Adventure Site Contest 2 REVIEW: Stables of Zothay

Stables of Zothay

Author: Patrick Dolan (aka OwlbearHugger)
System: AD&D
Party Size: ?
Level Range: 4–5

Kritas, the tyrant of Zothay, has a cavalry of 100 men and 100 horses. Horse shows have long been featured at his stables, but he has recently entered the horseracing field with an emaciated black steed named Kate. She has won the last three races.

This adventure is written for use with Gabor Lux's expansion of the City of Zothay setting—as found in the Barbarian Altanis region of Judges Guild's Wilderlands of High Fantasy. Related materials are used with his permission. The writeup even provides a location for this site on the Zothay city map, which is a convenient touch.

So, there's a local lord who's on a winning streak with his new black mare. Why does the party care? 

On the one hand, local bookmakers are losing big and need capable horse-killers to take care of business. So deep is their anger, they want the beast's head as a trophy and offer 10,000 gp to do the deed. To sweeten the deal, the gambling cartel reveals that the lord keeps his fortune in winnings in the stables, there for the taking. On the other hand, the local high priest is convinced that the mare is a tool of corruption planted by foreign powers, and wants its head to divine its origin. He offers the gratitude of the gods and the services of the temple to the party.

The horse is a half-nightmare, gifted to Kritus by an unnamed benefactor who knows his weakness for exotic mounts. In addition to Kate, Kritas owns a styracosaur, a manticore, a gorgon, four axe beaks, and a pair of bactrian camels. The true nature of the supernatural creatures (and the dinosaur) are concealed by a special illusion spell to look like regular horses. Why a tyrant would need to hide this fact eludes me, though. Who would dare even raise a question about it?

Before we get into the key, I want to return to the idea that this particular site is wedded to the specific setting of Zothay. The intro places the stables at a map location in the city's key (excerpted here from Gabor Lux's expansion material): 

8a. Cavalry Barracks: Commander Strephon Arthon and 100 trained light horsemen with their 10 officers are stationed in this compound. Drills are held daily at the central courtyard, and three patrols of 20 horsemen with an officer each are out on the road at all times.

This brief paragraph is followed up by the stat blocks for the 100 light horsemen, the 10 officers, and the commander. According to the city writeup, the site should be occupied by ~40 horsemen and 7 officers plus the commander at all times. Looking at the adventure site writeup, however, we encounter some discrepancies with this. 

The soldiers and command staff have all been reduced in level (which may be a change due to a difference in rule system as the city writeup is designed for Castles & Crusades, I believe), while the commander's equipment has been beefed up a little. All 10 "officers" (here, 7 sergeants and 3 lieutenants) are present, despite 3 of them always being in the field according to the city writeup. In the adventure site writeup, 60 horsemen and sergeants bunk in the barracks (which is confusing because the 7 sergeants already have another room in the key). None of these differences sinks the adventure by any means, but if you're going to link your piece of content with a pre-existing piece of content, I think you have the obligation to keep your material consistent with the source. Not out of a sense of honor or anything, but as a convenience to other DMs who may want to use both pieces.

The layout of the place is a walled military compound, with four wings surrounding an open courtyard. One wing has two-stories and houses the men and officers of the cavalry company. The other three wings are stables for the warhorses and Kritas' menagerie of monstrous mounts. A side enclosure off one of the stable wings is a dirt-floored arena where something untoward is going on.

In addition to the troops who watch over the stables, a ghost visits nightly to ride the nightmare into the ethereal plane (why it needs to bring a magic Saddle of Etherealness with it isn't clear as both creatures are ethereal by nature, unless the idea is simply to provide an opportunity for treasure). There's also a bulette (!!) lurking around the stable grounds.

Normal entry to the compound is via several guarded and often-barred gates. Infiltrators can also enter through some barred windows, or by climbing over the outer walls and across the stable roofs, or by coming up through one of four wells that connect to a large underground cistern beneath the city. Once inside, there is an insane wandering encounter chart that could find the party battling giant beetles, giant bats, or giant horseflies (not to mention the bulette or the ghost!) There is literally an equal chance to encounter some guards as there is to encounter the bulette. There is a second random encounter table for being down in the cistern (giant frogs, cave fishers, a flail snail), which isn't really necessary.

