Seven Strongholds

Have your players wandered off the beaten path yet again? Didn't have time to map out that castle? Just open Seven Strongholds to find forts, castles, and other well-fortified locations, fully detailed and ready for insertion into your game world.

• The Barrows: A concrete bunker allows a determined troop of gnomes to hold at bay the misshapen monsters of the subterranean world, intent on breaking through to the surface.
• Castle Briar: An elven warlord protects his living castle from jealous rivals.
• Gloom Keep: Under a sunless sky, grim-faced humans protect their senile, maddened deity from the world.
• Old Mound Fort: An iron-age ditch-and-rampart fort, refurbished by halfling adventurers, offers a way station for treasure-hungry dungeon explorers.
• Steelface Point: An imposing dwarven fortress protects the mouth of a mountain pass from the orcish horde and its war machines.
• The Perch: Keen-eyed bird-men zealously guard their domed lair, from which they oppress the area's population of "walkers" - their contemptuous term for flightless humanoids.
• Uthront Fort: Ambitious half-orcs occupy a newly-built motte-and-bailey castle as an early stage of their effort to mold the local humanoid raiders into a mighty and unified army.

Like all Penumbra products, Seven Strongholds gives you material adaptable to any fantasy campaign, whether it be a published setting or a world of your own creation.

Beware! This review contains major spoilers.
This is not a playtest review.

Seven Strongholds is Atlas Games' sourcebook of ready-to-run fortresses and follows on in a similar fashion to previous releases such as Backdrops and En Route in providing settings to drop into your campaign.

At $20.95 for 128 pages, this is fairly standard pricing for this type of sourcebook and space usage is reasonably good. The art reflects the fact that six different artists were used and ranges from poor to superb, and once more I found David Interdonato's work to be excellent on the whole. I was less than impressed by the front cover by Chris Pepper, which shows elves with very odd body shapes and Star-Trek-vulcan-like faces. I was glad to read Atlas have given David Interdonato a front cover after this poor showing. I was also impressed by Jennifer Meyer's much more effective portrayal of elves within.

Maps are pretty good, all scaled and with direction, and clearly keyed. Scales vary with the fortress portrayed, but are kept to 1 square per 5 ft. when indoors.

Both the style of writing and the editing are excellent.

As the title infers, there are seven strongholds detailed in the sourcebook:
* The Barrows - a group of gnome mercenaries use a concrete bunker as a base to protect the communities in the area from the monstrous hazards of the subterranean depths which lie beneath. The gnomes grant access to any adventurers willing to pay a hefty tithe. The bunker includes many deadly gnomish traps (fully detailed) in the area leading into the underdeeps, whilst the upper levels contain the living areas of the gnomish mercenaries, including shops for adventuring equipment (at a cost of course). Details of the political machinations going on in the mercenary group are given.

* Castle Briar - a living elven fortress comprised of thorny briars which reacts physically to the commands of its elven occupants. As well as offering up a variety of plant-related traps, this chapter has a wealth of ideas for magical fruits and a new deity, The Briar Princess, who responds to the clerics stationed in the castle who worship her. The politics of the fortress are explored through the most important NPCs and there is also a new poison given, which can be inflicted by the castle shooting voleys of pooisoned thorns out of its walls, sending enemies into unconsciousness.

* Gloom Keep - this miserable place is actually the location of a dying god of law come to earth, protected by his last few ascetic followers. As well as details of the god's important followers, there is information on the dying god himself, some answers to questions the PCs might have. The fortress where the dying god resides comes replete with various traps, some residual magical effects, six constructed floating spheres which protect the god and rules for the effect of sensing the god first-hand and possible conversations that might occur with the god.

* Old Mound Fort - an Iron Age hillfort giving access to ancient treasure-filled ruins beneath. The fortress is controlled by a band of evil bandit halflings, a bunch of backstabbing, double-crossing rogues. They aim to rob and murder the adventurers that come seeking entrance to the ruins beneath the fort, using a basic but effective scam.

* Steelface Point - a dwarven fortress protects the mouth of a mountain pass from a goblinoid horde. Even though vastly outnumbered, the dwarves have held their enemies back using missiles which explode to send spells such as fireball and lightning out into the charging hordes. There is an interesting wondrous item that enables the dead owner of a spellbook to make the spells in the spellbook invisible, bargaining in spirit form with its inheritor with the reward being the revealing of the spells, usually in return for resurrecting the wizard. There are also some details on the siege weapons used by the goblinoid hordes.

* The Perch - this clifftop fortress is commanded by a new race, the bird-like Psittae. Much of the section is dedicated to information on the Psittae, including their pantheon. The Psittae harass the local populations in the lands below.

