The D&D Dynasty: The New Path of Alzar the Mighty
 

I've talked before about the issue of Alzar this powerful. How do I do new Alzar stories? Find really high level stories for him? Send him to other planes? Have him fight as the general of an army and conquer?

What is next for our intrepid lawful evil Path Mage?


One of the things I miss is the opportunity to run some interesting modules. He did a bunch of low level adventures, and then blazed quickly to the upper level ones. He didn't spend a lot of time running around in the middle. By the end of the Isle of Dread super campaign, he was doing adventures for people in the high single digits or better. Then toss in the power advance from the Temple of Elemental Evil, and the dose of nasty from the Giants trilogy, the Drow series, and a handful of other adventures underground, plus a handful afterwards, and you have a character who really pushes the level of power. He blew through higher level ones. I missed a bunch of modules that i was hoping to run.


So what now? What happens to Alzar now?


(I wanted to run Alzar through some more modules, especially after playing with young Alzar again in the gamebook dynasty I wrote. How could I do that? It seemed like the best way was to do something heavy handed in the great DM traditions.)





EDIT - Check out post 84 for the Death of Alzar

EDIT2 - Check out - post 366 http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/...&postcount=366 for the Current places/people/history of the ongoing Sand Mire Campaign

Alzar has already created two portals for his complex that open into his large undead holding cell. Each empties as needed into a new location for fast travel of his army horde.

Today Alzar seeks to creating a third portal in the same room, this time opening up into the underdark and just a few miles outside of the Dokkalfar city he visited previously. He intends to drop out roughly 5000 undead, and then invade the city and fully capture and loot the city. Unless someone knows the 6th level Dokkalfar Teleport spell (or something similar) they may not teleport away from the city outside of a mile radius. Alzar has studied the rocks and their effect, and he believes that a portal will cross the boundary that a normal teleport spell will miss.

While establishing his portal the first opening is crafted successfully. Now Alzar needs to build a tunnel mystically to his intended target, which has been inlaid with magical components to receive the other end of the portal.

As he tries to link the two, something happens and the eldritch energy snaps in half. The energy coruscates around him, snapped back like a rubber band. Broken and untethered, the corridor reaches into a nearby alternate Prime Material Plane and Alzar is drawn into it……

Alzar blinks and pulls himself up. He focuses at the world around him. It seems similar enough to Thorasia and the air is easily breathed.

He looks down and is staggered. Where are his things? He is completely naked on this plane. That is embarrassing. He reaches out to his OtherSpace but he cannot access it on this plane. Typical. There are some planes where he is not able to access it. But he does not panic.

Instead, he just tries to leave. He can walk to one of the outer planes that he can survive and move to, and then just walk from there back home to Thorasia….

But it doesn’t work either. He sits down and pauses to consider, and he realizes that his head has been hurting badly all of this time. He has lost the knowledge of most of his spells.

Tied away from his minions, his spellbooks, his abilities, and his plane, where is he? What happened to him? Why are his things gone? Why can’t he remember his skills?

Alzar has arrived on the Prime Material Plane of Hamedh. He has been rolled back twelve years in the journey, and appears as he did twelve years ago.

He currently has memorized these spells:
Sleep, Charm Person, Read Magic, Empathic Control, and Ray of Ondovir

Once those are used up, they are gone, without a spellbook to replace them.

However, Alzar was not physically or mentally rolled back, just in terms of capability. He still remembers everything he did, and kept his skills, and his new sub-class.

Alzar on Hamedh

7th level Fighter (Myrmidon), 3rd level Path Mage (Fivefold Mage)

Lawful Evil
Human

Str: 17
Dex: 12
Con: 10
Wis: 15
Int: 21
Cha: 17

Hit Points: 51
THACO: 14 as Fighter, 20 as Mage
AC: 10
Total XP: 5100
Age 54, Body - 20

Race Abilities:

None Taken

Class Abilities (Cannot use as Fivefold Mage without losing XP gain):

Specialization
Leadership (Alzar can command the tactics, strategy, logistics and more that a large force requires)
3 attacks every 2 rounds


Non-Weapon Proficiencies:

Myrmidon Bonus:

Tactical History 14
Fire-Building 16

Riding 11
Swimming 12
Reading/Writing 13
Survival 14
Blind Fighting
Etiquette 13
Endurance
Heraldry 13
Hunting 10
Fishing 14
Weather Knowledge 10
Orienteering 15

As a Necromancer/Fivefold Mage

Necrology 17
Netherworld Knowledge 14
Herbalism 14
Alchemy 15
Poison Use 11
Ancient Languages 10
Spellcraft 12
Ancient History – 14
Bookbinding – 16
Papermaking - 16
Sage Knowledge: Outer Planes, Inner Planes - 13

Languages – Typic, Sis’sharr, UnderTypic, Kuo-Toa,


Traits:

Empathy
Fast Healer
Precise Memory
Obscure Knowledge


Weapon Proficiencies:

Bonus Kit Specialization:

Battle Axe

Battle Axe
One Handed Weapon Style x2 (-2 AC when using one weapon in combat)
Crossbow
Battle Axe Weapon Mastery
Spear
Dagger

Total with normal battle axe - +3 to hit, +3 to damage, -2 to AC. An additional +1 damage for strength


Staff – Can only use this as a Path Mage


Class Ability:

1). Alzar can control undead as an evil Priest of the same level, and this ability extends to extra planar beings which are considered undead with the same hit dice for this purpose.
2). One Extra Spell/Level is Gained, must be Path.
3). Fivefold Mages reduce the spell level by one when researching spells in The Path.
4). Chance to Learn spell in The Path increased by +15%
5). Saving Throw of Targets when targeted by spells from The Path at -1.
6). No more than one spell per level can be from the group: Abjuration, Alteration, Alchemy and Geometry barring a highly unusual and temporary circumstance.
7). Fivefold Mage must invest a focus item as the method through which magic is cast. (Alzar’s Father’s Ring)
8). Must have a lab and library and workbench with 1,000 gp value per level, and an upkeep of 50 gp/level/month
9). They can store spells like an Artificer, but cannot begin to do so until level 6
10). Fivefold Mages have a chance to identify a magical item by spending a turn peering at it closely and examining it - chance is their level times 5.
11). Fivefold Mages never suffer from a negative reaction penalty due to controlling or animating undead.


Stalked by a Death Servant, who merges with his shadow. If he ever is about to take a fatal blow, the Death Servant will jump out, take the blow instead, and Alzar will be fully healed.

Immune to starvation

Note that some of his skills are now useless: languages and ancient languages, reading/writing, etiquette, ancient history, and heraldry. He still knows these things, but they do not apply to his present situation. Some things might be sufficiently different, such as Poison Use, Tactics, Obscure Knowledge, Herbalism, and more.

When making a roll to check with these skills, he will be penalized by three:

Poison Use, Obscure Knowledge, Herbalism, Alchemy, Tactical History, Survival, Fishing, Hunting.

While still having some use, knowledge is missing of specific plants, poisons, tactics, game animals, and more.

Some things will always be the same – Orienteering, Weather Knowledge, Empathy, Fast Healer, and Blind-Fighting. But many are either nuked or hurt.

The good news is that Alzar is still a Path Mage, and he can use some of the Path abilities to help him here in the new plane. The bad thing, though, is that he is devoid of his Focus, which is his father’s old ring. Without this focus, he cannot cast any magic spells. He must spend time in a workshop and lab to craft a new one.

He also must have a laboratory and library. Without those, he loses all class benefits of being a Path Mage. Even if he builds a focus, he will be weakened. (Yet, he still has all of the restrictions). He is completely shorn of anything to his name.

Even when he started out adventuring before, he had a familiar in Lastion, a homunculus in Megala, animal skeletons, a spellbook, some money, and some useful items.

Here he is devoid of everything. Will he be able to restart on this plane? Can he regain his level of power? How much more does he half to do? How long will it take him to return to Thorasia? When he does, what will be left of his place and possessions? He suspects that Vala will replace him in his sanctum. She does not know of everything that he has. He also has much locked into his OtherSpace. What happened to the items he was wearing?

He pauses a few moments to ponder the situation. He is on a hill that overlooks a small wood. It is half past noon, and there are no sounds of animals, monsters or people of any sort. He makes his way towards a large creek down off the hill and follows it down stream. You always go down stream.

The day darkens, and Alzar moves to rest. The mystic draining has been much, and it is time to rest. He finds a nice comfortable pair of branches that cross in the air and climbs up to them. Since he is fully by himself, he has to play things a bit on the safe side. He has fire-hardened two spears in the fire and then puts it out. He grabs them and holds them by himself up in the tree, and falls into a fitful slumber.

Day dawns and the light of the sun brings warmth to Alzar’s bones. After an uncomfortable night, he drops down with the two spears. (They do 1d6-1 damage in combat, minimum 0, and are at -2 to hit). He continues along the stream, and as he does, he begins to make out a large structure on a hill overlooking the valley. Suspecting that this could be civilization, Alzar moves to head up to it.

B Solo. Ghost of Lion Castle (1984)




This is a solo adventure, much like a gamebook and similar to a solo module we did with the Maze of the Riddling Minotaur in the Isle of Dread campaign. I have not read one entry or even a little ahead, just the rules, and I am excited to take a weakened Alzar through it. Alright, here we go!

The building looks like a large lion, resting on its legs, with a diadem around its throat, gigantic glass red eyes, and a large roar on its mouth. It appears to be made of sandstone. There seems to be a keep of some sort around the lion. Alzar scouts it out and there are four sets of walls squaring off the Lion. There is a large outer gatehouse and a smaller postern one as well. He spies no people or signs of civilization around. Could this be a shrine or temple? Maybe a monument?

(Note that, if Alzar uses fighter stuff, like knowing how to use a spear, in combat, then he won’t gain XP from it.)

It’s around noon. There are four major options Alzar notes. He can try the gatehouses or he can just try to scale either the north or western wall, which are somewhat shorter than the two others. Alzar is looking for civilization and not necessarily an adventure right now. So he heads to the large gatehouse to see if anyone is there. The portcullis here is raised, but no one is here.

Alzar decides to walk through it. It falls and he takes 3 damage. He chooses to dodge inside the gatehouse, and the portcullis falls down. In front are some double wooden doors, and the wall has murder holes peeking in. He calls out, but none answer. He tries to sneak under the holes. He takes 2 more damage from some rocks that rain out of the murder holes, and rushes to the door. The wooden doors creak open and slam shut as Alzar crosses into the courtyard.

46/51

A narrow path winds around the giant lion, which towers up into the sky. He chooses to move towards the south flank of the creature. Rising from the rear left leg is a 35 foot tower. He can see arrow slits from the tower and the lion as well. Somehow, one can enter it proper. Alzar lacks means of heading to the top of the Tower, so instead he turns and moves to the north flank from here. Again, there is a tower here, and no entry to be seen. Alzar continues to move around the Lion when suddenly he hears noise from some bushes, and out springs a poisonous viper!

It has 9 hp. Alzar is able to fling a spear at it before combat begins. He is fighting as a level 7 myrmidon with proficiency, against a creature with just a 6 AC. He only needs an 8 on a d20 to hit, and he does for two damage. The viper arrives and wins init. Because Alzar has no armor, he only has an armor class of 8 (minus 2 for using a one handed weapon). The viper needs an 11 to bite Alzar, but it misses. Alzar follows with a stab and misses. It attacks and bites Alzar. He loses 3 hp and makes his save vs poison. Alzar stabs it for 3 more damage and it misses. They both miss. It bites him again after winning initiative and Alzar takes 1 damage, fails his poison save, and takes 10% of his max hp in damage rounded up. He stabs out and finishes the snake.

36/51

After battle, Alzar grabs the viper and lays it out. It is a poisonous viper that he fails to recognize. He could extract poison sacs, cut out the meat for food, perhaps even sell the skin, so he sets it aside for now. He continues around the lion and arrives at the front paws.

The paws appear to protect an entrance into the structure. Back behind it is another raised portcullis and Alzar moves in. Expecting more traps, Alzar steps in gently, but that does not stop a glowing arrow from flying from an arrow slit and nailing him for 4 more damage. As Alzar advances further, two streams of molten lead pour from above from the lion’s nostrils. He saves and dodges them and takes no additional damage and plunges on. Again, stones follow, and Alzar fails this save, and takes 1 more damage. The portcullis falls as Alzar finally reaches it, and expecting this, he dodges under it and is in the building as it slams shut. Alzar sees more murder holes and runs under them and escapes the expected rocks. He has now left the entrance to the building.


