Tom Moldvay

Mystara Monday: Module X2 – Castle Amber

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Today we're having a look at the second of the D&D Expert level modules, Module X2: Castle Amber, written by Tom Moldvay. X2 is a weird module both in style and content. In many ways it's similar to Gary Gygax's later Wonderland-inspired Dungeonland and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, drawing both directly and indirectly from multiple literary sources including Zelazny, Poe, and most strongly, Clark Ashton Smith. Castle Amber also introduces a character who goes on to become incredibly important to the ongoing Mystara setting, Etienne d'Ambreville.

Mystara Monday: Module X2 - Castle Amber
That's a 100 foot tall colossus formed of corpse flesh,
just so you're aware.

Castle Amber is split between a dungeon crawl (through the eponymous castle) and a more loosely describe adventure through the lands of Averoigne. Averoigne is described as a province of an alternate earth, based on the French province of Auvergne. Averoigne was the setting for a number of stories by the writer Clark Ashton Smith, four of which become mini-adventures in this module. Before reaching Averoigne, however, the adventuring party must brave Castle Amber and make it out intact.

The Amber family were originally the d'Ambreville's of Averoigne until they were forced to flee across dimensions and found refuge on Mystara in Glantri, a magocracy briefly described in The Isle of Dread. Being a family of powerful mages, the Amber family rose in power to the point that the head of the family was made a Prince of Glantri. The seventh Prince of the Amber family, Stephen Amber (or Etienne d'Ambreville) was one of the most powerful mages in history. Then the entire family and their mansion (Castle Amber) vanished. That was over a century ago.

The party goes to sleep one night on the road and wake to find themselves in the foyer of Castle Amber, penned in by a choking mist that prevents their leaving. To escape, they have to explore the mansion, encountering numerous members of the Amber family of varying levels of sanity, and ultimately find a gateway that transports them to Averoigne. In Averoigne, more adventuring is required to find a way back to the adventurer's home world.

Mystara Monday: Module X2 - Castle Amber
The first of the Amber family the players meet is Jean-Louis.
He likes to put on boxing matches using artificial people.
He's one of the relatively sane ones.

Many of the encounters in the mansion draw from the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, with clear references to Hop-Frog and The Fall of the House of Usher for example. Many of the Amber family have been cursed in some manner, often transformed into animal men. Even the encounters with normal monsters tend to be written in keeping with the off-kilter feel of the mansion, such as an ogre who killed Janette d'Ambreville and has been enchanted to believe it is her.

Mystara Monday: Module X2 - Castle Amber
Also there's a woman and a unicorn sleeping in the garden.
Spoiler: She's a gold dragon. Don't touch her chest.

In the course of exploring the mansion, the party can learn that the family was cursed when Prince Etienne was murdered by his brother, Henri, and Henri's wife, Catharine. To escape, they will have to travel to Averoigne through a portal in the castle dungeon and find Etienne's tomb. This leads to the second portion of the adventure where the party must explore Averoigne to find four magical items which can be used to summon the tomb. Each of those items is a reward from a short adventure drawn directly from one of Clark Ashton Smith's stories.

On reaching the tomb the party discovers that Etienne is not truly dead, but was trapped within his tomb waiting for the adventurers to free him. He teleports them all back to Glantri, resurrects up to four characters that died during the adventure (there are a lot of save or die opportunities in this module), gives everyone a magic item, and vanishes. Adventure over.

This is a module that I've never had the opportunity to run, but have always wanted to. In a lot of ways it feels like something that might better fit in Ravenloft than Mystara; it has a gothic weirdness feel throughout that would be right at home in the Demiplane of Dread. I'd probably modify the hook so that the characters are actively seeking the home of the Amber family so that it's less of a railroad, and I'd definitely want to turn a lot of the save or die encounters into less fatal punishments. Overall though, it's a really neat module with a lot to recommend it.

As I mentioned before, Etienne becomes a key player as Mystara develops. We'll see that more in depth when we get to the Glantri Gazetteer and later the Wrath of the Immortals boxed set. In short though, after being freed from his state of living death he goes on to ascend to immortality through the use of the Nucleus of the Spheres, a nuclear reactor buried deep beneath Glantri in the remains of crashed spaceship. Mystara can be weird, y'all.

Mystara Monday: Module X1 – The Isle of Dread

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It's time to explore one of the most famous D&D adventure modules of all time, and very likely the single most played adventure module ever, Module X1: The Isle of Dread.
Mystara Monday: Module X1 - The Isle of Dread

Originally published in 1981, The Isle of Dread was included in every Expert Rules boxed set as an introductory wilderness adventure. The copy I have is the second version, revised to match up with the Mentzer revision of the Expert Rules. Mostly this involves a number of monsters being replaced due to being left out of the new rules (giant squids were replaced with water termites, a sea dragon with a hydra, and so forth.)

