Another Hommlet Podcast

A Hommcast? Anyway, the latest is from the folks over at Mighty Deeds, which is, I believe, a DCC actual play podcast. Season 3 of which sees our heroes venturing into Hommleton. They continue on to the Temple of Ephemeral Edicts, but they spend about 16 episodes in the village/moathouse.

Strangely, even though they're using DCC rules--published by Goodman Games--they seem to be using the 4e Version of Hommlet, not the Goodman Games reprint. Probably because they didn't want to take a out a second mortgage to get the Goodman Games tomes. But the DM--or whatever they're called in DCC--keeps dissing Uncle Gary's flavor text even though the text he is reading is often not from the original T1. 

Linked here:

Mighty Deeds: Hommlet podcast 

If there are zombies in these rooms you all owe me a beer

Back in the 80s, TV personality Geraldo Rivera opened the supposedly as-yet unopened vault of Al Capone on live tv. Hoping to find the skeletal remains of Jimmy Hoffa, the Ark of the Covenant, or, at the least, verifiable proof of String Theory, instead the vault was empty and Geraldo was sealed inside, never to be heard from again.

Well, I'm doing the same thing here today, but in Blog form. You see, I just noticed this section of map from level 1 of the TofEE:

And its similarity to this section of map from the DMG sample dungeon--minus the back doors off of rooms a, b, and c:

Some of you might recall that I once surmised that the DMG sample dungeon and the moathouse in T1 are different versions of the same dungeon. And that those six chambers were once the homes of the same zombies skulking in prison cells under the moathouse in T1:

You can read all that tripe here if you want--I can't bring myself to re-read it so I will forgive you if you skip it.

Anyway, I recently (it was 2 years ago now; I've been busy) bought the Goodman games massive 2-volume hagiography of everyone's favorite place of worship dedicated to alliterative evil. Which is to say that for the first time I have a hard copy version of T1-4 to study. 

You should also know that even though my obsession with Vill. of Homm. is well documented, I have never paid much--read: any--attention to the post-T1 portion of T1-4. Which is why I just noticed the similarly arranged cells now, the day before Thanksgiving 2023. But this gives me the opportunity to either confirm or deny my long standing theory here, live and in person, on the ol' blog. That's right, for the first time ever, I'm going to turn to the dungeon key to find out what the heck is in those cells. Cuz if it's zombies then all of you bastards owe me a beer.

Here we go, turning to the key for level 1... room 150/a-e and--I suspect that some of you already know what's in store, don't spoil it for the rest of us--let's see... 

"150. cells." Good start but not just any cells, these are "gaol cells"--nice bit of pretentiousness there. Each door has a small barred window, straw on the floor... chains on the wall.. fine. What's this bit: "the inside is found to be covered with a sheet of rusty iron." Huh, I wonder what that's about. Chekhov's sheet of rusty iron?

Eastern rooms--aka rooms a, b, and c--are neither locked nor barred..."but as long as they remain shut, their 'ragged human' occupants (three zombies in each) stay huddled in their straw"  

F*ck yes!

More Hommlet Podcasts!

Every now and then I lower my Gillnet of Knowledge-Gathering into the depths of the internet to dredge up new Hommlet content. My latest trawling efforts have yielded not one but two recent podcasts. 

First up is Open Dice Night, an ongoing game-play podcast wherein a gang of PCs known as the Party Folk are using actual 1e rules (descending AC! D6 initiative!) to take on Hommlet. The gang are not old timers, but curious youths (relative to old creeps like me) going back in time to see what AD&D was all about. I always like to see what other folks do with Hommlet so this is pretty fun for me.

Next: Dungeon Master of None A couple of dudes, one a mere whippersnapper and the other an appropriately seasoned gamer, shine some loving attention on the greatest 16 pages of D&D ever printed.

Your Druid broke my Moathouse!

It took a societal lockdown but, at last, I took the now-teenaged [barely] progeny to Hommlet. He seems to finally have achieved the requisite maturity to handle a [simplified] character sheet, so he actually rolled up characters for the first time; though he did complain that "it took like nine hours". He was off by a factor of 12 but nonetheless I took over once it got to equipping the newbs mostly because I wanted to break out my old quick n' dirty PC starting equipment rules.

Once in town, he recruited a few NPCs at the inn--wisely shunning Zert's advances but taking on the wily Furnok, the drunken Elmo, and the pedantic Spugnoir instead. At the moathouse he got past the frogs outside the gate and the huge spider in the tower without much trouble. Then the kiddo wandered straight to the giant lizard encounter where his druid does the ol' Animal Friendship thing. So now he has an awesome giant lizard friend. He even has the MU cast a sleep spell on it so that he can remove the obstruction (a shield) that's stuck in it's craw. (See/listen to GGNoRe for an explanation of this situation)

Blogspots new insert image function really sucks.

This screws up--in a good way--the entire upper level of the moathouse. The bandits in room 7 are smart enough to know that they are just maybe up to taking on a small gang of novice adventurers, but are going to get slaughtered by a party of six accompanied by a voracious giant lizard. So they parley for their freedom and skip town. Two encounters out of the way thanks to one 1st level spell. 

But we're not done yet. Now the PCs wander toward the pantry where a herd of giant rats are waiting to feed on them. Maybe you can justify giant rats hungry enough to see a smallish anthropomorphic creature like a halfling or a gnome as food, but are rats  gonna attack a voracious, 25' long lizard? Hell no! They fled in terror, running down the stairs to the undercroft and triggering both green slimes hanging out on the ceiling. By the time the PCs catch up, the lizard has eaten 3 rats while 3 more are turning to slime and the rest have disappeared into the garbage heap. Two more moathouse encounters eliminated without an initiative roll.

Technically, this shouldn't have worked because the Giant Lizard is a 3 Hit Die creature and Animal Friendship, by Ed. 1 rules, only allows a 1st level druid to befriend a critter of 2HD or less. But, because I didn't have my 1e PHB on-hand, we were using the Castles & Crusades rules (basically 1.75 ed AD&D for those unfamiliar) which are not entirely clear on the matter. 

That all happened two months ago and we've been playing almost non-stop ever since. It's a lot more fun playing in person than the online game I've been involved with since society broke down and we moved into our Omega Man bunker. But that's another post.

Demographics of Hommlet: the Spreadsheet

My trusty colleague Rear Admiral D. Osgood III once again noticed that the ol' blogomatic device was out of gas so he wired a shipment of fuel over to Dicechucker Towers in hopes of restarting the boiler. And what form did this fuel dump take you ask? Why it's a spreadsheet detailing all the inhabitants of everyone's favorite town that nerdiferous pedants will tell you is actually a hamlet. 

