A Dragon Flies Into a Bar

Adventure Pitch

It’s a beautiful day in the fishing town of Leilon, but the players—a group of newbie adventurers—are down to their last coins and without a job to earn more. But when the anxious silver dragon wyrmling Flax literally drops into the players’ inn seeking help finding his stolen hoard, can the players track down the culprit and recover the hoard before Flax's sister arrives at noon?

Adventure Specifications

Party Size & Level: This adventure is designed for five 1st-level player characters, but includes balancing information for parties of two to eight players.

Expected Runtime: This adventure is expected to take between three and six hours to complete.

Themes: This adventure focuses on the following themes: independence, anxiety, confidence, childhood, maturation, and trust.

Content Flags: This adventure contains or touches on:

• potential violence against animals (the Rat Pack, the flying snake)

• mild fantastical child endangerment (Flax against the giant rats and Mud Pie Gang)

• cartoonish emotional abuse and bullying (the Mud Pie Gang targeting Flax)

• mild death and decay (Fenrick’s skeletal remains)

• mild claustrophobia (the Rat Warrens)

• references to grief and parental death (Flax’s and Iomandra’s parents)

• references to mild body horror (the desecration of Flax’s parents)

• references to mild imprisonment (the Mud Pie Gang’s past captivity)

Adventure Summary

The players begin this adventure in the Green Goat Inn, an inn and tavern for adventurers visiting the town of Leilon—even inexperienced, down-on-their-luck adventurers like them. 

After ordering breakfast and exploring their surroundings, the players’ peaceful morning is shattered when the silver dragon wyrmling Flax crash-lands in the inn’s kitchen, creating panic and bedlam amongst the innkeeper, Renna, and her two pets, Cake and Ruby.

If the players calm the kitchen’s occupants, Flax can share that his hoard was stolen by an unknown culprit last night and that he’s traveled to the inn to seek help from a friend—the dwarven miner Gundren Rockseeker. Whether by Gundren’s request (and offer of payment), Renna’s suggestion, or their own initiative, players who agree to help Flax can follow him out of Leilon to the Sleeping Tower, a tilted tower that houses his lair—for Flax’s older sister, Iomandra, is coming to visit him at noon, and if Flax doesn’t find his hoard by then, Iomandra will make him come back to live at home.

After speaking with Flax and potentially racing him down the final stretch to the tower, the players must explore the tower, deal with a local pack of hostile giant rats, and reach the (initially inaccessible) second floor in order to investigate the scene of the crime. All clues point in a single, unambiguous direction: the gray-brown Mud Pie Pond, which lies a short distance to the west of the tower.

Upon reaching the pond, the players find themselves drawn into a confrontation with the Mud Pie Gang: a trio of mean-spirited mephit bullies that have inhabited the pond for centuries, and who stole Flax’s hoard in an attempt to drive him away from the Sleeping Tower. If the players have encouraged and supported him, Flax can also unlock his cold breath in this fight, using it for the first time to protect his new friends.

If the players defeat the mephits, they can recover Flax’s hoard from the mephits’ burrow beside the pond, as well as an assortment of other treasures that the gang accumulated over the years. When noon arrives, Flax’s older sister Iomandra arrives to decide Flax’s fate—and, if the players helped Flax master his breath weapon, to reward them for their efforts.

How to Run this Adventure

We’ve written this adventure to try to reduce your work away from the table while empowering you (and your players) to tell your story at the table. That means:

• Compendium-First Design. We’ve placed all location and character information into a separate Compendium, which you can pull up as-needed to familiarize or remind yourself of the details within. (You can find the Compendium at the end of this adventure.)

• Light-Touch Scaffolding. We’ve provided a sequence of narrative scenes meant to guide and inspire your play at the table—especially when roleplaying NPCs—without straightjacketing you with long read-aloud text or sprawling contingencies.

• At-the-Table Execution. We trust you to narrate scenes and descriptions, adjudicate rules interactions, and improvise character dialogue without memorizing particular scripts and outcomes, but have planted seeds in the text that should make your job easy.

• Scene-Agnostic Frameworks. We’ve broken social and stealth mechanics down into simple, universal, fiction-first systems that (like combat) can be applied in any arbitrary scene, allowing for flexibility when players do the unexpected.

If you’re running this adventure for the first time, we suggest you:

1. Read or skim the Narrative to familiarize yourself with the adventure’s expected structure, referencing the Compendium as you go, and

2. Read off the page at the table, pulling up Compendium entries in the sidebar as-needed to recall specific details.

Welcome to Helm, your interactive companion for running tabletop adventures. Before you set sail on your first voyage, this tutorial will chart the waters ahead and show you how to navigate a scene in Helm. Every feature you'll encounter below is live. Click things. Poke around. Nothing here bites.

How Helm Works

Helm is built around one core philosophy: we give you everything you need to know, and how you present it is up to you.

This means Helm works for every kind of DM. If you want to run things exactly as they appear on the page, you can do that. If you'd rather improvise, riff, and make the adventure your own, Helm gives you the room to do that without worrying about missing critical information or breaking the game. Either way, everything you need is here.