At its core, The Isle of Dread is an adventure inspired by Skull Island from King Kong. The party come into possession of pages from a ship's log describing the discovery of a mysterious island, the natives of which live on a small peninsula separated from the main island by a massive protective wall. The natives claim an ancient city in the center of the island holds great treasure, and the adventure assumes the lure of both exploration and profit will be enough to get the players hooked (a reasonable assumption.)

Mystara Monday: Module X1 - The Isle of Dread
I suspect every D&D player above a certain age
recognizes this map.

On reaching the island the party finds an island of jungles and hills populated primarily by giant animals and dinosaurs (no giant apes, however.) The adventure itself consists of exploring the island, fighting monsters for their treasure, and ultimately reaching the island's central plateau where a temple ruin provides a short dungeon delve. It's less about the individual encounters on the island and more about the overall feel of exploration in uncharted wilderness far from civilization.

The Isle of Dread is also the adventure module that first provides a map of Mystara (though it's not called that yet, the map is simply of 'The Continent') and details each of the major countries shown on the map. One full page at the front of the adventure consists of a paragraph or two for each country, and is where things are established such as Glantri being a magocracy, Darokin's status as a merchant republic, or the Heldann Freeholds' resemblance to ancient Ireland. All of this information would be expanded on in later adventures and in the Gazetteers, but this is where it all started.

Mystara Monday: Module X1 - The Isle of Dread
It's not even the Known World yet at this point.

A number of important creatures are introduced in this module as well, including nearly a dozen dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures, including giant ground sloths and giant elk. There's a definite 'land that time forgot' feel to the whole thing. Also, a few new sentient races make their debut here, such as the aranea (giant spell-casting spiders), the phanaton (halfling-sized racoon / flying squirrel people), and the kopru (evil amphibious beings with mind control powers). This is also where the rakasta, a race of cat people, first appear; they go on to become an important race in Mystara, with other rakasta tribes showing up elsewhere in the world, as well as on the moon. Not the one you can see, the invisible moon. The moon rakasta ride flying sabertooth tigers and are patterned on feudal Japan. Rakasta are awesome, is what I'm saying.

I'm pretty sure this is the adventure I've run more than any other over the years; I can think of at least four separate campaigns that have visited it. I actually made a point of not using The Isle of Dread at level in one campaign since I knew many of the players had experienced it already. Instead I planned to have the party visit it much later, well after it had been discovered and explored by others. In more than one campaign players have planned to claim the island and make it their domain once their characters were high enough level and sufficiently wealthy to build strongholds.

Next week we'll move on to Module X2: Castle Amber, one of the weirdest adventure modules you'll ever see, and another that turns out be important to the development of Mystara. Also, part of it is set in France.

Mystara Monday: Module B4 – The Lost City

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This week we'll be taking a look at Dungeons & Dragons adventure module B4: The Lost City. Written by Tom Moldvay (also responsible for first revision of the D&D Basic rules) and published in 1982, B4 is a bit more ambitious than the previous B modules. The pyramid is a multi-level dungeon much like those previously seen but this adventure also presents a fairly detailed backstory for the pyramid and the underground city below it, NPC factions for players to ally with (or come into conflict with), ideas for further adventures using the setting, and an evil false god to serve as a challenging final fight.

Mystara Monday: Module B4 - The Lost City

The adventure takes place inside an ancient step pyramid found when the player characters become lost in a forbidding desert. The module doesn't concern itself much with how the characters come to the desert, simply stating in the background that they had joined a desert caravan that became lost in a sandstorm. Lost and desperate, the characters enter the pyramid in the hope of finding a means of survival.

The pyramid is all that remains intact of the city of Cynidicea, once the capital of a desert kingdom. While building the pyramid, workers uncovered the lair of a hideous monster, Zargon. Unable to kill the monster, the rulers of the city began sending criminals into the pyramid to appease it. Over time a cult arose around the monster, supplanting worship of the city's three traditional gods. The civilization decayed and eventually, when barbarians overran the city, fled underground below the pyramid. There the descendants of those Cynidiceans still live, now adapted to underground life and spending most of their days in a hallucinatory state.

Mystara Monday: Module B4 - The Lost City
It's possible for an adventurer to be transformed into a three foot tall
mini-Zargon. Yay cursed magic items.

Possible antics of the Cynidiceans the adventurers encounter can include trying to warn the adventurers of the invisible snakes on the floor and showing them where to walk to avoid them, 'recognizing' an adventurer as the lost ruler of Cynidicea and smothering him or her with attention, or following the adventurers around carrying boards until something is killed and then building a coffin for it and demanding payment for the service.

Some relatively normal Cynidiceans make up three factions each dedicated to one of the old gods of the city. Each faction is devoted to trying to restore the worship of their patron god and to save their society from its decay. None of the three trusts the others however, so they fight much more than they cooperate, even in the face of Zargon's evil. The adventurers can ally with these factions and try to assist them in their goals.