31/51

The dark hallway begins to form as Alzar’s eyes adjust to the limited light trickling in from outside. The hallway is about 5 feet wide and roughly 80 feet long. Alzar moves along it and grabs some soiled cloth and wraps it around one of his spears. After working for a few minutes, he makes fire with a bow and tinder he packed away yesterday and has a makeshift torch. There are numerous things of interest here. There are two sets of stairs heading up, one in the southwest and the other the northwest of the lion. There are also five doors, all with what appear to be labels on them, but Alzar cannot read the language. Alzar’s basic rule is in effect, usually work on fully exploring one floor at a time.

"And Alzar dies before even entering the castle" /reroll character/

SI

Lol!

He takes the first door on the right, really a pair of double doors. It opens into a large stables, He briefly explores but finds nothing of interest. The next door on the right is pushed open. This opens into a kitchen roughly 20 by 12 feet. A few utensils and pans lay everywhere and Alzar spots a large silver kitchen knife on the floor. He tests it and sees it would be a good weapon and takes it. He kicks aside a few pans and checks a few places, but there is nothing else here of interest. He does light a fire in the fireplace in order to preserve his torch while searching here, and he manages some old kitchen oil to put in the rags and extend the life of his torch.

(Knives do 1d3/1d2 damage in combat).


He spots a down portcullis at the end of this hallway, but a quick search turns up nothing to open it. The first door on the left opens into a third staircase. He returns. The 4th door from this hallway is opened. This is a food storage area, roughly 12 by 15 feet. The room is empty. As Alzar closes the door, he hears a sound and turns. Coming down the hallway from the two stairs is a giant fire beetle. Alzar tosses the knife and misses badly. He grabs his spear and hits for no damage. It misses him. After three turns, it dealt 4 damage to Alzar and he killed it. Alzar cuts out the fire gland in the beetle to provide a source of light for his stay. This was a creature he recognized. There are some on this plane.

27/51

"And longtime character Alzar was nickel and dimed for health until he had a crit miss, slipped in a pan lying on the floor, bashed his head on a rock, falling unconscious. There he was attacked by a pair of mice who each hit him for 2 points of prone damage, ending his life in a most ignoble fashion."

SI

Yeah, that's he problem with early level mages. Even with the LARGE amount of hp he has, he's a bit squishy.

The final door is another double door, and it swings to reveal a small blacksmith. There is a 4th staircase in here, there is one in each haunch of the lion. Alzar inspects the smith. Many items are badly damaged, corroded or missing. He does find a nice smithy hammer that works as a mace and secures it with some old leather straps.

All four staircases lead both down and up. Normally Alzar heads up before down, because places like this can have extensive dungeons, but in this case, the above ground looks quite high and thorough, so he heads down. He arrives t the bottom and there are two doors, one northwest and the other southwest. He grabs the NW one. This is a tower room at the base of one of the towers. There is a well in here with a bucket tied to a frayed rope. Alzar explores the room and the well for a while, but nothing happens.

He heads back out and goes the other way. This room is a central corridor for the lower level of this building. There are double doors to the west, and another stair is here. Behind him is a wall, and back here should be where the other two stairs lead, so there appears to be at least two separate dungeon places. He spends some time searching for a secret door but find nothing. He moves to the double doors.

They open into a dark 45’ long hallway with four doors on two sides and another set of double doors on the end. At each door are words written down and on top are four images Alzar notes the symbols used, because he can identify the symbols. They are four large cats - lion, tiger, cheetah, and leopard. Alzar moves to the other double doors first, and this is a large unfinished basement area. In here are a pair of rock baboons who leap out and attack!


Alzar does not have time to fling a knife and his spear is up and ready, set for a charging baboon. It leaps at him, and he keeps the spear out, braced against his foot. He hits and doles out double damage and slays it, but took 3 from the charge. The other misses him. Twice Alzar fails to connect with the Baboon, but it smashes him for 4 with a club. Then Alzar brains it for 3 damage and follows with 5 and slays it.

Alzar moves to search the area and locates some pieces minted in silver and gold. Valuable minerals here too, it seems. He does not understand the languages or images on them, but it appears to be the same language as the words above. He also locates an oddly shaped ivory wand, with runes that are clearly magical on any plane. He finds one boot, and instead of wearing it cuts it with his knife. He carves a belt from the top to secure his items and the bottom laces to make a heavy belt pouch for the coinage he found.

56 gp
44 sp
Unknown Wand

20/51

He returns to the pathway. He takes the tiger and in here are three mummified tiger, in a nice burial chamber, each in a alcove on the other sides of the room without a door. Alzar searches, and discovers a topaz worth about 500 gp. Next is puma, with again, three leopards, mummified, with a 10 gp turquoise. The cheetah room is next with the same, as is the lion room.

Onyz, 50 gp
Turquiose, 10 gp
Garnet, 100 gp
Topaz, 500 gp

Alzar returns back up the stairs and takes the others down. He finds an unusually shaped weapon, a yataghan, on the staircase, and secures it. This guard-less blade is recurved back toward the user and has two different types of metal fused together.

He arrives at the other half of the basement. Its dark and disused, thick with cobwebs. This corridor curves into the staircase on the other side. Along it are six doors with both names and symbols. They are three coins, bottle, fish, grapes being pressed, shelves, and keg. Alzar heads into the three coin first. This dark empty room has the odor of old coins and metals, perhaps once a treasury, exchange, taxing office or mint. As Alzar steps around., a large scythe trap is sprung and slashes at him, but he makes his save and dodges.

The bottle door opens into an old wine cellar, with the racks all around. Alzar tries to take a bottle, but it hangs in midair silently, and won’t budge after being taken from the shelf. He has no way to open it or tie it down, so after a quick search, he leaves.

The fish is a smelly room that stinks up the hallway too. As Alzar enters, his light reveals a giant spider, who has made this room her home. She moves out and Alzar slams the door behind her. He is not sure whether or not she is poisonous, but he is badly wounded. She smashes the door a few times, but it holds with him securing it, and about fifteen minutes later, she has settled back down.

Alzar tries the grapes door. In here is an old, decayed wine press. A quick search turns up nothing else. The next door, the shelves, is a storage area, but its been mostly cleaned out. Empty crates and bags litter the area. It takes a while to search, and after finishing, Alzar finds a leather tube with a scroll inside. There are three Mage spells on the scroll. He chooses not to cast Read Magic to see what they are and to use them.

Mage Scroll – 3 unknown spells (Sleep, Web, Continual Light)

Last is the keg, and that opens into a brewery. There is a strong odor in here. As Alzar enters, something follows him into the room and he spins and engages a unknown large reptile of some sort. It is about five feet long and has six legs instead of four. He spear clangs off its scales. It snaps at him but misses. It wins init and slashes him for 4 damage. He fails his save it has a poison that makes him woozy. Alzar is at -1 to hit for the rest of the adventure. His spear is true and he smashes it for 1 damage. Both miss. Alzar hits for 4. The lizard adds another 2 damage . Alzar hits for nothing. Then both miss three times before Alzar finishes it.



16/51

Alzar finishes exploring this level and moves back to the first, and then up to the second level. This also opens onto six doors. He searches the rooms on this floor and they appear to be a butcher, mason, barber, baker, chef and master brewer’s rooms. He took 5 damage from two traps, but skipped past things like scissors. He did find a tray of new, fresh food and ate it.

As Alzar moves toward a pair of double doors, out burst a pair of large flying bats. Alzar’s knife actually manages to hit and pins one dead. The other chooses to fly away and leaves Alzar his slain quarry. He enters a large bedchamber, that was once richly decorated. All of the things in here are secured and cannot be taken or moved. A rough search turns up nothing. Alzar heads to the other end of the hallway and discovers he is actually on level 3, not level 2, by looking out of the jaw of the lion. The stairs must have skipped a level. He heads to the other stairs and down. He pops out on level 2 and a suit of chainmail hangs here. He grabs it and puts it on. He cannot cast spells with it on, but his AC drops to 3 with a one handed weapon. He skips taking a nearby shield. This is a large anteroom, and from the other staircase pops a bugbear, armed and ready for battle. It wields a shield, club, and rudimentary leather armor. Alzar misses with a knife and then crashes into it. The Bugbear needs a 14 to hit Alzar, and Alzar just needs a 9 to hit. After a few turns of bad odd,s Alzar finishes it off without taking any damage back.

The main value of this kill is that it is the first humanoid Alzar has found and slain. The boots are way too big, as are some other things. The club is converted into a backup torch. The clothes, leather, and other goods are turned into clothes for Alzar, including breeches, and a gold pouch with 22 bronze pieces in it.

22 bp

Only one set of double doors leaves this anteroom. It opens into a large guardroom. It has benches, tables, and a few bedrolls. It also has the windlass for the portcullis and triggers and reload points for various traps Alzar encountered on the first floor. He turns the windlass and opens the portcullis. As he does, something hears him, and the doors are opened a moment later. Out pops another bugbear. Alzar dispatches it in four turn, but took a club hit at max damage.

12/51

26 bp

After finishing up the second floor, Alzar heads back up and skips the third floor. He arrives at the top of each tower in turn, and then heads up the other stairs. Apparently, the fourth floor is reduced in size. The stairs lead into a large circular room with a few tables, and another stair in the center – a new one. Alzar searches around and finds a box with a ruby. Alzar reaches to grab it, and as he does, he arrives randomly in the stables on the 1st floor. He climbs back up

1000 gp Ruby

Alzar searches and finds a hidden door. Behind it is a laboratory, and Alzar’s eyes ignite as they look over the lab. Two braziers are lit and illuminate the room. Alzar is at the Lion’s eyes, and the two large red glittering crystals are stronger than the surrounding stone. He searches and sees that, although on the simpler side, the lab here would be good enough to meet his requirements here on the new plane through level 4.

He returns and heads up this new staircase. He arrives at the top of the head. Alzar throws open a trapdoor and emerges at a study. He hears a growling sound and something large pops from behind him. It is an ogre.

It weaves its way to Alzar and Alzar spends a quick second readying himself, and cannot throw a weapon. They clash together as the sound of weapons and armor mixes. The ogre strikes first and smashes with a war club and deals 5 damage. Alzar stabs out and misses with his spear. Then Alzar wins init and clangs on the Ogre but deals no damage The Ogre misses (the Ogre needs a 13 to connect). Alzar stabs him for 2 damage and he misses. The ogre wins back initiave and misses, while Alzar stabs out and misses as well (he would have hit, had he not been poisoned by that lizard). They both miss again, and then the ogre connects with 3 damage while Alzar doles out 4. Then Alzar retreats and moves down the stair. The ogre misses an attack of opportunity and begins to pursue. Faster in the narrow corridors, Alzar thows a few weapons at the ogre, a knife, a sword, and whatever he can. Finally, he is desperate as the ogre closes and throws his spear and redies the club. The spear strikes the ogre for 3 damage and he charges in. The ogre sweeps and misses Alzar, with a hefty penalty, still manages to smash it for 1 damage and slays it. He finds some minor coins on the body, but nothing else of interest.

52 gp


Alzar returns to the study.

4/51

"And in today's ironic events, a Necromancer died and was made an undead servant to another Necromancer who wandered in after him."

Heh

The study is roughly 30’ round. It has books and shelves, plus four comfortable chairs. Alzar moves to search the room. The books that line the room appear to be in different languages, but Alzar cannot tell the topics. The furniture is too big for the trapdoor.

A ripple runs through the air. Alzar turns to see a presence gathering in the room. A swirling mass of dust and light gathers about two feet off the floor, and creating the form of an older, brown skinned gentleman. Alzar chooses to remain.

The ghost speaks to him in a language he understands. “You have done well. You have passed many tests, both seen and unseen to get here. If you came here hoping to become the heir of Sarathi the Sorcerer, congratulations. You already are. My castle’s treasures are transient ones of worldly value and fading magic. The true treasure is within. If you are ailing sleep on my bed. If you need light, seek out my lab. Go now, brave heir. Leave this place of death and decay forever. If you enter again, it will only cause you grief. I give you my ring as a sign that you are my rightful heir.”

