Douglas Niles

It's time again for a look at a bit of D&D history. This week we've got another Expert level adventure, X3: Curse of Xanathon, by Douglas Niles. This adventure takes the party to another new area of the map, the Kingdom of Vestland, along the northern coast.

This scene will only occur if the PCs go the wrong way. This is somewhat emblematic of the adventure as a whole.

The adventure takes place in the town of Rhoona, ruled by Duke Stephen (no, a different Duke Stephen). Rhoona is a decent sized town located on a fjord near the border with the dwarven nation of Rockhome. As such, there's a sizable dwarf population, many of whom have been employed by the Duke to construct a new palace. There is also a growing population of immigrants from the Ethengar Khanate.

The Ethengarians have brought their religion with them and have recently constructed a temple to their god, Cretia who is mysterious and strange and not at all evil at all, no really. This being early D&D, we need one church for each of the alignments. Cretia fills the Chaotic slot; in addition we have the Lawful Order of Forsetta and the best neutral church ever imagined, the Temple of the Spuming Nooga. The Spuming Nooga is worshiped by fishermen and sailors, takes the form of a giant spouting whale, and is the only one of these three that is neither evil nor an idiot.

As the adventure begins, the party are in a tavern (take a drink) in Rhoona and have learned that the Duke has recently been issuing strange decrees. First he declared that all taxes must be paid in beer, causing a beer shortage which has the dwarves in particular even crankier than normal. Then he declared that all horses must be ridden backwards while in town. A herald then announces the latest decree, that all dwarves are now banned from town. Any found within town after an hour has passed will be arrested, shaved, and stretched on a rack.

This gets the dwarves in the tavern in a bit of an uproar and one dwarven stonemason (who is wearing plate mail and carrying a battle axe because dwarves? I guess?) starts going on about how Draco Stormsailer, the captain of the guard, behind all of this. If the PCs approach him, he'll tell them there've been strange people hanging around the guard barracks and that someone should check it out. If they don't the high priest of Forsetta, who is hanging out disguised as a beggar, will whisper a cryptic clue as he passes. Apparently he has a good idea of what's going on, but can't take any action because he's lawful. And somehow that means he can't oppose an attempt to undermine his lawful ruler by dark magic, or something. I think Niles seriously misunderstands the definition of lawful here.

What's going on is that Draco is attempting to foment rebellion against the duke so that he can depose Duke Stephen and take his place. He's aided in this by Xanathon, the High Priest of Cretia, who has cursed the Duke with something similar to a feeblemind spell. Since Cretia aided him in inflicting the curse (as opposed to most cleric spells?) it can't just be removed in the normal fashion, an antidote is needed. Guess who has that? Also Xanathon is entirely invulnerable because Cretia stuck his soul in a diamond which is hidden in a shrine up in the mountains. Also, also, Xanathon is actually serving as an agent of the Khanate trying to weaken Rhoona so the Ethengarians can swoop in and conquer it.

The adventure, then, consists of five parts. First up, go to the barracks to try and find out what the hell's going on. The adventure basically assumes the players just start murdering their way through the guards to get to Draco, which seems a bit unheroic? Apparently directly opposing a villain is 'unlawful' but sending a bunch of dudes to kill all the towns guards is allowed? The adventure even makes it clear in the background that most of the guard, while loyal to Draco, have no idea what he's up to. Once they've reached Draco's room, the players find that he's not home, but he left an encrypted note on the table and a Helm of Reading Languages and Magic in a chest nearby.

Also, isn't it super cool to be evil like you and I both are?

While the adventurers were busy with that the Duke has outlawed fire, because it makes the sun jealous. With the evidence they now have, its presumed the players will go to the Temple of Cretia next to confront Xanathon. If they don't, the priest of Forsetta will get cryptic at them about it again. Fighting their way through a bunch of evil clerics, they will find Xanathon only to discover that he can't be harmed! He's super arrogant and riddles at them about it, as well as having a map on the wall with a big red mark where his super secret soul diamond is being kept. If the PCs are smart, they jump out the handy window and run like buggery. If they're not, he bludgeons them to death one by one with his mace and laughs.

Assuming the adventurers got a good look at the map while Xanathon was beating on them, they should now travel into the mountains to find the Shrine of Cretia. On the way out, they hear that the Duke has declared that meat is for horses now. There are a couple of paths once they get near the shrine; one leads to the chimera from the cover, the other to the shrine. The shrine is a short dungeon with fairly typical monsters; a bunch of various undead, some ogres, gargoyles, so on. At the end, guarded by a spectre, is the diamond. The players might think they need to destroy it, but no, they need to take it back to Xanathon. Once it's near him, he'll be vulnerable.

