Our campaign has a world, a route, and a clock. Now it needs people who want contradictory things in dangerous rooms. This is where a campaign stops looking like a travel brochure and begins making threats.

This is part two of the Bells Beneath Blackglass series. You can start with the campaign foundation or download the complete tutorial vault.

Quest 1: Make every location runnable

Use Create more → Location and create the six campaign locations from the route:

  • Gloammarket
  • Lantern Abbey
  • Blackglass Causeway
  • Ossuary of Nine Doors
  • Sunken Bell Foundry
  • Hollow Sun Vault

If you opened the downloadable tutorial vault, choose its custom Location Profile template. If you are building from scratch, start with a plain Location and add the same four headings yourself; Location Profile is part of the tutorial vault, not a built-in template Moonvault secretly forgot to show you.

For each Location, write only four things:

  1. A read-aloud impression.
  2. A purpose in the campaign.
  3. Three discoveries.
  4. One danger or decision.

For Ossuary of Nine Doors, that becomes:

Nine bronze doors rise from the cliff. Behind each, something whispers the name of a different character.

The doors are playable rather than decorative. One opens to a confessed debt. One opens only while every flame is out. One hides Choir Skeletons. One contains a Bellmetal Key inside an empty saint. One sends the party back to Gloammarket a day later.

That is enough material for exploration, improvisation, and consequences. The remaining four doors can become whatever the table provokes.

Now return to The Hollow Sun Crater in Map Room. Edit each named pin from part one and choose the matching Location under Linked page. Open one pin to verify that it navigates to the Location, then check Player preview again so the hidden vault is still hidden.

Ossuary of Nine Doors location page with linked monsters, encounter, lore, and connected places
A useful Location page gives the table an impression, discoveries, decisions, and links to deeper prep. Open the full-size view.

Quest 2: Give NPCs leverage, not biographies

Create five NPC pages:

  • Sister Veyra, the patron who helped found the enemy faction.
  • Toma Wick, a cartographer whose accurate map is technically a forgery.
  • Brindle Rusk, a guide whose daughter is held by the Concord.
  • Iri Ashhand, a rival who wants the foundry more than the apocalypse.
  • Rector Caldus, the villain who wants the Hollow Sun to choose him.

If you are using the tutorial vault, apply its custom NPC Profile template. Otherwise create a plain NPC and add Wants, Knows, Secret, and At the table yourself. The last section is the one you will bless when somebody starts an unexpected conversation.

Sister Veyra’s card reads:

  • Wants: restore dawn without revealing its full price.
  • Knows: the keys, the vault route, and Caldus’s true name.
  • Secret: she founded the Midnight Concord with Caldus.
  • Voice: soft, precise, never uses contractions.
  • Offer: 40 gp now and 80 gp at dawn.
  • Complication: she refuses to lie but answers the narrowest possible question.

We know how to portray her, what she can trade, and what breaks the relationship. Her childhood opinions about turnips can wait for the director’s cut.

Quest 3: Build factions as moving trouble

Create Lantern Abbey and Midnight Concord as Faction pages.

For each, record:

  • A visible belief.
  • A current goal.
  • Methods the players can notice.
  • One internal fracture.
  • Linked NPCs and Locations.

The Lantern Abbey wants the seals restored, offers sanctuary and saint’s wax, and hides the memory-price of dawn. The Midnight Concord wants Caldus crowned, steals keys, wakes guardians, and is already splitting because Iri wants the foundry instead.

Now both factions can act between sessions. If the party waits, the Concord steals another seal. If the party earns Abbey Trust, Veyra reveals the Sun Debt. The campaign moves even when the players spend forty minutes negotiating the resale value of funerary bronze.

Quest 4: Connect pages with Relationships

Open a Location, NPC, Faction, Party, Session, or Encounter that supports structured relationships. In Relationships, type part of a page title in Add relationship, choose the result, and select Add. The relationship chip appears under its page type; use its remove action if you linked the wrong suspicious priest.

On Sister Veyra, add the Lantern Abbey faction, the Lantern Abbey Location, and Gloammarket. The downloadable vault displays the Location as Lantern Abbey 2 so it is distinct from the same-named Faction. The Relationships area shows those durable links, while Outgoing links and Backlinks explain what her prose mentions and which other pages mention her. Choose Open graph when you want a one-hop visual view; busy pages are often easier to audit in the relationship rows and backlink lists.

