We were talking tonight in IRC and I made my pitch for what I think would be cool.
The genesis for this Campaign Concept is found at page 70 of Dungeon #116. This is the article which lists the 30 greatest adventures in the history of D&D, as selected by the panel of experts (Monte Cook, Bruce Cordell, Ed Greenwood, Chris Perkins et al).
As Dungeon thought it was inappropriate to put their own adventures up for consideration, they did not make them eligible for the “30 greatest” list. They did, however, list the “Top 10 Dungeon Magazine Adventures” of all time.
The authors of many of the Top 10 greatest Dungeon Magazine modules of all time are well know to us. Chris Perkins, Monte Cook, Wolfgang Baur.
But the overall winner is not a famous game designer. It was a “common gamer’s” module authored by Mike Shel which appeared in Dungeon #37. It is called “The Mud Sorceror’s Tomb”
It is this module and, more importantly, the campaign backstory that I propose that we use as the metaplot for the ENWorld Adventure Path.
The Proposed Plot
As presented in the original Mud Sorceror’s Tomb (“MST”, hereafter”) Once upon a time, in a land far, far away…
In the game world of your choice, about [700] years ago, social and religious decay lead to political upheaval and the crumbling of state-sponsored religions. This brought with it great dislocation, revolutions and the rise of depraved cults.
One such cult, premised upon the writings of a then long-dead mad sorcerer, named Jezule the Nabbarite, blossomed. The cult’s true purpose was secretive and never fully known, but it was widely believed they were then involved in the sacrifice and worship and covenanting with Elder Gods of the elemental planes of Earth and Water. Certainly, their followers were able to command great and powerful magicks over these elements. Those who chose to disparage the cult of Jezule thus called them “Mud Sorcerors”.
The Jezulein cult gained in notoriety and infamy as its number and ranks grew. The upper hierarchy of the organization was known as the Iron Circle. They dabbled in forbidden magic, anti-social practices in their secret rituals and were the most terrifying Powers of their Age.
But the Jezuleins also practiced divination and, perhaps, temporal dislocation. The Iron Circle foresaw that their doom was soon at hand, as the same forces which lead to their rise, would lead to their fall. The socio-political upheavals in the world were coming again, and bringing with them a fanatical foe; a group of zealots that their divination and prophecies revealed they would not defeat.
The Iron Circle debated and dithered. But as the threat grew more imminent and their doom more certain, a portion of the Iron Circle conceived a plan to defeat their enemy and escape the prophecy. They would place themselves in temporal stasis and have their bodies hidden. They would protect their tombs and holdfasts from their enemies by deliberately hiding these sites in unlikely places; they would also create elaborate and sophisticated traps and powerful magical dampening in their “tombs” to prevent those from locating them, entering them or penetrating their secrets. (The original MST features one of the tombs of the members of the Iron Circle, filled with riddles, dastardly traps and dangerous foes. The story of the Jezulein cult is the author’s back story for that specific dungeon crawl.)
They would also place keys and clues to their whereabouts with their followers. Their cult would keep alive this cryptic knowledge, waiting for a time when the stars were right to awaken the Iron Circle so that the Jezulein Order would arise again to continue its Dark and inscrutable Purpose.
Little did the Iron Circle realize the dedication and zeal of their foe. Even as they slept in the earth, their foes destroyed much of their cult and most of the precious documents which they had created to permit them to be awoken in the future.
And so the centuries past, and the Iron Circle slept beneath the ice, the sand and the oceans: ageless, timeless… and powerless. As the centuries past, even their ancient foe, now without a central purpose, lost its way and decayed.
And so the years passed uncounted, for nearly an age, until one of their tombs was discovered by accident and a cult, long thought dead, flickered anew.
I propose the adventure path to examine this plotline. It can feature in its beginning stages the stirrings of the cult, later identifying its purpose, then a contact with a tomb of a lesser Jezulein. Later, the party will search for clues and locate the legacy of the zealots who fought and nearly destroyed the Jezulein order.
What follows then is a mad race, attempting to prevent the new Jezulein cult from securing the knowledge of how to open the great tombs of those of the Iron Circle in the present.
Well developed along the path, the players will have an opportunity to stop the cult from achieving one of their goals the players will be lead to believe is located within an Iron Flask. Securing the Iron Flask, the players will be drawn within the flask itself. They will adventure within that most unlikely of places – itself a fortress in a bottle - to prevent the Codex from falling in to the hands of the cult. Little do they realize the cultists’ true intent: following the adventure in the flask, the players emerge in a different time, well back in the past shortly after the internment of the Mud Sorcerors.
The object of this adventure in time is to prevent their foe from securing the information it needs in the past – to use in the present. (The Iron Flask being a temporal conveyance for those who know how to use it).
At the last, the players move back to the present to engage some of the Iron Circle who have been awoken despite their efforts and to do battle with the Elder Elemental Gods and their servants, who are the patrons of the Jezulein and the object of their Dark Purpose.
All of this, in a bid to honour the #1 Dungeon Adventure of all time.
So that’s my proposed plotline, more or less. Any takers?
