Adventure Site Contest 2 REVIEW: The Lair of the Lamia

The Lair of the Lamia

Author: J. Blasso-Gieseke
System: OSE
Party Size: 4-6
Level Range: 4-6

In a nearby pine forest, a granite monadnock rises 5,000' in the air: a travelers landmark known as the Watcher that local legends claim is haunted by devils. Large “birds” circle on thermals around the summit, where a mysterious red flash winks. Lately, travelers passing along the road have disappeared. The local merchants guild offers the party 25,000 gp to clear the threat. 

The description of the monadnock serves as the adventure intro. From it, we derive some other key details: The birds at the summit are perytons; there's a strange red flashing at the top; the missing travelers were lured into the woods by leucrotta cries; there's a den of leucrottas at the base of the mountain that leads into the ruins of an old monastery; a lamia lairs in the ruins and she has enthralled the leucrottas to bring her human meat; the merchant's guild is aware of "the threat" and offers a large reward to deal with it. It's unclear how much of any of this information is known by the merchants guild and/or the PCs.

The reward amount offered is a powerful incentive for a mid-level group to risk a side venture on their way to somewhere else. Having strong motivation can help drive an adventure site where the risk-reward ratio is not always obvious to players. They at least know they'll walk away from this with a ~4–5k gp payday. It's a lot of money but whether that's a good or bad thing is up to your personal taste and thoughts on your campaign's economy.

This adventure site features an outdoor component (a pseudo-journey) plus a 12-area/8-location keyed dungeon. I call it a pseudo-journey because the party doesn't really "travel" anywhere in the "wilderness exploration" sense of things. They either wander up and down the road to investigate some ambush sites (and possibly trigger a leucrotta attack), or they surmise that the weird-ass mountain with a blinking red light is the problem and head there straightaway. In either case, the party winds up at the mountain which we're told takes two hours by foot. There are no wandering encounters (though the leucrotta ambush may be mistaken for one by the party).

The map legend gives the definition of "monadnock" as: "a small, lone mountain rising from a level plain." The intro says the monadnock is "haunted by devils" – a "devil's tower," as it were. Here's where the site gets fantastic, perhaps accidentally. In geologic terms, there is a difference between a mountain's "elevation"—which is its height above sea level—and its "prominence," which is its true height from an established base to an established summit point. As written and drawn, the monadnock is more than five times higher than the real Devil's Tower Monument, which has a prominence of 867 feet (264 m) according to wikipedia. There's nothing wrong or bad about any of this because we're describing a fantasy world. I simply point it out to relate how colossal this thing is. I also bring it up because I don't think some of the details given below take the mountain's scale into account.

The party can see the mountain from any point on the road, so they can see the huge "birds" and the "winking red light" near the summit (I have my doubts, but let's roll with it, we're here to game). A party would likely leave the road the moment they enter the hex map, well before the first potential leucrotta ambush site. When they arrive at the base of the mountain, they will have to decide whether to climb it or circle around it. In addition to being 5,000 ft. high, the mountain is described as 5,000' in diameter with a circumference of 15,708', or 2.97 miles. 

Given the scale, I doubt any group of rational players is going to opt for the climbing route, but if they do it (only) takes 5 hours. It is likely a death sentence for at least one player, however, possibly a TPK given the escalating odds of encountering perytons as the party climbs (see below). Maybe they reach the summit and the peryton nests via this route, but it seems like a pretty daunting task. The effort is rewarded with not only a gigantic loot haul (over 63k gp) and some cursed magic items, but also a teleport rune into the monastery below, by which the party can possibly surprise the lamia if they act quickly (though the one-person-per-round limit of the teleportal will lessen the impact of this strategy).

If the party decides to circumnavigate the base, which will take another 2-4 hours depending on movement rate and terrain, they eventually come to the leucrotta's cave den on the south face of the mountain. Here, they can find more than 13k gp in treasure plus more (curse-free) magic items. At the back of the cave are timber doors with rusty hinges (their creaking alerts the lamia). 

