The Pit of the Muirneag
Author: Stooshie & Stramarsh
System: Labyrinth Lord (Advanced Edition Companion)
Party Size: 4–6
Level Range: 5–8
The Pit of the Muirneag (‘Beautiful Girl’) is in a rugged gorse-filled and lightly wooded area that sees snow for 7-8 months of the year. The pit was a holy shrine dedicated to the earth goddess Muirneag as it was a bountiful source of gems, and the goddess gave her people the Iron Egg. Last winter a calamity befell them and the holy site was attacked. The reports say that white demons emerged from a blizzard and slaughtered all, taking the riches for themselves. Recently however trappers and hunters have went (sic) missing as have some brave traders who use the nearby trail as a shortcut across the hills.
The referee's background provides further information as to what's going on here: The shrine to the earth-goddess was a facade. The site is actually dedicated to Ogremoch, one of the Elemental Princes of Evil (Earth) from the Fiend Folio. The events of last winter were precipitated by an archmage named Sloop, along with a mother-and-son pair of white dragons, who attacked the shrine with the intention of stealing the shrine's relic, an item known as the Iron Egg. When the archmage realized the false shrine was actually an elemental cult, he nabbed the egg and fled, bailing on the white dragons who then took up residence in the sacked ruins (I think).
Another Elemental Prince—Imix of the Unquenchable Fire—took an interest in these goings-on and dispatched an efreet and mephits to check things out. The efreet managed to capture the mother dragon (no mention is made at this point about what happened to the son), and is currently trying to "extract information on the whereabouts of Sloop and the Iron Egg." The only thing dragon-mom knows is that the archmage was heading to some other caves.
It isn't clear how long ago "last winter" was relative to now, nor how long Sloop spent at the shrine discovering its "many secrets" before fleeing. It's also not known how much time has passed between Sloop's flight and the appearance of the efreet, and between the efreet's arrival to the present day. We can only extrapolate that a full year has not yet passed. Is any of that important? We'll find out, I guess.
We're next told that the Iron Egg is a plot device that isn't described beyond being able to entrap powerful supernatural beings like demon princes, and its fate won't really concern the PCs, nor will tracking down and finding Sloop be a goal. That's a whole lot of background setup for little to no adventure payoff.
Adventure hooks about the site consist of a rumor of rich deposits of precious stones, and a tale of stone golems being coaxed from the stones by a ritual ceremony. None of the background info—including the missing traders, trappers, and hunters—appears to weigh into the party's motivations. In fact, the missing people are never mentioned again and there's no indication why they've gone missing. Who's taking them? And while the lure of gemstone deposits may attract certain industrious-minded players, I'm not sure what the draw of the ceremony would hold for a party of adventurers. In short, I can't tell why the party would engage with this site, as written. But let's assume they do or it's going to be an early night.
The text gives us some conversion info to port the various mephits over to Labyrinth Lord from AD&D, along with some guidelines for how they might fight a party. For some reason, the authors gave mephits the ability to regenerate 2 hp per round while in their corresponding elemental substance (fire, steam, smoke)—but mephits aren't elementals, so why? These mephits also have a 50% chance (1–3:6) of gating in more mephits, which is about twice the chance AD&D mephits have. These also have a chance to gate in the efreet, who is more interested in figuring out what the party is doing here than he is in simply killing them.
Then we jump right into the adventure key. The pit is a 120' deep "crater...fringed with spiky gorse." This is a nice little detail that reminds me of some of Gygax's descriptions of regional flora like the tamarack stands he included in his adventures. They help a site really come alive and make them sound like an actual place. The frequent description of the pit as a "crater" suggests the place is formed by a meteor impact or maybe some sort of geothermal blast. There is a small geyser onsite, but nothing else in the key indicates how the pit/crater was formed (and I guess it doesn't matter outside a semantic quibble).