The interiors of the cavalry barracks and stables are all logical, though the discrepancies with the makeup of the troops stationed here are described above. The text doesn't say how many regular horses are being stabled here, but since about 60 cavalrymen are described as on site, we can assume a similar or greater number of horses. Descriptions aren't very detailed, but they don't need to be. It's a barracks and stables; often a room's title does all the heavy lifting. Even so, most areas have a few nicely-picked words that give the DM a quick rundown of a room's contents. The arena section (more of a parade ground, I think) has attracted the bulette, and the guards feed it old horses in an attempt to capture and tame it. If the party tromps across the dirt arena floor, the bulette has a good chance of appearing.

Unless you're running for a party of dunces, they will avoid the barracks area completely and head straightaway for one of the stables. They're looking for a black, emaciated horse to denogginize. Among the dozens of normal horses kept here are 8 monsters: four axebeaks, a styracosaur, a gorgon, a manticore, and the party's target—a half-nightmare. 

The monsters are all concealed by a special illusion spell called "Horsemorph." The spell is never actually described, beyond its power to make these monstrous creatures appear to be regular horsies. Apparently their LAWFUL GOOD owner, Kritas, is so overly paranoid that he routinely disguises the gorgon and manticore to look like his prized steed, while making the nightmare look like one of the other regular horses. The styracosaur is also disguised as a fat old horse, but in real-life these creatures were like 15' long and weighed 2–3 tons; how does an illusion conceal its considerable passage as it moves around?

The gorgon (disguised as the half-nightmare) is kept behind a metal, Wizard-Locked door with "a small (1x2-ft), tight-fitting sliding door." If the horse-gorgon is attacked through the little door-window, "the horsemorph is dispelled—and the gorgon will attempt to break out," followed by a set of procedures to manage that. This makes it sound like the Horsemorph spell prevents the creatures from using their natural powers until attacked or the illusion is dispelled. 

Without knowing exactly how this spell is designed, it's hard to know for sure, but illusions don't generally work that way. If the intention is that this is a type of polymorph spell, that's alteration not illusion. The similarly-cloaked manticore is kept in another metal-lined room with chain mail curtains, suggesting it can use its spikes in horse-form, and there is no similar requirement that the manticore be attacked before it may act, which makes one wonder why the gorgon doesn't just flood the stables with gas when the door-window is opened for feeding. It's all confusing, but details about the spell might have cleared it up.

All this is meant to complicate any investigation/recon efforts, though a way for the party to figure out which horse is which is provided. But more than likely the party will simply hack its way through a gorgon and a manticore before running out of viable targets, and then maybe figure out which horse is their quarry among all the other regular horses in the stables. One last issue with Kate, the half-nightmare. She's said to be leaving her competition in the dust at the track, but her movement rate is listed as 21". An average light riding horse moves 24", so how is she winning all these races?

Treasure is a mix of coins, some jewelry, and non-obvious loot like exotic foodstuffs and fancy china. Total amount lands around 31,000 gpv, two-thirds of which is bound up in the race winnings: 4,000 pp in a metal chest (minimum 500 lbs. of encumbrance). There are some magic items to be found: a Wand of Fire, +2 Banded Mail, a Saddle of Etherealness, a Crossbow of Distance, a Caparison (horse blanket) of Displacement (neat), Eyes of Minute Seeing, and a few potions and scrolls (including a scroll of Horsemorph, but no spell writeup so it's up to you, DM).

