Café de Nuit

In my upcoming adventure, the heroes (6 Level 1 characters of diverse classes) are going to infiltrate The Red Academy in order to save their friend from being used in an amoral magical experiment.
Any ideas for the horrors they might face in the way?

The themes I want to feature are:
- Mild body horror (probably in the results of former experiments)
- A dark mirror of school, kinda? Like, ordinary school stuff recontextualized in a dangerous or scary way?
- The setting being obviously magical. Every single bit of it, wherever you look.
- The temptation of dark knowledge. Two of the PCs are newbie students - and growing up in Hazlan, they probably heavily associate magic with depravity. Would they choose morality and friendship, or power, knowledge and self-realization? Or reject their society and seek their own way through the mists?

I also want to follow the template of: combat encounter, puzzle/exploration encounter & roleplay encounter (not neccessarily in this order) & two optional encounters for in case the players decide to be more nosy than needed, ending with a climax encounter that could go either way.

You might like to consider your exit strategy, too.
The PCs might need allies to get the poor victim out of not just the Red Academy, but Hazlan entirely.

If you're interested, in Quoth the Raven #28's Conferences of Victor Gagné's "Who's Doomed", I give a writeup on Amourette Schlosser and her qabal in Hazlan. They might be unusually helpful - for later considerations.

As for body horror, please consider Darkenbeasts: regular animals twisted by foul magic into winged horrors. A touch of daylight restores their true form, but where can you find that in a dungeon?
Darkenbeasts were detailed in Monsters of Faerûn, whoch is where Hazlik came from.

Rock of the Fraternity wrote: Tue Nov 04, 2025 8:25 am You might like to consider your exit strategy, too.
The PCs might need allies to get the poor victim out of not just the Red Academy, but Hazlan entirely.

If you're interested, in Quoth the Raven #28's Conferences of Victor Gagné's "Who's Doomed", I give a writeup on Amourette Schlosser and her qabal in Hazlan. They might be unusually helpful - for later considerations.

Oh, I have an idea for this.
There'd be two roleplay encounters with other, unrelated infiltrators. One will be an agent of an underground organisation rebelling against Hazlik - that's secretly sponsered by Nova Vassan organisations as retribution for Hazlik banning the Church of the Lawgiver in his domain, and is, as expected, very anti-magic - trying to persuade them to join his/her/their cause; The other will be a known adventurer (The obvious choice would be van Richten, but I'm debating on whether to introduce him so early in the campaign, or foreshadow him as 'the hero who disappeared a few years ago and is probably dead' and bring him back in a much later arc to create mystery - in this case I suppose I could replace him with the WF twins, but it wouldn't give the same vibe... I'm basically trying to decide between hitting them with my best roleplay oppurtunities right at the beginning and keeping something for later.) enlightening them about the nature of Ravenloft and offering a dangerous path toward freedom.
And the climax encounter?
It's going to be against one of the teachers.
The student characters' favourite one, the one who always believed in them and encouraged them, the one who showed them the wonders magic can do - who happens to also be the one who tortured their friend for the sake of those wonders!
And that's how the encounter could go either way:
- They could convince the teacher (roleplay) to free their friend and keep their foolhardy rescue attempt secret, meaning the wizard and sorcerer can keep study at the academy, the others can go back home to Toyalis, and so-called everything is okay - but in this, they accept the broken system, accept that they'll grow up to participate in similar atrocities. Their friend is safe now, but someone will take her place.
- They could fight the teacher (combat), earning the respect of the rebels by kiling him and getting brought into the underground's base of operations - but to join the rebellion, those with magical abilities will have to swear to never use them again (wouldn't be hard to multiclass, but this is part of the foreshadowing that the rebels are going to be equally bad tyrants if they succeed, simply in an opposite way).
- They could escape the academy (exploration) and walk into the mists with the adventurer, jumpimg head-first into the unknown.

Three possible 'happy endings' to the arc, depending on player choices, each with it's own hook for the next arc !
I would rather have them jump to the next domain, but the resistance could be interesting too. I need to come up with a hook for if they decide to collaborate with the teacher - maybe helping to solve magical disasters across the domain? - though I don't think they would.

So I have a way out.
Three of them.
What I need is ideas for what's hiding within.

Rock of the Fraternity wrote: Tue Nov 04, 2025 8:27 am As for body horror, please consider Darkenbeasts: regular animals twisted by foul magic into winged horrors. A touch of daylight restores their true form, but where can you find that in a dungeon?
Darkenbeasts were detailed in Monsters of Faerûn, whoch is where Hazlik came from.

Okay, I'm using one of those.
Now I have ideas for one combat encounter, two roleplay encounters and the climax encounter.
I need either two puzzles, or one puzzle and one combat.

Any advice on how to run puzzles in dnd?