A silver signet ring appears on Alzars finger with the head of a lion.



END ADVENTURE

Yay for fighter/mage combo's!

Or for having lots of HP! ;)

Alzar does not leave just yet. He heads to the bedroom and sleeps. After a long, dreamless sleep, he awakens without any damage, poison or disease.

This is the perfect quiet place to craft a new focus, and he has the perfect item. Alzar spends two weeks here, eating a few pieces of food he scrapes together, and crafting a new focus with the ring.

At the end, Sarathi’s Signet Ring is now Alzar’s new focus. He also cast Read Magic, and now has access to the scroll of three Mage spells. This leaves him with just four spells.

During this time, Alzar has taught himself a little of Hamedh Common, the common tongue of the plane of Hamedh. Alzar discovered a magical tome that went over all of the various differences between Hamedh and other planes.

Hamedh:

The alternate prime material plane of Hamedh is different in major ways from Thorasia. Magic is not as rife, and the nature of magic is somewhat different. The plane is also harder to breach when travelling, and there are some other changes as well.



Differences from Hamedh and Thorasia


1). Hamedh has a third type of magic, called Mentalism, which is very developed. This did not exist on Thorasia. There are Mentalists as a class.
2). Hamedh has a fourth type of magic as well. The practitioners are the Shi’ar class.
3). Thorasia saw resurrection magic as virtually impossible, but it’s easier to cast here, and thus a bit more common.
4). Hamedh is harder to conjure beings from outside the plane. Any attempt to do so is slower, and results in an upgrade to the next time unit. A spell that normally takes a few segments now takes a full round, a spell that took a round or three now takes a full turn, etc.
4b). One form of conjuring and planar travel is not negatively impacted, and that has led to the power and influence of the Shi’ar and those that follow this easy connection between Hamedh and the planes.
4c). Because of this, many ways of leaving the plane are locked off.
5). Extradimensional spaces, such as bags of Holding or spells which duplicate them (Rope Trick) are inert on Hamedh.
6). When more than one permanent magic item is worn at a time, a chance for miscibility occurs. The combination of magics may not work as planned. The likelihood of backfiring increases with the amount of permanent items worn. Each added item rolls on a chart to see if it works.
7). Magic spells may not be memorized more than once per day per spell. Thus, no mage can memorize two Sleeps. This does not affect Mentalism or Clerical magic.
8). Races and creatures on Hamedh are different than on Thorasia. Here we have traditional elves, dwarves, halflings, and more.
9). Hamedh has a more North African, Persian, Middle Eastern, Indian, Southeast Asian feel to it. Expect weapons, magic items, and some other accoutrements to follow styles in these areas.
10). Hamedh has a totally different set of gods and deities.
11). There is no one common tongue that is spoken throughout the land, but instead common regional languages.
12). A year in Thorasia is 283 days divided into seven day weeks and four week months. A year in Hamedh is 313 days long, and there is no unified calendar. Instead, different areas have different ways of tracking time.
13). Feldspar is inert, and does not have the magical properties it has on Thorasia.
14). Rhabdomancy does not exist on Thorasia, but it is alive and well on Hamedh.

(I actually did not know this adventure would come with a lab, library, and focus item. I totally ran it naked. Crazy)

Because Alzar cannot read the books, he cannot substitute Sarathi’s library for his own. (In reality, most of these books are just general knowledge, and not worth a lot.)


Total Accumulated Wealth:


Several nonmagical weapons and armor
Silver Knife
172 gp in coins
10, 50, 100, 500, 1000gp gems
Unidentified Wand (Of Paralyzation, 7 charges)
Scroll of Web, Continual Light, Sleep

Focus - Signet Ring
300 books on general knowledge, in several different languages – total value – 1600 gp
Workshop and lab – total value 4000 gp

Alzar needs to find a way to transport the items from here away, but to where? Several wandering monsters arrived and he had to fight them off, so they are coming from somewhere, but he cannot find any secret doors or portals or somesuch.

Alzar gained no XP for the adventure (Actually, the book was crazy. It was giving away Gauntlets of Ogre Strength or other massive items, said at the end the character should gain a level just for the adventure, and more. Go away Monte Hall!)

Alzar would have loved to have secured a magical spellbook. But considering the randomness of being on Hamedh for just a day and walking into a place where he could create a new focus, found lab equipment, and some books to begin a new library – its considerable. Most of Sarathi’s stuff had to have ben elsewhere. The power required to build a large lion shaped castle, run it, and devise some of the magical items within far exceeds the modest lab, library, and treasure discovered.

Alzar spends some time looking around and scouting the area while he is working on the focus. A nice vantage point from the castle revealed the nearby area. He spots a town about six hours distant and downriver. One day, after finishing his focus, he moves to it and introduces himself. He is beginning to learn the local language after encountering it in the lion/castle.

Alzar trades his gems, worth 1660 gp, for the following:

1). Several sets of clothes that fit him properly
2). Three wagons, and numerous steeds to carry them, plus extra.
3). A full set of armor and two battle axes.
4). A variety of equipment such as food, nets, rope, and other various items

WG11. Puppets





This 1989 module is actually two tournament modules stuck together to make one big one. I am moving this module up because I want to use it to springboard some other modules. I initially wanted to run Eye of the Serpent now, but it begins with a very heavy handed “A Roc picks you up and drops you off (safely) in its nest way up in the mountains. Now you have to get back down!” I tend not to be a fan of such plot elements unless they are needed for the story, (which I did with Alzar).

There are no mages in the area, the town is quite small, roughly 1100 people. However, it is the only major area of trading and transportation in the area. It is known for syrup and trapping, and several outposts surround the town that secure the raw materials for these enterprises. While in town, a merchant named Jandabad who has purchased some textiles and building tools is ready to return to a medium sized city, Arjuna, of about 40,000 people on the other side of the mountains. He will be heading through the woods, up the mountain chain, and the over the pass and thence to the other side. There are some bandits and creatures along the route. He offers to pay Alzar 5 gp a day to guard his caravan. This is a perfect opportunity to get to civilization where Alzar can acquire a spellbook and library.

He has time to head back to the castle, bring out lab equipment and books for two wagons, and then move back to town. They leave a few days later. In their troop are four other fighters as guard, Marilla, a human priestess who is quite good, several other merchants and servants, a family, and a sailor who washed up down river from an accident and is returning home.

The journey up and over the mountains is supposed to take about two weeks. Of course, with weather and more, it can be a bit difficult. Alzar spends the first few days finishing up his understanding of the local language, and he has a decent proficiency with it. Enough to make sentences, and know normal topics of conversation. He does not know obscure words or have a deep vocabulary. He also has a decidedly Thorasian accent, which no one can identify.

After a few days, the forest thickens and Alzar moves out. Good territory for an attack or ambush. Just as he does, arrows fly out. They mostly miss everyone. Then more follow and two people have been stuck. Alzar orders the fighters forward and the others to take cover. Marilla moves to heal some wounded. He moves up and takes an arrow to the shoulder for 4 damage. He carves out a hedge and opens up line of sight to the archers up on a hill. In front of them are about 10 bandits, and behind them, 10 archers.

More arrows fly at the caravan as the bandits move to face Alzar. Soon Alzar’s reinforcements arrive. As he moves to engage, he hears noise from the camp as arrows begin to come from another direction. He is surrounded by bandits and has to focus on them.

Ten minutes later and Alzar has taken quite a few hits, but his axe mastery has carved up 11 bandits and the rest fled. All of the fighters have died. He turns back and moves to the caravan, but it is a disaster. Arjuna’s head was pierced by three arrows, and his body is a pincushion. Almost everyone else has died as well. Marilla long since ran out of healing magic. The only ones to survive were Marilla, Alzar, and an unconscious boy about nine years of age from the family. The boy was hurt. The bandits tried to stay clear of hitting the animals – they are worth money. Just two horses and an ox died. Two more broke free. All of the other steeds of various sorts are still here.

Marilla moves into a position of authority. She orders Alzar to collect Jandabad’s things. They will continue on to Arjuna, sell his things, and then donate them to her church, which Jandabad also followed. The bandits fled to the southwest, toward the town, so they are behind them. There are at least 15 bandits still alive. It is smarter to press on ahead, rather than return the way they came.

Alzar searches the bodies of the dead bandits and collects a small amount of coin, weapons, food, water, and other assorted items. There is little of real value. He also gathers the items of the dead and brings them along too. All told, there are about 250 gp worth of coins of various sorts.


Marilla, Priestess of Khshathra, God of the Perfect Society, Lawful Good, Level 9

Str: 13
Int: 18
Wis: 16
Dex: 12
Con: 14
Chr: 17

AC: 0
THAC0 – 12 with +3 mace
Hit Points 42

Has several powerful magic items, including Bracers of Defense: AC 2 and a +3 mace. She also has a handful of trombashes. (These are a type of throwing stick with a upturned end and a sharpened striking edge, often made of metal – 1d6/1d4 damage when thrown A simple google search will reveal much – feel free to google the name of the God too). Her normally memorized list of spells include a lot of healing magic

They load everything up and move on. After two days of travel, they arrive at the foothills of the local mountain chain, the Legs of Heaven. All of the sudden, a creature flies out of the hills, a roc, and grabs a donkey and carries it off for food. Luckily, that donkey was just loaded with food and water, and with just the two of them, there is very little need to eat the large amount f food and water they have.

After a few hours, Alzar sees that the upcoming passage has been cut off. Either intentionally or accidentally, an avalanche fell across the pass and is untraversable. Scouting shows there are no ways over or around it. However, the map Alzar found of the area shows a nearby glen with a few homes and lighter woods. There might be a route through the glen and over the ridge.

Marilla and Alzar move the caravan off and enter the road to the glen.

UK5. Eye of the Serpent





This 1984 adventure is both designed for one character and a small party of level one folks. (Which is crazy. You have to face a serious group of powerful foes. First level party my ass! You’ll see..) (We’ll also be adding two more adventures into this one, and then wrapping this up and continuing Puppets.

The path to the glen narrows quite a bit just a few hundred yards inside the walkway. It gets less than ten feet wide at the narrowest point and holds this for about forty yards. The caravan slows down to make it and they hear a voice from ahead. Soon,six men with crossbows move into the path, and then verify that we are not bandits, and let us continue.

Alzar meets with the men after a few minutes and learns about the area they are heading into. There is a valley down here among the mountains, separate from the rest of the area. It goes on for miles, and eventually, there is a path over the mountain.

There is a mage in the area, a half-elf named Garinda. He is a rhabdomere. Alzar asks what that is, and they look at him as if he is silly for asking. He’s a hedge mage who helps everyone in the area. We all help ourselves out here. Alzar obtains instructions to Garinda’s home and the caravan meanders through the narrows part of the trail, and then picks up speed again.

Two hours pass before the path opens up, and Alzar gets his first glimpse of the valley below. The path they are on continues for a few miles, and then the area widens and there is what appears to be a frozen lake in the middle. It’s not that cold – what is happening with that? The path continues and descends and there are a series of plateaus and paths that lead down into a large lush valley, and a meandering river heads from the valley out the other side miles and miles away. That is the exit.

As they descend, they path begins to become more difficult to pass. Te angle is a little rough, so they pause to lash the animals together to help get things through safely. As they do, from out of the rocks bursts an unusual looking creature. It swam through the dir like a fish through water, and left no hole behind it. Marilla shouts out that it is a Vilstrak, and to be careful, but it is an unusual creature Alzar has never heard of or seen before.




Alzar runs to it, grabbing his axe. With a high AC, it is hard to hit and Alzar’s axe merely rattles off its rock-like exterior. Marilla’s trombash misses. The Vilstrak attacks with two heavy punches, and smashes Alzar once for 6 damage. It wins init, but misses. Alzar crashes it for 9 damage with the extra damage from his weapon mastery and strength. It falls down, and Marilla uses the opportunity to thwack it for 4 damage with a trombash that whistles in and finishes it.

There is no chance to follow the dead creature back to its lair (in reality, the module lets you, and there is a magic shield there. In reality, the 6 foot tall creature had 4 hp, so that’s stupid too. A 4 hp creature in a module for 1st level characters should not have a +1 shield in the FIRST ENCOUNTER IN THE MODULE. Wtf is wrong with these people?)

