I took a break from grading book reports and pulled out the Four Evil Brothers’ Fortress map (FEBF), a blank sheet of graph paper, a pencil, a couple of black markers, and an eraser. Some time later, I had remapped FEBF’s northwest quadrant, as you can see below.
I tweaked the layout a bit, most obviously by adding some thickness to the walls. FEBF’s exterior wall is 5 feet thick. Interior walls are usually about half that, although there are few places where the walls are thicker. I also changed the map scale from 10 feet to a square to five feet a square. The quadrant barely fits on the paper, but it fits.
I left off all the doors. The original write-up included brown puddings as wandering monsters, and brown puddings eat wood and leather. Given how long FEBF has been abandoned, it’s reasonable that brown puddings would have devoured most wood and leather in the complex. FEBF was built in a swamp, and I like the idea of swamp monsters more or less having free run of an ancient fortress of evil. It’ll change the ecology of the place a bit, I’m sure.
I also like the idea of a dungeon crawl without doors. Nothing to close or open. Nothing to barricade or listen at. Adventurers with light sources will unintentionally cast illumination into shadowy corners. The thick walls, all made of stone, baffle or block sound. Add details related to years of humidity, darkness, moisture, and rot, and the entire place is likely rank with mold and fungus.
How long before explorers develop respiratory problems?
In the past few weeks, I finally got my library remodeled. New shelving installed, new paint, new floor, better use of space, et cetera. It’s a roomier, brighter place now with more exposed wall on which to display framed art, my Greyhawk maps, and a selection of LPs above my turntable. During the reshelving process, I found 18 pages stapled in the upper lefthand corner. The pages summarize a dungeon that I wrote some time after I was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina (so, after the summer of 1985). The dungeon itself is written for 1E AD&D. After this paragraph, you’ll see a column of pics of the dungeon. Each pic embiggens when clicked upon (caveat: the pictures might not open in a new tab).
The dungeon had an poetric intro, which I’m pretty sure I wrote in the form of an epic limerick. I strung together several limericks that told the story of four evil brothers who built a fortress in a swamp. Mondo, a paladin, assembled a team of heroes, who assaulted the evil brothers’ fortress, emerging victorious but only after many goodfolk fell in battle. Unfortunately, I no longer have that epic limerick, thus making the world a poetically poorer place.
The fortress itself is divided into five parts. Each brother lived in one of the sections accessed via tower (the circular rooms to the northwest, north, east, and southwest). Each tower leads into a quadrant (loosely speaking), and each quadrant is not directly accessible from any other quadrant. Each brother had his own motif, and the chambers in his quadrant reflect that motif. For example, one brother was a thief and a glutton, and his quadrant included a sumptuous dining hall, extensive kitchens, and a collection of treatises on lockpicking. Each brother also had a special item that enabled them to control the maze in the center of the fortress.
I don’t recall the exact workings of the maze, and that description isn’t in the dungeon’s write-up. I remember that each brother had a special item (which are mentioned in the dungeon’s write-up). These items could somehow be used to change the configuration of the maze. Why and how? No idea. There might have been some sort of dimension travel possible when the last maze configuration was unlocked through the use of all four items at once.
Looking the Wandering Monster Chart, a few things become clear. First, I used the 1E AD&D’s Monster Manual II method to construct a random encounter table. Using 1d8+1d12, the table produces results from 2 to 20, “with a large flat spot of equal probability in the 9-13 range” (to quote MM2, page 138). The more common monsters go in the slots near the center of the table. As one moves closer to 2 and 20, the monsters become increasingly rare. Returning to the Wandering Monster Chart, I see that there is a death knight in the dungeon, but that fearsome monster isn’t likely to be encountered just wandering around the place. The most common encounter is “no encounter”, with hordes of giant rats or a solitary mist horror being somewhat less common.
Also, with at least a small nod to a sensible dungeon ecology, most of the monsters are undead, not particularly intelligent, and/or small enough to access the fortress via the narrow arrow slit windows that pierce its walls. The major villains in the fortress, based on the Wandering Monster Chart, would be the aforementioned death knight as well as a ghoul lord and a night hag (whose presence hints at the dimension travel angle that is perhaps connected to the maze).
Take a look at the stat blocks. Notice the circled portion. After HD and hp, there is a bonus. This is something I picked up from gaming with Lewis Pulsipher, game designer and contributor to the Fiend Folio and Dragon magazine. A giant centipede has a +1 to-hit bonus. By contrast, the night hag (not shown) has a +8 to-hit bonus. THAC0 worked like this:
Character’s THAC0 – (d20 +/- all relevant modifiers) = AC hit
So, a character with a THAC0 of 18 scores a 15 on his to-hit roll. This hits AC 3 (18 minus 15). Lew’s method kept everyone’s THAC0 at 20 with a variable attack bonus equal to the difference between 20 and the creature’s THAC0. So, a night hag has a THAC0 of 12, and 20 minus 12 equals 8, so a night hag has a +8 to-hit bonus. (This also means I either goofed the giant centipede’s attack bonus or else I wanted robust giant centipedes.) Using Lew’s system, THAC0 ends up like this:
20 – (d20 +/- all relevant modifiers) = AC hit
So, if that night hag scores a modified 22 attack roll (14 + her bonus of 8), then she hits AC -2 (20 minus 22). Lew’s system sped up combat by keeping the minuend at a constant 20. This system also foreshadows 3E D&D’s base attack bonus system, which I’ve long maintained is just THAC0 standing on its head.
