M1 – Medusa’s Hunger

A wagon has gone missing in the nearby swamps and the party is hired to help retrieve the contents.

This is a very short and very deadly lair dungeon. The entire piece is a set up from the beginning. It’s well done, and because of that, very deadly. A merchants wagon has gone missing in the nearby swamps. The party is hired by a mercenary to help locate and retrieve the contents. Things got too rough for him in the swamps and now he needs help fulfilling his contract. After a short three-day trip, with about 14 wandering monster checks (1 on a d10, with mostly animals and a couple of trolls/ogres thrown in), the party will arrive at a rocky outcropping where the mercenary thinks the tracks lead. Inside is a short lair dungeon with ten keyed encounters. Almost every single one is trap and all are meant to soften the party up. For a non-OSR group the dungeon, though short, is going to be a rough one. Many of the traps will do 4d6 or so, and at least one is a likely to result in some character deaths for slow-witted characters.

There’s a method to most of this madness. The mercenary, Garen, is actually ordering take out. He’s a rare Medusan, a male of the Medusa species, and is bringing home some take-out for the wife. When the party reaches the last major room they’ll have to face a greater medusa, an immobilizing trap, and Garen. They are in for a world of hurt.

This is almost too small for a proper review. Garen, the NPC, lives the life that every NPC wants to. He puts up with all of the parties nonsense, delay tactics, and BS, all so he can learn more about them, discover their weaknesses, and take home his general tso. The traps are not much, a few pits with spikes, some green slime (dinner is gonna go bad with that one!) and a net trap. The two monsters feel a little gimpy: one has a ring of invisibility and the other a ring of x-ray vision. I understand that monsters use their treasure, but this feels more than a little like a set-up.

It’s advertised as being appropriate for a single evening, however I suspect it would work better as a side-trek while on another adventure. It’s just too short to be anything more than that. It reminds me a lot of the Ogre cave in B2/Borderlands; just a single room cave with a monster. This cave has a couple of more rooms, and a few traps with a setup, but in reality it’s just a little monster house designed to bring home the bacon, literally.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/20896/Wyrms–Warlocks-Medusas-Hunger?affiliate_id=1892600