Now that they have the diamond, the adventurers can take out Xanathon, recover the antidote, kill Draco, and restore the Duke. He is, of course, grateful and rewards the PCs. How he plans to keep the peace since his entire guard force was brutally murdered is not detailed. Maybe he hires the dwarven army that are coming to burn the town after he apologizes to them.

As I already said, Curse of Xanathon is disappointing. There are the bones of a good adventure here, but the execution is just terribly ham-handed. The basic idea of an agent from another country trying to foment rebellion by cursing the ruler is good; there's a definite Grima Wormtongue vibe to that. Duke Stephen could be used as a patron for the adventurers in the future since he owes them big. I feel like there's a lot work needed to bring the adventure up to snuff though. Also, it needs more Spuming Nooga.

This week we're taking a look at Dungeons & Dragons adventure module B5: Horror on the Hill, written by Douglas Niles and published in 1983.


Douglas Niles is probably best known as a novelist who has written quite a number of books set in the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms campaign worlds. Early in his career with TSR he also wrote a few adventure modules for the Basic ruleset, one of which we have here. Horror on the Hill seems transitional in a number of ways. Most obviously it's the first of the B modules that uses the updated trade dress that I grew up with. It's a minor thing, but this is the design that immediately screams 'Basic D&D' to me.

This is also a module that attempts to be more logical in it's progression and throws a twist in midway that the players might not expect. We're still looking at a situation where the party's reason for going on the adventure is mostly 'there's loot in there', but the DM could easily have a minor lord or the like send the party to investigate rumors of a massing hobgoblin army and deal with the problem.

The adventure claims to be for 5-10 characters of level 1-3. In all honesty, I wouldn't run this adventure for level 1 characters. Entirely apart from the logistics of having 10 players at the table, an encounter that challenges 5 level 3 characters might be defeatable by 10 at level 1, but some of them will almost certainly die. One encounter fairly early in the adventure is with a pair of ogres. Ogres! It'll likely take a party a couple of rounds minimum to take them down, and one hit from an ogre can kill any level 1 character with a good roll. I may speak from experience on this point.

The adventure has the party hiking up 'The Hill' to find the ruins of an abandoned monastery which has been taken over by a band of humanoids led by a hogoblin king. After defeating the king, the party is intended to fall victim to a trap door which drops them a few hundred feet (via a chute, so no falling damage) into caverns beneath the monastery where they have to find their way out. The only escape ultimately leads through a red dragon's lair.

The Hill is an overgrown wilderness with a few caves inhabited by various creatures (giant bats, ogres, Neanderthals) and some outdoor encounters with killer bees, giant ants and the like. There are also a pair of old women living in a little shack that is much larger on the inside than outside.

We're just innocent old grandmothers, dearies.

The players might expect evil witches, and the women are in fact level 6 spellcasters, but they're only interested in making bargains. If you have players who like to rob or kill non-hostiles, this may be the end of the party right here, these old women don't mess around. Trying to cheat them after a deal is made will also have them chasing the party wherever they go to get what's owed them. As long as the party deals square though, they can be a good source of intelligence and resources.

The monastery is a good adventuring location with an aboveground area and a dungeon below where the hobgoblin king resides. There are enough goblin, bugbear, and hobgoblin forces throughout that clever play or multiple sorties will probably be needed for the party to make their way through. Once the party starts to make their way out, they fall through a trap triggered by the king's empty throne. Or at least they're meant to; this seems like the sort of thing that requires a DM caveat to make everybody fall victim, and could result in cranky players since they didn't have a chance to avoid the trap.

The caves below the monastery are a fairly typical cave type dungeon, with the more random sorts of monsters that those tend to have. The adventure does make note of the fact that creatures here are mostly ones that have become trapped there over time and that they are all in a state of crazed hunger, having survived mostly on rats. No options for diplomacy here.

At the end, the party has to make their way through the lair of a young red dragon to escape. This encounter would absolutely murder a level 1 party; I just don't see any way around it. Even a higher level party would have trouble. There's no option as written to avoid combat either. The dragon is willing to talk for a while, but will attack if the party tries to leave or when he gets bored with them. If the players remember the dragon subdual rules though, and manage to do so they'll have a dragon to take with them. And those old ladies they met would sure love to have their own pet dragon...

On the whole, Horror on the Hill is a pretty good module as long as the DM is either okay with some character death or can tweak things a bit to be a little more fair. It's a step in the evolution towards more logical adventures where things fit together in a sensible way. We still haven't reached the truly story-driven adventures of later years, but we're getting there.

Next week we'll be having a look at a truly different adventure module, B6: The Veiled Society. Not only is this the first city adventure we've seen, it's a city adventure set entirely in Specularum, capital of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos. Political intrigue and secret societies await!