In the last picture, we see handwritten notes about the dungeon. For whatever reason, those last pages never got typed. What likely happened is this. I had a leave coming up, probably for Christmas. I knew gaming with my old group from high school would be part of that leave, and, therefore, I needed something to DM. So, I drew the map, and then used one of the few military computers I had access to where I worked. The paper on which the print appears was fed through a dot-matrix printer in a continuous feed. I can see where I separated the pages and removed the left and right strips along the perforations. Then, I ran out of time, and so I hand-wrote the rest of the dungeon while on leave but before we met to play.
I remember running the adventure. There are a few marks here and there in the text that indicate which encounters the players faced. I fondly recall the ambush on the party by the githyanki warband (yet another dimension travel hint), but I’m not sure what happened after that. The githyanki might have been the encounter that broke the party, especially since the githyanki managed to catch the PCs by surprise in a crossfire of rebounding lightning bolts.
Let’s take a look at cloud giants from 1981 to today, specifically focusing on the giants’ cloud castles. We start with a survey of the cloud giant across five editions and three decades, ending with OSRIC, which largely repeats 1E AD&D.
D&D Expert: “[Cloud giants] live in castles in the sides of mountains or atop masses of clouds.” Cloud giants have no magical abilities.
1E AD&D: “Unlike the commoner sorts of giants, cloud giants usually reside in crude castles built atop mountains or on magical cloud islands.” Cloud-dwelling cloud giants can levitate.
2E AD&D: “The majority of cloud giants live on cloud-covered mountain peaks in temperate and sub-tropical areas. These giants make their lairs in crude castles. Only 10% of good cloud giants live in castles on enchanted clouds. …. Cloud lairs are fantastic places with giant-sized gardens of fruit trees. According to legend, some giants mine their cloud islands for small chunks of the purest silver.” Cloud-dwelling cloud giants can levitate and create fog clouds and walls of fog.
3E D&D: “The majority of cloud giants dwell on cloud-covered mountain peaks, making their lairs in crude castles. …. About 10% of the population builds castles on enchanted cloud islands and tends to be isolated from other cloud giants.” These cloud giants have magical abilities similar to 2E AD&D cloud giants.
5E D&D: “[Cloud giants] dwell in castles on high mountain peaks, or on the solid clouds that once held their fiefs. Still gracing the skies on occasion, these magic clouds are a lasting remnant of the giants’ lost empires.” Descriptions of cloud islands include “extraordinary gardens” with giant-sized fruits and vegetables. Cloud-dwelling cloud giants “keep griffons, perytons, and wyverns” in much the same way some “nobles keep an aerie for hunting hawks”. 5E D&D cloud giants possess the most magical abilities. They can detect magic; create fog clouds and light; use feather fall, fly, misty step, and telekinesis; can control weather; and assume gaseous form.
OSRIC: “Cloud giants usually live in giant castles at high elevations. When not high up in the mountains, their castles on on clouds given substance by magic.” Cloud-dwelling cloud giants can levitate.
In 1E, 2E, 3E, and OSRIC, only cloud-dwelling giants have magical abilities, the base of which is the ability to levitate, which makes getting to and from their cloud islands a bit easier. Only one in ten cloud giants have this magical ability, and these cloud giants tend to have higher intelligence compared to their ground-bound kin. D&D Expert cloud giants cannot levitate, which means those that dwell in the clouds must reach them via more mundane means. With 5E, all cloud giants possess a range of magical abilities, most of which fit the theme of living in the clouds. (I’m a bit skeptical of telekinesis, which I’m think ought to be replaced with gust of wind.)
If we ignore secondary sources, such as material related to the Forgotten Realms, the origin of cloud islands remains undefined. Did cloud giants create them? Did cloud islands occur naturally? Did some other creature create the cloud islands for the cloud giants, or did cloud giants conquer the cloud islands? I like 5E’s idea that the cloud islands once formed a sort of feudal cloud nation; this idea probably originated with the Forgotten Realms, which is 5E’s default setting.
From Whence Cloud Islands?
Ages ago, followers of Yan-C-Bin, the Prince of Evil Air, opened gates between Elemental Air and the Prime Material Plane. Through those gates floated cloud islands, which Yan-C-Bin’s most powerful clerics and magic-users anchored to mountain peaks and then enslaved the mountain peoples of the region. Over a period of many decades, a combination of slave labor and magic built Hua-B-Nroog, a series of fortresses, monasteries, cathedrals, and towns that formed a cloud nation devoted to the Prince of Evil Air.