Beyond the doors is an abandoned monastery occupied by the lamia and her human thralls—spear-wielding guards dressed in rags who, if they survive and are freed of the lamia's charm, retain full memories of being forced to eat the lamia's scraps (their former comrades). A grim detail but it gives the adventure some emotional heft. It's a straight-shot and only about 20 paces from the front door to the lamia's chamber and she's right there, so it's pretty much game-on as soon as the party enters. Details are given about her actions if alerted to the party's presence, as well as what she does if she faces defeat in battle, which are all good to include.
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1) THEME
(How strong/consistent is the adventure's premise, flavor, and setting?) 

There's not much of a theme going on with this adventure site—essentially just three monster lairs and a couple of puzzles—but it is definitely an interesting location. The monks studied astrology/astronomy, making the monadnock's summit the perfect observatory. The astrological flavor of the monastery only becomes apparent as one reads through the text, but any explicit background to the site is ignored for the most part. An in-depth backstory isn't necessary here, but cluing the DM in to the context of the ruins with a sentence or two at the start would be helpful.

There are some good descriptions of the interior areas: various tracks, some not human, lead into the lamia's den; an isolated peryton nest contains a pair of dead perytons and a rotten egg (clues to the cursed periapt found among the treasure); urns filled with monk cremains in the columbarium; etc. Leucrottas, perytons, and lamias are not in the OSE bestiary, but they are in the Advanced OSE supplement (more on that below). The description of the lamia is different from the AOSE version and is more like the Fiend Folio's lamia noble with a serpentine body instead of a beast's body, which is truer to the mythological creature. I also like her use of illusion to hide her true nature from the PCs. She makes for a potentially great villain; unfortunately, the way the adventure is set up, the party has no idea she exists until they enter the dungeon, whereupon they immediately deal with her. There is literally no opportunity to set up the depths of her villainy (and she is quite vile).

The treasure is flavorful and often supports the astrological flavor of the monastery: a brass spyglass, a silver scroll case, gold and silver inks, a set of quadrants and compasses, star charts—even a meteorite of star metal worth 90,000 gp! There's also a Book of the Black Gate that describes a future cataclysm, and a ruby and diamond necklace worth 50,000 gp called the Heart of the Mountain (the source of the winking red light on the summit). Both these items include some additional details that a DM can use, if desired, to develop campaign events after the adventure is over.

The amount of treasure is likely to be an issue for a lot of DMs. There is a total of 236,855 gpv in loot to be recovered, though in fairness, more than half that amount is tied up in two items (see above) that are difficult to attain, and one of which (the necklace) the party may choose not sell but use to curry favor with a dwarf realm instead. If we take those two items out, then the xp haul for treasure is a more reasonable 90k xp (about 18k apiece for a party of 5). Still, be prepared for at least one of these items to be found and cashed in for an epic haul.

SCORE (THEME) = 3 / 5
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2) MAP AND ART
(How complex/useful is the map and/or art? How easy is it to grok the layout?)

We're given no scale on the outdoor hex map to calculate alternate movement rates, only a time-factor we can use to extrapolate if necessary. The side view of the monadnock (scale 1,000') helps visualize the spire's height and slope relative to the surrounding forest, but doesn't give a true sense of scale (the tops of the forest trees apparently soar to more than 1,000 ft. high in places, according to the rendering).

The monastery level (scale 10') is a fairly-simplistic, highly-symmetric layout. The architecture serves to quickly move the party from one linear location to the other. There are no doors, save for a pair of secret portals each activated by solving a puzzle.

The adventure loses a point here for listing treasure values and monster stat blocks on the map page. These are useful pieces of info and their inclusion is much appreciated, but they count as body text and should have been on one of the three content pages instead. The inclusion of the constellation patterns on the map is perfectly acceptable.

SCORE (MAP/ART) = 2 / 5
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3) CLARITY
(How easy is the writeup to read/parse quickly? How well does the information flow?)

The cover page says this is written for OSE, but the monsters and some of the magic treasure come out of Advanced OSE, which is a separate book. It's not a deal-breaker, but could be really confusing if the DM has no idea what a leucrotta is, or how a Gem of Monster Attraction works. Monster stat blocks are provided, but those are meant as shorthand for a DM who is at least marginally familiar with the creature in question. There should be some indication that AOSE is necessary to run this.