This is made possible by two systems working together: scenes and the compendium.

A scene captures what is happening right now at a specific moment in the adventure. It's your live tool at the table: who's here, special events that kick things off, and what you do when your players react. They're flowcharts.

The compendium holds everything that is always true about a character, a location, or an item, regardless of when it appears in the adventure. It's your reference library: backstories, room descriptions, item properties, world lore. They're encyclopedias.

Scenes and the compendium never repeat each other. The scene tells you a character is nervously stirring a pot. The compendium entry tells you she's a halfling chef with a fear of fire. Together, they give you everything you need. And anything not covered by either is yours to decide.

Lets begin by breaking down Scenes

Scenes

A scene begins by telling you where the scene takes place. Before the scene starts proper, It will be important to convey the location and its description if the players are entering it for the first time in this scene. For example, This scene takes place in A Location (Well, not really... its taking place in Helm).

A scene will then give you a reference point for what characters are doing at the beginning of a scene.

When you first open this page:

• You are here, reading this for the first time.

• A Character is NOT here. (She is patiently waiting for you over at the compendium section.)

Flavor Text

You'll always recognize flavor text by its distinctive styling, a quoted block set apart from the surrounding text. After a flavor text box, the scene opens up into the information you'll need to run it.

Interaction Blocks

Scenes rarely involve the whole party doing the same thing at the same time. The tabbed section below is an interaction block. Each tab holds a different piece of information, and clicking between them lets you quickly find what you need. In play, you flip to whichever tab matches what a player is doing right now. Try clicking through them.

Each tab in an interaction block covers one point of engagement: an object to inspect, a topic of conversation, a phase in the interaction, ex. The tab's title tells you what it covers. The content inside tells you what happens when the players interact with it, what they learn, what rolls might be required, and how a character responds.

Whenever a scene has a lot of information you might need to switch back and forth between, interaction blocks organize it into tabs so you can find the right piece instantly. During prep, read through all the tabs to get a feel for a scene. During play, flip to the one that matches what's happening at the table

Waypoints

At the bottom of every scene, you'll find a set of branching boxes. These are Waypoints. They tell you where the adventure goes next based on what the players choose to do.

Each Waypoint has a condition as its header. That's the situation that needs to be true for this path to open up. When that condition is met, just click the linked scene name inside and you're on your way.

Think of Waypoints as the ports on your chart. When your players sail into one, you'll know exactly where to go next.

Compendium Entries

As you read through a scene, you'll notice certain words are styled as clickable links. These are compendium references. Clicking one opens a compendium entry in a panel on the right side of your screen: a self-contained profile of a character, location, item, or other key element. The entry stays open beside the scene you're running, so you can reference both at the same time.

Compendium entries come in several types, including A Character, A Location, A Handout, A Lore Entry, A Rule Each follows a consistent format so you always know where to find what you're looking for. Try clicking one of those links now to see what a compendium entry looks like and learn how to read it. For example, uh oh! Your are playing out a conversation with A Character and they are really interrogating poor Dr. Character. See if you can pull up A Character's knowledge section to figure out what they know!

You're Ready

That's Helm. Flavor text sets the stage. Interaction blocks organize the options. The compendium fills in the details. Transitions keep you moving. The Star Map shows you where you are. Everything works together. Remember, these adventures are meant to answer all your questions and tell you what happens in the world of your story. Its up to you and your players to figure out the best way to tell that story! Relax, improvise, use the tools at your disposal, and have fun!

The best way to get comfortable is to open an adventure and start running. The tools do the heavy lifting. You bring the voice.

Ooooo look at that! This is the next scene in our little adventure! If you happen to get lost navigating our scenes don't panic! We have a tool for that too!

The Star Map

To the left of your screen, you'll see a visual diagram: the Star Map. It's a bird's-eye view of the adventure's structure. Each node is a scene, and the lines between them are the paths players can take. Your current scene is highlighted, and connected scenes are visible as adjacent nodes.

The Star Map updates as you move through the adventure, so you always know where you are, where you've been, and where the story can branch next. You can also click any node to jump directly to that scene, which is useful for quick reference, backtracking, or skipping ahead during prep.

Think of the Star Map as your chart of the waters ahead. The scenes are the ports. The transitions are the headings. And your players are the ones at the wheel. But the Star Map isn't sailing alone.

The App Dock

The entire left section of your screen is called The App Dock. Along with the Star Map tab, It holds several tools for navigating and managing your adventure.

• Compendium: Every scene comes loaded with its own relevant compendium entries: monsters, items, lore, and more. If something in the scene text links out to the compendium, this is where it lands. More on this later!

• Assets: Maps, handouts, and artwork crafted by the Eidolon team, organized by scene. Pull these up on the fly to show your players or just use them to set the mood for yourself.

• Dice: A built-in dice roller for when you don't have your physical dice handy (or you just want the table to stop questioning your rolls).

• Combat: An initiative tracker that keeps the order of battle clear for both players and monsters. Add combatants, track turns, and keep the chaos organized.

