Itinerants are typically those with skilled or semi-skilled professions such as tradespeople, doctors, and spiritual guides like clergy. They tend to receive a warm welcome from the communities they travel to, but that welcome comes at least partially because they make active efforts to fit in.

Grooming Kit. This small leather or waxed canvas kit folds up for easy transport and contains a small bar of soap, some small scissors, a comb, a small mirror, a vial of perfume, and some other personal hygiene items. If the user has at least a gallon of clean water, they can clean themselves thoroughly, gaining an expertise die on Persuasion checks for the next two hours, or until something happens to make them less presentable.

Spiced Candies. Sold in packages of 5 pieces, these small hard candies are flavored with ingredients from a variety of far-flung locations. Their unusual flavor makes them excellent as ice-breakers and gifts among those of lower or middle income. At the Narrator’s discretion, gifting such candies grants you an expertise die on your next Persuasion check against the recipient. This bonus only applies once every 24 hours. This period may be longer or shorter, depending on the discretion of the Narrator. The candies do not readily spoil, but cannot be used as Supply .

Traveling Toolkit. All of the artisan toolkits have a traveling variety with collapsable or lightweight tools and especially efficient storage containers that are useful to traveling tradespeople. These toolkits have the same functionality as their normal counterparts, but weigh less and cost more.

Versatile Clothing. This comfortable, neutral-colored clothing has been designed to be worn in different ways, allowing the wearer to pass through the local population without attracting undue notice. When combined with local accessories, the wearer can easily pass as having purchased their clothing locally, though other details of their appearance may still cause them to attract attention.

Circusfolk not only spend their lives traveling, but entertaining. Unfortunately, not all communities are equally-receptive to the shows they put on, and stigmas around circusfolk can sometimes escalate into dangerous situations requiring a fight or a speedy escape. Their equipment reflects this tension.

Makeup Kit. This compact set of face paints and powders lets you quickly change your appearance or freshen up existing makeup between shows. In a pinch, it can be used like a disguise kit, but at a –1d4 penalty and only twice, after which point it is depleted. Alternatively, it can be used to gain an expertise die on Intimidation or Persuasion checks (chosen when you apply the makeup) made in the next hour, unless something happen to compromise your look, such as rain, physical exertion, and the like.

Sleeve Sparklers. These basic fireworks fit in a heavy leather bracer up the sleeves of the user. They can be activated as a bonus action, spraying a stream of colorful sparks for 3 rounds. You must make a DC 5 Dexterity saving throw upon activation, taking 2 points of fire damage on a failure. While the sparks are active, you gain an expertise die on Performance checks and Deception checks to distract creatures. You can also use an action to focus the sparks and ignite paper, dry straw, and other flammable substances. Finally, if the sparks are directed toward the face of a creature, it must make a DC 13 Constitution save or take 2 points of fire damage and be blinded for until the end of its next turn. The sparklers are made with a flammable metal and cannot be extinguished early without the use of magic, though they can’t be lit underwater.

Speaking Horn. This cone-shaped device is popular with ringmasters, barkers, and masters of ceremony. When shouting into this device, your voice is magnified in a 60-foot cone emanating from your space. Creatures within the cone have advantage on checks to hear you over background noise and other distractions, and your voice can be heard up to 300 feet away from your position.

Quick-Change Clothing. Useful for both quick backstage changes during performances and for giving angry locals the slip, this clothing can be quickly removed, reversed, and put back on as an action. The styles can be radically different, such as a simple farmer’s shirt on one side and fine noble’s clothing on the other. The garments do not include the jewelry necessary to pass as a noble, however. Depending on how radical the difference is, the Narrator may rule that swapping garments grants an expertise die on checks to convince creatures that have only seen you in the previous garments that you are not the same person.

Caravanners typically have beasts of burden and wagons, so while their equipment needs to be as rugged as that of any traveling culture, they can often deal with a little bit of extra weight if some other concern makes it worth it. Still, every pound of equipment carried is a pound of carrying capacity that can’t be devoted to trade goods, so a balance must be struck.

Caravanner's Canvas Caravanners usually keep a few of these tarps in every wagon; they are made of heavy-duty, tear-resistant fabric that has been waxed to keep the rain off. They can be folded into an improvised poncho to keep a teamster in an open wagon dry in the rain or used to build quick shelters where needed. At the Narrator’s discretion, this item can be expended to gain an expertise die to relevant exploration challenges of 0th and 1st tiers.