The adventure is in need of some serious information re-organization, particularly at the beginning. The text follows a rough flow, but frequently intersperses player- and DM-oriented details, making it tricky sometimes to parse out what info you're supposed to give to the players. There is also a section where the keyed descriptions start, then jumps back outside to cover details about climbing the mountain, then resumes the keyed descriptions again. It's jarring to read and the section on scaling the mountain is not where one would logically expect it.

On the positive side, the information is all pertinent and cleanly written. The margins are tight, which can make the left-aligned text a tad hard to read, but not too much so—and this is a personal taste thing. When text columns are this close to each other, a justified alignment opens up the line kerning and is easier on the reader's eyes (mine, at least). Added details like treasure value totals and monster xp always make the DM's job easier and are a welcome inclusion.

SCORE (CLARITY) = 2 / 5
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4) INTERACTIVITY/INNOVATION
(How well does the adventure use the rules to create interesting play?)

There are a lot of attempts at interactivity in this one, starting with the leucrotta ambush. The order-of-battle includes an unnecessary script that eats up valuable page space. Using a trick to lure the PCs into doing something (entering a forest ambush site in this case) requires subtlety on the part of a DM to simply describe what the party hears ("a man/lady screaming," "a child crying," etc.) The second you start reading from a script, the players will immediately smell a trap. Being purposefully vague and letting the players draw out what they're hearing by asking questions makes it sound like the DM is improvising a random encounter. If you simply describe the tenor of the sounds—fearful men and women...even children... screaming for help—the players may still suspect something, but they'll probably at least investigate. Just cutting that section out would save 5-7 lines of text, which are worth gold in a contest like this. The space is better used elsewhere.

The note about the perytons swooping in and feasting on the PCs' leucrotta kills is a nice touch. It drives interesting interaction because players could deal with this encounter many different ways. Nothing happens if they let the beasts feed, but if the party kills the perytons here, they can then scale the spire unmolested and without failure. This brings us to the next big piece of interactivity: scaling the outside of the monadnock.

The summit description establishes that the active peryton nests face east, southeast, and south, which seems like a wasted opportunity to enable the party to climb the northerly and westerly slopes to avoid being seen by the perytons. Instead, regardless of which slope the party chooses to climb, you're rolling 1d6 for every 1000' of elevation, with a 1:6 chance of the perytons noticing. This chance increase by +1 per additional 1000' climbed (i.e., 1–2:6 at 2,000' elevation; 1–3:6 at 3,000'; etc.) There are five such rolls to reach the top, with the final one being a 1–5:6 chance to be noticed; i.e., the party WILL have an encounter with all six perytons unless they are extremely lucky.

The perytons attack different targets (THAC0 16 for 4-16 damage) and defenders will be unable to counterattack and use a shield. Presumably, casters can't cast spells with somatic components while climbing. EACH round a character is in combat, they must make a "DEX Save" (presumably a DEX check instead), or slide 10–60 ft. back down the slope for 1–4 damage. The slide distance doesn't add or detract from the length of time indicated it takes to climb the mountain (~5 hours), so what's the point of calculating the distance lost? Maybe to track party member separation in terms of spell ranges/effects, etc.? (I can buy that.) Curiously, there are no mechanics for outright falling/being knocked off the rock face, nor guidelines about what happens if the party members are (likely) tied together. A 5,000 foot distance with a 30-degree slope off vertical is a STEEP-as-hell climb, so simply sliding down a bit is a pretty generous result for failing, but its not unforgivable (merciful, even).

At the top, the party discovers that the "winking red flash" seen from the road is a 50k gpv ruby, the "Heart of the Mountain," which is a sacred (and obviously lost) artifact of an unnamed dwarf clan, which can be leveraged for goodwill with the clan. I have an issue with how this is described. As the DM, you learn this info halfway down page 2 (the actual midway point of the manuscript). Until this point, I was imagining a Great Gatsby-like beacon blinking on and off in a regular pattern. What I imagined to be some sort of magical interaction turns out to be the sun "glinting" off a gem (albeit a doozy of a gem, well worth the climb). This is a quibble (and maybe belongs under the Clarity section), but this reveal threw my expectations off, and not in a good way. That aside, I like the idea of this treasure quite a bit, and a quest to find this hard-to-attain jewel could even be used as a hook for the adventure.