They continue on. Hours pass and they near the entrance to the upper lake area. A patch of white suddenly seems to be more than it is and a snow mountain lion rushes after the caravan. It must be really hungry to risk this. Alzar flings a knife and it and a trombash flies in from Marilla. The long range weaponry does not hit the swiftly moving cat but it does scare it off.

It’s almost evening. At the opening to the plateau and the icy lake are a handful of buildings, all of which are homes for various people who work here. This is the location of the rhabdomere. Alzar pulls over the caravan for the night, and Marilla begins to make camp while he moves on to the house of the local mage.

Alzar arrives at the house. It’s the largest one here, and it has at least three floors of local stone. Outside brushing the area is a young lady, probably 14. She sees Alzar and stops and approaches. She announces herself as an apprentice to Garinda. Alzar asks if Garinda is busy, and she goes in to check. In a few moments she returns and beckons Alzar to follow.

He ducks his head and enters the building. Garinda is a tiny wizened old half-elf centuries old, probably four feet and six inches on a good day. He pounds a table with considerable strength for his body as a way to motion Alzar to sit down. He beams a smile at Alzar.

Alzar can sense a lot of power from this man and eagerly sits down. After introductions, he explains where he came from, and what happened to him. Garinda listens, and then pauses for a few minutes. Garinda then speaks with a deep voice. “And now you would like my help.”

“If you can offer it, yes.”

“It just so happens that I can. I managed to procure a spellbook from an dying apprentice who risked the northern path to cross the mountain and failed. It has just two spells, and I already knew them both. I knew its value and kept it. I would be willing to let it go, if you have something to offer for it.”

Alzar reaches into his belt and pulls out the unidentified wand and hands it over.

“Ah yes,” Garinda says. He stands up and reaches for a forked branch that has been finely carved and polished. He spends a few minutes with it, and then looks up. “It’s a wand that will paralyze a target when used. It can be used six times safely, but on the seventh it will be destroyed after it s use.”

Alzar looks up, suddenly ignoring the spellbook. “Is the stick you used magical?

“This old thing? No, it’s just hickory.” Alzar inquires and Garinda tells him about the nature of being a rhabdomere. They use these rods to enhance their divination work. Apparently, rhabdomeres are quite common on Hamedh, because Alzar has never heard of them on Thorasia, and this is a branch of magic that would really interest him.

Absorbed by the potential for knowledge, he asks to be an apprentice of Garinda for a year. At the end, he would understand rhabdomancy quite well, and he will have helped out Garinda too. Normally on this world, apprentices bring a item of worth to the mage in order to pay for being an apprentice. Alzar offers the scroll with the Web spell on it, wanting to keep the Continual Light and Sleep for his new spellbook. “I have many scrolls of Web, plus it’s not really a spell I fancy.”

They head out and look through the items Alzar took from the castle. Garinda looks over the books and agrees to apprentice Alzar in exchange for the 350 books he took from Sarathi’s leonine keep. While Alzar loves books, and would normally want to keep them, he can’t read most of them, and needs this, so he agrees.

He goes outside to tell Marilla, and she agrees to continue with the caravan. Alzar keeps the things he brought with him, and two days later Marilla joins a group of soldiers heading down into the depths of the valley and continues on to the city.

Meanwhile, Alzar’s personal wagon becomes his new home, and he sets it up as his bedroom for the next year.

For that year, Garinda instructs Alzar in many ways. Meanwhile, Alzar and the other mages help the people of the valley, as well as travelers find lost objects, new veins of ore to mine, locate predators, and once to find a missing child. Since Garinda usually charges for this, he gets paid from people who need to find something.

Meanwhile, Alzar becomes very intimate with the valley here. The ice lake is iced year round, because there is a portal to the Para-Elemental Plane of Ice at the bottom, and occasionally an ice creature will come through. Portals here are quite rare, because of the nature of Hamedh, and Alzar wishes he could survive on the Ice Plane, because he would head out and then plane step back to Thorasia.

Alzar has gained a significant amount of knowledge and understanding about rhabomancy. While he has not changed into a rhabdomere specialist wizard from the Fivefold Path to Power, he has gained a much deeper understanding of the foundation of the Path, divination. He has met diviners on Thorasia, but none had the skill and expertise of Garinda and two other high level rhabdomere’s he met. Knowledge is the foundation of power.

And Alzar has gained it considerably. Due to his high intelligence (21), he aced the concepts quickly and blazed through it (remember, he looks 20, so people think he is young)

After his year, Alzar has the following in his spellbook (It came with Read Magic and Detect Magic):



Level 1:

Comprehend Languages
Craft Divining Rod
Detect Magic
Identify
Read Magic
Sleep


Level 2:

Continual Light
Locate Object


Level 3:

Lesser Rhabdomancy

He has gained the Dowsing non-weapon proficiency. This allows him to use a divining rod. It enables him to interpret the finer points of the tugging and twitching of the rod. For example, Alzar can tell how strong a vein of gold that he discovers with the rod will be with this proficiency. He can also try a proficiency check to break through barriers (such as lead) when using a downing rod. It won’t work for general scrying, just for when using the Rod.

Alzar has crafted a pair of Divining Rods, one to use normally, and the other for backup. He takes great care of them, and oils, polishes, and carves them.

The Lesser Rhabdomancy spell is a more powerful version of the Locate Object spell. This can be used to divine for people, locations, creatures, and other things.

If Alzar were a rhabdomere, his divination spells would become more potent. For example, a simple Detect Magic will also reveal an item’s identity 20% of the time. But Alzar is not a specialist mage.

However, the combination of training, the skill, the spell, and the right Rod means that any divination spell Alzar goes to cast will not need material components beyond the Rod itself if it just is trying to get information about something nearby (spells such as Contact other Plane are not Rod-able). So Detect Magic, Identify, Locate Object, and more require no physical component because Alzar is instead using the rod.

Over the year Alzar gains 1250 XP for casting spells, crafting rods, learning a new NWP and other things.


(6350 for him – needs 10000 to be at level 4)


(Alzar is now 55 but looks 21)

With his focus, he can cast spells, so he is alright there. He has no benefits from his specialization kept away from a library and lab. He still needs a library. Since he does not have class benefits, he can only memorize three spells daily.

Sleep, divination spell as needed, and Locate Object tend to be the ones he memorizes. He was forced to cast the spells he knew long ago (Ray of Ondovir, Empathic Control, etc).

After one year, Alzar is ready to continue. He says goodbye to his master, Garinda, and moves the wagons and steeds down the path. This path can be dangerous, so he is in full armor and axe, instead of his mage robes. He passes the iced lake and moves to the path to the lower plateau. Before beginning, Alzar sets up camp for the night.

Luckily, nothing disturbs him at night. The morning sun comes and Alzar is ready to head down the path. This one is wider and not that dangerous. The descent is gradual. During the nine hour trek down this road, the day moves on. Alzar passes a herd of Musk Ox quietly on the left and everything is relatively quiet.

As he arrives at the second plateau, the vista is warmed by the older day. A river cascades from the plateau above and several streams create a large lake, which is not frozen like the one above. Alzar beds down here for tonight, and after dark, he hears a scraping against the rocks. He leaves the wagons and steps out.

After a moment, he spies a giant snake, which is going into its den for the night. Alzar now has more information about this area. It’s a non-poisonous snake, and just sticks to smaller animals like rabbits and foxes and this six legged rodent that resembles a raccoon in coloration that is not on Thorasia, but it is called a Gamett. He lets it be and heads back to bed.

Another morning arrives, this time under serious cloud cover. It looks like rain. He arrives at the lake a few hours later, and it is quite warm. There are several geysers here that feed it, and it is warmer than one would expect. There is actually a cave to the left that Alzar has never explored. It used to be an old mine, but it ran out of silver and iron, and no other valuable ores were detected. It has not been used for decades.

Alzar decides to head over and check it out. In front of the cave is the most reliable of the geysers, and it usually goes off every 50 minutes or so. It regularly is a bit slower or faster, but about 50 minutes. Alzar sees it go off twice before he arrives at the mine. He scouts out the area and sees that there is an opening that is partially collapsed from the moisture of the geyser. He slips in and pulls out a stone with Continual Light on it so that he can make out the mine. As he reveals the light, he notices a hissing sound and turns. Here is a steam mephit, enjoying the warm geysers. (Alzar cannot attempt to control it, he does not have the powers of a Path mage, instead he is just a mage with the hindrances of the Path Mage (can’t memorize more than one non-Path spell per level, for example).

Steam mephits are the annoying nasty tricksters of the mephit world. There nothing like the loyal and clever mephit that Dryshik is/was. It floats up lazily and blinks at Alzar, and then speaks an outer plane tongue Alzar understands. It is here enjoying the geyser, and trying to undermine the celing above, where there is an ice mephit guarding a remorhaz egg. It uses its boiling rain to weaken the ceiling. Alzar moves over and hacks at the ceiling a few times to advance the steam’s plot. The steam mephit tells Alzar that there is a nasty little water ghoul in the next area, and Alzar then moves deeper into the mine.

After fifty feet, there is a clear pool, and the rest of the mine has collapsed past it. Alzar suspects the pool as the home of a lacedon, or a water based ghoul. He approaches it carefully. He lobs the continual light pebble onto the beach to light things up, and detects movement. In a few seconds, a lacedon begins to emerge from the water, looking hungry and angry at being disturbed. Alzar feels that familiar sensation, but he cannot control this creature.

A knife misses it, and melee range is reached. These things are nasty. They have three attacks – two claws and a bite. Any of them can paralyze their target, and Alzar has no immunity. It needs a 17 to crack Alzar’s armor though. If it does, Alzar needs an 11 or higher to keep himself un-paralyzed and free. On the other hand, Alzar needs just a 5 to connect with the ghoul, will dole out 1d8 hp if he does, and he gets 3 attacks every 2 rounds with his axe of dervish death.

The ghoul wins init. It rolls a 6. 3 and 17. Connection. It bites Alzar’s left hand for 1 damage, but that scratch is enough to force a save. Alzar rolls a 17 back and saves. Alzar rolls a 3 and misses. He wins init and attacks with the axe. He rolls a 9 and an 11. He carves it twice for 19 damage and it dies.

The pool is clear enough that Alzar can see the items at the bottom. He jumps into the warm water after stripping off his armor and gathers them up – the water is about 9 feet deep. There is a rusted scabbard that fell apart when Alzar grabbed it, but an untouched and beautiful pesh-kabz (Kyber Knife). It has a beautifully polished agate handle and acts as a dagger in battle save it is 1d4/1d4 instead of 1d4/1d3. (the second number is damage against large creature, like giants). The pesh-kabz is giving off clear signals of being magical, with the untouched blade. There are also various coins here, probably worth about 100 gp total.

He returns past the steam mephit, tosses the head of the ghoul at it and it dodges and chuckles. Alzar leaves the mine and heads back to the path. This detour basically cost him a day, so he sets up camp at the end of the hill. He has memorized Detect Magic today, and as expected, the knife glows. He’ll memorize Identify tomorrow to discover what it is.

Again, no major disturbances hinder his sleep. In the morning he memorizes Identify, then casts it. He has acquired a +1 Pesh-kabz. He has Sleep and Locate Object for the day as his other spells. (He can’t memorize Sleep twice a day on Hamedh)

Two days see Alzar cross the second plateau. He fights off a griffon that flies in, but nothing else disturbs him. On his last night here, a pack of wolves surround his camp and want a horse or donkey or oxen, but Alzar’s well thrown silver kitchen knife hits the eye of one and they retreat.


There are four routes off the second plateau and into the dale below. One is to ride the waterfall down the cliff, but that’s not really feasible. The second is to take one of the safer, meandering paths down the mountainside side to the left and right. The final is a steep path that parallels the waterfall and is quick and dirty.

With his wagons, he chooses a long, safe path. He has used them all before, and he thinks the left path is the best change, because it skips the odd grotto of bones that several creatures call home. The geyser lake falls and collects into a larger lake in the dale, which creates a winding river that looks like a serpent. Far off in the distance Alzar can just make out the shape of an island in the middle that looks like an eye in the serpent. There is also a small island in the lake below that can be reached by a long dirt walkway of sorts that has been braced by wooden supports. That island is used as a dock by locals for fishing.