From Whence Cloud Giants?
Some cloud giant chieftains looked up from their mountaintop lairs and grew envious. Others looked down at the enslaved mountain people and grew angry. The disparate cloud giant clans formed an army, gathered allies, and went to war against Yan-C-Bin’s followers. After years of savage fighting, the cloud giants emerged victorious. They took Hua-B-Nroog as their own.
From Whence Civil War?
From the start of the war against Hua-B-Nroog, cloud giant chieftains had divided aims. Some fought to free the enslaved mountain peoples from the tyranny of the Prince of Evil Air. Others, however, sought to impose their own tyranny. Each side used the other as a means to their different ends. When the war ended and peace began, the tension between cloud giant factions increased to the breaking point. Civil war engulfed Hua-B-Nroog.
One freedom-loving cloud giant hero fought his way into the heart of Hua-B-Nroog’s largest cathedral. There he shattered the Calming Eye, a magical gemstone that kept Hua-B-Nroog’s various islands stable during even the most violent storms. Other good giants sundered the mountaintop anchors. Hua-B-Nroog broke apart, its cloud islands scattered by the winds.
The twelve days of Christmas are almost over, which means Santa’s Holiday Bag of PDFs for 5E D&D will be going away soon. If you’ve not gotten your bundle yet, there’s still time. Also, The Lady in the Shoe, a short adventure for 5E D&D, received a four-star rating today. That’s cool. I dig four stars. I’m a bit curious, however, since it’s just a rating, not a review, but still that’s four stars.
In homefront gaming news, our Saturday game, diminished to a mere two players (excluding me as GM) finished our year-long d20 Modern/Call of Cthulhu campaign that featured time travel, mind/body swapping, space stations, the return of the Old Ones, and rocket-building followers of Nyarlathotep working with Nazis in a secret base within an Egyptian pyramid.
Grant and Kelly, the last two active PCs, infiltrated the pyramid. Using a combination of stealth, memory-clouding magic, and disguises, they made their way to the payload module of the rocket. Kelly being a literal rocket scientist modified the rocket’s telemetry so that it would not complete its decades long flight toward the Sun to create the apocalyptic solar event that started the campaign in our somewhat distant future. Grant and Kelly realized they had little chance to sneaking back out of the pyramid without being detected. So, they concealed themselves in the rocket, which blasted off on schedule. Grant and Kelly died by the time the rocket left the Earth’s atmosphere, confident that they had averted the end of the world that they had witnessed from the decks of Space Station Alpha.
Our next Saturday campaign kicks off in a couple of weeks. It looks like we’re turning to Savage Worlds with elements of Broken Earth adapted to what will likely be a sandbox-style campaign. From the Broken Earth Player’s Guide, the main focus will likely be on the equipment and the community building rules. I’ve not read through much of the Broken Earth core rules, so I don’t how much that will come into play, but since I’m not GMing, I guess I don’t need to worry about that too much.
I’ve not abandoned the Cliff of Crypts. I’ve completed maps for each level of the crypts, including ghoul tunnels leading to caves. I’ll likely use the maps for a new adventure, but at the moment I’m up in the air about the adventure’s system. Not sure where I’m going to land, but possibly my feet will alight upon For Gold & Glory.
Nota Bene: The links in the previous three paragraphs are affiliate links. If you clink and buy, I get a few pennies.
Last post, I mentioned the eerie Cliff of Crypts and the Ossuary Coven, three undead hags who possess terrible magic power and know the secrets of crafting magic weapons from bone and sinew. It sounds like a good idea, so I whipped out some graph paper, pencils, and Paper Mate pens. Here’s the initial results:
As you can see, there are four levels within the cliff. Each level is the final unresting place of important members of the upper five social classes of the people who built the crypts. The most important social class occupies the uppermost level, and each subsequent lower level represents a lower social class. The priest and warrior levels are connected by means of a ladder, which represents that these two classes shared leadership and that mobility between the two classes was possible.
The lower three levels represent the traders, scribes, and merchants. The traders were distinct from the merchant class by virtue of the former voyaging to other lands in order to bring in wealth. Merchants did not travel. They represented mercantile interests by running shops, warehouses, et cetera. The scribes worked with all of the other classes to ensure accurate records of treaties, laws, accounts, and so on were maintained.
When the crypts were built, the valley had not yet been flooded. Some time ago, torrential rains created enormous mudslides that deforested sections of the valley’s highlands. The resulting logjam blocked the normal course of the valley’s river, creating a lake and flooding the merchant level of the crypts. During the rainy season, water levels in the lake rise sufficiently to flood the scribes’ level as well.
As you can see, I’ve penciled the priests’ level. I leaning toward adding ghoul tunnels in the space around the level. These tunnels could provide other connections to the lower levels as well as natural caves. After all, what’s a crypt complex without claustrophobic ghoul tunnels?