Osgood has pored over the text of the Village of Hommlet (I understand he is using the Hommlet portion of T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil as his base text rather than the original, stand-alone module) and developed a thorough census of the population. If you're just here for the handy spreadsheet, here it is. Use it in good health. Or poor health; I won't discriminate against the infirm.

If you want some analysis--or you're just killing time until the pandemic is over--stick around for further reading:

The Male:Female ratio is 7.7 men to 1 woman. This is made more significant when one considers that just 10 years ago the region was at war; you'd expect at least a few widows in this town. Or perhaps it was the women of Hommlet who cleared the moathouse, thus leaving the menfolk to step in and fill the gaps in the militia in the years hence.

The write-up on the Inn mentions that "when the season arrives there will be one or two "likely lasses hired on". What exactly is a "likely lass"? And what season is it that brings more bustle to the burg of Hommlet? Fall foliage? Hunting Season? Hockey season?

Over at Rufus and Burne's tower, the 16 mercenaries share a 20' d. room at the top of the tower for their lodgings while their capt and lieutenant get tiny yet private chambers on the floor below. But there are two 2nd level fighters posted as guards in the tower who do not appear to be affiliated with the mercenary posse that sleeps up in the turret. Since there are no other 2nd level fighters at the tower to relieve them, it must be assumed that they are always on duty and therefore have no need for a place to sleep.

Scale mail: Good enough for Thor

Also, those two guards have AC 5 and carry shields which means they must be wearing scale mail. No one in AD&D ever used scale mail. Leather and chainmail are prevalent, obviously, but studded leather and even ring mail--studded leather's disfigured troglodytic half-brother--occasionally make appearances, but no scale mail. And this despite it's cinematic appeal.

 

 

Scarabs of Hommlet Continued

T1 has this to say about Rannos Davl's famous TZGY scarab:

"The [TZGY scarab] is a pass in an area of the Temple of Elastic Underpants but there is only a 20% chance that even a sage would recognize it as such."

Or, to look at it another way, 20% of sages are likely to know that the ToEE has used these scarabs as passes. Since the rebirth of the temple is still a secret at the time that your characters are wandering through/pillaging Hommlet, it must be assumed that this sagely knowledge is based on the old Temple. Which is to say, the new Templonians have revived the practice of using scarabs as passes as they did in the old Temple.

We want our names on the scarab too!

In my last post I pointed out that the four letters on the scarab--TZGY--are not a misspelled abbreviation of Zuggtmoy but, rather, they indicate Rannos's four co-conspirators in Hommlet: Terjon, Zert, Gremag, and Y'dey. Rannos (10th level thief), as the highest level baddy in all of T1, is head of the Hommlet Task Force. His underlings are the aforementioned Gremag (7th level assassin) and Zert (2nd level fighter) who we already know about, as well as Y'dey, Canoness in absentia of the church of St. Ebert, and Terjon (6th level cleric), who is standing in for her. It is not made explicit in the module that these two are Templers, but it is now apparent that that is the case.

The scarab "pass" is really more of a badge indicating to other Templonians that Rannos is a member of the Black Scarab unit, and also notes his underlings. These four, and only these four, may accompany Rannos to the Temple. Zert, however, does not know that the traders are part of the Temple Conspiracy; clearly he must be taking his orders from Terjon.

Meanwhile Calmert, the rector of the church--for such a small parish, this joint sure commands a lot of hierarchy!--is obviously too low-ranking to know that the Church of Cuddy is really a front for the New Temple. However, he has seen Terjon meeting surreptitiously with Zert and the Traders, who he has determined are unsavory characters.

Knowing that Terjon is up to no good and having uncovered evidence that a band of brigands is forming in the area to, he believes, harass the population, Calmert has decided to put his trust in Rufus and Burne to defend the growing flock here in Hommlet. This is why he's embezzling church funds and sending them to the tower construction fund. Unwisely, he still trusts Y'dey and is looking forward to her return so that he can let her know about Terjon's sinister doings.

Of course, things aren't quite as lawful good as they appear over at the tower either: guess who else has a scarab? Rufus does, that's who. Rufus's scarab is carnelian (a red gemstone) and lacks any glyphs, which suggests that he has no underlings and has not been activated as an agent yet. But we do know that he has, upon achieving 8th level (he's currently a 7th level fighter) been ordered to report for duty to the Viscount of Verbabonc who will indoctrinate him in the Red Scarab Division at that time. He is as yet, a sleeper agent. Note: now the Viscount has been implicated in this plot as well!

Rufus's scarab also confers resistance to poison on him so clearly he gets more love than Rannos. Not surprising when you consider what an A-hole Rannos is.

And yet there is another member of the conspiracy at the tower: a 2nd level fighter hired by Rannos to pose as a laborer and spy for him. This dude is just a hired hand, not actually a Templonian, which is why he doesn't rate a glyph on Rannos's scarab--or even a name for that matter. But his presence their indicates that Rannos is not getting intelligence on the castle project. So either Rannos has taken it upon himself to gather intelligence or he has been ordered to do so by the Black Scarab Division leader--not realizing that its construction is being overseen and funded by another division of the Temple!

The Scarab of Hommlet: The Conspiracy Continues, part XVII

I recently received an email from Darrell, Director of Research down at the Home Office of Dicechucker Enterprises. He kindly delivered up an impressive pile of demographic stats on the villagers of Hommlet that clearly need to be published on this here blogsite. Inspired by his handiwork, I dug out my old Hommlet notebooks to compare his findings with my own research and came across a drawing amidst some notes I wrote approximately 4 years ago:

I admit that the sketch is a bit shoddy but Hommlet loons the world over might hopefully recognize it as a rendition of the Scarab of Rannos Davl, one of the evil traders cum devotees of Evil most Elemental. Said loons might also likely remember that the scarab is known to be a hall pass for certain portions of said Temple.

Now I understand that for many/most/all of you TZGY is just an abbreviation for Zuggtmoy goddess of fungus, which makes sense when you realize that her name was once spelled Tzugtmoy, which might not even be true but too late, I just said it so now it is. But for those of us who were barred admission to T1-4 The Temple of Elephantiasis of the Esophagus we had only the text of T1 to go off of. And in T1 there is only one deific entity mentioned in association with the Temple of Elevated Estrogen and her name is Lolth, not Zuggtmoy. For folks like me, TZGY was some sort of code used by Lolth worshippers, sort of like how folks of a certain persuasion will immediately recognize INRI as a signifier of Jesus Christ without necessarily knowing what the letters stand for.

"Ok, but what's your point, D-Chuckles?" you ask? Here's my point: if you live in a world where Zuggtmoy doesn't exist--as most of us did until 1984-ish, then what does TZGY stand for? Well, on the same page in my notes as the above referenced scarab drawing is a list of four names:

Terjon
Zert
Gremag
Y'dey

Holy Crap!