One day later, the path begins to curve, and out fly a flock of 7 blood hawks. These Hamedhi species are so called because they are carnivorous and will feed on larger animals, like cattle or horses. They begin to circle Alzar and then one dives in and other follows from an opposite angle. Alzar’s axe snaps up and cleaves one in half. The others stop and move to it and begin to eat their former co-hunter. Alzar leaves them to their cannibalistic meal and moves on.

The rain is now pouring and one of the wagons bogs down. He spends the better part of a day just going one mile. He can’t go further and just holes up for two day awaiting the end of the storm and the path improving.

Near the end of day six, one of his donkeys twists a leg. It is badly wounded, and he is unhooking it now, and transfers over the goods it was carrying. He will leave it here, and then if a healer is available, they can come and mend it. He is about one day’s journey from the local village here. About a half hour later, he hears a large cry of fear come from the donkey and hurries back to investigate. Soon cries of pain echo in the pathway.

As he nears, he sees the corpse of his donkey being chewed on by large cave bear, with her three cubs just off to the side. They clearly thought the downed donkey was a perfect meal. He leaves them be and returns.


Alzar lands near the end of the path and camps for the night. The trip has been a lot longer than anticipated. In the morning he makes his meal, gathers his things, and moves out. About a half hour later the final bend in the road arrives, and he can see the valley stretched out below.


What he sees shocks him

N2. The Forest Oracle





This 1984 module is the next in the line that began with N1. Against the Cult of the Reptile God, written by Doug Niles. The N designates a module for newer players. N4 and N5 are expensive and hard to find and I don’t have them. But I do have N3 and hope to run it soon. In order to run this, we are going to smash the plot of this and Eye of the Serpent together, and say that both valleys are the same, and that the incident in question just happened, instead of a while ago. (I am also modifying some people. Garinda replaces the generic mage in this story, and a certain priestess replaces the random druid.) (We’ll be sort of ping-ponging encounters and people and plot between these two modules for a while)

As Alzar glimpses the valley, a huge change has settled over it. It has been six days and seven nights since he saw it. Leaves have browned and are falling on a massive scale. The brown soil has taken a grey tinge. The grass has yellowed. There is a smell of decay on the wind.

Alzar orders his group into the valley and they push into the area. The soil is dried up, as if no rain had fallen here in weeks, yet a heavy deluge just occurred. He plunges on and arrives at a nearby village of about 140 people. He pulls into a tavern/inn/meeting place and unloads at the Happy Farmer establishment. This is a small country place with just a handful of rooms, one barmaid and one bartender, plus the owner is the chef.

He pulls in and finds that others are already here. He pushes into the crowded space and there is a hush over the room as people are discussing what is happening. Garinda has arrived just a few hours ago, and has used his magic to determine the source.

“It seems that a curse has been laid on the valley, but not the rest of this area. It was delivered five days ago by an ancient witch who had lived here more than a century ago. She was harassed by the people of this valley as a child, and that stayed with her in her whole life. She was a bitter old woman to her death five days ago. As she died, her dying wish was a curse on the place that treated her unkindly all of those years ago. The death wish of a person of power can be an incredible thing, as you can see. In just five days, the valley had begun to rot, just as she decayed for decades before passing.”


“Now that we know what the problem is, you can fix it, right?” The speaker was Delonna, a local miller, and often spokeswoman of the village. There was no official government.

“Unfortunately, my magic cannot heal this place. We need something more, something powerful. But my magic has told me who’s aid we need.”

“Let me guess.”Alzar speaks up

“Right on queue. It’s Marilla, the priestess who passed by this way last year. Her deity specializes in ideal societies, and has the power to fix this. She likely has the right magic and everything.”

“And where is she now?” Someone in the crowd asked.

“It’s a long trek through the mountains on the east tunnels, and on the other side.”

The east tunnels are not the path to the city Alzar was expecting to take that go over the mountains, but instead go underneath a peak and continue up into a much smaller vale on the other side. He has not been that way before though.

Garinda turns to Alzar and asks that he go and procure aid from Marilla. He agrees. It is almost evening, so he stays the night in the Happy Farmer before setting out the following day.

Alzar leaves behind most of his things. It’s not like he suspects to run into a random library on the way and will wish for his lab. Instead he is just going to take one horse, food and drink, a basic set of supplies, and his normal items. On horseback, it should take about six days to reach the tunnels.

As he does he passes a small marsh to the northwest of the lake here. Soon Alzar hears a croaking sounds, and about a half dozen or so reptilian creatures come out from one side of the road. They try to squirt jets of muddy water at the head , and hopefully eyes, of Alzar and his steed. He pulls forward and then jumps off (takes one damage from the fall) and his axe is out. These medium sized lizards are around 2-3 feet tall. He slays two easily and the other rush into the brush. The ash tree they were resting on is their home, with many chewed up bones. Alzar recognizes a pole with a standard of a lizard man on it and knows the owner -it’s Swilbosh, a lizard man who lives on the island on the lake and runs the small dock there. He gathers it up and takes it back to Swilbosh and then returns to his course. It takes about six hours to deviate from the journey. Swilbosh likes to carve creatures in the valley on top of walking sticks, and that was one of the Muckdwellers that Alzar just defeated. Swilbosh trades Alzar a fine flask of high quality lizard man made liquor which is made from a local gourd.


Two days into his journey, Alzar runs into a hunting party that has come deep into the area, after losing food from father away. It is a hobgoblin, three goblins, and three hunting dogs. They are chasing a stag that just darted past.

Alzar holds up and waves them down. They stop and speak the local dialect. They live in another abandoned mine up the road about a day. They live by themselves and don’t really hurt anyone, so no one bothers them. Alzar greets them and they discuss things for a bit with the trio o’ goblins while the hobgoblin continues to chase the great hart. The valley is decaying where they are as well, and they have seen few creatures for food, so they are foraging far away. Alzar and the goblins part ways and he moves on.


One of the things that Alzar has noticed about this area of Hamedh is that really has a under-swell of Live and Let Live. There are few places in Thorasia where a good village and area of mixed humanoids lie half-elves, dwarves and humans would let goblins live nearby knowingly. It seems like there is less anti-evil or perhaps anti-humanoid evil prejudice here. Swilbosh, the lizardman does not seem evil, but these goblins certainly were. Every joke they told was about torture or killing. But they keep out of people’s way and don’t bother them.

Alzar arrives at the place where the snaking river busts out of the valley and continues, but instead, he heads for a section of tunnel. There are a few days of woods between here and there though, and he’s heard stories about how dangerous this area can be.

As he continues a group of seven men move onto the path he is traveling and five raise crossbows. They call out to him to stop and give them money in order to pass. He agrees, and stops the horse. Slowly he takes off his armor, and they wonder what he s doing. “You want my armor too, right?” “Umm…sure!”

He then bends down to pick up some sand and casts Sleep. Five of the seven drop asleep. Both of the two still awake are hold crossbows at range. They both fire and Alzar takes 3 damage from a bolt. Then his staff is down and he charges them with it whirling about him. He fights as a Mage. He takes 11 damage from one’s scimitar before finishing him. The other has fled and is too far away to chase. Alzar takes a blade and kills the sleeping bandits save for one, who he ties up and smacks awake.

Unfortunately, Alzar has lost the ability to use ESP once a week that he gained while at Castle d’Amberville. But he is still pretty good at intimidation and torture. He tells Alzar where their hide-out is. It has about seven people still here, and the other one ran towards it. It’s miles away, so Alzar decides to bed down for the night with the bandit tied up and in Alzar’s bedroll by the campfire while Alzar is perched above, keeping watch in case someone shows up.

They do not. Alzar relearns Sleep, prepares a different second level spell and heads out. He has gathered the useful items from the dead bandits but has no wagon to store them in. He secures them in a hidden location in case he wants them later (and to hide them from the bandits). They bandit and Alzar head out to their camp. As they near, they see a camp with four huts and several guards. They have been alerted to Alzar’s presence. The one who escaped is their leader, and both him and his second in command are running the camp. That makes eight people to deal with. Alzar moves in. They have covered all access points. Normally, he could sneak in, but not with them alerted.

He walks calmly up the front, dragging the living bandit with him. The leader smiles and walks out to meet him. “Leave him, and he will be your toll, and you can walk free.”

That’s not a bad deal. If these were someone he could trust to keep their word, like orcs, then he might do it. But they aren’t. He hasn’t seen one thing that would imply they wouldn’t hunt him down or fire arrows at him. Seeing his hesitation, the leader orders his men to fire on Alzar and begins to backpedal. Two bolts have let go before his Sleep has let his lips, and he takes another 4 damage. This time four people fall asleep, leaving the two leaders and two others awake.

Then Alzar wins initiative and casts Continual Light at the eyes of the lead bandit. It works and the bandit is now permanently blinded. And a torch for everyone. Another bolt smashes into Alzar for 1 damage the leader screams out and falls. The second in command rushes up to her leader and bends down and grabs something from his belt.

They win init back. She grabs the potion bottle and drinks it. She turns into a gaseous form and starts floating away. Smart. With one leader blinded, the other fleeing, the other two drop their crossbows and begin to run post haste. Alzar lets them and easily defeats the leader, capturing him and slaying the others.

He uses the leader to tell him about any traps or information on the camp. After learning about the nearby area, and the camp, he slays both the leader and the surviving bandit. Just before he does the bandit cries out that Alzar promised to keep him alive. To which Alzar replied, “Actually, no I didn’t…”

(For actually winning a battle as a mage, Alzar gets full XP for this encounter – 300 XP + his normal 10% bonus for being super smart, so 330 in all)

Alzar then searches the camp and finds the following items:

Silver Ring, Bracelet, Necklace set – worth 750 gp as a set
Wine Barrel holding 5000 CP
Gem - 150 gp
Small Chest with 1000 cp – it was trapped, but Alzar learned how to bypass it with the leader’s info
750 sp
Various weapons, items, bedrolls, and so forth.


Alzar takes the best crossbow and 50 bolts. He actually knows how to use it and is quite happy to add another long range weapon to his repertoire. Alzar leaves behind the CP and again secures it in a private place. He takes the gem, set of jewelry, silver pieces. There are a few goats here in a corral. He knows of a village up ahead, so he takes the goats. Rather them be with him and used somewhere then set free and perhaps slain by random predators.

Alzar camps at the bandit camp and the next day sets out. In a few hours, his route passes by a lovely sylvan setting, which is unusual in a place reeling from a death curse by a witch. His interest piqued, Alzar gallops over to take a look. There is a small lake here, and everything is very quiet. There are beautiful flowers and trees that spark the interest and attention. A dead dear lays right by the lake, and looks fresh. Suspecting poison, Alzar steps down and uses his poison use proficiency. No, not poison. And the deer is not dead.

Just in a deep sleep. It is barely breathing, but it is there. That’s odd. His spellcraft proficiency suggest it has been put to Sleep as per the spell. He spends a round waking the deer up and it groggily rises, and then moves back out. Odd. Then Alzar notes other things asleep by the lake, such as insects and a spider. He grabs a flask of water and empties it and, without touching the lake, fills the flask with lake-water.

A bit south Alzar notices a pavilion and heads toward it. It’s a simple square structure with curtains and two doors, one in the water of the lake. Alzar chooses the other door, the front. He knocks, and there is no answer. He checks and it is unlocked. Curiosity engaged, he moves in.

There is gentle breathing inside. Sunlight reveals a young man sleeping on a bed. The pavilion has a fireplace, two chairs and a table, and various other typical sundries. The man does not awaken as Alzar walks in. His spellcraft proficiency again tells him this is a Sleep spell, and he wakens the man.

The forester wakens, and spends a few minutes gathering his thoughts. He is out here gathering wood, and he fell in love with a nearby nymph. The two of them began a romance here by the lake, and then she apparently got jealous and cast a sleep enchantment on the lake itself. At this, she appears and apologizes. She gives Evan an antidote for the lake and the two make up. Alzar leaves. Mystery solved – the nature powers of the nymph allow her to keep this small area at bay from the curse.

Alzar spends another day moving down the path and things are clearing out. He reaches the small village at the entrance to the Horns of the Dragon as the tunnel network is called. There are about twenty buildings around, including another small inn/tavern place, the Wildwood Inn, run by a small Halfling named Bolo, who looks a bit rakish, although cheery enough. Alzar sells the goats to Bolo for a refreshed set of supplies, food and drink and lodging for the night and information.

