Azural: The Anvil Road | 5e | Weekly | Sandbox | Levels 1-20
The Anvil Road grows more dangerous; with every mile, another knot comes loose. Choose which to unravel. Prove this road still forges heroes.
$20.00
/ Session
Details
Weekly / Wednesday - 2:30 AM UTC
Session Duration / 3 hours
Campaign Length / 45+ Sessions
1 / 6 Seats Filled
Report Adventure
StartPlaying Money Back Guarantee
If your game doesn't happen, we guarantee a refund. Just reach out to StartPlaying Support. Refund Policy
Meet your party members
1/6
About the adventure
The Anvil Road remembers your name before you do. It watches every promise, every failed escort, every bargain struck beside a dying fire. The Anvil Road is a frontier fantasy campaign in Azural where the road itself feels like a living force; hungry, judgmental, and impossible to ignore. Starting at level 1 in the dusty outpost of Arazar, you begin as hired blades taking rough work for rough pay. Together we will craft an epic tale where survival, reputation, and choice are all measured by what the road chooses to carry forward. At first, it tests you with small things. Bandits in the grasslands. Missing cargo. Petty disputes that turn bloody before dawn. But the Anvil Road is never content with playing it small. Convoys begin to vanish, raiders strike with impossible precision, and whispers spread that someone is teaching the road to betray the people who depend on it. This is not just a place you travel through. The Anvil Road is a witness, a judge, and sometimes an accomplice. Every contract you accept, every caravan you swear to protect, and every side you take in a roadside feud races ahead of you to the next inn, the next camp, the next frightened town. Back the wrong shipment and the Violet Record may write your failure into history. Cross the wrong clergy and the road may suddenly feel a lot longer, colder, and less forgiving. The deeper you go, the more the road begins to reveal its wounds. Beneath the trade wars, the failing blessings, and the border politics lies something older: tears in the weave of the world, things that grow where they shouldn’t, and a stolen crown that covets a secret buried so deep that history itself has gone quiet around it. The first knot is fraying. The Anvil Road knows it. Soon, so will you. There is an imprisoned truth rattling its cage, a truth that you can choose to subdue or set free. You will discover it through survival, investigation, negotiation, and the consequences of your own ambition. You decide whether the Anvil Road becomes a lifeline, a graveyard, or the first crack in a lie that has endured for millennia. The tone is tense, grounded, and character-driven. Combat is dangerous and tactical, but so are route planning, social pressure, and deciding which powers deserve your loyalty. This campaign is for players who want thoughtful roleplay, meaningful choices, and characters willing to find out what the road demands and what it gives back. Characters that want to forge a legacy from humble beginnings. Characters ready to answer the call of the Anvil Road. If you’re ready to see what the Anvil Road forges you into, step into the heat and we'll shape your story together.
Game style
Realm Building
Sandbox / Open World
Tactical / Crunchy
Combat Heavy
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
Less than a year on StartPlaying
Highly rated for: Storytelling, Inclusive, Sets the Mood
About me
Hello there!! I’m Mike, the GM of Shared Legends. I’m a long-time gamer, a huge fan of RPGs, and a single digit handicap on the golf course. From Willow to Final Fantasy to Diablo to the Elder Scrolls, I love and cherish them all. And while my experience with TTRPGs came much later in life, I knew from my first session as a player that the GM-life is for me. I admit my first real experiences with D&D was with Baldur’s Gate 3 and then a table GM’ed by a co-worker that only lasted until level 4. Since then I’ve GM’ed half a dozen light-hearted, comedic one-shots and have a 6-player weekly campaign, based out of the Radiant Citadel, that has run every week for the last 8 months. When I commit to running a campaign, the commitment is sacred. The time, effort, & emotion my players commit to my games is precious to me, & is a sign of their confidence in the experience & story we create together. As a GM, my mission is to create a space where stories can be safely: - Shared, - Created, - Explored, & - Shared. I create spaces & experiences that give my players a place to find & express their voice. Spaces for them to tell their stories that need to be told. Creating epic journeys where stories intertwine & evolve into something greater than each individual arc. None of us go through our story alone, by creating spaces where we can share in the stories together. A space to explore the unknowns in the stories we build together. Stories of greatness, heroism, trial & triumph. When I'm not a GM, I'm a proud dad of a 6-year-old, a 3-year-old and a dog. I've recently rediscovered my love of storytelling and creating stories with others. If you want to hear about more about why I love being a GM take a few minutes to watch my Why I'm a GM video: https://youtu.be/FhAaHAGwswI If you're still reading and interested in finding out more about me, feel free to hop in my Discord: https://discord.gg/rxQjqWmeyr