From the rim, the characters can see a set of stairs cut into the steep sloping sides of the pit, spiraling down to the muddy bottom. Several passages are cut into the crater wall at various points along the path. Part of the stair has also collapsed and the glint of gold can be seen among the rubble at the bottom. A door is visible in one darkened alcove and wisps of smoke drift up from a wide tunnel on the crater floor. Birds' nests decorate the craggy pit walls. Why is the party here again and what are they supposed to be doing? Still not sure, but let's head down and check out that gold glint.
The dungeon layout consists of 5 discrete sections connected by the spiraling stair, with additional connectivity via interior secret passages. Some of the sections are worked stone; others are cavernous. The first section is a cluster of ritual chambers, closed off by a very Wizard-Locked door (cast at 11th level). The chambers contain an elaborate clue to navigating the secret doors elsewhere in the complex, couched in an implied ceremony featuring consecrated sand, dirt, and stone. The religious details are nicely evocative without getting into the weeds of what it all (once) meant to the worshipers.
Continuing down the crater stair, the path ahead becomes untenable as a wide gap has appeared where the steps collapsed and tumbled down to the crater floor. Beneath the pile of rubble below, a "giant's arm and foot" can be seen protruding. Nearby, a thorny bush (a witherweed from the Fiend Folio) partially blocks a cave entrance into the second dungeon section. These caves continue the ritualistic ceremony by which the cult raised stone golems from among its sacrificed members. The ceremony is described, though the party is unlikely to be able to repeat it, but I'm struggling with the golem part. Golems aren't elementals and they aren't evil; Ogremoch would have no truck with these sorts of creatures. But since it won't really come into play, does it matter?
Exploring deeper into this cave section, the party finds a steam-filled chamber with a "sparging" geyser guarded by a single speed bump, I mean, steam mephit. After quickly rolling over that lone monster, the party finds a secret door into the next section of dungeon. It can be opened by employing the clue found in the previous ritual chambers.
Another route leads into a chamber with a blazing brazier guarded by a (single) fire mephit. Past it, another series of chambers culminates in the prison cave of one of the archmage's erstwhile white dragon allies, the 4 HD youngster named Kuehlhammer, who is being kept here and tortured by the efreet. My first thought was that there's no way a single mephit could hold back a dragon bent on escape, but in the dragon's currently injured and anxious state, I could see a fight with the mephit being risky, especially as the mephits in this adventure have an elevated chance to summon allies.
The next dungeon section lies beyond either the collapsed stair or the secret door in the ritual caves. A short passage ends in a door carved with runes praising Ogremoch, which has been defaced by the efreet. Inside, the ashen remains of a library or scriptorium. Two statues of Muirneag holding bowls stand in alcoves. By again employing the clue from the ritual chambers, the party can open two secret doors. One of these is the door from the steam cave; the other leads into the final section of the dungeon.
Continuing down the crater stairs instead, the party encounters four bloodhawks living in the cliffside nests, with a few gems as a reward for climbing up to search their roosts. Reaching the crater floor, the party sees a smoking tunnel of worked stone entering into darkness. The text notes that screwing around out here and making a bunch of noise will alert some mephits in the smoky tunnel, though they don't do anything special in response, so there's not much point in mentioning it.
The decaying carcass of an owlbear at the bottom of the stairs is full of bluebottle flies that swarm if the body is disturbed. What were earlier described as "a giant's" limbs protruding from the pile of stair rubble are now described as "large" and obviously nibbled on by the bloodhawks. Who was this? Was he an actual giant? What type? We're not told, but digging into the pile turns up a decent bit of loot, including an awesomely-described scimitar that, alas, turns out to be a mere +1 weapon. (Is it giant-sized?)
The final section of dungeon is entered either through the secret door from the burned library, or via the smoking tunnel on the canyon floor. The smoke causes those within the tunnel to make a Poison save or cough for up to an hour (!), though no indication of what that means is given so the DM will need to make something up. That's a relatively minor complaint, I know, but it's part of what the designer is supposed to be doing to help the DM get this site up-and-running quickly with minimal effort.