While some of you are probably thinking "why is this jackass lumping two clerics of St. Cuthbert in with two known Culstists of Evel Knievel?"* Those conspiracy wingnuts amongst you will remember that years ago some internet nutjob posited that the coincidence of Y'dey's sabbatical from the Church of Cuthbert and Lareth's arrival at the moathouse was no coincidence at all. If you don't feel like clicking that link, I'll give you a brief summary: Y'dey = Lareth.

Terjon knows that Y'dey was sent off to live in a dank dungeon under a swamp with a squadron of brigands and he's jealous. If you would rather live in a dank dungeon under a swamp with 16 unbathed brigands as your roommates than hang out at Cuddy's posh new church in Hommlet then obviously you too are a devotee of the Temple of Eloquent Eros. I'm aware the logic here is circular but bear with me.

And if Terjon is in on it, it stands to reason that the Arch Cleric of Veluna--who assigned to Terjon the task of covering for Y'dey while she assumes her alter ego (Lareth)--is also in on it. This Cabal goes clear to the top of the Cuthbert hierarchy! 

*And for those who are wondering who those 4 names refer to:

• Terjon, interim canon of the Church of St. Cuthbert  while Y'dey is off "adventuring."
• Zert, Inn resident and known agent of the Temple of Erectile Enhancement. 
• Gremag, Rannos Davl's colleague at the Hommlet dry goods depot; also a known Temple associate. 
• Y'dey, absentee Canon of St. Cuddy, Hommlet diocese.

4th Edition Hommlet: Bowdlerized for your viewing pleasure

So Reader Rick tells me that there's a 4th Edition D&D version of V. of Hommlet and he's hoping I'll rail into it for him. Since I'm pretty hard up for new material around here--as evidenced by my post-count for the year--I'm jumping all over it.

The Down Low

Hommlet? Is that you?

Back in 2009, the TSRs of the Coast sent out a revised-for-4th-edition-D&D Version of Hommlet to members of their D&D club. A few years later, that module was reproduced in Dungeon Magazine #212, which also happens to be the area code for Manhattan; coincidence? Anyway, thanks to Rick for helping me secure a review copy of the original, bookclub version of the module. 

Those unfamiliar with Gygax's original T1 may find this illustrated summary helpful, if not amusing.

Before we go any further, I'd like to point out that this is the closest I've ever come to a 4th ed. Big D product. My first impression: it looks an awful lot like Magic The Roleplaying Game. The statblocks are set up like a Magic the Gathering card what with the named attacks, the odd titles and creature types; "Zombie drake attacks with flying and lifelink!" That pretty much exhausts my knowledge of Magic the Gathering.

But I'm not here to review 4th Ed. Dung & Drag, I'm here to tear off a piece of Latter Day Hommlet and chew it up. So here we go...

General Impression
First, the artwork. The cover photo clearly was selected at random from a pile of fantasy clip art as it bears no resemblance whatsoever to Hommlet; maybe it's Minas Morghul? But later on there's a cool picture of a giant, bloated frog outside the moathouse, which, in my opinion, is the iconic encounter of this module; I fully approve. And there's Tramp's classic birds-eye view of the moathouse from the original, 'nuf said. The bookclub version also has extensive, large scale plans for the moathouse and other locations; these are not included with the Dragon Mag version.

Moathouse Roll Call: Giant Frog? Present.

The village description has been reduced to a few notable locations: the Inn, Temple of Pellor (who?), Trader's Establishment, etc., and denizens: mostly the occupants of the notable locations, while the rest of the town has been reduced to single word descriptions such as "Brewer," "Farmhouse," "Herder," etc. This contrasts sharply with Gary's original, wherein even the least significant locations in town got 10-15 lines of text describing, at the minimum, the structure, its occupants, their occupation, religious views, notable combat acumen, as well as the location and quantity of treasure they have inevitably stashed somewhere on their estate. Leaving out these details is going to make the DM's job a lot harder when the PCs decide to "clear out" the town rather than/after they've tired of the moathouse. Not showing a lot of foresight there, Wizards.

Over at the moathouse, the update is a fairly straight cover version of the original. The monsters have been updated for the current version of the game which is to be expected. And even though they failed to update the map of the dungeon level to make room for the last pair of zombies, they did at least get them all inside a cell. Sadly, the treasure is assigned in random "parcels" which apparently was a thing in 4th ed. D&D, no? I say sadly because the treasure in the original helps establish a link between the moathouse and the DMG sample dungeon, removing it isolates this version even further from the source material.

Since the greatest degree of variation appears, at first glance, to be in the village rather than the moathouse, that's where I'll focus for the remainder of this here review. Perhaps I'll delve into the moathouse some more in a future post. Anyway... 

The Village
Probably the most significant change in town can be found over at the Church of St. Cuthbert, now described thusly: 

"Ostensibly dedicated to Pelor, this temple welcomes worshipers of any good or lawful good deity."

That's right, Y'dey and Terjon no longer dispense the obtuse wisdom of St. Cuthbert. Rather, they labor at the temple of a deity who is made of toast so milquey that the clergy's primary job is apologizing to parishioners for running out of gluten free communion wafers. And since the villagers no longer get their 15 lines of infamy--and thus their religious affiliations are undeclared--none of them is required to attend his tepid temple. Hoser.

I know nothing about Pelor--I assume he's the patron of something incredibly insignificant like elbow-patch-less tweed jackets or low-VOC mayonnaise--and the module provides no insight into the values his cult adheres to other than their openness to non-adherers. Contrast this with T1 where Gygax lays the groundwork for the hardheaded and venal doctrine of Cuthbert--if you visit the Church of Cuddy, the clergy won't even acknowledge your existence until you toss a few gold pieces in the ol' collection basket. Hommlet sure seems a lot less interesting with Pallor around. Why did they change it? Did they lose the rights to Ol' Cuddy in the divorce? Did Pellor the Homogenized somehow mastermind a hostile corporate takeover?

Here's a summary of other changes from the original. Many are innocuous, others not so much, and some, dare I say it, might actually represent an improvement on the original.