The lamia's human thralls are interesting: some are obedient guards; others are emaciated women and children squatting in dirty alcoves who are compelled to shriek in alarm if anyone passes nearby. All of these humans are going to have some serious mental issues when freed from the lamia's charm, and the concept of a human alarm (and the moral quandry of how to silence them) is a neat idea, but all of this detail will likely prove pointless as BOTH entrances to the monastery are within the line of sight of the lamia.

The scale/layout of the dungeon means that if the party enters area 2 (the main entrance), they are only 75 ft. away from the lamia, who sits in the center of room 5 according to the text. If they teleport from the summit and appear in area 7, they are a mere 40 ft. from her. In either case, she can see them and they can see her because room 5 is "well lit." Any interaction begins immediately. Maybe that is the intention, but it doesn't offer any opportunity for exploration/info gathering before the party is engaged in the "boss fight." In addition, the small size of area 5 (40' x 40') makes for a crowded battle area with 8 guards, the lamia, and the party. 

Her escape plan through the teleporter to the summit is helpful, but seems like a huge risk on her part. She can only charm a single 4 HD peryton at a time and she won't be able to give them direct commands as she doesn't speak their language. The target also gets a save, so what if the peryton makes it? Would the other perytons attack the lamia before she could mount a charmed peryton? I acknowledge that the DM can hand-wave all this, but my players would definitely call shenanigans if I just let her get away like that.

There are two astrologically-themed puzzles that try hard but fall a little short of good. The first involves a series of "star(s) on the floor." No real description of what that means, so we'll assume they're designs carved into the stone. They're apparently obvious, as nothing is required to notice them. If they are all properly mapped, the party may correlate the pattern to an identical constellation ("The Gate") found in one room. When this constellation is touched, a secret door opens giving access to a teleport rune to the summit. Neat! But if you were just looking at the stars on the floor, however, you probably wouldn't correlate the pattern to the constellation. There's also nothing stopping someone from simply touching all 60 constellation patterns to eventually open the secret door, as there is no penalty for touching the wrong one.

The second puzzle relates back to my criticism about not providing any context to the adventure site. Four pillars are each carved with a single constellation pattern: Crown, Ox, Swan, and Bow (all recognizable to the PCs according to the text). If they touch the constellations in an order that corresponds to the acronym of the monastic order: The Cenobitic Order of the Starry Brotherhood (C-O-S-B), they gain access to a sub-chamber containing the 90k gp meteorite. The only place the order is mentioned (other than the sub-title on the cover page) is on the star charts in the library, an easily-overlooked clue. It's not a terrible idea, but again there is nothing preventing a party from simply brute-forcing the secret code.

Both puzzles feel pertinent to the author's home campaign maybe, but they have little reference to the adventure unless the DM sets the context up first. As written, the second trap is too oblique to work effectively. It's totally cool to hide such a valuable treasure behind a difficult-to-open door, but this one doesn't really work for me.

SCORE (INTERACTIVITY) = 2 / 5
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5) MODULARITY
(How easy would it be to drop/integrate the adventure into an existing campaign?)

This adventure site could be easily modified and dropped in anywhere for a quick monster lair, or as a mysterious location for a quick mission/side quest.

SCORE (MODULARITY) = 4 / 5
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6) USABILITY
(How much work will the referee have to do to run this adventure at the table tonight?)

Not much work needs to be done to fix most of the glaring problems, maybe reducing the amount of treasure, and weaving some history/contextual background into the location so some of the clues make more immediate sense to the DM and players. If I were running it, I would also reduce the scale of the spire to 1,000 ft. (or less) and consider making the lamia fight less immediate, perhaps by adding doors to close off area 5.

Run as-is, the DM will have to read carefully and maybe highlight some of the clues that come into the text after the resolution of the puzzles is described. 

SCORE (USABILITY) = 3 / 5
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7) OVERALL THOUGHTS

This adventure has a lot going for it, despite my issues. It meets many of the criteria for what makes a good adventure site and I like much of what the author is doing here. Just fixing the presentation by reordering the text would do wonders for clarity, and the puzzles could be much better with just a few tweaks and some starting context for the players to sync into the location's vibe. The added context could also strengthen the loose-as-written astrology theme.

I would love to see a second draft of this manuscript.

FINAL SCORE = 2.7 / 5