Most (and I mean basically ALL) the loot is only going to be recovered if the party can kill every guard and monster in the place and have sufficient time to search all the rooms. That is not what this adventure is designed to be, which is a quick infiltration for a bit of horse assassination with a clean escape. Competent players are not going to go anywhere near the barracks to locate their target, so almost all of that nice detail is probably wasted. And even if the team does go in and kill everyone and steal everything, that's just going to make the LAWFUL GOOD Kritas even more furious and determined to find the villains who massacred his innocent men and made widows of their young brides. The inevitable consequences (and questionable morality) for doing this mission should shoo away most intelligent, non-evil parties.
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1) THEME
(How strong/consistent is the adventure's premise, flavor, and setting?) 

The premise and hooks are a different flavor than what we normally get out of an adventure and seem well-suited for a more criminally-oriented party than your standard group of dungeon explorers. Here's where the adventure's explicit setting starts to cause a narrative problem. According to both the original Judges Guild material and Lux's elaborations, Zothay's ruler is Kritas the Red, a 6th-level LAWFUL GOOD magic-user. He is described as a "benevolent tyrant," which is an odd choice of words as tyranny typically involves oppression and cruelty, whereas Kritas' rule could be more accurately described as "authoritarian." 

Granted, this sounds like a huge nitpick, but the differences between the two terms signal vastly different outcomes for a party caught in the act. An authoritarian is likely to follow legal procedures and allow the chips to fall where they may (perhaps keeping a thumb on the scales of justice to ensure the most populist outcome). A tyrant, on the other hand, is likely to flay the perpetrators alive in the public square and then have his dogs eat their skins as they watch, still alive and wheezing their last breaths.

Why am I even getting into all this? Because, remember, the party is being asked to kill the prized possession of a mid-level magic-user with an army at his disposal, so they will probably be identified and caught at some point

Furthermore, on the alignment angle, Kritas has a penchant for exotic mounts, but his stables are populated by blatantly dangerous monsters who pose a real threat to his subjects. Both the manticore and nightmare are evil-aligned (though I suppose a half-nightmare might not be). On top of that, he is concealing their presence with illusions, and using a supernatural beast to cheat in order to win the local horse races. Finally, he has commanded his cavalrymen to supervise the daily slaughter of a horse to feed a deadly monster, which must be a morale-crushing horror for the dedicated horsemen tasked with the duty. These are not the actions of a LAWFUL GOOD person.

All that aside, the adventure site itself is a singular location with a very simple theme. The stables setting itself is well-realized in the map and keyed room titles. It looks and feels like the type of compound a cavalry troop would occupy inside a city, and it feels like a very real and lived-in space. Good job, there. 

Some of the lord's menagerie feel a little off-theme. The nightmare and axebeaks are suitable mounts, but who would ride a metal bull? Or a spike-necked dinosaur? Or an outright evil, human-headed lion? I mean, that sounds metal as hell, but in practice would probably be really uncomfortable and dangerous. The point of these creatures being a gorgon or a manticore is simply to trick the party into fighting them.

I think this whole scenario might have been more effective without the ruse, instead populating the stables with actual monstrous mounts like griffons, hippogriffs, maybe a pegasus, maybe even a subdued dragon, and then working out some different methods of interaction to deduce where the nightmare is kept. Make it more of a covert investigation into how the lord's new mount is having so much success rather than a weird mission to slaughter it.

Finding evidence for one of the city's political factions (the thieves guild, the temple, etc.) to use as leverage wouldn't necessarily create a "situation" between the party and the lord of Zothay, either.

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?)

Three maps accompany the adventure: Ground Level, 2nd Story, and the underground Cistern caves. The scale on both stables maps is 10' squares; the cistern map scale is 20'. The Ground Level map looks hand drawn and then finished using a program like GIMP or Photoshop. The key for this level is definitely done in a program, with fonts for labels and circled key numbers.

The 2nd Story map is hand-sketched and appears unfinished as there is a large blank space contained within the walls to the right of the barracks, while the crude Cistern map is barely a sketch. Both feature handwritten labels and key numbers. 

It looks like the designer ran out of time to finish up the maps, and though the sinking quality diminishes the overall presentation, they remain usable, accurate maps, so I won't deduct any points for aesthetics.