• Gary's pedantic and pointless distinction between villages and hamlets has been removed from the background. I admit, I've always found this trivial tidbit to be inordinately annoying but now that it's gone I miss it.
• Spugnoir, 2nd level MU and resident of the Inn, has changed his name to Spugnois--which is too bad because that doesn't rhyme with Guy Noir. 
• Furnok of Furd is now a dwarf.
• Kobort the Moron and Turuko the Malcontent, roommates at the original Welcome Wench, have made their way to the cutting room floor in the updated version.
• So has almost every other villager including the likes of Black Jay and the family of infidels with the bossy but attractive daughter that lived by the mill. 
• The village elder is now a woman named Hesta. 
• Calmert reprises his role as officiant at the temple but rather than secretly diverting church funds to the construction of Rufus & Burne's tower, now his point of interest is that he's hot for a barmaid over at the 'Wench. 
• The PCs get bonus XPs if they pass a note to the barmaid during study hall on Calmert's behalf. This juvenile set up is in keeping with the church's change in denomination from St. Cuthbert of the Cudgel to Pelor the vacuous glow worm. 
• There are maybe one or two other innocuous side quests such as this planted in town; it's all very reminiscent of 90s computer games.
• Rufus and Byrne's castle is being funded by unnamed "royalty" rather the than the Viscount of V'bonc and the Arch C. of Veluna as in the original. Not very significant except perhaps in establishing that this Hommlet is only precariously linked to the World of Greyhawk.
• There's a shrine to Avandra on the edge of town. Mysteriously, there is no priest or following for this deity in Hommlet. The Ostler at the 'Wench has his staff maintain the shrine, which I suspect is done more out of civic pride than devotion to Avandra, otherwise he'd tend to it himself, no? The shrine adds a bit of mystery, which I appreciate.
• Dannos Ravl still has the TZGY scarab, but its significance is distinctly left to the DM--it is no longer necessarily a pass to the T of EE. Nor do 1 in 5 sages understand its significance.
• Rannos Davl and Gremag are much more amiable characters than they were under EGG's regime, which is smart. In T1, Gary portrayed them as such unlikable dickheads that no one would ever bother to deal with them, which is not very good for business if you're a merchant trying to make a living and possibly even less good if you're a spy who's trying to gain the trust of the locals.
  
  • Aside: Rannos Davl is obviously another near-anagram for Dave L. Arneson--as you may recall, one of the giant chieftains in G1 was named "Nosnra." But the best I can make of Gremag is Mare Gg which could maybe possibly be an abbreviated pseudo-anagram for Mary Gygax, EGG's first wife. Or maybe it's "Gamer G," a reference to Gary himself? Or maybe it's just Gremag, a cool sounding name.

In Conclusion...
The whittling away of many (most) of the details in town certainly makes 4th ed Hommlet a less lush setting than the original, removing the nooks and crannies that crazed loons like me--and, if you've made it this far, likely you as well, dear reader--thrive on, sinking the talons of our imaginations into them, kneading and prodding until we've rendered a more fully formed image in our minds. But most people who've gone through T1 never put most of the village into play, so they're not likely to notice the lack of information--other than the demise of the cult of Cuthbert of course.

As an adventure for your gang to go through on the odd Friday night, does it suck compared to good ol' T1? That's not really my area of expertise but I would say that the new version is so close to the original in terms of actual action that any attempt to malign it on these lines would likely risk smearing Lord Gary's original as well. I think for 96.83% of people, this is likely a perfectly adequate rendition of a classic. Where it differs is in the softening of the details, and for me, and others who like to obsess over minutiae, the new version's glossiness is a strike against it.

Moathouse Friday: The Lareth Conspiracy

A few things we know about Lareth:

Figure 1.  The vizor brings out the chaos in your eye.

1. Lareth is never seen without a full-vizored helmet [Figure 1].
2. Lareth is known to some within the Temple as "The Beautiful"--not an adjective typically preferred by men, who find terms like "handsome," "studly," or "well-endowed" more descriptive of their virility
3. Shortly before Lareth arrived in the Hommlet vicinity, Y'dey vacated the Church of C'bert on her mysterious quest.

If you haven't already figured this out, I'll make it real simple for you: Lareth and Y'dey are the same friggin' person.

Furthermore: It is therefore almost certain that there is a deep-seeded and nefarious connection between the Temple of EE and the Church of St. C., perhaps running as high as the Prelate of Almor him(her)self!

Bonus Lareth Trivia:

"Lareth" is most likely an Oeridian bastardization of "Larix" which is the genus of the larch tree, also known as the tamarack.  It has been established that tamaracks grow in close association with chaos; see the K on the B-lands, as well as V of H, and Sample Dungeon of Evil Terror.

Gygaxian Dungeoneering: Put on the uniforms

Check this out:

The Hommlet lacrosse team takes the field .

"These places are the roosts of 23 gargoyles... These creatures greatly fear the Drow, and will attack no creature with a Drow or wearing Drow garb" -- D1 Descent Into the Depths of the Earth, pg. 9, room 8.

"OGRE...has been instructed to guard the room against any creatures who do not wear the symbol of the new master" -- T1 Village of Hommlet, pg. 15, room 7.

"There will always be 8 zombies...Anyone entering will be attacked unless they are robed in temple garb." -- B2 Keep on the Borderlands, pg. 21, room 53.

Three Gygax penned dungeons agree: if you see someone in uniform, steal his clothes.  It should be noted that the Ogre in T1 also required that you flash Lareth's gang sign or he would attack regardless of your outfit.  Presumably EGG's players, by that time, had caught on to the pacifying effects of a man in uniform.

Hommlet: Heart of a Village

One of the coolest things about The Village of Hommlet is that it is not just a static village setting designed solely as a medium for PC activity.  There are things going on here--big things that may have little or no bearing on the actions of the PCs.  Things that are too big for your puny PCs to affect or too subtle for them to notice.

Obviously, there's the rise of the nefarious Temple of Elemental Evil.  But what about the concurrent rise of the Church of St. Cuthbert, as members of both cults infiltrate the village, each in their own fashion.  The Cuthbertines are generally lawful good artisans and craftspeople and seem intent on becoming a part of the growing community.  The Temple members are evil and secretive and presumably are trying to return to the era of oppression that precipitated the warfare of a decade ago. We don't know which of the two groups the Druidic natives of Hommlet find more objectionable.   Though the Cuthbertines are not outwardly malevolent, tight-knit, homogenous populations are, historically, not too well disposed to large influxes of new folks with different cultural values and beliefs. 

Then there's Rufus and Burne's castle under construction on the hill east of town.  Though it's not finished, the town map conveniently shows the ultimate plan of the structure, just so you know what the future has in store for Hommlet.  Is the castle a sign that Hommlet is already being subjugated to a higher power even without the Horde of Elemental Evil? How does the village elder feel about its  presence?  Glad for the safety provided?  Threatened by the assumed diminution of the traditional authority of the village?

And at the Church o' St. Cuthbert, Canoness Y'dey has "left unexpectedly and has not returned."  What sort of business is she tending to that it is accompanied by such mystery?  Terjon, the acting Canon--who would rather be off adventuring himself--believes that she is off "on a quest", but what sort of quest do churches send their Canons on?  

Furthermore, Calmert--the officiant of the church--is mysteriously diverting funds from the church to the construction of the new castle across town.  This suggests that perhaps the church does not officially support the new castle or its inhabitants, even though R&B are devotees of the Chapeau.  At the least, it indicates that Calmert's loyalties are somewhat misplaced.     

