Knockspell #5 – Where Dwells the Mountain God

by Bill Silvey
Knockspell Magazine
0/1e, S&W
Levels 7-9

This seems like ‘just another lair assault’ adventure but has some interesting possibilities if work were put in to it. And if you can ignore the bizarre way the lair was populated.Uh … so … if you can take the core concept and work up a different implementation then you could have something decent to play.

The local village priests have converted to a new god that hangs out in a temple ruin nearby. The new god demands tribute and human sacrifices (but the priests are’t evil … uh, yeah, right …) Most of the villagers are ok with this, such is the price of freedom! What the FUCK is wrong with villagers these days? They don’t move? No, far fucking better to hand over your kids as human sacrifices than run? There’s some throw-away text about the town militia ejecting meddlers from the town. Here lies the central issue with the adventure. The town is actually a decent little set up but it needs to be expanded on. Converted priests, dejected villagers, villagers who have hired the mercenaries, people hiding their kids, abandoning town, this is all great stuff, it just needs to be expanded on with some personalities and more descriptive faction write up. Without it then the DM has ALL of the work to create it. That’s not exactly what I’m looking for in an adventure.

The actual adventure is … I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s like someone took a random map off of the internet and took an adventure and put it on the map. The map is just a branching corridor design. Rooms and hallways branch off of other hallways and rooms. That means there is only one way to get to the Mountain God. And it’s behind a concealed door. WHich has a room with Doppleganger invaders. Beyond which are three submerged rooms full of green slime. Behind which is a guard room with four giants. There’s a secret door in that room that they use to get to their sleeping chambers. Past which is the Mountain King, another giant. That seems like a pretty rough gauntlet to run, even for giants. That’s the bizarre part and the seemingly random part. Other places are kind of like that also. The temple has a pet owl bear, but to get to it to feed the guards have to go past a mean troll not aligned with the temple. Huh? Guards and guys live behind very secret doors … it just makes no sense in many places.

The ideas behind some of the encounters are not that bad. You’ve got human bandits who are now guards. You’ve got orc guards. You’ve got ogres. You’ve got guard captains. You’ve got minor priests and major priests. Most of them some some comment about them. The former bandits are there for loot. Some of the ogres don’t like it here. Some of them do. The whole place is just screaming out for a little more details and some factions. Expand the personalities JUST a bit and expand the storyline just a bit as well: set them up as raiders and slowly taing over a couple of villagers and throw in a raid or two for the party to experience and get a taste of the factions and some foreshadowing of the main villains. That would all be pretty cool. But it ain’t here. Parts of the complex have some decent encounters. A statue that kills/gives wishes is nice, as is the sunken temple area. But there’s not enough weird stuff to save it and the treasure, both mundane and magic, is pretty boring standard affairs. “3 gems worth 1500go each” and the like.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/88793/Knockspell-5?affiliate_id=1892600