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
Player options can be selected from the 2024 Players Handbook, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything & Xanathar's Guide to Everything. There are 6 homebrew backgrounds I have created based on the worship of one of the 6 major gods of Azural. The backgrounds and basic information about the gods will be provided before Session 0. Youtuber Mystic Arts did a video on Knife Theory that gives me the GM 'weapons' to integrate into the story and stab you with. Try to include 5 to 7 knives in your backstory so we can build a deeper story together. Youtube video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWtDBHYl06E&t=55s Characters will be starting at level 1 and can be created from the template linked below. All the major settings have been set in the template. Choose Starting Equipment for both your class and background, also have something memorable your character keeps with them at all times. https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/163348089 Characters will be imported into Foundry prior to session 0 where final tweaks to the characters can be made. If one of the backgrounds based on the Azuran Gods is chosen, they will be added in Foundry.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
Players will need to have a D&D Beyond account for initial character to be uploaded into Foundry. Players will need to join my discord server located here: https://discord.gg/KT3XEWfH6x Foundry is accessed through your standard web browser by going to the following link: http://142.59.121.66:30000/ I recommend bookmarking that link. Also please note, if I don't have the Foundry server up and running on my computer the link will not work correctly. We will have a Foundry tutorial during Session 0 for anyone not familiar with the platform.
What Mike, the GM of Shared Legends brings to the table
My goal as a GM is to create an experience for you, the players at my table. Pairing ambient music, custom battle maps & a vast array of monsters selected to fit the atmosphere & energy of each scene, I aim to make each and every session a memorable experience. I make attempts to create voices for NPCs but my vocal range only goes to about 5 or 6 characters. I do give each a distinct personality and their own motivations and goals to build their characters from. No Safe Roads will be played as a Structured Sandbox. Players will have the choice of where and what to tackle next but time and action will pass as they complete each choice. What may have been a small threat 3 or 4 sessions ago has grown to a significant threat as while you prioritized something else. I use Rules as Written as the backbone to my tables but the Rule of Cool has it's place as well. Don't expect every encounter to provide ideal conditions for every player to fight to their full potential. I build encounters and mini-arcs to allow the spotlight to shift from player to player organically throughout the campaign.
Homebrew rules
1. Healing Potions: If drank as an action, gives maximum healing. If drank as a bonus action, healing is rolled based on potion rarity. 2. Drinking a potion is a bonus action 3. Critical hits for both PCs & NPCs are max base damage + rolled crit dice. 4. Death-saving throws are rolled blind to the GM as just a d20 roll. Foundry still tracks your death saves on your character sheet even if you roll blind to the GM. 5. Failed Death-saves only reset to 1 until a Short Rest is taken 6. Primed for Combat: A nat20 on Initiative rolls give PCs & NPCs advantage on their first attack.
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Platforms used
Safety
How Mike, the GM of Shared Legends creates a safe table
There is a link below to a Line & Veils document prior to Session zero. During session zero I will cover what has been identified in the documents. I have a module in Foundry installed that allows for easy anonymous X-cards to be displayed if what is happening in game starts to approach something that is potentially triggering. We will take a bathroom/refreshment break halfway through the session but a break can be called for at any point of the content is triggering. The aim of the game is fun and while some of the content below can be expected in all games, it won't be glorified or gratuitous in nature. There won't be overly graphic descriptions of gore, injury, or any identified trigger. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ieqHoTJ_TFIZl4-hRPPVIIgFFkkQ_VJixpTV7kzJ_9Y/
Content warnings
Safety tools used