People do travel the Horns and use it as an artery through the mountains. There have been dwarves living in the Horns before, but none know if any still do. Of course, a large contingent of bad guys has moved in and made travel difficult. That seems to be the most common story on both Thorasia and Hamedh. This time is is a group of orcs. Bolo even scrawls a rough map of the tunnel for him.

After night falls and everyone has retired, Alzar is dozing when someone enters the room. There is a one in six chance Alzar will awaken. He rolls…..a three. Stays asleep. He is robbed.

In the morning, Alzar awakens early, ready to head out again, but there is a serious problem. He is missing his valuables. He gets up and spots some large rat tracks in the floor. He takes a quick inventory. He is missing his gold, gems, and jewelry. They did not take anything he was wearing, so he still has his focus Signet ring.

Alzar slips down and grabs Bolo and pulls him up to the room. Bolo does not know what is going on. He agrees to stay while Alzar is searching. Alzar casts Continual Light on a random stone and then studies Locate Object for the day. 20 minutes later he grabs his diving rod and casts Locate Object, targeting a the bracelet from the jewelry set. He walks about and soon the Rod is pointing at a wall in his room. He checks and finds a secret door. Bolo tells Alzar he does not know about it. Alzar opens it and follows the Rod and the hallway that has been revealed.

Soon enough Alzar has arrived at another secret door, and the Rod is pointing right in there. He makes a divining check and the missing object is in the next room. Bolo is quiet and Alzar asks who is in there. Bolo quietly mouths – “four” and “wererats.” Wererats?

Alzar grabs his silver kitchen knife and the magical pesh-kabz. He knows sleep, but that won’t work on lycanthropes. He has used the 2nd level spell. His other spell today is Detect Magic. Alzar is very unsure of slaying four wererats with a knife or pesh-kabz that he doesn’t even know how to use. So he and Bolo slip back to his room to think it through. Instead, they pretend that they don’t know what happened or who is responsible.

Alzar announces that some of his items went missing, and he has put out a reward for them, but that is it. He spends the day scouting and getting ready to head into the Horns of the Dragon, like normal. That night he sleeps, and no one comes into his room – smart. In the morning he memorizes Continual Light. At least that will cut down one, hopefully. Alzar sneaks to their room early, just a few hours past midnight. He places a variety of furniture in front of their door preventing an easy escape from him.

Then he moves back into his room and readies his full armor. He decides to go in as a mage in terms of armor, so he can cast Continual Light, but then fight as a warrior. As a warrior he needs a 9 to hit with his magical weapon. That’s not bad. It would be a lot worse as a mage (he needs a 17). But it deals just 1d4+2 damage in combat (from magic and his strength).

He does the expected and kicks down the door, casting Continual Light on the eyes of a wererat. Unfortunately for Alzar, it makes its save. They rise quickly and are wielding four khandas. Alzar’s weapon is out and battle begins. He wins init and slices out. He hits one for three damage. They need a 10 to hit him, and two do for 1d8 and 1d8 damage – he takes 13.

He keeps init and again carves into the wounded one. It takes five more damage. They hit once for 4. They win inti and hit three times for seven damage. Alzar misses

29/51


Alzar grabs init back and stabs it for 6 damage, and it is reeling. It retreats and screams out. The other three swing and one hits for 2 damage.

27/51

Alzar moves in and swings and misses. They add 6 more damage. They win init and carve him for 3 more, and he retreats. They swing an attack of opportunity and miss.

18/51

That was a disaster. Alzar flees down the tunnel and scoops up his armor. He hears scratching behind him. He dons the armor quickly, but they have arrived and begin to fight him back. His AC drops significantly, and now they need an 16 to hit him. They get one free round of attacks but miss.

Alzar smashes one for 4 damage. One hits for 4 back. They win init and miss. He hits again for 3 more damage. They miss He misses too. They win init finally and carve him twice for 1 and 5 damage. He dices into the damaged one for six damage and it dies. Two left. The other stayed in the room.

Commotion is beginning in the hotel.

Alzar wins init back and misses. One of the rats misses too, and the other critically misses dropping its weapon for a turn. Alzar carves for his max, six damage on a werereat. They miss and then win init and one hits for four damage, dropping Alzar to four life. He cannot flee for an attack of opportunity and has to press his attacks. They don’t know how badly damaged he is.

He stabs out and hits the wounded wererat for another five damage. They miss and they win init. They badly miss and Alzar finishes the wounded one for another five damage,

With that the other scurries back to its room and Alzar chases as if he is not that badly damaged. As he arrives, the wounded one is trying to break out of the jammed door with the stolen items, from Alzar and others. The other one, fully healthy, pushes forward and the door is freed. Alzar’s silver knife flies out and smashes the leg of the wounded one for 2 damage and kills it. The other flees out the door, rushes down the stairs and bursts out of the door to the inn.

Alzar has, barely, managed to win.

Bolo and others arrive to tend to his wounds. His stuff is here and he gathers it back up. There is a load of treasure, but it all belongs to others. Bolo will get messengers out to the right people. Meanwhile, Bolo allows Alzar to keep one of the items, a potion of healing, with two doses.

Alzar spends the day recuperating, and then begins the next day with 9/51 hp (fast healing trait). He heads out fully armored and ready to go. Hopefully he won’t run into any major problems in the tunnels or the other side, where Marilla is supposed to be.

What edition is Alzar?

And the dumber question: why does it take so long to relearn spells? Or does he only have a couple to begin with? I guess as a level 3 mage, there's not much to work with.

SI

Heya!

2.X Skills and Powers. As a level 3 mage, he normally gets 2 first and one 2nd. As a specialist Fivefold Path or Power Mage, he should get 3/2, but that doesn't happen until he has his library and workshop, which are requirements for that specialty.


He, like many, used S&P to create a nice specialist mage, and I took some abilities from various specialties and kits to make his. (His specialty must also be his kit, so he has not ability to add anything else to it). This gives us a chance to see him weaker because the disadvantages are kicking in. It;s going to be a while before Alzar is fully a Path Mage again.

He began as an Undead Master kit of the Necromancer (as listed in the DM Guide, Complete Book of Necromancers). Some of those abilities are still seen in his specialty.


It takes one day to relearn a spell, including rest. He has to spend time re-memorizing his spells in order to have them available.

My way of dealing with how weird this sounds is to have created what I call a binding process.


Suppose it takes a half hour to cast a spell. At the end of that 30 mins, you have done everything except for the last bit. All you are doing when you cast the spell is intoning the final formula for that spell. However, holding onto multiple spells is hard to do. You can only bind more than one spell as you gain experience. Plus, it can be exhausting, so you can only bind and cast so many spells a day, because it wearies you mystically. (kind of like how I spend an entire day interviewing, even if I never moved to a new room, I am exhausted. The same concept, just magically) That's my personal take on how the procedure works. You aren't memorizing it so much as binding the force using formula given.


You can;t memoriize the same spell more than once per day on Hamedh. Back on his home plane of Thorasia, Alzar could memorize Sleep twice day, so he could cast it in successive turns and drop even more humanoids. But he can;t do that here, so just one Sleep spell a day, and then he has to get a divination spell of some sort because that is all he has left. He doesn;t even like Continual Light as a blind spell that much, but that is all he has. He'd much rather have something more useful than that, but when in Hamedh...


Hope that helps! If not, just ask more stuff...

One of the questions I often get is, is Alzar really evil? He seems like a nice evil person. Maybe he's just lawful neutral?


Well, let's take a look under the hood to see:


1). Alzar regularly kills people after putting them to sleep with his sleep spell. This is killing a defenseless person, and in the AD&D world, it is an evil act. Alzar defends it easily - "You would have killed them violently with a blade in their hand and that is noble. I kill them peacefully while asleep and that is evil. You have a messed up view of the world!"

2). Alzar will use torture to get information from people without any problem. He;ll use it just ot find out where a camp is, what treasure they have, and more. Torture is a very valuable tool to him.

3). Alzar animates the dead en masse. Animating the dead is an evil action. It reimbues a person;s life force into their corpse, and that messes with the natural order, and is quite evil.

4). Alzar uses Charm, Suggestion, or Domination magic with ease. He will turn an enemy into a friend with magical force. Not by money or argumentation, but by magic.

5). Alzar dislikes Lawful Good people (lawful stupid). But at least they are lawful. Of the other three alignment extremes, he gets along best with these, because he can usually trust them, He thinks chaotic evil people are idiots. He gets their self centered nature, sure, but they will sacrifice long term gain for short term fun every time and that is truly misguided and wrong. But he truly loathes those chaotic good idiots. They will lie, steal, and kill for the greater good. They have all of the untrustworthiness of a chaotic evil person, with the idiotic good worldview of a lawful good person. They are truly idiots and actively hurt this world. These are the viewds of a clearly lawful evil person.


Of all of the alignments, after LE, Alzar does, it is true, get along with Lawful Neutral the most.


He does good things (rescue the village, kill the insert target X here) because it makes him more powerful. He gets gold, experience, and loyalty from others. These make him increasingly more potent. He plays the long game quite well.


And he is, lawful evil.

In an hour Alzar has arrived at the tunnel that penetrates the mountain. There is a large trail that leads up to them. He has arrived at the Horns of the Dragon, and can see horse prints and many other prints in the entrance. (He doesn’t know tracking so outside of the obvious, he cannot tell how many, what race, etc)

Alzar pulls out the stone he enchanted a few days ago and uses it as a light source.

The main tunnel is wide enough for a pair of wagons side by side at first. But it gently narrows. After almost a mile, a side tunnel to the south (and right) heads off. Bolo’s map shows a cavern here. Alzar decides to check it out. It’s an old dusty cavern, which looks quite weak. Old supports were added to brace it, but they look rickety, so he returns to the main tunnel and moves on.

After another three quarters of a mile the tunnel has bent to the right and then back to the front, and another tunnel passes that heads right/south. This cavern has an old collapsed ceiling. There are six dwarven skeletons here with small items, like hammers showing. Alzar’s necrology proficiency reveals that these are already animated skeletons that are just dormant. They will activate when someone tries to take any of the items or disturbs their bones. He skips the room and heads back.

Another 1/3 of a mile passes. The main tunnel hits an intersection with paths leading off in three other directions. The path out leads ahead. The left-north/west one leads to a cavern and that has an underground lake in the back. Right and south/east hits a large maze of tunnels that go nowhere. Alzar heads right first, but after an hour, comes up with nothing.

Left reveals a cavern with chipped rocks revealing evidence of quarrying and work. Alzar is only in here for a few minutes when a dwarf reveals himself and introduces himself as Thisvynn Talus. (every turn I rolls a d6 and Talus will either be insane or normal for the next ten minutes). He has been fighting the orcs here for a long time. They killed the rest of his dwarven friends and now he is the only one left. He tells Alzar that he knows why he is here. The orcs wanted his secret, but they could not have it, oh no.

He motions for Alzar ot follow him and picks out a very narrow ledge that is not on Alzar’s map. Alzar leaves behind his horse. They move up the ledge which heads over a crevice. It takes about ten minutes to arrive on the other side. Talus, who already seemed a bit loose begins babbling madly about the evil orcs trying to take the last secrets of the dwarves.

They arrive at an old forge. Talus’s loud ramblings have woken something though, and a noise can be heard up in the ceiling . Alzar looks up as an insect shoots a filament at Talus and snags him. It is a cave fisher.

It begins to drag in Talus, who ignores it. Alzar’s axe is ready and he tries to cut the filament. On the second try it succeeds. He races to the insect, but it just retreats behind stalactites and back off the crevice and walkway.

Talus gathers himself together and thanks Alzar and moves to the forge. “This is the famed lost dwarven forge of the mountain” He sighs. “Gone, all gone.”

Talus is lost in thought so Alzar searches. Weapons and a few shields are broken and unusable. He cracks a hollow base under a mighty anvil and opens up a compartment. Inside are a pair of bracers, chainmail armor, and a khopesh. Talus looks over them and tells him that the braces are cursed of fumbling, the sword is cursed too, but the chain very powerful magic. Not exactly trusting the dwarf, Alzar drops his armor and casts Detect Magic and only the bracers and sword glow. So he grabs them and will come back later for the chainmail if he wants it.

