{"id":9499,"date":"2024-12-14T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-14T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9499"},"modified":"2024-11-27T08:41:56","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T13:41:56","slug":"wall-top-lair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9499","title":{"rendered":"Wall-Top Lair"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Nickolas Zachary Brown
Five Cataclysms
Five Cataclysms
Level ... 5? 8?<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The carcass of a dead city is to many, a ruin. But to others, it is an opportunity. Where tens of thousands of still bodies lay, necromancers and their ilk shall flock.  This is the way of things. The perimeter of this city, like many of the great cities of old, has a wall. Atop this wall are two towers. Day and night, an ominous green glow emanates from the larger tower, where an undead animator toils away, creating horrors for its master.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This fourteen page adventure is a twenty five room hack in a two-tower gatehouse full of undead. A little wit, a straightforward style, some interesting things to stab \u2026 for what it is it\u2019s doing a decent job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I do complain about hacks, don\u2019t I? I think this falls in to the same category as how I treat tropes. And, I suppose, a hack is a trope in D&D-landia. A throw-away isn\u2019t going to land with me, but if you put your heart in to it and really make it your own then I\u2019m probably down. For all of the \u201cBryce doesn\u2019t like X\u201d shit, I think I\u2019m really quite generous. Just make it not terrible, and I don\u2019t really care how you go about doing that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, \u201cA local cleric was able to interrogate the fallen undead [abducting people from their beds], who revealed to him thus: A lich named \u2018Father\u2019 has made the southern gate-fort its lair, and is collecting bodies for its evil work\u201d  I could bitch a lot about this. The skeleton knows he\u2019s a lich? The cleric does? \u201cEvil work\u201d? Is that what old skelly said? I\u2019m much more amenable to Widow Agnes, dead a year now, telling the tale, and so on. You want some specificity, some color. That\u2019s what being a designer is, adding those boots that bring the thing to life. Sure, the DM has to run with it, but you need to give the DM something to run with, something to get the ol brain juices going. And in a generic vs specific battle it\u2019s hard to see how the generic could win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the town militia and local soldiery is always busy in one of these adventures. And the local pretext here for this adventure is a great example of a couple of principals.  \u201cThe local militia has their hands full with stirge mating season in full-swing, thus the Mayor has implored the adventuring population to \u2026\u201c There\u2019s some absurdity here, at just the right time. It\u2019s the pretext to get the party moving, and we all know it, so let\u2019s hype it up a bit. It more than grounds the DM in some things to introduce as vignettes in the parties village journey, imagine the possibilities or stirge suits and stirge nets and giant DDT vats and so on! We\u2019re playing D&D tonight and the DM has introduced a pretext and ir running with it, acting like its serious. I\u2019m down! A little silly at the start can help to do this. Yes, the villagers are idiots. Of course they are. That\u2019s why you\u2019re here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The map here is, well \u2026 It\u2019s a set of gates with a tower on each side and a couple of bridges across to each other. You go up a flight in one tower and then over to the other side and then up to the other side and so on. This gives a linear progression to things, as you journey from the ground to the top of the tower and the big green crystal sphere on top. There\u2019s a side room or three hanging off of each level as well, but it\u2019s mostly linear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t know where to go from here. Descriptions are kept terse but in an interesting way. \u201cA blackened blood smear runs across the stone floor and up the stairs. A lever is attached to the eastern wall. The opposite north gate has also been smashed open, long ago.\u201d or \u201cHuman corpses, stacked like logs, the stack reaching chest height. Stripped of all gear & equipment, there must be at least 40 corpses here. The most common cause of death is a slashed throat\u201d I can quibble with an over-reveal or aside in these, but they are not terrible descriptions. And, to the adventures credit, it generally understands that the most important thing should come first. If the door to the room is trapped then thats the first thing in the room description. Major features comes before minor ones, and so on. And then, when needed, a cross-reference comes in to play, noting, for example, at the entrance, that the skels in room sixteen fire down on the characters if they draw attention to themselves \u2026 instead of putting that information in room sixteen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our creatures. Oh my. For a hack \u2026 Well, there\u2019s a decent assortment of 1HD and 2HD skeletons. No problem. One group chucks a barrel down the stairs at you. And what does a necromancer do with their extra blood? \u201cBLOOD OOZE \u2013 Ah, what to do with this extra blood? Put it in a barrel and animate it, of course.\u201d Again, that sly little wit. Or, the Weakened Wight \u201cScrawny. He\u2019s got a goblet,for reasons unknown\u201d Well, yes, he should have one, obviously. That makes him more wightlike. Did I mention the hair monster? \u201cAttacks by shoving itself down the target\u2019s throat, suffocating them. It becomes more and more difficult to get it out.\u201d There are also an assortment of non-traditional skeletons, including a giant spider with a max full of sharks teeth, the hand of a true giant and what feels like an endless variety. Even the wight (above) and a shadow gets little bit of a special treatment beyond the mere ordinary book thing. And then, sometimes, it goes and does this \u201c12 x UNDEAD MONKEY \u2013 A barrel full of monkeys! Sort of. They\u2019re vicious\u201d A bridge too far! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m not mad at this. If I wanted an assault mission I\u2019d be happy with this. It\u2019s got enough going on with its hack to elevate it beyond the normal ones. The descriptions are interesting, the treasure tries a little bit, the monsters are horrific. It\u2019s not bad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see the first three rooms on the last page. SO, it\u2019s an ok preview. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/258178\/wall-top-lair?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Nickolas Zachary BrownFive CataclysmsFive CataclysmsLevel … 5? 8? The carcass of a dead city is to many, a ruin. But to others, it is an opportunity. Where tens of thousands of still bodies lay, necromancers and their ilk shall … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-no-regerts","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/walltop.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9500,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9499\/revisions\/9500"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}