Many of these features are, I assume, further evidence of the palimpsestuous nature of T1.  As I may have mentioned in another post or two this module is unique in that it was created for play in Gygax's own campaign but then modified to incorporate many of the actions and characters--P- and NP- alike--from that original campaign into the final, published work.  Elmo and Lareth seem like they were probably members of that original party; likely Rufus and Burne were as well.  But was the Cuthbert Infiltration also a result of the original campaign?  Was the entire Battle of Emridy Meadows an outcome of their actions? Can I get a witness?

While T1 offers the opportunity to uncover clues to the second rising of the Temple of Elemental Evil, The death knell for Hommlet has already sounded.  Soon it will be overrun either by baleful Temple followers or the docile-yet-obtuse followers of St. Cuthbert.  Either way, Old Hommlet is dying.   Which is the one bummer about the village, one gets the sense that you've arrived at the party only to find that the keg is floating in a tub of molten ice. A new regime, as represented by St. Cuthbert's middle class followers and the imposing phallus rising on the hill east of the village, has taken over and it's only a matter of time before the Hommlites of old either assimilate or emigrate.  The battle for Hommlet's soul has already been lost regardless of what those dorks in Nulb have up their sleeve.

Moathouse Monday: Structural matters

A while back I was doing some excavation over at the moathouse for my revised T1-2 Moathouse of Hommlet/Sample Dungeon of Evil Chaos.  As my crew dug out the rubble and cleared the stairway down to the dungeon level, I began to notice that things didn't line up quite right.  For instance, the stairs at 13 run smack into the curtain wall.  And the doorway to the stairs at 8 opens not to the hallway where both the number and the arrangement of the risers would seem to indicate an opening should be but, rather, it opens to the side into room 6 at the mid point of the stairway, by which point the steps are presumably several feet above the floor level.

ABOVE: Curtain walls outlined in magenta, bailey walls in blue

Now we all know that, back in the day, the cartographers of TSR were gleefully insouciant when it came to practical considerations of underground construction, so none of us gave them any grief over these sorts of quirky inconsistencies of structure.  Yet, oddly, the Dungeon directly beneath the moathouse seems to be excessively concerned with structural matters, as manifested in the forest of big, fat, presumably load-bearing columns arranged throughout the level.  There is nary a span of ceiling greater than 20' that is fearless enough to refuse the support of one of these pillars.  And yet, once you descend to the sub-dungeon level, accessible via the secret doors in area 7 and 5, the columns are no more; even though this portion of the dungeon supports a vast and sodden fen on its roof.   

Intrigued by these subtle clues, I decided to pry a bit further to see what other oddities I might find. So I had my CAD guy draw the outline of the curtain walls and the exterior wall of the moathouse (above) and transpose them to the dungeon level below. 

BELOW: Moathouse outlines transposed onto dungeon level

First off, notice that the stairs don't match up.  The stairs from area 13 Above that butted into the wall have now turned completely around in area 1 Below; a much more sensible arrangement to be sure.  And the stairs in the wall of the tower of area 7 Above seem to drop you into the room below from the ceiling of the strangely enlarged area 7 of the dungeon level.  And I'm not even going to get into the wide staircase from the bailey up to the Black Chamber (6 Above).

Although it seems pretty obvious that the dungeon level was intended to fit snugly into the footprint of the moathouse, for some reason the 5 zombie cells in area 4 and Lubash's quarters in 7 have expanded outward.  Why is that?  Could it be because Gygax wanted to make the secret door hidden in the south column of the torture chamber (5) that much harder to find?

Hear me out: If the columns in area 5 were the first columns encountered in the whole place, it wouldn't take an elf to smell something fishy; every old school gamer worth his beard would know something was up and spend the next several rounds/turns/days looking for traps, secret doors and lost lunch money around those pillars; resorting to mining operations if such were necessary.  So he made sure that PCs approaching from either access point to the dungeon level would already be inured to the presence of structural columns; pillars went up roughly every 20' through the level and what once stood out like a sore thumb became just one more finger in a pair of ordinary-looking gloves.

But pillars would look pretty suspicious in a 30' x 30' room (7) and downright tacky in a 10' wide corridor, so in order to accommodate these structural elements in an inconspicuous way, the dungeon engineer expanded  room 7 Below to a 40' x 40' square and widened the zombie corridor to a voluminous 20'  wide hallway at area 4.  The result: a much more pleasing pillar arrangement, but the curtain walls have been undercut and the zombie cells protrude out into the bailey. But, thankfully, fantasy adventure gamers are not too particular about these sorts of things, and no one ever noticed. 

Also of note: the east wing of the dungeon level does not extend all the way to the south curtain wall.  Too bad, because if it had gone that extra 10', there would have been exactly enough room for a sixth zombie cell to accommodate the last, homeless pair of zombies from area 4.  For those not in the know, the encounter at area 4 involves 12 zombies who are lurking in pairs in the chambers off the west side of the corridor.  Of course, anyone familiar with basic arithmetic will quickly notice that there are only enough cells for 10 zombies so arranged.  Some bloggers have taken this misstep and extrapolated vast and exaggerated conspiracy theories regarding the provenance of the V. of H. and other Gygax-penned dungeons, but we shan't deign to acknowledge those wingnuts here.

Crayfish and Abbots: More Fodder in the case of the Sample Dungeon vs. Hommlet

Back when I did my big DMG Sample Dungeon vs. T1 comparison last winter, I did not look very closely at the Giant Crayfish encounter in room 13 of the Dungeon level of the Moathouse.  Perhaps because I considered the crayfish encounter to be a monster encounter, I never made a connection between it and the water room in the Sample Dungeon, even though both feature... water.  But on closer inspection, there does seem to be something of note going on.  Not with monsters, obviously, as there is no evidence of a giant crustacean loitering around the abbot's old bones, [EDIT: Actually, there are crayfish hanging out near the abbot's bones, check this out from the description of the pool: "There are a score or so of small, white blind fish in it, and under the rocks are some cave crayfish, similarly blind and white.  Thanks to my fact checker over at Zenopus Archives for catching this one.] but check out the treasure description for each encounter:

Monastery:

"The limed-over skeleton of the abbot is in the pool of water... If the remains are disturbed in any way, a cylindrical object will be noticed, the thing being dislodged from where it lay by the skeleton, and the current of the stream carrying it south at 6" speed.  To retrieve it, a character must be in the stream and score "to hit" as if it were AC 4 in order to catch it. It is a watertight ivory tube with a bone map of the whole level inside."

