fighting.

A ceramic mug, beautifully crafted with green vines wrapping around it, sits on the mossy floor next to the nest, with about an inch of cold, undrunk coffee in it. This matches the description of the "chalice" Asboxes gave.

Study (Asboxes)

The door to Asboxes' study is locked (DC 16), as is the window (DC 13). The room contains bookshelves covered with scrolls of arcane formulae, as well as the artifacts of his cons, such as a disguise kit, bottles of snake oil, decks of marked cards, etc.

Characters who succeed on a DC 20 Intelligence (Investigation) check discover a hidden compartment in his writing desk, which contains a backup spellbook. The spellbook has ever spell he has prepared, up to 2nd level.