Treasures of the Necropolis

By Gabor Lux
First Hungarian D20 Society
OSR
Levels 3-7

[A place of burial since primordial eras, this is a site of crumbling (and sometimes repurposed) mausoleums, catacomb passages, and more oddities] [one of the subterranean complexes beneath the City of Vultures. Located under the crooked streets of the Beggars’ District (also described), this is a section of the undercity that goes from reasonably simple to remarkably deadly. From the Court of the Pariah-King to the Domain of Virotán and the Ceramic Space, it just gets stranger and more vicious.]

This 56 page supplement presents four different dungeons, each with multiple levels and a large number of rooms. Delightfully idiosyncratic, with consistently enough information to fire the imagination without droning on. It harkens back to Dungeon of the Bear and Arduin with shades of Barker. Everything you love about old school.

There are a couple of dungeons presented here. The first are an above ground graveyard complex with tunnels underneath, so two levels. The second is multi-level (four?) complex under the beggar district in the City of Vultures. Then there’s a kind of fantasy/fairy castle, replete with pennants flying, on a rolling hills full of flowers, manned by the Knights of Roses. Finally, there’s the tower of a retired thief back in the beggar district, by far the shortest of the four. The first three are all excellent, with the fourth being good but a little weaker. (It’s a fucking tower, what do you do with that?) 

I find these multi-dungeon volumes hard to review, particularly when especially good or bad, since I could pages and pages on each of the dungeons. I’m going to kind of cover the vibe of each and then generalize a lot in what they common in how they communicate that vibe and facilitate play. The outlier in tone is the Castle of Rose Knight. “Flowering meadows of improbable beauty cover the perpetually sunlit slopes, and a small castle rises  in the middle with fluttering pennons  on peaked towers.” Approaching, a feat unto itself, you meet the Knight of Roses who challenges you to single combat. A civilized man, to fight blood, horse fall, and then invites you in to the castle win or lose: he is, after all, a gentleman. And evil gentleman, but a gentleman none the less. Inside we get this kind of .. folklore or fairytale view of a castle. Fantasy or high fantasy? I feel like all four of those words now mean something else now, so, back to those kind of original pre-80’s definitions. Got the vibe? Good. The first and second are completely different. The first is an ancient graveyard with tunnel underneath … home to the Brain Eaters! (Which, I must say, is a great way to describe ghouls. I love it!) And then the second is a kind of multi-level dungeon beneath the beggar section of the city of vultures. You’ve got businesses, with entrances from the streets, well access, various sects/cults/factions with interesting in certain areas … it’s got a very urban vibe while still feeling like it’s a dungeon. The place is alive … even the abandoned sections. 🙂 Great use of zones, especially in this dungeon.

The Gaborian excels at a turn of phrase and interactivity and that is what helps makes these dungeons great. A little serious, a little snark, and a terse description that leaves you hanging and wanting more … which excites you and you fill in those sections with your own DM brain. Which is what EVERY description should do. And he does this, time after time, with remarkably few words. There are embellishments here to bring home the environments to the players/characters. “Feeling of sour taste in mouth, slight vertigo.” Every fucking time I am bitch hing about telling instead of showing I am comparing it to this. When I bitch about a descriptions that says a location is weird, or feels weird, or something like that, I am contracting it to this. A sour taste in your mouth and slight vertigo. That’s weird. That’s a weird feeling for your character. Those eight words communicate the feeling that the abstracted “weird” word is going for. But it does it in a visceral and concrete way. That’s how you show instead of telling. There’s just enough here to be tantalizing, to get you excited, to build on. A masterclass in getting the vibe across.

Interactivity is great, across the board, but particularly in the second adventure, under the beggars quarter. You really get the sense that this place is alive and that it is both a part of the city and distinct and separate from it. The various factions running around, doing their own thing, alongside forgotten rooms and the like. There’s a tendency, in a lot of dungeons, for a room to have one thing in it. And that’s a meme not present here. Time and again the various rooms will have multiple things in them, a real depth to the adventure environment not present in others. No, it’s not every room, but its enough to make me recognize it. The puzzles are nor ham handed riddles, but rather integrated in to the environment. The creatures are not throw-aways but rather seem like they should be there and fit in well. It’s that whole “image the place and THEN figure out what in the book makes sense to describe it” It’s not a room with a black pudding in it. The room was imagined and then a black pudding was a close enough creature to what was meant to be Imagination first. 

There’s a wandering poet, on the wandering table, looking for his lost love, a dancing girl. There’s another dancing girl, freshly escaped from the underground tunnels. There are ghouls, feasting on the poets love, in league with the “escaped” dancing girl. Bitches man. 

Great dungeons with distinct flavours: ancient graveyard, undercity, fantasy castle. And yet each loaded with diverse interactivity and evocative descriptions that are easy to digest. This is the way you write a dungeon!

This is $10 at the storefront.

https://emdt.bigcartel.com/product/echoes-from-fomalhaut-12-treasures-of-the-necropolis