Caravanner's Map. This map is made of heavy parchment and is mounted to a thin sheet of wood and waxed, waterproofing it and making it easier to reference while on a bouncing wagon or horse. It can be marked with grease pencils and wiped clean after. Caravanners typically update these regularly and sell the old ones at a slight discount; they make nice wall decorations.

Easy Access Backpack. Caravanners know better than most that being able to get to the right item quickly can save you a lot of trouble. This backpack has the same capacity as the standard backpack, but it is covered with extra pockets and the larger compartment has additional flaps for quick access to the items stored within. If it is properly packed, which takes half an hour when empty, you can make a DC 5 Dexterity check to access any item inside as a bonus action. On a failed check, retrieving the item requires using an action as normal. Alternatively, you can abandon the attempt to retrieve the item this round without spending your bonus action.

Entertainment Box. Assembled to give weary caravanners something to do in the evenings at camp, this small but sturdy wooden box is lined with waxed canvas to waterproof it and held shut with a simple leather strap. It contains a deck of cards, a small, cheep instrument (such as a flute, ocarina, harmonica or similar), and some paints or colored chalks.

Prodigies are gifted with exceptional talents entirely inaccessible to the vast majority of creatures. Those with elemental skills are most often associated with the Laboratory , Sacred Grove, and Temple strongholds, but may be available as free followers from other stronghold types, at the Narrator’s discretion.

For each prodigy, choose a rare skill.

Inexperienced. Once between the ends of each long rest , the prodigy makes a rare skill check for you as though you had access to and were proficient in that skill.

Seasoned. Twice between the ends of each long rest , the prodigy makes a rare skill check for you as though you had access to and were proficient in that skill.

Expert. Three times between the ends of each long rest , the prodigy makes a rare skill check for you as though you had access to and were proficient in that skill.

The saying goes that when the snowpears can be harvested the winter is ending and new journeys can begin. These odd, squat trees appear dead for much of the year, but they leaf and flower briefly following the first thaw and produce their fruits quickly afterward. Growing in clusters, each snowpear is no larger than a grape. They have pale pink skin covering jelly-like purple flesh and taste like a ripe pear long soaked in honey. Unfortunately, they spoil quickly and have proved difficult to preserve or ferment into alcohol.

After long months of dried and smoked foods and long hours in their homes, Snowharvest is an opportunity for people to have something fresh to eat and an excuse to be outside. Town squares are often lined with snowpears so residents can gather the fruits while singing traditional songs, and so children—eating more than they collect and with purple juice running down their chins—can enjoy the year’s first opportunity to run and play under their parent’s watchful eye.

Others claim that wild snowpears taste better and travel out to heathland or woods to collect them. Where such plants are common, bears awaken early from their hibernation to consume them, and often a hunt is added to the celebration. No matter where one gathers snowpears, it is considered proper to leave a small offering at the base of the first plant one harvests from, usually a tree or simple holy symbol carved from wood or fashioned from bound sticks and twine. The days before harvest often involve art classes and small gatherings where the younger children learn how to make such offerings while the older children and adults fashion their own.

There is no defined timing for the harvest, as each household watches the plants for signs of fruit—and their neighbors, in case they start collecting first. Once the harvest begins, it can be a frenzied affair, typically lasting until the beginning of the following week when the feast is held. Snowharvest is a raucous event with whole communities bringing out the best of their remaining foods to celebrate the end of winter. Casts of rich and complex mead, prepared at the beginning of the season, are broached and consumed with relish and much toasting.

Snowpears are delicious raw, but they are even more so when cooked, and households compete to create the most fantastic snowcakes for the Snowharvest feast where they are shared with all. Filled with skinned snowpears, a family’s special blend of spices, and often a generous dash of brandy, snowcakes are covered in a soft and flakey sweet pastry and traditionally made to resemble a tree.

While some look forward to the celebration with nothing but excitement for the food and drink, others are apprehensive. Snowharvest also marks the beginning of a new year, and many young people leave their homes to start apprenticeships following the feast, while others choose this auspicious time to start a new journey or make a significant change to their life. Before taking the first bite of snowcake, it is customary to offer up a short prayer committing oneself to a journey or new challenge.

Game Mechanics

A person’s prayer before their first bite of snowcake at the Snowharvest feast produces different benefits depending on what they prayed for:

• Someone committing to a journey gains an expertise die on any check to overcome an Exploration Challenge. This feature can be used a number of times equal to their proficiency bonus and lasts for 1 week.
• Someone committing to a new challenge selects a skill related to that challenge and gains an expertise die on checks made using that skill. This feature can be used a number of times equal to their proficiency bonus and lasts for 1 week.