 Moathouse: 

"in the water on a ledge is a platinum pin set with a ruby (2,000 g.p. value) and a bone tube. The pin is under a skull (human) and the the tube under some bones.  Unless searchers use their hands, their is a 50% chance that either or both treasures will slip off the ledge and be lost below.  The tube is water-tight and contains a scroll of magic user spells (push, stinking cloud, fly)"

Sure, one's an MU scroll and one's  a map, but c'mon, two watertight scroll tubes hidden amidst bones with a chance of dislodging and losing said item to the PC's eternal dismay?!  It should be noted that in monastery, the moving scroll tube has only about 10-20' of stream to go before it flows through the outlet tunnel at the south end of the room and is lost forever.

Also of note: the ruby pin under the human skull, though much more valuable, is somewhat reminiscent of the garnet in the goblin skull in room 1 of the Sample Dungeon.  Red gemstones hidden in skulls; what would Freud say about that? 

To be sure, this is not jaw-dropping evidence that these two dungeons are derived from a similar progenitor.  But, given the vast amount of other forensic evidence, it certainly enhances the argument.

B2-T1 Keep of Hommlet: a self-diagnosed T1 obsessor goes off his meds again

Keep THIS!

As mentioned in yesterday's teaser, today we're exploring B2 Keep on the Borderlands and its potential as a link in the Hommlet series.  No, B2 is not based on T1 or the Sample Dungeon or any of that nonsense.  Don't be ridiculous.  But there are some similarities nonetheless.

For some background, a few months ago I posted a deal about some of the more remarkable similarities between T1 Village of Hommlet and the Sample Dungeon in the Dungeon Masters Guide wherein I made the claim that the Sample Dungeon was probably the original dungeon upon which T1 was based.  And though I'd accept that they both were separately crafted from the roots of the same prototype, my money still says that the Sample Dungeon is closer to the original Hommlet campaign than is the published version of T1.

This all started when I was looking around for a sequel to T1 for my current AD&D campaign.  I started eyeballing the Sample Dungeon as a potential source for a T2 Temple of Elemental Evil of my own semi-design.  I liked it initially only for the dungeon's inherent Gygaxian flavor, but as I started reading into it more closely, well, you know the story.

Something similar happened the other night when I started checking out B2 as a potential sequel--T3 if you will--to my semi-homebrewed T2.  Inspired by the stand of tamaracks--a tree unique for being both coniferous and deciduous, and, thus, particularly well suited to cold climates--on the wilderness map of B2.  Obsessive weirdos like me will recall that tamaracks are also present in the vicinities of the moathouse and the Sample Dungeon--indeed, I have it on good authority that the "T "in T1 initially stood for Tamarack. So I thought here's evidence that they're all set in a similar climate, that's a good starting point.  Plus: again with the Gygaxian flavor.

So I'm giving B2 a thorough read-through for probably the first time ever.  In contrast to The V. of H., EGG seems to be going for maximum genericness with the KEEP. NPCs are bereft of names, ability scores, and background of any meaningful sort; these are things that you, the introductory DM, are supposed to come up with on your own.

There is one exception, however: the jovial priest in apartment 7b of the KEEP.  Though he is nameless and statless like the other denizens of the Borderlands, he does have an agenda spelled out.  As you may recall, he is described as being a genial mo' fo', and, along with his two acolytes, would love to help the party on there quest for glory in the ol' Caves.  But don;t turn your back on him for too long because he'll club you senseless at the worst possible moment He's actually "chaotic and evil" and is "in the KEEP to spy and defeat those seeking to gain experience by challenging the monsters in the Caves of Chaos."

So just as in T1 we have evil agents in town who are only too interested in getting in on the party's expedition.  But in contrast to the malevolent traders in Hommlet who project an off-putting aura of d-baggery--only the most desperate of adventuring parties would ever do business with them, much less accept their company into a dungeon--the cleric in the KEEP has a better grasp of tradecraft; he actually has the sense to make himself likeable. Also of note: the dude who hires himself out as a guide in the Sample Dungeon is also up to no good; he's just hoping to steal the Fire Opal with the assistance of the party.

Over at the Caves Of Kaos, there is an imprisoned merchant awaiting his fate--just like the poor merchants in the ogre's pantry in T1--though this time he's to be the entree at a hobgoblin banquet. And just like his compatriots in the moathouse, he too offers a reward for his release, though he's a much more generous chap than the cheap bastards in Lubash's pantry who could only spare meager wad of silver pieces for their saviours. 

Also, there are a couple of fire beetles in adjacent-ish rooms in the minotaur caves, but that's a similarity to the Sample Dungeon, not T1.

And then there's Cave K: The Shrine of Evil Chaos; a cloister of evil clerics and their malevolent little underground chapel in red and black that bears some resemblance to Lareth's malicious little cult. And possibly to the cleric and hobgoblins in the Sample Dungeon as well. Plus, try to convince me that "Shrine of Evil Chaos" is not the Basic-ified version of the phrase "Temple of Elemental Evil"--they're one and the same. 

And again there's the long tunnel to a location off the map near the cleric's quarters, just as in T1--and possibly the Sample Dungeon--though this one is blocked with fallen rubble and is obviously not their personal means of egress.  Though the head cleric's quarters are described as lavishly decorated, much as Lareth's joint is in T1, there are no flaming eyeballs or fire opals or other physical evidence to link this cult to those that inhabited T1 or the Sample Dungeon.  But the place still has the feel of something ominous hiding just barely beneath the surface, awaiting its chance to break out and corrupt and oppress all of humanity.  I wonder what Gygax was reading back in the late 70s that inspired all this cultiness.

Into the Ruined Monastery of Evil Chaos on the Borderlands of Hommlet... Near a Keep

That is the working title for a campaign I am cobbling together using T1 The V. of H., the Sample Dungeon of the DMG, and now... B2 Keep on the Borderlands.  Yes, I've found adequate linkages between B2 and T1/Sample Dungeon to enlist it into the fold.  I won't go so far as to say that B2 is based on the same source material as the other two dungeons, but there is enough evidence to suggest that Gygax was not done scratching his evil cult conspiracy itch when he penned B2.  More on this tomorrow.

One Other Thing I learned While Obsessing Over Hommlet:

The real bad guys of Dungeon Module T1 The Village of Hommlet are not Lareth and his band of Scary Men or even the evil traders back in town.  No, the true villains of Homlet are the two captive merchants in Lubash the Ogre's pantry.  "How do you figure, D-Chuckles?" you ask? Here's how: these two dudes promise their rescuers

"large rewards for their release, vowing to send monies to Hommlet as soon as they return to Dyvers."

Four weeks after their rescue, a passing caravan will deliver to the PCs a sack laden with--wait for it--one hundred silver pieces. Are you kidding me?? That's only 5 freakin' gold pieces at AD&D exchange rates, just barely enough cash for the entire party to split a half gill of Ulek Elixir at the Welcome Wench.*

A hundred platinum would have been a worthy reward, sealing a bond of mutual goodwill between merchants and party; 100 gold would have been a respectable gesture--at least fueling a nice post-dungeon bender.  A friggin' thank you note would have been appreciated--it's always nice to know that your good deeds are remembered.  But 100 silver?!  That's just an insult.  If I were a PC I would be all "Screw the Temple, let's hunt down those cheap-ass merchants!"