Suddenly Talus screams and grabs his club. Alzar looks up and several giant rats get onto the platform and move to attack. Alzar draws his axe and gets ready to join into the fray, but seven more giant rats pour out. Talus is completely surrounded. He calls out, “I’ve got you now you filthy orcs. I will slay you and rest tonight in the Sultan’s glory hall!” One giant rat is smashed and three more jump up. Alzar backs up and hacks a timber with his axe. Another thwack releases the ceiling and he rushes back out of the barrage. Mounds of dirt and rock land on the rats and Talus and finish them all quickly.

Alzar backs up and heads to the main tunnel and continues. He passes a collapsed tunnel to the right. The main tunnel veers north a bit but generally continues in an easterly direction. Another mile passes before the cavern on the right appears. It has murky water on the bottom deep enough for some large eels to call it home. Alzar sees no treasure and skips the area (with low hp).

Another 2/5s of a mile pass and another collapsed corridor passes on the left. Finally the last element occurs. Just before the exit, the path will arrive at a large chamber that the orcs call home. Alzar gets ready, in case battle is needed. He knows both Sleep and Continual Light, but he also has his armor.

Alzar believes he has a better chance of surviving the fight with his spells are no armor than his axe and armor. 9 hp won’t go long either way. He scouts ahead and sees a cavern with about twenty orcs in the area. There is a crudely drawn large red hand dripping blood on a blanket that is hung on one side of the chamber. They are not actively looking for people on either side.

Alzar steps up and calls for them. Suddenly, three grab slings and a leader looking orc moves in. Alzar demands to be allowed through the cavern.

“Why should Bloody Hand not capture you and make you slave?”

In five seconds, Alzar has cast sleep and five orcs have dropped. “In just a second I took out one fourth of your fighting force. Do you really want to give me another second?”

The leader peers at him deep in thought.

“I don’t want to kill your people, I just want to pass.”

“How about you pay.”

“No. If I were afraid of you, I’d pay you. I am not trembling. Would you like to see my next spell?”


The leader continues to look uncertain. Alzar grabs the components for his last spell. Before he begins to intone the spell, the orc relents and allows him to cross.

“Good. I really didn’t want to waste my powerful magic on you.”

Alzar crosses free. You can trust an orc a lot more than a human.


He comes out the other side, and in the bright air, he can see several humans working as slaves for the orcs, cutting wood and gathering nuts for dinner. Alzar nods at the guards and continues. In another fifteen minutes, Alzar is free on the other side and walking down the mountain side.

The day is growing long. Alzar has made it through the Horns, but he is growing tired. There is a river ahead, and Alzar has neared it. There is a sound of cutting wood here. Did the orcs bring their slaves this far? Rude laughter and harsh voices ring out. That is the sound of an orc enjoying himself.

The path curls toward the sound, and Alzar closes and sees two orcs cutting at a tree with axes, and then they rest and two others move in to start working at it. It is a huge oak, the tallest tree in the area. They certainly are an ambitious lot. Alzar decides to leave them to their intense work and moves on without being seen.


Then, a few moment slater, a young blond robe clad girl appears right by Alzar “Will you help me?” she implores. “Those vile creatures are trying to destroy my tree.” That phrase tweaks Alzar. “Your tree?” She nods, “My home”

Alzar suspects she is a fae creature of some sort. How can she not stop four simple orcs? Alzar sighs and moves back to the orcs. “Hello orcs.”

Startled they turn around and stare at Alzar as if caught with their hands in a cookie jar. They are cutting down this tree because the creature that lives here keeps pestering them. Just the other day she freed a slave. Alzar asks them to not cut down the tree. I will pay you if you don’t. That gets them interested. Alzar agrees to pay them each ten gold in order to stop cutting the tree. That’s worth five slaves apparently, and they leave.

-40 gold

The dryad is grateful. She lets Alzar stay the night here in her grove and she will protect him from the dire wolves that roam the river. She searches her tree and finds a small blue bottle. She gives it to Alzar and tells him it will make him float. He stays the night and in the morning, leaves refreshed.

Potion of Levitation.

12/51 hp

Alzar approaches the river, but there is a problem. The only bridge here is rope bridge made with a rope on the bottom and two guidelines at arm’s length. He cannot get his horse across. He returns to the dryad and she agrees to watch his horse while he journeys on.

He carefully moves across the bridge and makes his dexterity check to prevent himself from falling.

About a half hour later, Alzar is walking along the path when he begins to hear a howling sound from far away. It is answered by another from a few miles in another direction. They sound like wolves. After ten minutes, Alzar feels crashing in the woods around him and three snarling dire wolves explode from the trees and move in to attack the lone Alzar. His axe is up and he moves in to battle.

A dire wolf has one bite, and needs a 14 to hit and deals 2d4 damage when bitten. Alzar needs just a 5 and will carve for 1d8+4 with his axe. These are study beasts.

Alzar is set and swings first and smashes one for 5 damage. They bite back and miss. Then they one and one bites Alzar for 5 damage. He connects again for 9 damage, but misses once. He wins init and kills the wounded one. The others miss.

7/51


They win back init. One bites him for 4 damage and he carves it for 14 damage in two hits. RAR. Then he wins init and slays the wounded one. The other flees.

3/51


Alzar chooses to spend the day resting and taking care of his wounds and sleeping nearby. He is undisturbed. He casts identify on the khopesh and it is a +1 khopesh.

6/51

The next day he memorizes Identify again and casts it on the bracers. They are Bracers of Protection: +1 like the ring. He dons them and drops his AC one gets a +1 to saves.

After seven hours of travel, Alzar notices the ruins of an old, abandoned castle. He takes a path to it to explore what is there. It looks like it once guarded this path, it was probably a road at one point then. The castle is mostly destroyed, with only a rickety tower still standing. The walls are sort of there, but clearly decayed and old. Nothing stirs in the compound, covered with weeds and stones.. There is a pitted and scarred story of the keep that seems to have a bit still up on the next floor. The word Karn is above the destroyed gatehouse, but whether that is a person, a place, a prayer or even a command is unknown.

Alzar heads into the castles. The interior is difficult to pick through. He begins in the destroyed gatehouse. There are fresh tracks in the mud from something. Alzar treads more carefully. Ancient winches with rusted chains speak to the drawbridge which must have been here, once. An old stone shed that was storage is right here, but there is nothing inside. Alzar heads around. He passes an old abandoned stables, and a few destroyed buildings. The stables seem to have had animals in here recently. There is fresh dung on the floor and it smells.

He pushes through a door into one of the few rooms that has a ceiling and two women cry out not to be hurt. They were captured yesterday by the river by some goblins, who brought them here, stayed the night, and then left them here. Alzar learns that the goblins were riding dire wolves. That means this is probably their home. He pushes on, and a large old kitchen has been turned into a makeshift barracks, with piles of straw and flaxen strewn about. A room right off of this still has its roof and in here are some supplies like sacks of flour and dried meat.

On top of a shelf is some of the goblins treasure. A few jars of coins. It’s mostly low level stuff, bronze and copper. Alzar pulls out a few pieces of jewelry to review later.

Pearl Necklace – 750 gp
Silver Clasp – 50 gp

As Alzar moves toward the tower, the ground shifts dangerously. Perhaps a dungeon level is about to be his new home, so he carefully moves to parallel an exposed beam, so he is not walking between supports but on one. He arrives at the tower. It opens easily. The wooded stairs in here go up, but are rotted too badly to attempt., There is a dirty pallet and a small chest. Alzar uses his staff on the chest but it won’t open. He flicks the lock and it clicks open. A dagger springs out and slices him for 2 damage. There is nothing inside but dirty clothes. Even a second inspection double checking for false bottoms finds nothing.


Alzar leaves the castle behind and moves back to the path and continues on his way. The women mentioned that a priestess named Marilla was nearby, about a day and half journey east. He spends the rest of the day travelling, and then beds down for the night.

At night a group of wandering gnolls happen upon Alzar;s camp. He awakens and then casts sleep on them and draws all three of them. Slays them, and then heads back to sleep


(50 XP)

In morning, he packs up and moves out. Along the way, he sees a group of hyenas, but they give him a wide berth and he continues. By late afternoon, he has arrived as a large hedge and natural preserve. This hedge protects a glade and several large trees have stairs and platforms built into them.

He moves into the hedge, and just behind the entrance is a camouflaged guard he did not see before. Alzar is given a once over and allowed inside. He moves to the front tree and climbs the platform. At the top is an elven guide who escorts Alzar silently down the platforms and up another set of stairs. They arrive at a large building along the side of a giant yew tree. The building beautifully melds with the tree as if the two were one.

Alzar enters and here is seated Marilla at a long table, with several other people. They reacquaint themselves and then he sits down. They get each other caught up on their stories. She went to the city, sold the goods, and was coming back when she felt a call to come help these people from her deity. She arrived here about five months ago and has been healing them and providing a foundation for a new government. Their old leader had died childless and there was no heir, so there was great uncertainly here, which she helped to alleviate by changing their government to a representative one.

Alzar tells her about what has happened to the valley. She agrees to help, and first, she heals him. She even notices that he contracted lycanthropy from the wererat battle and cures it too.

She does have the ability to heal the valley of its curse, but it will take four day to prepare a remedy. In the meantime, the goblins have become a problem. Goblins alone aren’t a major threat, and the dire wolves are dangerous but unguided. However, the combination of the cunning of the goblins and the power of the dire wolves has created real threat to the area. She asks Alzar to return to the ruins while they are there, and finish them off.

Two days later Alzar arrives at the castle and slips in. The drawbridge is guarded but the collapsed walls are not, and Alzar makes his way into the east. They are on high alert – they know they were invaded. There appears to be about 20 of them.

He would like to come in as a mage, sleep five of them, but that is not possible. Who knows how many dire wolves are in the stables. Instead, he keeps his armor on and grabs his axe. With three attacks every 2 rounds, he should be able to cleave a goblin regularly. He will need a 5 to him them, and they an 18 to connect with him. Here goes.

Alzar leaps from behind a destroyed wall and smashes the ribs of a goblin and slays one. Several cry out in alert and sling stones fly in. He takes 3 damage from one. Melee range has been reached.

He misses on the first turn. They hit him once for 4 damage with a yataghan. About six are in close combat and others are winging in stones. One accidentally hits a goblin instead of him. He gains initiative and hits and slays two goblins. Many more have arrived and are shouting wildly at him. They are enraged and he doubts any will run. This is a battle to the death. Alzar is hit twice for 5 damage

39/51

He slays another and they all miss. Then they win init and a stabbing yataghan hits him for 4 more damage. He attacks twice, missing once and slaying another goblin.

35/51
5 goblins dead

He wins init and slays another goblin. Suddenly, the door to the stables opens and a wolf peels out and moves in. He is his twice for 4 damage.

31/51
6 dead

He loses init and they hit once for 6 damage. He slays two more. Another dire wolf exits and moves to battle and the first one is almost here, and will be able to attack next turn.

25/51
8 dead

Alzar regains init and stabs and misses. They also miss, including the dire wolf . A third one heads out. He keeps init and slays two gobblies. They miss but a dire wolf bites him for 4 damage.

21/51
10 goblins dead


A fourth dire wolf pours out and Alzar is hit once for 6 damage by a wolf and 1 more from a goblin. He smashes another goblin dead. They keep init and miss. He wrests it back and kills two more.

14/51
13 goblins dead.

Alzar keeps init and slays another goblin. No more wolves are pouring out. Because he fights one handed, he can use his other hand for stuff (since he is specialized in that style) . He quaffs one dose of his healing potion and heals ten damage. He just takes 5 from a bite and a yataghan.

19/51
14 dead

Alzar misses once and hits his 15th goblin and kills it. Just six left. One fights better than the others and has hit him several times – he suspects it’s the leader. Alzar gulps down the last dose of healing potion, and takes 7 from a warg and the leader. He loses init and takes another 4 from a sword and then stabs out and kills another goblin.

18/51
16 dead

He wrests back init and moves to a wolf. He still just needs a 5 and hits twice, once for 6 +4 and the other for 4 +4, which slays it (they have 18 hp each). The counter misses him, save for a goblin blade that bites him for 3 damage.