Additionally, those who leave offerings they have personally made at the first snowpear tree they harvest from gain an expertise die on rolls make to perform the Harvest or Hunt and Gather Journey activity for the next week.

If Hearthenfalme is meant to be a joyous occasion, the longest night of the year is often a source of fear, as undead and evil powers are thought to take advantage of the extended darkness to further their vile plans. The Dunwell Rising, which saw the ghosts of that accursed and abandoned town appear to kill thousands, started on Longnight a little over twenty years ago. The devastating plague known as the Gray Blight took its first victim on a Longnight centuries past before going on to ravage the continent.

In larger communities, the ritual of Longnight is observed as a time of somber remembrance and reflection. In smaller ones, it is believed to be the difference between life and death and ancient traditions are carefully followed, especially the spring planting of bay trees for the occasion. During the few hours of daylight, celebrants carefully work the leaves from a bay tree into armbands of a unique woven design. Doing so is believed to harness the lifeforce of these evergreen plants, whose sweet scent wards off evil spirits.

As night falls, families gather together in their homes and candles are lit to remember those who have passed and to help guide the sun back towards its path of longer days. Stories are shared and memories recounted. Throughout the night the lost are referred to by their relationship to the speaker, but their names are not spoken. It is believed that speaking a spirit’s name disturbs their rest and risks calling them back to trouble the living—or that it disturbs their well-earned rest, depending on the town and deceased in question.

As evildoers and malicious spirits are said to avoid the candles lit on Longnight, those who light only a few candles—or worse, none—are looked on with suspicion and not a little fear.

Game Mechanics

During Longnight dark magics are more powerful, fueled by negative energy and the spirits that stalk the night, but special protections are granted to those that follow the ancient traditions. The effects of these traditions include (but are not necessarily limited to) the following:

• Between dusk and dawn, creatures wearing a bay leaf armband that they personally made gain resistance to necrotic damage.
• Creatures who light a candle and remember the dead without naming them gain darkvision out to 30 feet, or extend their darkvision by that amount.
• If cast after dusk in a home with candles lit to honor the dead, the effects of protection from evil and good last until dawn, but only against undead. The spell functions as normal for the first 10 minutes. When casting the spell in this way, the caster gains an expertise die on checks to maintain concentration .

At the same time, spells from the necromantic, evil, necrotic, or undead schools have the following changes:

• If the spell involves a saving throw , the target makes that throw with disadvantage .
• Spells that create undead creatures create one additional creature of the same type
• The create undead spell can be used to create specters instead of ghouls . In this case, the target becomes up to three items taken from the tombs of the deceased, instead of the usual corpses.

The world is old beyond the memory of all but the longest lived, and heroes who were once renowned for their selfless sacrifices and mighty deeds are long forgotten. The genius minstrel Wol Dreyfoot claimed to have been inspired by the many partial tales and snippets of longer stories held in the bardic college’s vaults as he composed his magnum opus, “Song of the Forgotten Hero”, nearly a century ago.

With hundreds of verses, the song tells the tale of Nymia over five acts and typically has an interlude after the third. The epic’s protagonist was a knight already known for her skills in battle and commitment to justice when her love was abducted. The song covers the many trials and adventures she faced trying to rescue him, and the powerful verses that describe her journey are filled with passion, fear, hope, victory, and loss. So long is the song that a full performance can last for several hours.

Using his fame and his position within the bard’s college, Wol ensured his epic was part of the final exam for admittance, and now generations of bards have trained to perfect it. For many of them, it has become customary to perform it a week after Longnight, during what used to be called the Feast of Memory. This much older celebration, dedicated to a now-obscure god of knowledge, has waned in popularity along with that particular faith, but many of its rituals have been rolled into the Feast of the Forgotten Hero.

During the first act, which describes the depths of the hero’s love, small honeyed grain cakes are passed among the crowd and shared between spouses and lovers. The second act is split between alternate verses where the hero is helped by the wise and good-hearted or impeded by fools or the wicked. This act is often extended to incorporate patrons, local figures—and of course visiting adventurers) exposing them to praise or ridicule, depending on the opinion of the performer.

At the close of the third act, the hero is at the gates of the underworld, having discovered that the goddess of that realm has seized her love in jealousy. She sits at the table of the satyr Caretus, eating old mutt on and vegetable stew accompanied by coarse bread. As the satyr complains of the poor fare, she replies with compliments and thanks for a last meal in the land of the living. As the bard pauses to refresh themselves during the interlude, it is traditional for the same stew and bread to be served to the listeners.

The fourth act is the most technically difficult to perform, as it requires the singer to shift styles several times, and the best bards also learn to sing in different voices. It sees the protagonist traverse the underworld, meeting countless heroes who have been forgotten and hearing fragments of their tales.

