Introduction

Let me start off by saying thank you for all those that gave comments and feedback on
my first article. Hopefully I can keep you all as happy and interested with this one!

Last time, I talked about potential changes to the beginning of Lost Mine of Phandelver,
and ways to expand the story, letting your party explore the wider world of Faerun. So,
that means that the topic of this article follows on logically. Yup, that's right, I'm going
right to the end this time. Discussions of Nezznar, and what to do after LMOP has
finished.

Speedrunning LMOP
Let's start by looking at a hypothetical LMOP campaign summarry.

Goblin ambush > Cragmaw Cave > Cragmaw Castle > Wave Echo Cave.

This is probably the shortest path a party can take in LMOP. They get ambushed, raid
the cave, capture and interrogate a gobln to find the location of Cragmaw Castle, go to
the castle, rescue Gundren, do the cave, end.

More realistically, there will be some sessions spent in chapter 3, or more likely in
Phandalin.

Ambush > Cave > Phandalin > Redbrand Hideout > Cragmaw Castle > Wave Echo
Cave.

As my party did, they wiped out the cave and didn't think to interrogate anyone. So,
they head to Phandalin and meet the residents. Edermath offically doesn't know the
location of the Castle, but realistically, why wouldn't an adventurer know the location of
a large castle? Regardless, the notes state that Halia knows there is a goblin in the
Redbrand Hideout that knows where the castle is. The party go and clearout the
hideout, interrogate that goblin, get the location of the Castle, then it's the same as
before.

There's two things to notice in both of these scenarios. Let's deal with the simple one
first. Nezznar only appears for the first time in Wave Echo Cave. If the party hit the
Manor, then there's the hint about the Black Spider, but no connections to Nezznar. By
adding in several more tantalising hooks, Nezznar becomes more of an antagonist to
the party. Have a RP encounter outside Cragmaw Cave where he annoys the party and
misty steps away before combat. Have an NPC killed off with signs of drow weaponry or
poisons. There are plenty of articles on how to include a villain in your story before the
end, and that's not really my focus for this article.

The second problem is neither route takes the party to Thundertree. Now, you may
suddenly shout at your screen something along the lines of "Thundertree sucks, it's a
TPK, they shouldn't be going there anyway!". And indeed, there are a lot of
recommendations that suggest exactly that. However, do you know what's on the cover
art for LMOP? No? Go look. I'll wait.

Yeah, that's right. A big honking dragon.

One of the most popular suggestions is to cut out the most obvious "you're going to
have this encounter" encounter from the story. To me, that's a stupid thing to do. And
that's what prompted me to do this article. How can we take out (one of?) the most
controversial characters in the story, introduce some of the larger D&D Lore while
keeping a dragon in the campaign, but also give options for continuing the story?

Going Deep with Dragons

We're going back to 3e today, and into the shady world of zekyl, zar'ithra, and
draa'zekyl.

Shadows Dragons exist in the 5e Monster Manual. They are evil dragons native to the
plane of Shadow, a dark version of the Feywild. However, at some point in their past,
they had interactions with the Drow, creating three off-shoots. The first, the Zekyl, have
the abilities of a Drow and a half-dragon of shadow dragon patronage. They are
dexterous, but no longer frail. The second, the zar'ithrin (zar'ithra is singular) are not
strictly half dragons, but rather the offspring of subsequent generations. They are also
more likely to reside on the Shadow Plane, rather than the material one. Both of these
are tempting to use, but the third is far better.

Enter the draa'zekyl, or the Drow-Dragon. According to the FR Wiki, they are shadow
dragons, but at the same time Drow. Older beings are able to change between dragon
form and drow form at will, and stay in that form indefinitely. Now we have our kicker.
The party work through the story, get antagonised by a drow or their minions, and
finally confront them in Wave Echo Cave. Bloodied and wounded, the party think
they've got the drop on Nezznar, and the end of the story is in sight. And then he
transforms into a large Shadow Dragon. The party lose their mind.

"But," I hear you shout at your screen again. "Isn't this just you using a random dragon
with no motivation?"

Let's look at the history of drow dragons and zekyl then, and see what we can find.

Waaaaay back in -221 DR (LMOP is set in 1491 DR), a clan of shadow dragons enslaved
the drow in the city of Chaulssin. In 634 DR, their zekyl offspring and servants turned
on them, later fleeing to the plane of shadowto evade the armies of Menzoberranzan
who were hunting them as heretics. In 734 DR, the original clan, House Jaezred, stole
the magic used to divide their dragon and drow parts, thus creating the drow-dragon
race.

Could the Forge of Spells be used in this division? Or could it be used in the reuniting of
the two halves? This points at a fun conclusion where Nezznar is only drow, but is able
to complete the ritual to reunite with their dragon half.

Alternatively, what if the Forge of Spells is a Shadow Gate - a gate from the material
plane to the plane of Shadow? Stopping Nezznar leads to the creation of a failed
shadow gate, which causes anything that passes through it to risk having their flesh
subsumed with shadow, either killing them of transforming them into a dark creature.

The inclusion of the shadow plane opens up so many more reasons that Nezznar is
looking for the Forge, and some very cool narrative endings.

What next?
So, your party stopped Nezznar from their nefarious shadow deed, but want to carry
on. Where do we go from here? Again, we can get some ideas from the lore.

A number of Shadow Dragons were courted by the original Cult of the Dragon, and
turned in to dracoliches. Anything involving the Cult is a good tie in to Tyranny of
Dragons.

Or, we could send the party out to Chaulssin, heading along the Evermoor Way from
Triboar/Yartar to the Silver Marches region. Finding the city would involve some effort,
as it's almost ten miles beneath the surface. A potential reason to be sent out there is
an invasion, or infestation, of Krinth. These humanoid creatures are the offspring of
shadow demons and the Netherese. Yes, the same Netherese that were responsible for
the creation of the (now ruined) tower at Old Owl Well, which means you can seed
some hooks in there as well. This could then be a great location for a homebrew finale,
confronting the House Jaezred shadow-dragon assassins, much like the idea of
returning to the Nine Hells and finishing off Tiamat. As of 1372 DR, one hundred or so
years before LMOP, there were known to be nine drow-dragons in Toril. Eight are the
leaders of House Jaezred, and the ninth is the daughter of the main leader.

There is a freely available adventure called City of Wyrmshadows with some great info
on all sorts of shadow dragons and drow-dragons, and contains an adveture to rescue a
noble from Chaulssin. This provides some more tie in with the LMOP world, and
introduces us to Nurvureem, the daughter. The reason why I mention her in particular
is that Nurvureem also appears as "The Dark Lady" in Princees of the Apocalypse.

Running LMOP into City of Wyrmshadows into PotA now develops into a much larger
campaign, covers a large swathe of Faerun, and gives the players some "Oh crap"
moments as characters (literally) change before their eyes, or return to be antagonists
and now a major part of a story.

Wrap up
Anyway. That was quite a ramble in the end. Hopefully you enjoyed this one as much as
my first, and I hope that this provides a spark of curiosity in some DMs to either include
some of this in a campaign, or to do their own dive into the lore of the LMOP world.
Next time, who knows what I'll talk about. Something will come to me randomly... Until
then, may you not have too many shadows over your D20s.