* According to the handy conversion tables at the back of my notebook that I have not bothered to ever use in a hundred years there are 4 gills to a pint, so a half gill is [avert your gaze--mathifying taking place] ... 2 ounces or approximately 66 mL if your feeling metric-dependent.

DMG Sample Dungeon Part 4: Cult of the Fiery Eye or Palimpsest of Hommlet

After much delay--my dissertation committee asked for some additional graphics before I put it out for publication--I'm finally getting to the conclusion of my analysis of the Sample Dungeon of the Dungeon Masters Guide.  Today we're speculating what to make of the unfinished portions of the dungeon based on the clues provided in the few room descriptions, background, and the wandering monster tables. Without further ado...

Sample dungeon site analysis.

The author provided wandering monster encounters for the two distinct areas of the Dungeon, the Non-crypt Area and the Crypt Area which conveniently included the room numbers of the wandering monster's lairs, a Gygax standard that I failed to appreciate for too long.  Non-crypt area wandering monsters include bandits, goblins, giant rats, and fire beetles--the fire beetles emit a fiery red glow which illuminates a 10' radius; that's kinda' cool.  But are there any running themes here?  The only one that comes to mind is that these critters are all just looking for a quiet place to lay low, somewhere with a roof overhead where no one will ask any questions.  So the non-crypt area is going to be filled with "volunteer" monsters; whatever manages to crawl, slither or hop down here from the swamp above.  Giant snakes, lizards, ticks, maybe a pack of voracious giant frogs even.  And lots of the rooms will just be empty old store rooms littered with moldy crap and the occasional fungus or slime.

Now let's see what the crypt area has going on in terms of wandering monsters: more rats, ghouls, skeletons--your standard crypt fare; one could expand on this a bit.  But then there's the evil cleric with the hobgoblins in tow from areas 35-37.  An evil cult in league with humanoids occupying several rooms; that's got potential.  Let's say they're beholden to some demon lord and let's riff on  Nunya's notion (from the comments section of Part 1 of this series) and say that the fire opal the monks were hiding was the prized jewel and symbol of power stolen from the temple of this demon lord and turned over to the monks for safe keeping.  The enormous, smouldering opal represents the demon lord's baleful, fiery glare. Indeed, reflecting the significance of this symbol of power, the hobgoblins have an emblem of a fiery eye painted on their shields while the cleric has the same stitched into his robes.

My eye!

So these cultists of the Fiery Eye have set up quarters here in the crypt area, perhaps because they're still looking for that damn fire opal.  And since, as Zenopus points out, using the secret door to area 3 is not a very convenient means of egress--it being 10 feet above ground--they use the stairs up at area 39 which leads, as Zenopus further suggests, to a long tunnel eventually daylighting at a narrow opening amidst rocks and thick briars and brambles over at the stand of brush and tamaracks beyond the monastery.  The cult uses this tunnel for occasional sorties to pillage passing caravans for supplies, treasure, and prisoners which they use for either ransom, slaves, or food.  So a few of the other rooms are occupied by their humanoid allies, some gnolls, bugbears, and maybe an ogre who's got a few human or demi-human prisoners in his pantry.  And perhaps the cult has contacts in the nearby village, other cult members who might feign to provide assistance to the PCs but whose real intent is to obfuscate and assassinate them...

Wait, what's that?  This sounds exactly like the premise of Dungeon Module T1 The Village of Hommlet you say?  Good!  Now we can get to the real thesis of this post which is that the Sample Dungeon in the Dungeon Masters Guide was the original dungeon associated with Gary Gygax's Hommlet campaign back in the 1970s.  For real.*


Monastery vs. Moathouse: One and the Same

Introduction
First, here's a little historical background for those unfamiliar or who've forgotten the details.  In Gary Gygax's 1979 dungeon module T1 The Village of Hommlet, he included the following bit of background on the origin of the module:

"The area here was developed to smoothly integrate players with and without experience in the Greyhawk Campaign into a scenario related to the old timers only by relative proximity...  and many of the NPCs in the module are the characters and henchmen developed through play... the situation and surroundings have been altered because of the actual experiences of these participants." (Gygax, Village of Hommlet, pg. 3)

Also in 1979, Gygax published the Dungeon Masters Guide which included an unfinished Sample Dungeon composed of a map of a single dungeon level underneath a ruined monastery, descriptions of 3 of the encounter areas, and some background info about the dungeon including a description of the adjacent terrain and a legend that there was an enormous fire opal of exorbitant value hidden within.  I contend that the Sample Dungeon is the original dungeon that those "smoothly integrated players" of Hommlet went through.  Check it out:

"After two miles of distance, the land begins to sink and become boggy... and tall marsh plants grow thickly where cattails and tamaracks do not... A side path, banked high to crossover the wetland to either side, juts north to the entrance of the ruined place."

"[A]fter about a two mile trek along a seldom used road, they come to the edge of a fen... with little to relieve the view save a few clumps of brush and tamarack sprouting here and there.  A narrow causeway leads out to a low mound upon which stand the walls and buildings of the deserted mo*******. "

Pretty similar, right?  A "side path banked high to crossover the wetland" sounds a lot like a causeway through a fen, no? And those ubiquitous tamaracks.  If you haven't already reached for your DMG, the first one is the description for the approach to the Moathouse in T1, the second is from the Monastery in the Sample Dungeon.

Design concept
Each adventure is distinctly divided roughly in half between areas that are easily accessible from the obvious entrance to the edifice and those areas that are accessible only if you find a secret door.  Thus, an uninspired or very unlucky party could easily wander through half the dungeon and think their work was done.  Also, between the accessible portion of the adventure--we'll call it the Outer Dungeon--and the secret Inner Dungeon, there is a pronounced shift in the mood of the encounter milieu.   In the Moathouse, it is the upper levels--those that are part of the moathouse proper, including the cellars directly directly beneath--that form the Outer Dungeons while in the Monastery it's the "non-crypt areas" on the north side of the map.  In both cases, the Outer Dungeon is inhabited by whatever random outlaws and freeloaders moved into this subterranean tenement seeking shelter from the elements--bandits, giant lizards, goblins, fire beetles...  it's your classic dungeon crawl.  The Inner dungeon, however, is inhabited by those with a reason for being there; those who belong.  In both cases there is a crypt area inhabited by the undead; both also are inhabited by an Evil Cult, the evil cleric and his hobber bodyguards in the monastery; in the Moathouse the cult includes Lareth and his gang of flaming stormtroopers, but also the various humanoids mercenaries--the ogre, gnolls, and bugbears--as well.