The final act is a rising crescendo of triumph as the hero returns to life with her love, but the end is tinged with sorrow: to escape the land of the dead, the hero had to give up all fame and renown, and is from that moment forth forever remembered as Nymia, an ancient word meaning ‘nameless.’

Game Mechanics

Those who attend a performance may be affected in the following ways:

• Romantic partners that share a cake gain a limited empathic sense. For the following month, while their partner is within 100 feet, a creature can spend a bonus action to understand the emotional state of their partner. At the Narrator’s discretion, strong emotions felt by one partner may be transmitted to the other during this time. Those who renounce their feelings in front of their partner three times can willfully dispel this effect, but doing so is thought to bring terrible luck for the next year and a day.
• Individuals mentioned in the second act as wise and good-hearted gain advantage on Persuasion checks for the next two days. Those described as fools or the wicked suffer disadvantage on Deception checks for the same period.
• Consuming the stew and bread during the performance grants a creature advantage on their next death saving throw made before the first day of summer.

Hearthenflame occurs on the night of the first new moon of winter and commemorates the bravery of Paneth, the celestial who legend holds brought knowledge of hearth and fire to mortals in direct defiance of the gods. When discovered he was transformed into a pig by the gods and then unknowingly cooked and eaten by the mortals to whom he had given the secrets.

In each settlement, a vast communal bonfire is prepared, the hollow at its center lined with oil-soaked silver birch bark. Taking on the role of Paneth, one member of each family dresses in a harlequin costume of red and yellow. Carrying a torch and a stone taken from their hearth (often carved with a family initial or symbol to make later identification easy), they march from their homes calling out the ritual chant “Hearthenflame! I bring hearthenflame!” as they travel to the bonfire.

As each arrives, they place their stone inside the pyre and form a ring around the stacked wood, holding their torches aloft. As the last of the sunlight fades from the sky, each throws their torch and the fire is lit signaling the celebrations can begin. Maintained throughout the night, the bonfire is used to cook a sacrificial pig, recalling Paneth’s punishment, though poorer communities or individual families celebrating abroad may instead burn wooden pig figurines. Communities often cook any food that cannot be stored through the winter, with generous supplies of ale and wine also typically made available. The latter is often used to toast the celestial and the gifts they gave humanity.

In the morning, as the flames are permitted to fade, each family reclaims their stone, hurrying it back home. It is said that the solidarity of the community warms the stones imbuing each with special magic, and if the stone is returned to the family hearth while still warm it will keep the deadly cold from that house all winter.

Game Mechanics

Once returned to a family hearth, the hearthenstone remains effective until it is removed, or for 1d3 + 1 months. Creatures who complete a long rest in such a building gain resistance to cold damage for the next 24 hours. Additionally, those who make a toast to Paneth during the feast gain an expertise die on their next Arcana, Culture, History, or Nature check (a creature can only gain this blessing once per year).

Places of darkness, oppressive heat, and air so thick with humidity it feels like you could drink it—jungles and other tropical rainforests are dangerous even before you encounter the wildlife that hunts even the hunters. Included here are a series of challenging environments for your players to encounter while moving through such an environment, though many would work well for dense forests of all climates.

Note: In some entries, challenges list the trait Dense Canopy, along with the alternate trait, Dense Undergrowth, allowing Narrators to tweak the exploration challenge to reflect the aspects of the forest. Rainforests, for example, are old growth forests featuring large, towering trees that block so much light that it is difficult for smaller plants to grow beneath them. Jungles, on the other hand, are younger forests, often on the edges of older forests and where natural effects or disasters have thinned the trees, meaning they have much thicker undergrowth.

Alternate Challenge Trait: Corrupt

Exploration challenges such as Maddening Twilight would be fitting places to introduce the Corruption mechanics, as seen in “Perverse Contamination: Corruption Mechanics” in Gate Pass Gazette Issue #20. Narrators who wish to do so can add the following trait or use it in place of the Cursed trait:

Corrupt. Upon entering the area, each adventurer must make a Constitution saving throw . On a failure, they suffer one level of corruption. At the end of each short or long rest in the area, each adventurer makes another Constitution saving throw, suffering an additional level of corruption on a failure.

Carnivorous Fish || Corpse Plant Stench || Follow the Waystones || Maddening Twilight || Perpetual Twilight || Sacred Garden of the Ancients || Treetop Bridge || Wilderness Garden

Alternative Challenges: Corrupting Twilight || Corrupted Garden of the Ancients