15/51
16 goblins dead
1 dire wolf dead

Alzar smashes a dire wolf for 5 damage. It bites but misses, and no one connects with him. He loses init and another bite snags him for 5 damage. He stabs the wolf twice and finishes it off.

10/51
16 goblins dead
2 wolves down


They keep init, but miss. He carves but misses. They attack and miss. He does not and damages a wolf but it is still alive. He wins init back and finishes it. The remains small group can’t pin him down with his high AC, before they were hitting due to the large number of attacks. He misses once and hits the last wolf. They attack, bite him once for 4 damage, and then he attacks twice and kills the last wolf.

6/51

But just four goblins and the leader left.

He wins init and cuts that down to four foes. They miss. He keeps init and cuts it to two foes. The leader smashes him. It deals 1d6 damage to him. Will it roll a 6 and finish him?



The green/gold d6 tumbles over and.....

It does… It rolls a 6! Alzar has died!

He has pushed it a lot, especially here, and now he dies at the hands of a low level goblin leader. How humiliating.


Alzar has died! Alzar has died! Alzar has died!

But wait….

Long ago, (in a previous adventure) Alzar was blessed with a shadow that would follow and stalk him forever. If he died, instead, it would fully heal him and then leave. Alzar is restored to full health but then it leaves. He didn’t even know about it.

Alzar does not know what happened, but feels as if something left him and weakened him that he never knew was there. Suddenly empowered, he smashes the last goblin and finishes off the leader without taking any more damage.


He stands above the carnage and ponders what just happened. He cannot be that lucky again. This was a normal combat. If each goblin had about a 15% chance of hitting him, then 20 attacks should hit him 2-3 times each for little damage. But the wolves and the leader were the lethal ones, hitting him much than they should have been. It would have been one sided against just the goblins.

On their bodies total Alzar finds about 236 gp.


236 gp

Well that was a lame way to use your deus ex machina macguffin ;)

SI

I know...sad but true. Stupid goblins!

Alzar returns to the glade and meets with Marilla again. She has prepared a large magical brew. It will not only cancel the curse, but it will also restart the growth of the land. She advises Alzar that the route he took has even more orcs than before, so he should instead take a southerly route that will cross the mountains to the south, but overland in a natural pass in the peaks. It’s longer, and will add at least a week or ten days to his travels but it should prove safer.


After his recent brush with death, Alzar wants safer. He points out that the land is getting colder and colder, and perhaps snows will begin soon. She agrees, but it’s the best way. Scouts have shown more than triple the number of orcs that were there before.

That’s a bit intimidating. This whole thing could have been handled in a week with a teleport spell. Ah well. Or he could head back, and then use Passwall or Transmute Rock to Mud to make a passage in a different point and enter the tunnel behind the orc camp. Ah well.

He takes the alternate path.

At first, Marilla was spot on. For a week Alzar see and hears nothing dangerous. He gathered his horse from the Dryad, and then moved down the river. This added two more days, but it gave him his full provisions for the ride.


On the eighth day, the sun is cold but bright, and the noon hour long since past. He passes by a small clearing as the path up river continues. Then Alzar sees a bit of smoke to the left on a trail that veers off to the river. Few seconds later, he sees a glimpse of something large and brown-red. Then four bugbears loom into view. For traveling, Alzar has been in his robes, since he is fully healed and its easier. A simple sleep spell drops two as thrown axes collide and he takes 5 damage.


46/51

One is barking orders to the other and it moves to the sleeping fellows to awaken them. Normally Alzar would target the leader with a Continual Light, but instead he targets the other, and it fails its save and is blinded. The other shows to it and gives it courage, and it draws a large war club and moves towards Alzar. The leader throws another axe, misses, and runs at Alzar. Alzar dismounts with his staff.

The bugbear wins init and smashes him for 5 damage. Alzar misses. After listening to directions the blind one will arrive next turn. Alzar regains init and thwacks the leader for 4 damage. Five turns later, Alzar has killed the leader barely, after getting a critical double damage hit, taken 27 damage, and the blind one has missed him every time. He finishes the blind one easily enough, and then heads over and slays the sleeping bugbears.

250XP

I was tired last night. Yes, deus ex machina. No, not a macguffin.

SI

He grabs their things and pulls them to the camp they have on the river. This appears to be a small raiding party. He grabs all of their stuff and uses his Rod to cast Detect Magic and looks for objects. A small set of mail glows. It’s sized for a human female, and is too small for Alzar to wear. Nothing else glows. In addition to some coinage he gathers something quite useful – a silver-tipped spear. It gives him another tool to fight creatures, since he is proficient in a spear. (He’ll cast Identify the next morning on the mail)


+1 Set of Mail, smaller humanoid female
Spear, silver-tipped
200 pp
500 gp
150 ep


He spends the day and night in their camp, eating the fish they caught, and healing.

22/51

He heads back out the following day and continues on the trail. As he does, a group of stirges fly around, and begin to sweep in. There are about five all told. A spear flies into one and kills it and his axe carves another before they can bite him. The others leave.


Several more days pass by. He has hit the main trail over here Marilla told him about and he has arrived in the foothills of the mountains . He has just about two days to hit the pass. Snow falls today and the first snow of the season has arrived. As he discovered in his first year living in this area, snow can be pretty serious business here.

He is forced to camp for the night here, and grabs a space by a shallow outcropping. Night falls, and his warm fire (fire-building proficiency) keeps him nice and toasty.

Around midnight, he hears a strange cry that echoes across the area. He does not recognize it. It might come from up higher. It silences all other noises for a good fifteen minutes before they pick up again,


About an hour before dawn, Alzar awakens to hear crunching noises around his camp. Slow, deliberate, and loud steps are heard. Alzar reaches down to grab the components for a Sleep spell and his weapon. After a minute, they move off.


After the sounds die away, Alzar moves from his shelter. In the snow is a trial of large footprints that circled the camp and moves to the mountain above. They are larger than min sized prints. He follows them for a bit after donning his gear. The sun is about to peek in when a snowdrift moves and instead it grows larger. Something large and white and loud moves to Alzar. It’s ape-like in size and movement.

Alzar tries a Sleep spell. Unfortunately it does not work. His staff is out and the creature arrives to battle him.

It swings two fists and connects once for 3 damage. Alzar misses.


28/51 (gained 3 hp a day due to fast healer trait)

It swings and hits once and misses once for another 2 damage. Alzar cracks it for 2 damage back.

26/51

It punches twice and hits Alzar twice for 5 damage. Since it hit twice, it has a chance to grab Alzar and put him into a bear hug. It misses that though. Alzar misses. Alzar wins init and misses. It misses twice. Alzar swing and hits hit for a solid 7 damage – his max with strength bonus. It punches once more for 4 damage.


17/51

It wins init back and punches him for 3 damage. (each punch deals 1d6 damage). He hits it for 4 damage.

14/51
It has taken 13 damage.

The creature keep s init but misses. Alzar doesn’t and adds 3 more damage.

It roars and moves off, running away. It moves a lot faster than Alzar. It gait is much large and it is unhampered by snow. He follows it. He doesn’t want to be ambushed by it later.

After a half hour of tracking the giant steps in the snow it leaves behind, he has tracked it to its lair. Alzar slows down and spends a few minutes looking things over. He crawls up an embankment and sees the creature, nursing its wounds and resting. Alzar gathers himself but makes too much noise and the flies of the creature fly open and spot him. Its roar rattles Alzar and the beast moves in. His staff is out.

It has taken 16 damage.

The staff misses and the creature does too. It wins init and punches him twice for 1 and 5 damage – 6 total. It misses the follow up squeeze. Alzar adds 5 more damage to it and it reels over and dies.


200 XP

Alzar pulls everything together and casts Detect Magic. Three things glow under the light of his Divining Rod. One dagger, one potion, and something he didn’t even see before. He would not have noticed it if he had waited to cast Detect magic elsewhere. He heads over to it and discovers a blue-white colored wand, virtually the same color as the snow.

+1 dagger
Potion of Healing – one dose
Wand of Frost – 9 charges

1500 gp
300 ep
1000 sp
10 diamonds - (200 gp each)

He gathers his treasure and adds it to his horse and continues on his way. He will identify the items in the next three days.


Two days pass and Alzar only manages to push forward through one day of journeying. The snow is thickening with more and more blasts. The going is very slow and methodical. Luckily he has a lot of food and water. But the day is cold and the evening sharper.

M1. Blizzard Pass





Welcome to 1983. Blizzard Pass is another of those wacky solo modules. In the 80s, TSR was trying to find the right way to do a solo module. Like all gaming companies, modules are the worst selling product that you make. You sell a lot more handbooks or guides than you do modules. Even books which will have little impact on your campaign (such as Legends and Lore) sell more than modules do. So TSR was trying to get a hit, at a time when solo gamebooks were all the rage and books such as Lone Wolf were selling like hotcakes. They tried several methods. Lathan’s Gold is a pretty good one, it reads like a gamebook, adds some rule about sea travel, food and ships, and moves you into the game. Ghost of Lion’s Castle is also very gamebook-y, with some changes to spells and magic in there. On the other hand, M2, Maze of the Minotaur used an invisible pen to write on the book and reveal what happens. We might even see one later on that uses a red plastic screen to filter out red junk and reveal things beneath it. TSR used the tech of the 80s to push through solo adventures.

And so, that brings us to M1. Blizzard Pass. This is another invisible pen module, written by David Cook and edited by Troy Denning. None of these solo modules are on anyone’s best of list. But what they do is give me a chance to run them naked, without knowing what is coming. While I try to remove Alzar and my own knowledge and keep them separate, we all know that’s never 100% certain. But here, there is no chance Alzar knows, because I haven’t been peeking at the end.

Now, the M1 that I own only has some of the places revealed by a pen. Plus, some are hard to read after 30 years. So I purchased a football game book from Lee Publications and I will be using that pen to illuminate the sections in this module.

I am altering the plot line considerably. Instead of being a thief on the run from false accusations of murder, Alzar is just heading to the pass as normal as part of Forest Oracle, and runs into this.

So let’s begin, M1, Blizzard Pass!


Alzar moves up the day towards the pass and gets closer and closer. It takes a while, the snow is steep and the horse is sturdy, but slow. But progress is being made.

Alzar moves up the pass and things are looking good. Then, almost without warning, the wind picks up dangerously. Within moments, Alzar is pushed forward as gusts picks up snow on the ground and moves it around. Ten minutes later snow starts falling from the sky, and combination makes visibility poor. Alzar cannot afford to keep going in this, but there is nowhere to turn around or get shelter.

As he slowly pushes forward, the horse falls and tumbles. It has broken its leg and Alzar carves off its head to give it a peaceful death. He gathers what things he can and pushes forward. Soon the cold is increasing, and he makes an endurance proficiency check, and is able to keep on going.

An hour rolls by an Alzar keeps moving slowly forward. As he does, suddenly some forms melt out of the snow ahead and move to attack Alzar, who is focused on moving and keeping his balance. His staff is in hand for balance and walking, so he grabs it to fight. Three humanoids surround him as another circles around to his rear. His staff swings out and misses. They punch him several times and he falls over in the snow, and that about wraps him up. In a few minutes, they are on top and snow is pouring into his clothes. The weather and the enemy forces him unconscious.

An unknown amount of time later, Alzar awakens to a painful throbbing in his head. He hears voices nearby discussing impending death. He gently opens his eyes, allowing light to filter in and to get them to adjust. A few minutes pass, and he looks about.

Alzar is in a rocky chamber, like a cave. There are curtains on two walls, a table with four rugged stools around it, and several humanoids there he recognizes easily. Kobolds. He is in a prison cell with three others, a portly older man, a younger spry elf, and a younger female warrior. The older man tells Alzar to remain still and gently touches his head . In a few moments, Alzar has been cured of all wounds. “I don’t have much curative magic left. But I still have a few spells stored away, just in case.”


Their captors searched and took everything except for his boots and clothes. He is missing his focus Signet ring, which means no magic, even if he finds spell components, until he recovers it. Soon, three of the humanoids get up to leave and the fourth moves to the wooden bars, which look quite strong. That one grabs a spear and moves to the bars and calls out that the chubby balding priest will be a nice snack, but the thin lady won’t be much of a meal at all. It jabs her a bit and she falls to the ground. It laughs and turns and leaves.