* Uthront's Fort - a newly constructed motte and bailey castle built by a visionary half-orc, the first of many strongholds that will be part of his planned half-orc barbarian kingdom. The half-orc has gathered a group of half-orc barbarian bandits to his cause who lord it over the 'wretches', gnome and halfling slaves, who are put to work keeping the castle in proper shape. The section introduces a number of new feats, a new creature (a screaming horse) and some magical armour that grants extra feats at the cost of XP.

Each fortress begins with an overview of the stronghold, advice for geographical placement in a campaign setting, fairly detailed NPCs with excellent roleplaying information and (as far as I could see) correct stats. Also covered is the layout of the fortress itself including traps, treasure and design features. Each section ends with a few good adventure ideas and, most usefully, ideas for changing the setup of the fortress as portrayed in the preceding information to suit a GMs needs (such as making the halfling bandits at Old Mound Fort good-aligned (really there to help adventurers) or neutral (there to fleece adventurers but not rob and kill them).

There is also an index of all d20 rules introduced in the book.

Conclusion:
This is a well-written sourcebook with plenty of adventure ideas, and generic enough to be thrown into most fantasy campaigns (or with alternative ideas to tweak it if not immediately suitable). There are also lots of crunchy bits - traps, magical items, deities, feats, etc. to keep rule-lovers happy. The NPC information is excellent and gives plenty of scope to those GMs who want to explore the roleplaying aspects of the characters in the strongholds. There are some great political setups to involve the PCs in and some fun NPCs to play.

My only complaint would be that a couple of the stronghold ideas seemed a bit weak to me, or maybe just didn't appeal to me - Old Mound Fort and the Barrows seemed to follow a similar theme, and the Psittae in The Perch didn't excite me greatly (though there were plenty of original ideas here).

So I can't fault the book in either its presentation or its approach. It should be useful and appeal to most GMs out there and is definitely value for money. Its hard to put my finger on why I'm not giving this 5/5 because its such a well-heeled book, but some of the strongholds just didn't grab me by the shirt collar, fling me against the nearest wall and demand to be used in my very next adventure. But some did, and its worth getting for those.

*Note: This is an older review being reprinted here for inclusion into the EN World archives.

By Steven Creech, Exec. Chairman d20 Magazine Rack

This review is for Seven Strongholds by Robin Laws and published by Atlas Games under the Penumbra d20 imprint. This 128-page sourcebook retails for $20.95 and is well worth it.



Seven Strongholds is exactly what the subtitle says it is; a d20 sourcebook of fortresses and fortifications. Each of the seven structures is highly detailed. There are rich background histories, a diverse and highly developed cast of NPCs, detailed blueprints, and new d20 rules material in every entry. A strong selling point to this book is that all of the information is generic enough to fit any campaign with virtually no modifications.

The Barrows is a two-story concrete bunker run by gnomes guarding this entrance into the underground world. For a fee, adventurers are allowed access through the locked gates that keep the monsters that reside below from attacking and raiding the surface world. Political intrigue can really play a role in this scenario if the GM so desires. New open content material includes new spells, traps, a feat and a wondrous magic item.

The second entry is Castle Briar, an elven stronghold made entirely of thorny briar vines. Once a major strategic location, Castle Briar is now a footnote in elven lore and home to some very status conscious elves. New material includes new poisons, traps, potion-like fruits and a new deity.

Gloom Keep is home to a fallen deity and a ragtop group of followers. This crumbling stone tower is ideal for a remote location. The residents want nothing more than to be left alone, but mysteries and rumors about the keep tend to draw adventurers like a magnet. New material here includes a deity, monster, trap and variant rules.

Old Mound Fort is an Iron Age fort filled with halfling adventurers who have discovered they are literally sitting on top of an ancient treasure-filled ruin. However these halflings are making their fortunes by taking advantage of adventurers who are there to seek the treasures below.

Steelface Point is a dwarven fortress saddled in a mountain pass and holds off the hordes of goblins and their war machines from the civilized lands. The dwarven traps are well done and the Lions of War (new minor artifact) are especially formidable. The new crunchy bits given here more than makes up for the lack of new material in the last section.

The Perch is a lair atop a mountain for a new character race that is avian in origins. Besides the new race (known as the Psittae), a new skill, set of deities, and new traps are included as new material.

The final stronghold detailed is a newly constructed fort run by a half-orc with grandiose dreams of conquest. This scenario has several new NPCs, new feats and a couple of other original items. Of all the scenarios detailed in this book, this has the most potential for continual use in a long-term campaign.

Seven Strongholds is an excellent source of keeps that can be used for your campaign world. Following on the steps of their outstanding release, Backdrops, Atlas Games succeeds once again in delivering a great product that is useable time and time again. In my opinion, this is required literature for any GM’s library.

To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.