Related to this, the smoke mephits in the tunnel have an order-of-battle that indicates they "will grab anyone in the smoke and drag them out back to 20, saying “it’s orders” and threatening violence from Lord Baslasrach if the party persists." There aren't grappling rules in Advanced LL and no indication is given as to how the mephits will accomplish this, but it's a moot point anyway because no party is going to allow themselves to be shoved around like that. Better to just have the mephits block the way and give their warning because it's "Roll initiative!" time, regardless.
(On a personal note, I'm not a big fan of Alan Hunter's artwork in the Fiend Folio, but his illustration of the smoke mephit is one of my favorite images from that book. It looks like something out of a Bosch painting. I also love that they spit a cloud of soot at you...mephits are cool.)
Then we come to the ultimate chamber, which is separated into two areas by an illusory wall cast by the efreet. When touched, the illusion vanishes to reveal a chained white dragon bedecked with a fortune in jewelry. At the same time, the dismissal of the illusion warns the efreet that someone is messing with his captive, and he will arrive in 3–6 turns (presumably from the elemental plane of fire). Meanwhile, the party can get to know the dragon, Eisklaue, who is bound by glowing-hot manacles that harm anyone getting close (except the dragon apparently). She is guarded by a frost sprite (?) named Hilde whose motivations and allegiances are a complete mystery, as are her reactions to the party's presence. She only has 7 hp, but her touch can turn a character to solid ice, so she is potentially deadly.
Eisklaue just wants to be freed so she can reunite with her son. Her bindings can only be released with a Cone of Cold spell, by dispelling a 10th level spell, or by convincing the frost sprite to touch them. The dragon goes nuts if she learns her son is dead, breaking her manacles and attacking everyone in sight. In either case, the text tells us that releasing the chains signals the efreet that the dragon is free, and he will arrive in 3 turns accompanied by a mix of four more mephits.
The distinction of how the efreet is warned is important because it is possible for the party to enter the room on the dragon's side of the illusory wall, via the secret door from the burned library, which means the party may be able to engage with the dragon before tipping off the efreet. Why it takes the efreet longer, potentially, to arrive when the illusion goes down is not clarified. No details are given about the dragon's reaction if she learns that her son is alive (if the party doesn't kill him).
The adventure probably ends in a fight here between some combination of the party, the dragon, and the efreet (and possibly some mephits). This could be suitably epic, but are the PCs supposed to kill the dragon, or free her? Would killing a neutral, chained-up dragon just to steal her loot be a chaotic act?
We're given some follow-up developments depending on how everything went down. Each development brings the party into some sort of conflict with one or more of the Elemental Princes of Evil, but there's absolutely no warning that this could be a possibility. The characters will simply blunder into a bad situation with a powerful supernatural being and they can't really avoid it unless they leave the adventure site alone (which sort of defeats the purpose).
Treasure runs about 46,000 GPV in coins and jewelry. Most of that is found on the dragon, which is disappointing, though I heartily approve of turning the dragon's hoard into its personal jewelry. None of the treasure is particularly interesting or given any description.
Magic items are sparse: Eyes of Petrification (a cursed item), a Potion of Treasure Finding (a consumable), and a +1 Scimitar. Yep... that's it. Even if the party drinks the potion, it's just going to lead them to the dragon where 90% of the treasure will be found, but THEY'LL END UP THERE ANYWAY by virtue of simply following the dungeon to its conclusion. Even worse, Advanced LL doesn't award XP for magic items, so suck on that players. Monster kills will garner ~9k XP if the party defeats everything including the efreet and his posse of four mephits. This amount is derived in part from the Fiend Folio monsters using AD&D XP calculations which may be different from ALL's (I'm not sure how they stack up in that regard but, for example, a ghoul in AD&D is worth about 83 XP, whereas in LL it's worth 47 XP).