The architecture makes logical sense, though the simple layout makes for some pretty uninteresting exploration. As a "place," though, this site feels realistic. I question the need for the Cistern map, but I do think it's a nice way to connect the site to the original city material. 

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

The margins are wide with good line spacing between sections, bolded section titles on their own lines, and bolded key locations and monster names. Magical stuff is italicized. The document is very easy to scan and find what you're looking for quickly. High marks there. The text is in two-column, left-aligned format. I prefer a little spacing between paragraphs over the indentation, but that's a personal thing. 

The adventure is well written and tight, information flows in a logical manner without a lot of fluff. Stat blocks are provided for all stable occupants except for the cavalry horses. This is pretty much how it should be done. 

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

This is an infiltration-type adventure into a military facility, so there aren't a lot of interactive pieces here, although the monstrous mount fights (and the bulette) have some interesting features to them. The nightly ghost ride is a neat vignette, though it ultimately doesn't mean or impart anything of use to the party or mission. It's more likely to lead the party to tangle with the ghost and get seriously barfed up for no real purpose.

There's a kitchen cabinet filled with fine dinnerware (for the cavalry officers, I guess?). It is trapped with a Glyph of Warding (Blindness). It costs 2,000 gp in material components to cast the glyph, which is protecting a total of 1,500 gp worth of treasure. (Kritas must be serious about preventing thievery if he's allocating precious city funds and divine spells to protect his cavalry's dinnerware.) The bit about the glyph's command word and the staff having possibly misheard it is clever, but players who use the false command word would probably see this as a petty "gotcha" moment on the part of the DM (and it kind of is).

The arena is a mystery at first, with a few clues about the bulette's presence (though who would imagine a bulette would lurking under this specific spot in the midst of a city?), and there is a semi-secret attic crawl space above where a kleptomaniac guard has stored his stash of filched treasure. That's a neat little piece of hidden loot, but the backstory will be completely invisible to the players.

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 site is written for a specific setting and much of the background is strongly associated with that locale, though not dependent on it. I think the background stuff could be easily modified or replaced with something different, allowing this scenario to be inserted into any type of urban setting. 

 It is the nature of the mission itself that may limit its modularity. The high-stakes nature of the task and its probable outcome is going to deter many freelance parties I think, but it may work better as a factional-type mission in which the players are obligated to do it (and can expect some faction protection for any blowback when Kritas catches wind of the crime).

Your mileage may vary here, but the core gameplay of this adventure site requires some precise setting details for it unspool properly, and that will drastically limit how and where it can be used.

SCORE (MODULARITY) = 2 / 5
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6) USABILITY
(How much work will the referee have to do to run this adventure at the table tonight?)

Unless you intend to play this adventure exactly as written, you will need to do some work to integrate it into your campaign setting (particularly with the factions and mission motivations). Probably not a lot of work, but definitely some. Critically, the adventure doesn't give any guidance at all about what comes after the deed is done, which is important because this mission could (and should) have severe consequences for the party. 

You're completely on your own in that regard, but when one starts to consider what resources a 6th-level magic-user, who runs a city with an army, could leverage to find and capture the villains, it's not hard to see this ending badly for the characters. This part of the post-adventure is likely to require a lot of work and could conceivably become the central conflict of the campaign—escaping Kritas' wroth.

Having said that, the author was under no obligation to worry about the aftermath according to the contest rules, so I won't ding the adventure for it (my personal score here would be a 2).

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

Tough one. It's good for what it is—a site for an infiltration mission. The horse assassination seems a little over the top for me, particularly when one game-theories out the resolution and aftermath. The adventure wraps itself in some of the trappings of a normal D&D dungeon setting, but the nature of the mission demands stealth, speed, and careful timing so some of the team will have to sit on the bench for a bit while the thief-types get things done. There's also the angle of the party using magic to charm their way in and look around, but in either case, there won't be time for searching or looting or sussing out a backstory. It's in and out, then collect the reward and get the hell out of Dodge before the wizard gets the news. I like it well enough, but I have trouble imagining myself ever running it.

FINAL SCORE = 3.0 / 5