The adventure as written is a 10 tier dungeon, though only the first 5 tiers are fully detailed. Quite a lot of the encounters in this part of the pyramid are with undead or vermin as you might expect. From tier 6 on the rooms are less detailed and the encounters are more difficult, honestly rising above what's reasonable for even a level 3 party. It's clearly intended that the party have reached the Expert levels (4 and up) and by the last few levels they're encountering creatures such as vampires, a chimera, and a 9 hit die blue dragon. These levels also seem less planned with monsters seemingly chosen at random to populate the various rooms, each with their own individual treasure hoard.

Mystara Monday: Module B4 - The Lost City
This dwarf is way too excited about being
stuck in an ancient pyramid.
The Lost City continues the shift we saw begin in Palace of the Silver Princess towards adventures that are more than just a dungeon full of monsters and treasure for the adventurers to kill and loot respectively. Where the story was mostly just on the surface in Silver Princess, here it's worked more directly into the adventure, with ways for the players to learn more about the past of Cynidicea and become involved in long term efforts to halt its decline and even attempt to restore it. Adventure ideas are even provided for after the pyramid is fully explored and Zargon is defeated dealing with such matters as cure the Cynidiceans permanent hallucinatory state, wiping out Zargon's cult followers and ensuring he doesn't rise again, and attempting to restore the royal line. This one module could easily be made the basis for an entire campaign set in and below the pyramid.

Next week we'll keep on going with a look at adventure module B5: Horror on the Hill. Find out just what's so horrific, and why bargaining with kindly old grandmothers can be perilous indeed.

Mystara Monday: Module B3 – Palace of the Silver Princess

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This week we continue our look at the B series of adventure modules with the infamous module B3: Palace of the Silver Princess, published in 1981. There are actually two versions of this module although very few physical copies of the original version, which can be recognized by its orange cover, exist. A few years back though, Wizards of the Coast decided to make that original version freely available in digital form on their website. Wizards no longer hosts a copy but plenty of other locations on the internet do.

Mystara Monday: Module B3 - Palace of the Silver Princess

What I have here, however, is the second version, which credits both Tom Moldvay and Jean Wells as writers. Stories differ as to why the original edition was immediately recalled, but blame is usually placed on both the quality of the adventure itself, disturbing elements regarding a couple of the new monsters presented in the adventure, and 'questionable art'. One of those disturbing monsters is the decapus, shown above on the cover of the adventure. In the second version of the adventure it's simply a sort of forest dwelling tree-octopus. In the original version, however, it's capable of producing an illusion of itself as a beautiful woman being taunted by nine ugly men.

Whatever the reason for the recall, Tom Moldvay heavily rewrote the module to create the version that was eventually released. Where the original was a typical for the time delve into a castle simply to hunt treasure, the new version had the adventurers summoned shortly after the castle has fallen victim to some sort of curse so that they can try to break the curse and rescue the eponymous Silver Princess.

According to the backstory a giant ruby was recently found by dwarves while mining, and they presented it to the princess as a gift. Shortly thereafter, the entire palace was imprisioned within a ruby glow, and the valley over which the princess ruled was struck with disease and decay. The players are tasked with entering the palace and finding a way to save the kingdom. The ruby, it turns out, is linked to an evil extradimensional being called Arik and is being used by him to forge a passage between dimensions. Arik's power has driven some of the palace's residents insane, attracted many monsters, and imprisoned the princess within the ruby.

The adventure itself is presented in three parts. The first is a 'programmed adventure' intended to introduce new dungeon masters and players to the game. It's basically a choose your own adventure covering the first few rooms of the palace. Past that, the module shifts to a more typical room by room breakdown of a two level dungeon. Like a lot of early dungeon crawls, the monsters and rooms seem kind of random, with little connecting one room to the next. White apes in the jail cells? Three foot long cobra in the linen closet? Why? Who knows? Don't question it, just kill them and take the treasure they're guarding.

Mystara Monday: Module B3 - Palace of the Silver Princess
Also, there's a guy named Travis. He's a real jerk.
That said, there are some memorable rooms and encounters like a bathroom with magic gems to fill the bathtub, a garden overgrown with carnivorous plants, and a pair of thieves who got caught in the palace when the curse befell it and just want to steal what they can and get out. The backstory of the module also alludes to a heroic order of dragon riding knights that could be used in further adventures or as a group the party might attempt to ally with or join in the future.

Palace of the Silver Princess is a step forward in the evolution of the D&D adventure module; it provides a reason beyond pure greed for the player characters to be adventuring and presents a goal beyond simply killing all the monsters and taking their loot. We've still got a ways to go before we see modules that truly tell a story though. That said, at the age of 10 I thought it was pretty great. It was probably my second favorite of the B modules, behind Rahasia.

Next week we continue with a look at module B4: The Lost City. Join me for drug addled mask wearing pyramid dwellers, an evil cthulhoid monstrosity, and invisible snakes.