I honestly cannot remember what made me decide to check out Tales of the Valiant as an alternate 5e ruleset. But we decided to check it out and start our first Tales of the Valiant campaign. If I have my way, this will end up being our longest running campaign. Time will tell.

Character Introduction

Appaluna Harrietdaughter (Female Human Warlock)

Stats

• Heritage: Vexed
• Background: Courtier
• 28 years old
• 6 feet tall
• Brown eyes and hair. Caucasian skin color.

Backstory

Appaluna was born to a noble family. She grew up in comfort, but was often bored and unhappy. When she was 20 she made a deal with an otherworldly creature. Some of the maids found out, and word got out that Appaluna had made a deal with the devil. Appaluna was cast out of the court in disgrace, and now works to try and earn enough money to buy her way back to nobility.

Jackal Bonfeather (Male Beastkin Fighter)

Stats

• Heritage: Slayer
• Background: Soldier
• 5 years old; considered an adult
• 6'4" tall
• 181 lbs
• Yellow eyes, green skin, no hair.

Backstory

Unknown at this time.

Ariana Mesa (Female Human Druid)

Stats

• Heritage: Cosmopolitan
• Background: Scholar
• 22 years old
• Green eyes, black hair, tanned Caucasian skin.

Backstory

Currently unknown. But adventuring motivation: Adventuring will lead me to the answers I desperately seek.

The Adventure

The adventurers were each individually playing poker at the Tigerpaw Casino. They were joined by Silgre Silvertooth, an inveterate gambler with a huge unlucky streak. Suddenly the casino was overrun with large spiders. They teamed up to fight the spiders. Afterwards they were offered a bounty by Ariadne Sasaki to rid the casino and the town of the spiders. 

The team ventured into the sewers where they fought with some even larger spiders. Eventually they found a very large spider who was mother to all the spiders over-running the town. They also found out that she kneaded the bread for the bakery above and her venom was used in the sourdough starter. They negotiated with the spider to leave town and go to the forest. Afterwards they confronted the baker and were paid off by him to be quiet about his use of the spider in his breads.

A few days later the newly formed team was hired by Kylana, a human mechanist who had heard of their exploits in Cardew. She needed their help in finding her solodron, Wingnut. She’d sent the solodron to Bellgrove to provide a water purifier to the mycolids living there. When the party arrives at Hulgig (a city next to Bellgrove), they are attacked by humanoids who are affected by a fungal infection. The team goes to the local goods story. When they don’t get the information they need there, they go to the largest building in town where the head of the town, a gnome druid, directs them to the caverns. The team suspects the mycolids may be to blame and the gnome shares their conclusions.

In the caverns they save a human named Dusstan who got caught in a rope trap that saved him from the sporeborn by suspending him at the top of the cavern. Eventually they save Wingnut from some quasits, but never find out which magic user had summoned them. Afterwards they go to the mycolids and find out that their leader has secluded himself because he’s also sick. They suspect that the water has been poisoned. 

The party descends to the lowest level of the cavern and builds a raft to float to where the spore lord was. They give him purified water and he gets better. The adventurers then return Wingnut to Kylana and are rewarded and congratulated for their efforts.

GM Commentary

I wanted to run a Halloween-ish adventure for the kids and chose to use that as our first Tales of the Valiant adventure. The first half, at the casino, came from a one-shot I got either as part of a Kickstarter or from RPGDriveThru in 2023. It had stats for D&D 5e, Pathfinder, and a game I hadn’t heard of at the time - Tales of the Valiant! The second half of the adventure is from Caverns of the Spore Lord. It was one of the first adventures they wrote, so it didn’t require the Monster Vault or full Player’s Guide. This made it perfect for trying out this new system without spending too much money! It just cost me $10 for the alpha rules and $5 for the adventure (less, actually because it was on sale as part of their Halloween sale). My only mistake was trying to do both these adventures in one night. It got to be a bit too much for the kids, so I rushed the climax and conclusion a bit. I’m currently in love with FoudnryVTT for virual games, so here is the FoundryVTT conversion of the game if you’re interested.

• Tales of the Valiant