For an average recommended party of 5, total XP will be around 55k all-in, or about 11k per character. Not much for the effort required, especially considering the inevitable consequences of pissing off one or more greater elemental beings.
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1) THEME
(How strong/consistent is the adventure's premise, flavor, and setting?)
There is a real-world Muirneag, a Scottish word that does indeed mean "pretty (or beautiful) girl," though it's a mountain (a reverse-pit, as it were). It's a pretty desolate-looking place, and I can definitely imagine cultists of Ogremoch worshiping there.
So, the theme here is obviously elemental earth. I'm not sure what the point is of the whole false cover story of this being a shrine to the earth-goddess, Muirneag. Why not just make it a secret shrine to Ogremoch? The Muirneag angle just doesn't come into play, other than the name of the site.
Some of the details included in the dungeon, especially in the ritual chambers near the start, lean heavily into the elemental earth theme, but they ultimately peter out, amounting to little. The fire-type guardians sent here by Imix seem appropriate at first glance, but only the efreet is an elemental. Mephits are fiends from the Lower Planes, so Imix really shouldn't have any sovereignty over them. This discrepancy is similar to my problem with the Ogremoch cult creating stone golems.
In addition, the relationships between the other elemental-based creatures in this adventure are confusing and often at odds with D&D's expectations. This is a shrine dedicated to the Evil Prince of Elemental Earth, so why did the Evil Prince of Elemental Fire send his own minions here... to take revenge? Why didn't Ogremoch respond instead? Are they allies or rivals? Why does a 6 hp frost sprite guard a white dragon that would be resistant to its icy attacks?
According to the aftermath section, if the party kills the white dragon, then both Cryonex (sic) and Imix become their sworn enemies. But why? Sworn enemies?? A case can be made for Cryonax maybe, as white dragons are part of its schtick, but that's because white dragons in AD&D are chaotic evil. They are neutral in LL, however, so Cryonax shouldn't care. I have no idea why Imix would care either what the party does with a white dragon. The section continues, explaining that if the white dragons escape, then Cryonax will show gratitude to the PCs, but Imix will still become a sworn enemy. Huh? Ogremoch won't care either way, apparently, but he does want to find out whether the party knows the location of the Iron Egg. I just can't figure out what's supposed to be going on with all that.
SCORE (THEME) = 2 / 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?)
The stairs down and the crater floor aren't gridded so the DM has to extrapolate distances from the surrounding chambers. Not hard but kind of a pain. I have no problem with a designer using someone else's map, but it's difficult to give points for effort and this map just doesn't thrill.
SCORE (MAP/ART) = 1 / 5
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3) CLARITY
(How easy is the writeup to read/parse quickly? How well does the information flow?)
Page margins are fairly tight, and the text is in two-column format, left-aligned. The font is easy to read and monster details are in red text so they stand out against the sometimes dense paragraphs. There's good use of bolding to make the section and keyed area titles stand out. The inclusion of the correct book and page number references for each monster is very useful. A few unusual spellings and phrases make me suspect the authors may not be native English speakers, but the issues aren't egregious and don't interfere with comprehension.
One area makes judicious use of the word "sparging," a term I'd only ever heard among my homebrew beer friends. I'm not 100% sure the word is being used correctly here, but its repeated use was mildly distracting. To sparge means to sprinkle or spatter a liquid, but the sparge in this case is caused by a geothermal geyser, which I think would be a more forceful and violent process than merely sprinkling the cave with water.
I only mention this here to give a bit of general advice about adventure writing to anyone reading this review. The use of interesting and obscure or archaic words is highly encouraged, but one should only sparge them into your text, otherwise it sounds like you've been plundering a thesaurus. Also make sure you're using the word in the right context to achieve the desired evocative result. If you're uncertain whether it's the correct usage, then don't use it. This was purely an aside, however; I'm not deducting anything from this adventure for it.
