The opening
A flash flood traps the characters in a tea house near Petra. When the water drains, people at the public taps begin speaking in the voices of dead relatives. A local guide named Dus offers to show the party the ancient channels before officials seal the site.
The channels carry whispers instead of water. Dus knows which tomb facades hide overflow chambers and warns the party never to answer a voice that knows their childhood name. He casts no reflection in the flooded stone.
What the party is trying to do
Reach the main diversion gate, stop the voices from spreading, and keep the next storm from tearing through Petra.
A route through the campaign
- Climb a cliff channel while floodwater repeats the final memories of drowned travelers.
- Enter a reservoir lined with contracts between Nabataean engineers and something called the Lord of the Mountain.
- Catch Dus opening a sealed gate with a word no living guide should know.
- Choose whether to return stolen memory jars to grieving families or use them to repair the water system.
- Reach the storm vault as Dus steps into the flood and takes the form of Dushara.
Possible endings
- Defeat Dushara and help the city survive with ordinary engineering.
- Negotiate a covenant that gives the living control over whose memories are kept.
- Release the storm vault and let the dead speak once before the water runs clear.
History and invention
Petra was a Nabataean caravan center whose channels, tunnels, dams, cisterns, and reservoirs supported a large settlement in an arid region. Its monuments include rock cut tombs and temples. The memory water and bound storm spirit are fictional changes made for the adventure.
Content notes: drowning danger, grief, memory loss.
I would move the reveal in Stormvault of the Red Canyons one session earlier and let the players spend longer deciding what to do with it.
The choice to negotiate a covenant that gives the living control over whose memories are kept would absolutely split my table. Perfect.
The part where the party must climb a cliff channel while floodwater repeats the final memories of drowned travelers gave me the whole first session.
I would give the first clue in Stormvault of the Red Canyons to the least scholarly character. It keeps the mystery from becoming one person reading while everyone waits.
My players would turn the first choice in Stormvault of the Red Canyons into a three hour argument. I mean that as praise.
This would work nicely as a DND campaign for players who enjoy investigation but still want a clear objective. Stormvault of the Red Canyons gives them both.
The desert adventure mood in Stormvault of the Red Canyons is exactly what my group likes.
My version of Stormvault of the Red Canyons would lean harder into survival through cooperation.
One change I might make to Stormvault of the Red Canyons: let the helpful NPC save somebody early. The later betrayal hurts more when the kindness was real.
For a D&D campaign idea, Stormvault of the Red Canyons leaves a surprising amount of room for the party to wreck the plan in a useful way.
We played a tabletop RPG adventure in Nabataean Petra last year, and the place did half the storytelling for us. This outline understands that.
I would ask each player what their character believes about memory and ownership before session one.
The best part of Stormvault of the Red Canyons is that the antagonist can be right about one important thing and still be impossible to support.
public resources is such a strong pressure point for this story.
The second campaign beat in Stormvault of the Red Canyons is the one I would build the trailer around: Enter a reservoir lined with contracts between Nabataean engineers and something called the Lord of the Mountain.
Saving Stormvault of the Red Canyons for our next campaign.
That Nabataean Petra backdrop is doing real work here. It does not feel pasted onto a generic dungeon.
I would keep the real history notes for after each Stormvault of the Red Canyons session. My players love checking what was true once the spoilers no longer matter.
The job in Stormvault of the Red Canyons is to reach the main diversion gate, stop the voices from spreading, and keep the next storm from tearing through petra. There is a nasty moral problem inside that objective.
Session zero for Stormvault of the Red Canyons: ask everyone what their character would never trade for safety. Then bring those answers back near the ending.
The 6 to 9 sessions length feels right for Stormvault of the Red Canyons. Enough room to build suspicion without losing the thread.
I ran something adjacent to Stormvault of the Red Canyons, but the party trusted the wrong faction almost immediately. I would keep that possibility open here too.
I would open Stormvault of the Red Canyons right in Nabataean Petra and let the party find the first clue before anyone explains it.
I can already hear my group arguing over whether to defeat dushara and help the city survive with ordinary engineering.
Stormvault of the Red Canyons feels playable rather than merely clever. I know what the party is doing, what can go wrong, and where I can improvise.