Candlekeep Mysteries: The Price of Beauty

Beauty sometimes is not skin deep but an illusion to disguise something truly ugly.

This was a 5e Dungeons & Dragons side quest where I played as a player.

Candlekeep as a campaign does not work all that well, but as side adventures these adventures are perfect. Each adventure is its own thing and can slide easily into your existing campaign. The Price of Beauty is a perfect example of a nice mystery that can be added to most campaigns. This 5th-level adventure was written by Mark Hulmes and developed and edited by Scott Fitzgerald Gray.

The mystery starts with the characters learning of the missing dwarf Falthrax. This can happen in many ways, in our campaign the acolytes learned of the party and they asked us to find their missing friend. You can have the party discover the mystery and the book in whatever fashion works for your campaign. While investigating the disappearance of Falthrax we came across the book in the library where he had been spending much of his time before his disappearance.

The adventure really gets going once the doorway to the Temple of the Restful Lily is found. It is in a pocket dimension of the feywild. As the DM, you can have the Restful Lily as full or empty of guests as you like. There are eight guests provided in the adventure for you to use. You can use them as written, as jumping-off points, or create your own guests.

The real stars of the adventure are the three owners of the Restful Lily and their underlings. Adventurers will have to peel away the layers of the mystery to find the missing dwarf and discover the evil that has taken over the Restful Lily. There are allies, but the players will have to be careful with whom they trust.

The players will have to use role-playing encounters to learn what they can from the owners, employees, and guests. They will have to sneak around when the opportunities arise to learn what will not be told to them. There are also chances to meet those that have undergone the special treatment.

I cannot praise this adventure enough. It has everything I love about playing D&D with a mystery to solve, great role-playing opportunities, and an epic final fight. We completed it in two sessions of about three or four hours each. It broke nicely into the investigation in session one and then the fight that took up all of session two.

How it Played

Our party consisted of Lyrie (elven fey wanderer ranger), Chai (tiefling mastermind rogue), and Hops (harengon conjurer wizard). We are a group of players that really enjoy role-playing, but aren’t afraid to roll up our sleeves and fight it out with a bunch of monsters. In other words, we were perfectly suited for this adventure. This is the adventure that we as players talk the most about.

I will admit we went into the Temple of the Restful Lilly a little too hot. We asked way too many questions at the front desk about Falthrax and had the owners and their minions on alert. We soon softened our approach and became guests of the temple.

We were able to slowly unlock the mystery of the Restful Lily and by the end of our first session, we knew what we were up against. The problem was how could a party of three 5th-level adventurers defeat a coven of hags and their minions?

There is something uniquely exciting about preparing for a battle where you know as players that you are outclassed by the enemy. We knew our only chance was to break the coven as quickly as possible and to get as many allies as we could. We got Cyrena to help us and we needed to get one of the hags into her pool. Greensong was the hag that was closest and was thus nominated.

The plan went thusly, Hops would cast summon fey in one of the changing rooms while Lyrie distracted Greensong with questions about her upcoming treatment. Chai was also in one of the changing rooms. Hops would try to charm the hag with the summoned fey and Lyrie would guide or push the hag into the naiad’s pool. We would use entangle to block the door from the garden.

The fight started off going our way with quick thinking by Chai and poor dice rolls by the hags. Greensong died during the first round which broke the coven and gave the party a chance. The rest of the fight was a slog that ranged throughout the grounds. The last surviving hag almost got away, but Chai’s player figured out that she was disguised as one of our allies.

In the end, we barely survived, each character had a moment (or two) to shine, and we had so much fun.

What was Changed

Not much was changed, except the hook, and the adventure was run as written. The DM had only three other guests in the Restful Lily for us to interact with and learn a bit more about the place.

We have been going back and forth between Tales of the Yawning Portal and Candlekeep, which gives us a nice mixture of role-playing mysteries and intense dungeon crawls.

The Adventures the party has gone on so far:

• The Sunless Citadel (We started this as 1st level characters and leveled up to 3rd level)

• The Forge of Fury (Started at 3rd level and leveled up to 5th-level)

• The Price of Beauty (Started at 5th level and leveled up to 6th-level)

• Sarah of Yellowcrest Manor (leveled up to 7th-level)

• White Plume Mountain (leveled up to 8th-level)

My Rating

Ratings are not about quality, but quantity. A low number means very little or none of something, while a high number means that it is the main focus of the adventure.

Roleplaying: 10 - Lots of chances to use those role-playing chops to try and find out what evil lies in the heart of the Restful Lilly.

Combat: 10 - There is not much fighting, but the final fight is epic.

Exploring: 5 - There is not much to explore, but it is important that the players snoop around to find out what won’t be told to them.