u/Embarrassed_Dealer68

Hi I'm at the shadow fell portion of the campaign and I wanted to flesh each location out as much as possible.

I'm sacking off the meat of the campaign and just using the chapters as locations. I am sort of playing the campaign backwards using the doomed forgotten realms scenario where Vecna has already won and the party needs to find 7 obelisk shards in order to access the original timeline at the point in which Vecna conducted the ritual of remaking.

What happens within those locations is completely off-book apart from the final few chapters.

To that end, I've fallen in love with the sorrowsworn of the shadowfell. I considered injecting lady Shar into the story but thought it too on the nose following BG3 so I've settled with this... Loose plot where the sorrowsworn will prey on each party member's history (I've had them create secrets that are only known themselves) and allude to the general emotion surrounding that past. Lonely hungry lost etc etc. I'm definitely going to be making up some sorrowsworn emotions also to fill gaps.

My general outline will be that the players need to find out how to "fix" Castle nowhere in place for more than a moment in order to delve into it and ultimately find a return portal to the material plane.

I'm looking for any assistance, be it map/narrative advice/lore dump as there isn't much on castle nowhere besides the fact it disappears sometimes and even necromancers fear it-- Great, I'm going to be putting the sorrowsworn death knights?(Need to double check this) in there to suggest an imbalance in even the shadow plane following on from the knock in reality that Vecna has caused.

TLDR: sorrowsworn are out of control in the shadow plane due to Vecna. Trying to perhaps involve the raven queen. Want to involve castle nowhere. Story ideas please

I DMd the latter half of Barovia village couple days ago and my god, here I was thinking to myself "OK. Doru will run to the first PC, melee grapple, drain blood turn 1, turn 2 drain blood once more (more than likely downing the PC and then melee attack anyone else on the way out up the stairs."

They utterly destroyed him to the point where my sense of horror i'd been building for 2 sessions has been seriously damaged.

Turn 1, warlock cast darkness on the edge of the party, disadvantage. I missed both attacks (I honestly think I should have fudged the dice here to have the horror kick in).

Turn 2, ok regenerate 10hp. None of them have magic weapons so only took about 18 damage last round. Grapple bite cleric, hit miss. "Ok, at least he's grappled for round 3 bite". Then the cleric switches on and starts casting radiant spells, killing the regen trait and the rogue soul knife uses psychic damage knife which bypasses the resistance as it's no longer slashing or bludgeoning. Sneak attack also is psychic as far as I read. Sorceror then casts a spell I'd genuinely never heard of which is basically hold person with damage each turn.

At this point, they have Doru grappled, the party have taken no damage and Doru is lined up for a turn 4 death and all he can do is use his action to try and escape the grapple each turn before attempting to bolt for the stairs. This has gone from horror to some sort of weird jurassic park tame the beast moment.

At least the old bone grinder won't be so simple for them!