• Party: A quick-reference panel for your players' key stats. HP, saving throws, whatever matters most at the table. Keep an eye on your crew without breaking the scene.

• Campaign Log: Add notes for each session as you run them. Jot down what happened, what the players did, what you want to remember for next time. It's your running record of the adventure as it actually unfolded at your table.

• Calendar: Track time in-universe with a fully functional fantasy calendar, complete with special events and rollable weather. You can swap between different calendar systems in Settings.

• Notebook: Your private scratch pad. DM notes, reminders, half-formed ideas, anything that doesn't fit somewhere else lives here.

• Community: A place where previous DMs share tips, warnings, and clever tricks on what worked and what didn't. Wisdom from the veterans. (Coming Soon)

• Familiar: Meet Flax. Your helpful little guide lives here, ready to troubleshoot, clarify, and point you in the right direction whenever you hit a snag mid-session. (Coming Soon)

• Scheduling: A place to plan and track your upcoming sessions, so the campaign actually keeps moving. (Coming Soon)

• Settings: Customize your Helm layout, switch calendar systems, and make the workspace feel like yours.

.... Okay... that's kind of all I had for you here! You can go back now.

This scene takes place in the Taproom

As the scene begins:

• Gundren Rockseeker is asleep at the bar.

• Renna Goresy is in the kitchen (soon to arrive behind the bar)

• Rubyis asleep by the fireplace

• Cakeis waking up on the bar.

When the adventure begins, read or paraphrase:

Ask the players to introduce and describe their characters. Then, read or paraphrase:

This scene takes place in the Taproom and Kitchen if the players choose to explore that far.

As the players are waiting for breakfast:

• Gundren Rockseeker is asleep at the bar.

• Renna Goresy is in the Kitchencooking.

• Rubyis asleep at the fireplace.

• Cakeis relaxing at the bar.

While waiting for their breakfast, the players can explore the Green Goat Inn as they please.

This scene takes place in the Taproom and Kitchen

Before the players are interrupted:

• Gundren Rockseeker is at the bar.

• Renna Goresy and Rubychasing Flaximundar in the kitchen.

• Cakeis relaxing on the bar.

When this scene begins, read or paraphrase:

If awake, Gundren urges the players to investigate and assist, entering the kitchen alone if ignored.

If the players enter the kitchen, read or paraphrase:

Ask the players to roll imitative, and roll initiative for each other creature present.

This scene takes place in the Taproom

Before the players are interrupted:

• Gundren Rockseeker is with the party.

• Renna Goresy is at the bar

• Ruby and Cakeare around the taproom depending on the resolution of A1c. The Dragon in the Kitchen

Once calmed, Flax attempts to seek out Gundren and ask his help in finding his hoard, sharing his Loud Knowledge “Iomandra’s Visit” and his Quiet Knowledge “The Stolen Hoard” and “Flax’s Anxiety” when helpful or relevant.

This scene takes place on the way to The Sleeping Tower

As this scene begins:

• Flax and Gundren are traveling with the party

As the players depart the Green Goat Inn, Flax leads them toward Leilon’s southeast gate. Read or paraphrase:

If he’s leading the players, Flax trots ahead of them, anxiously glancing over his shoulder to ensure they’re still there while townsfolk gawk and stare at him

While traveling, Flax urges the players to hurry, his feet prancing nervously on the road. (“My hoard could be anywhere,” he whimpers. “And I need to get it back soon.”) If he hasn’t already, Flax can share his Loud Knowledge “Iomandra’s Visit.”

As the players approach the southeast gate, read or paraphrase:

As the players travel, a curious Flax asks the players about themselves, beginning with whichever player has shown him the most kindness. Flax’s questions might include:

• “Who are you? Where are you from?”

• “What’s your favorite food? What’s your favorite game?”

• “Are you an adventurer? Have you ever found treasure? Have you ever slain a monster?”

• (To a player carrying a visible weapon) “Are you good with that? It looks dangerous!”

• (To a player carrying a visible instrument) “What’s that? How do you use it?”

Ten minutes after the players depart Leilon, read or paraphrase:

If the players have befriended him, Flax shouts “Finally!”, his wings wriggling excitedly. He then turns to the players and asks, with puppy-dog eyes, “Race you there?”

If the players accept Flax’s challenge, he races them to the tower. (Use the Race rules to run this race.) This race has the following waypoints:

If Flax wins, he whoops happily and darts through the air in joy. Decrease his Anxiety Die by 1.

If Flax loses, he congratulates the victor, either cheerfully (if it was a close race) or disappointingly (if it wasn’t).

This scene takes place in The Sleeping Tower, specifically the Tower Exterior

As this scene begins:

• Flax and Gundren are with the party

Upon arrival, Flax excitedly welcomes the players to “his lair”—though he deflates immediately afterward, adding morosely, “for now, at least.”

If asked, or if relevant or appropriate, Flax might share his Loud Knowledge “Flax’s Lair” and “The Rat Warrens.”