adventure idea: sunken tower

EricNoah · Oct 28, 2007

Hey gang!

I dropped my players a hint about an adventure back when they were 1st level PCs. It indicated that a mysterious tower rises out of the sea once every decade or so, and that this might be the year for it to appear. They seemed interested in following up on this, but got sidetracked for a while. Now they are 3rd level.

My plan was to run Tower of the Black Pearl, one of the adventures from the Goodman Games DCC collection, "The Adventure Begins." Now that I read the adventure carefully, it seems totally wrong or unsuitable. Even if I beef it up for 3rd level characters there just isn't much to it. So I want to come up with a different adventure that features a tower that rises out of the sea.

My vision is a tower that is sort of an incubation chamber for some tentacled horror (a mooncalf, a suped-up grell, something along those lines) that the tower produces once a decade. To complete the ritual, the tower rises out of the sea on the night of a full moon. Some kind of magical receptical at the top of the tower gathers moonlight for a night, and then the creature is released to start plaguing the mortal world.

I thought maybe the tower might feature a mix of watertight chambers and areas that are normally open to the ocean.

My ideas:

1) a group of pirates has beaten the PCs there and they are looking for treasure. These guys are both comic relief and also their gruesome demise at the hands of whateve lurks in the tower could be used as foreshadowing.

2) A band of sahuagin led by a water naga have used the "open" areas of the tower as a home for some time. They were pretty surprised when the tower rose, though the naga surely has some clues about the nature of the place.

3) Maybe a water weird (ala MMII) or other watery fey creature could be entrapped, in constant torture. Could be released and could provide information.

I'm still unclear about who built the tower (for some reason I have spellweavers in my mind), and what the PCs can/should be allowed to do about the situation. Maybe they can interrupt what is going on here before the creature is released. Or maybe not. I could use some inspiring ideas if you have them!

Thanks

Eric

Phlebas · Oct 28, 2007

With CR 7 a seryulin (MM3) could be a nice larval tentacled horror and might have the extra surprise factor of being unrecognisable.

Low level pc's so octupi, squid & sharks are all interesting fights. (I have this mental image of opening a door and a flood of water plus shark come out.....mad panic combat ensues until they realise shark is now in 6 inches of water....)

I'd be tempted to use tojanida's if you want an intelligent occupants (maybe change the descriptions for flavour?).

Plot wise.... I think the gathering of moonlight to release a horror is pretty good basis. Possibly the moonlight plus a sacrifice (the tojanida's trying to find an alternative victim to free one of their number trapped in the uppermost chamber with a big lens above them?)

Andre · Oct 28, 2007

A bit of a cliche, but you could go with the "tower" actually being a creature from the elemental plane of water. Like a salmon, it always returns to its birthplace to spawn.

The saguagin could be from the elemental plane, or they could be local denizens who are expecting the creature to appear. Perhaps they have some use for the spawn and seek to capture it. Or they plan to sacrifice it as part of some rite to gain significant power.

The creature itself might emit a mild compulsion for a mile or two radius, which essentially lures food near, so the spawn will have plenty to feed upon. That could explain the pirates, who could also be replaced with a fishing vessel or merchantman. Any of those could include an "old salt" or two with legends of the "tower".

If you use pirates, you might give them a captive or two, that the party can rescue (or not...

) In fact, the captive(s) could be denizens of the plane of water who ended up here with the creature, whether intentionally or not.

Oh, and if you use the living tower idea, give some thought to how fragile it is. It could be interesting if a pirate shoots at a PC, misses, and the crossbow bolt sticks in the "wall", which then begins to bleed...

Wycen · Oct 28, 2007

Two other DCC's come to mind. The Mysterious Tower is a low level adventure. And the Aerie of the Crow God is higher level, 5-6? that takes place in a light house. The interior could replicate a tower, (because it isn't simply a light house). And there is definitely something not right going on in the light house.

Treebore · Oct 28, 2007

????

I ran it for 4th level, just advanced everything several HD, and it was a good, quick, adventure, where they unleashed what they weren't supposed to.

Now its a major campaign hook. Of course I love it when adventures turn out that way.

Wraith Form · Oct 29, 2007

Tree:

Eric's point was that it's too brief for his tastes. (My gaming group finished it in, I think, one night--and we're slow as molasses at gaming.) Beefing it up is great, but it won't make the adventure last any longer.

You might combine the first with another from Adventure Begins, specifically Lair of the White Salamander as a lead-in or follow-up to the Tower. (I'm just riffing off the top of my head here--you'll have to create the ties between these two.)

The Stench of Death and The Fate of the Vigilant are both nautically-inclined adventures that might be used to bulk up Tower.

EricNoah · Oct 29, 2007

Wycen said:
Two other DCC's come to mind. The Mysterious Tower is a low level adventure. And the Aerie of the Crow God is higher level, 5-6? that takes place in a light house. The interior could replicate a tower, (because it isn't simply a light house). And there is definitely something not right going on in the light house.

Good thoughts but I actually have plans for those two adventures.

EricNoah · Oct 29, 2007

Treebore said:
????

I ran it for 4th level, just advanced everything several HD, and it was a good, quick, adventure, where they unleashed what they weren't supposed to.

Now its a major campaign hook. Of course I love it when adventures turn out that way.

I just don't like it -- it doesn't work for what I want to do. Nothing to explain, really, just not to my taste.

EricNoah · Oct 29, 2007

Andre said:
A bit of a cliche, but you could go with the "tower" actually being a creature from the elemental plane of water. Like a salmon, it always returns to its birthplace to spawn.

Nice. There's an angle to consider!

Garnfellow · Oct 29, 2007

The old Dungeoneer's Survival Guide described the aboleths as building floating cities that drifted through the underdark seas and which could rise or submerge beneath the surface at will -- it doesn't seem like a stretch to imagine them building some sort of tower, and this backstory would justify all sorts of nasty mutated/fleshwarped horrors found inside the tower.

If you go this way, the one twist I might suggest would be to make the entire tower a living creature engineered from some foul protoflesh material. (See the icky aboleth city featured in a recent Dungeon adventure for details.)

Also, if you've never read it, Fritz Leiber's short story "The Sunken Land," collected in Swords and Death is a great example of this motif -- and just a flat-out great story in any case.