SCORE (CLARITY) = 4 / 5
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4) INTERACTIVITY/INNOVATION
(How well does the adventure use the rules to create interesting play?)
The trick to opening the secret doors involves pebbles carved with runes related to clay, earth (soil), or stone. Clues in the ritual chamber associate the pebbles with graven images of Muirneag in which she is "digging for sand," "tilling the earth," or "building a wall." That's all great—fairly intuitive and thematic, and easy for players to figure out if they ask just a few basic questions about the room. Transmitting important information about the setting through interaction with the environment is just the best way to do it. It feels organic rather than narrated, and the players get to drink deeply of the juice of accomplishment, which encourages them to search harder to slake their thirst for more. You have to make it pay off, though...
Later in the dungeon, however, when the party encounters the secret doors, there is a missed opportunity to correlate the pebbles with the interaction. The party opens the doors by placing one of the three pebbles into a stone bowl, but there are no clues as to which is the correct one. It would have been much more effective for the bowls to have had matching glyphs or, better yet, for the statues associated with the secret doors to have been repeating the actions seen in the ritual chambers. As is, the solution appears to be simple guesswork (on top of deducing somehow that the pebbles have anything at all to do with the bowls). It's almost there as a good puzzle, but in the end this neatly-established trick fails to play out in a satisfactory way for the players or the DM.
White dragons in LL are neutral, so presumably the party can negotiate Kuehlhammer's release, and he could try to enlist them to assist him in rescuing his mother. Some direction here would have been helpful as well, because it's not entirely clear why the party would be fighting him. He will panic at the site of fire, so maybe its intended to be an accidental killing?
Some efreeti graffiti (sorry, I couldn't resist) translates into a taunt, mocking the worshipers of Muirneag for being fooled by Ogremoch (though I was under the impression that the Muirneag thing was a ruse, so wouldn't the worshipers have known?). The scrawls also declare that someone named Baslasrach succeeded in capturing "the worms that ate the remains of your priests." Lacking any context, this will mean nothing to the party, though it does provide a few clues to what's happening here. The "evil script" of the graffiti isn't identified, but if the DM describes it as the language of elemental fire, then that might also provide a clue as to the identity of Baslasrach. If it simply refers to the alignment language of Chaos, then the revelation won't mean much.
Though the adventure design intends to bring the efreet in as part of the "final boss stage," each mephit has a chance to summon the efreet as part of their natural ability to gate in other mephits. So what happens if Baslasrach is encountered earlier and defeated? No idea, other than making the encounter with the dragon more manageable.
All in all, there's just not much to play with here, and what there is isn't very well thought out.
SCORE (INTERACTIVITY) = 2 / 5
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5) MODULARITY
(How easy would it be to drop/integrate the adventure into an existing campaign?)
The crater/pit/hole could be dropped in pretty much anywhere, though the whole Elemental Princes of Evil angle may conflict with a DM's campaign world and limit interest (I don't use these guys in my campaign, for example).
SCORE (MODULARITY) = 3 / 5
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6) USABILITY
(How much work will the referee have to do to run this adventure at the table tonight?)
This dungeon can be run as-is without too much difficulty, as long as the DM is willing to accept the oddball assumptions of the background "plot" and the incongruities of the monster selection. If the DM wants to improve the elemental theme and 'zazz up the place with more treasure and some additional, more interesting gameplay features, it would be relatively easy to do with just a few modifications.
SCORE (USABILITY) = 3 / 5
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7) OVERALL THOUGHTS
It's an interesting locale and I like the idea of the Elemental Princes sort of tussling over this site, but the concept isn't fully formed and the opportunities to refine it into a kick-ass adventure were missed. It needs more work, but even a few simple improvements would go a long way toward making the site more worthwhile to explore.
FINAL SCORE = 2.5 / 5
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