Part Three: Riding the Marlow
The next section of the adventure is all of two pages, and is primarily a random encounter table for encounters down the river. There's some flavour text to make this seem like a trip down the exotic Amazon River, but most of this isn't that important. (Useful, but not important).
That comes with "The Giant Hands". Xen'drik used to be ruled by giants, and the Emerald Claw have ended up in one of their ruins. So, as soon as you see the ruined statues, you've found them. There's one encounter here with the Claw soldiers guarding a skiff. One will try to run away to alert the other Claws. Guess what happened to him in my game?
There's a nice bit of role-playing here as the guards try to stall the PCs. Muroni can also pipe up to keep the adventure underway... "You must reach this Garrow before he finds the object he seeks, for you must be there when the great event unfolds." Cryptic and unuseful to the players. Definitely prophetic babble.
Part Four: The Ruin
The centrepiece of this adventure is the massive ruin of the ancient giant empire. 16 pages - half the adventure - is devoted to its features. The maps are on the inside cover of the adventure, and are extremely clear. Unusually, they're drawn in one square = 20 feet! I can assure you, once you draw out sections of it on the battlemap, your players will be left in no doubt that it was built by giants. The illustrations of the ruin are likewise evocative and excellent. I wish Steve Prescott worked on more D&D products.
One of the really nice features about the ruin is the existence of both giant and human-sized steps. The smaller steps are due to the drow race that used to serve the giants. And, yes, the drow still haunt the ruin, though a shadow of what they once was. I like details like that.
Random encounter tables, dungeon features, check. Sidebar about who lived in the ruin, check. All good here.
Gallery Level
As the PCs try to enter the ruin, they get attack by drow - an EL 9 encounter with a drow Warrior 7 and 6 Drow Warrior 3. (To make things confusing, the leader's stats are here, and his minions are in the appendix). This encounter is much easier than it might appear - with only +2 leather, the drow leader has an AC of 15 and only 38 hp. In more recent adventures, Wizards have adjusted the CR based on poor equipment. This isn't the case here.
Mind you, they *do* have a rolling boulder trap. (Cue Indiana Jones music). That's probably deadlier than the drow.
This level is basically empty. There are the drow "nests" that hold a few dire rats since the drow were forced out by the Emerald Claw, and there is a Gargantuan Monstrous Scorpion trapped in one of the rooms (a god to the drow, they keep it fed; with what I don't want to know). The Scorpion was never found by my group.
Most interesting are the two sets of stairs: one to the "Dark" Level, a level that is entirely enclosed within the ruin (thus, dark), the other to the Temple Level, where the Claw are.
The Dark Level
Six Emerald Claw Soldiers (human War 2) guard the level. After the PCs sweep them aside, the rest of the level becomes possible to enter. Well, once the doors are opened. What makes this fun for the DM (and damp for the PCs) is that the level is full of water. Once the doors open, a great torrent of water can sweep them off the edge of the ruin, and 50 feet to the ground below. What fun!
(Yes, one of the PCs in my group failed all the saves and ended up on the ground below. At this point, everyone was about 7th level, so it wasn't deadly, just inconvenient).
Within the Dark Level, once most of the water has drained away, can be found one of the two puzzle clues to the portal at the top of the ruin: ancient runes of the giants on an interior ziggurat. Alas, if the PCs encounter it early, it's incomprehensible. They need something from above for this to make sense. There's also a Drowned.
Drowned are like Bodaks - very deadly. Unlike Bodaks, the PCs do have a chance to get away from them and not die just due to one failed roll. Stupid play will see PCs die, though. This was the third occasion I have used a Drowned, and the PCs were not that smart. I had Muroni keep dragging them out of the drowned's suffocation aura so they could recover.
There's not much else here. Altogether, it's variety but not much more. Things get more interesting up above.
The next section of the adventure is all of two pages, and is primarily a random encounter table for encounters down the river. There's some flavour text to make this seem like a trip down the exotic Amazon River, but most of this isn't that important. (Useful, but not important).
That comes with "The Giant Hands". Xen'drik used to be ruled by giants, and the Emerald Claw have ended up in one of their ruins. So, as soon as you see the ruined statues, you've found them. There's one encounter here with the Claw soldiers guarding a skiff. One will try to run away to alert the other Claws. Guess what happened to him in my game?
There's a nice bit of role-playing here as the guards try to stall the PCs. Muroni can also pipe up to keep the adventure underway... "You must reach this Garrow before he finds the object he seeks, for you must be there when the great event unfolds." Cryptic and unuseful to the players. Definitely prophetic babble.
Part Four: The Ruin
The centrepiece of this adventure is the massive ruin of the ancient giant empire. 16 pages - half the adventure - is devoted to its features. The maps are on the inside cover of the adventure, and are extremely clear. Unusually, they're drawn in one square = 20 feet! I can assure you, once you draw out sections of it on the battlemap, your players will be left in no doubt that it was built by giants. The illustrations of the ruin are likewise evocative and excellent. I wish Steve Prescott worked on more D&D products.
One of the really nice features about the ruin is the existence of both giant and human-sized steps. The smaller steps are due to the drow race that used to serve the giants. And, yes, the drow still haunt the ruin, though a shadow of what they once was. I like details like that.
Random encounter tables, dungeon features, check. Sidebar about who lived in the ruin, check. All good here.
Gallery Level
As the PCs try to enter the ruin, they get attack by drow - an EL 9 encounter with a drow Warrior 7 and 6 Drow Warrior 3. (To make things confusing, the leader's stats are here, and his minions are in the appendix). This encounter is much easier than it might appear - with only +2 leather, the drow leader has an AC of 15 and only 38 hp. In more recent adventures, Wizards have adjusted the CR based on poor equipment. This isn't the case here.
Mind you, they *do* have a rolling boulder trap. (Cue Indiana Jones music). That's probably deadlier than the drow.
This level is basically empty. There are the drow "nests" that hold a few dire rats since the drow were forced out by the Emerald Claw, and there is a Gargantuan Monstrous Scorpion trapped in one of the rooms (a god to the drow, they keep it fed; with what I don't want to know). The Scorpion was never found by my group.
Most interesting are the two sets of stairs: one to the "Dark" Level, a level that is entirely enclosed within the ruin (thus, dark), the other to the Temple Level, where the Claw are.
The Dark Level
Six Emerald Claw Soldiers (human War 2) guard the level. After the PCs sweep them aside, the rest of the level becomes possible to enter. Well, once the doors are opened. What makes this fun for the DM (and damp for the PCs) is that the level is full of water. Once the doors open, a great torrent of water can sweep them off the edge of the ruin, and 50 feet to the ground below. What fun!
(Yes, one of the PCs in my group failed all the saves and ended up on the ground below. At this point, everyone was about 7th level, so it wasn't deadly, just inconvenient).
Within the Dark Level, once most of the water has drained away, can be found one of the two puzzle clues to the portal at the top of the ruin: ancient runes of the giants on an interior ziggurat. Alas, if the PCs encounter it early, it's incomprehensible. They need something from above for this to make sense. There's also a Drowned.
Drowned are like Bodaks - very deadly. Unlike Bodaks, the PCs do have a chance to get away from them and not die just due to one failed roll. Stupid play will see PCs die, though. This was the third occasion I have used a Drowned, and the PCs were not that smart. I had Muroni keep dragging them out of the drowned's suffocation aura so they could recover.
There's not much else here. Altogether, it's variety but not much more. Things get more interesting up above.