Use relationships for durable campaign structure:

  • Faction ↔ NPC
  • Location ↔ Encounter
  • Session ↔ Encounter
  • Party ↔ PC
  • NPC ↔ Location

Use ordinary [[wikilinks]] inside prose for clues, mentions, and narrative context. The two systems complement each other: relationships describe campaign structure; links describe what the text says.

Sister Veyra page in Moonvault showing the Add relationship field, faction and location relationship chips, outgoing links, and backlinks
The Relationships workspace separates durable structure from prose links and backlinks, so you can see why a page matters before opening a graph. Open the full-size view.

Quest 5: Prepare monsters once

Create six Monster pages and keep reusable combat truth on those pages:

Monster LV AC HP Table job
Glass Scarab 1 12 4 Steals light and follows silver ink
Ashen Pilgrim 1 12 5 Uses a familiar face to delay the first attack
Choir Skeleton 1 13 4 Silences characters when fighting in a group
Bell Wraith 2 14 9 Hunts spellcasters through walls
Bell Maw 4 15 24 Extinguishes light and drags prey into a furnace
Rector Caldus Ascendant 5 16 32 Multi-stage final villain who advances the toll

Choose Shadowdark on the campaign before creating the monsters. Their structured sheets can then store LV, AC, HP, ATK, movement, alignment, ability modifiers, and traits.

The Bell Maw has two attacks — Bite +5 (1d10) and Chain lash +4 (1d6 and pull near) — plus one rule worth remembering: it can extinguish a carried light instead of dealing damage and heal 1d6 HP.

Keep that reusable statblock clean. Damage, initiative, temporary bonuses, conditions, and nicknames belong to the Encounter participant later.

Bell Maw Shadowdark monster page showing structured combat stats, traits, tactics, and linked encounter
The source Monster page stays reusable while each Encounter stores its own combat snapshot. Open the full-size view.

Quest 6: Turn rewards into table tools

Create Item pages for Lantern of Unspent Dawn, Bellmetal Key, and Saint Orra’s Wax. After the page has Shadowdark campaign context, choose the built-in Shadowdark Item sheet. The downloaded vault also includes an editable Shadowdark Item template for reuse.

In the structured sheet, add a named Roll action, enter its dice formula, and save it with the Item. The lantern carries:

  • Dawn flare: 2d6
  • Kindled mercy: 1d6

The Bellmetal Key has three mutually exclusive uses: open one sealed door, silence one final toll, or shatter to restore a light source. Writing those choices on the Item page turns treasure into campaign structure.

For Sable Quill, create an Ability named Echo Step, give it Shadowdark campaign context, and add a 1d20+3 spellcasting Roll action. Abilities and Items can be linked from PCs, Sessions, Encounters, and loot notes without copying their rules each time.

Quest 7: Reuse the prep you repeat

Choose Create more → Reusable Block and create two block pages. Give each one a title, category, compatible page type, and the Markdown body to copy:

  • Hollow Sun Strong Start for Session pages.
  • Shadowdark Exploration Turn for Session and Location pages.

Open Tools → Block Library or use Cmd/Ctrl+K → Block Library. The library can search blocks, filter by category and compatible page type, and keep create, edit, duplicate, rename, and delete actions together.

To use one, open a compatible page, place the cursor where the section belongs, then choose it from Insert, the command palette, or /block. Moonvault copies the block’s Markdown into the current page. The inserted text is yours to edit; it is not a hidden live reference to the source block.

Moonvault Block Library filtered to Session blocks with strong-start and exploration-turn entries
Block Library organizes small reusable Markdown sections by category and compatible page type. Open the full-size view.

Your campaign can now answer questions

Before preparing sessions, confirm that:

  • Every Location has an impression, discoveries, and a danger.
  • Every NPC has a want, leverage, a secret, and a table voice.
  • Every Faction can act without the party.
  • Structural Relationships connect the cast, places, and conflicts.
  • Monster source pages hold reusable stats.
  • Items and Abilities carry their own roll actions.
  • Reusable Blocks cover prep you genuinely repeat.

In part three, we will put the campaign on a fantasy calendar, prepare all four Sessions, link Encounters, use the prep checklist and Briefing, and build Session Boards that keep the dangerous bits within reach.