Clues to the Beyond
But Gygax was not willing to leave things purely to chance; in both adventures he supplies a hint that there is more to this place than a casual exploration might divulge.  In the monastery, this clue comes in the form of the the map and key found amidst the abbot's skeletal remains in room 2.   In the moathouse, this hint is the locked cache of food, weapons, and Flaming Eyeball sweatshirts in the storerooms (rooms 2 and 3, dungeon level).  Also, to make it clear that this crap doesn't belong to the bandits above, he placed the green slime trap on the stairs up to their lair to indicate that they don't bother coming down here too often.

The Secret Door
In both the moathouse and the monastery the secret door to the hidden, Inner Dungeon is located in a room dedicated to death--the funerary room of the monastery where the passage from the world of the living was celebrated, and the torture room in the Moathouse where the same passage was celebrated in a much more pro-active fashion. More importantly, neither door is located in a typical fashion, each is positioned in such a way that a specific effort by the players will be needed to find it; nine feet above the floor in the Sample Dungeon or hidden in the column in T1.  By strategically locating these secret doors, a generic, "we search for secret doors" is clearly not going to be good enough, no matter how well the dice work in your favor.

However, there are clues to be found that will lead the observant PC to the location of said secret doors--the wall sockets in the Sample Dungeon and the faint trail of blood to the pillar in T1.  And on the other side of that secret door in T1 you will find the same 4 ghouls who ate the gnome in the Sample Dungeon.  


First encounter
Monastery:  Room 1 contains a large Spider lurking on the ceiling over a  "a central litter of husks, skin, bones, and its own castings" patiently awaiting its prey.  In the heap can be found a treasure of 19 sp and a garnet worth 50 gp.

Moathouse:  Area 4 is likely to be the first encounter inside the moathouse (we can only assume that there was a gang of hungry frogs waiting in ambush along the causeway to the  monastery) and it contains a huge spider lurking over "a scattering of husks and a few bones on the floor" and a small treasure trove of 38 sp, 71 cp and an ivory box worth 50 gp.

The descriptions are similar though not exact.  "Husks" and "bones" are constant but the spider in the moathouse has been ratcheted up a notch and the treasure slightly increased: the silver has been exactly doubled and a few coppers have been thrown in for good measure, but the main treasure remains set at 50 gp in value, though its manifestation has altered from a garnet to an ivory box. On its own, this encounter doesn't carry much weight, but as the evidence mounts, the similarities are certainly worth noting.

Flaming Eye/Fire Opal

Figure 3. Flaming Eye meet Fire Opal

If you were a member of a cult whose emblem was a flaming eyeball, wouldn't the fire opal be the front runner as your candidate for sacred gemstone?  (see comparison, Fig. 1.a.) Whether the cultists in The Monastery wore a flaming eye or not is impossible to say, but I think I made a pretty fair case back in paragraph 3 about how one might easily extrapolate such.

What is more, and this is the clue that sent me down this rabbit hole in the first place, in T1 Lareth's prized possession and the single most valuable treasure in the entire Moathouse is a string of matched fire opals.

Even Scully should be coming around by now but the best is yet to come.

Hall of Zombies
Check out these two maps, and read the description below as it might apply to area 4 on the left map and area 10 on the right:  

CORRIDOR LINED WITH CELLS: Anyone entering this area will be attacked by the monsters lurking in pairs in these cubicles: 12 ZOMBIES (H.P.: 15, 14, 13, 12, 3x10, 9, 8, 6, 5, 4)

If you had to choose one of these two as the map for the encounter area described wouldn't you choose the map on the right?  It looks like a standard AD&D corridor--10' wide, leads to a room at the end--and it's lined with 3 cubicles on each side of the hall which provides exactly enough room for 12 zombies hiding in groups of two in each cell.   Area 4 on the left looks more like a chamber than a corridor--what with its 20'-wideness, pillars down the center, and lack of a portal at the end--plus it's only "lined" with cubicles on one side.  But most importantly of all, it has only five cubicles which leaves two of the zombies homeless!

The encounter description is from T1 area 4 of the dungeon level of the moathouse, the map on the left, while the map on the right is from the Sample Dungeon.**  By now it has to be pretty clear that this description was originally written for area 10 of what became the sample dungeon of the DMG and was then transcribed word-for-word into T1--including hit points for all 12 zombies even though most people who ran T1 back in the day, lacking accommodations for the 6th pair, only threw 10 zombies at their players.***

Exit Strategy
Adjacent to Lareth's den under the moathouse was a long tunnel leading up to a concealed opening at the surface that allowed his cronies to come and go without disrupting the ecosystem of the moathouse above.  The hobbers and cleric in the monastery presumably cannot live off of mold and ghoul-droppings and, as already mentioned, it's unlikely that they use the secret door in the ceremonial chamber, so it seems rather likely that they have a separate way out of the crypt area.

While it's not obvious that such an exit exists in the Sample Dungeon, several clues do allude to such an egress.  As Zenopus Archives pointed out, there is mention of a "secret entrance/exit  from the place" indicated in the background material for the Sample Dungeon.  I had always, assumed that this referred to the stairs down to area 1, but since this area is not indicated to be "secret" it opens up the possibility that indeed, there is a separate, secret portal to the dungeon.  And the conspicuously noted "fairly dense cluster of [brush and tamarack] approximately a half mile beyond the abandoned place" provides the most obvious location for such an emergency exit.  Add to that the presence of a stairway leading up not far from the chambers occupied by the Cleric and his band of hobbers, you have some evidence that the Sample Dungeon had a similar escape tunnel.

And so forth
In light of  this evidence, some things about T1 Village of Hommlet start to make a bit more sense.  For instance, it always struck me as odd that Lareth--who we know has been going to great effort to throw off interest in his location by staging his caravan raids far away in disparate locations--would allow another gang of brigands to operate out of the same location.  Possibly the Great Hope of Chaotic Evil isn't aware of the bandits in the moathouse above, but more likely these are the same bandits transposed from the areas 4 & 5 of the Monastery. Like the extra pair of zombies, they're a relic that doesn't quite fit into the New Order of Hommlet.

This might also explain why T1 was named the Village of Hommlet rather than the Moathouse of the Flaming Eye or some-such.  When EGG decided to modulize the endeavor, he may have wanted to showcase the village as a setting, but also needed some sort of adventure to go along with it.  By the standards of the time, a module with the entire monastery adventure would have been too large for a single module.  Remember, the only other modules around at the time were the G and D series which were originally published as separate, emaciated adventures of only ~16 pages.****  So he took the first level of the monastery dungeon, re-worked it as the moathouse in T1 and used the affair as an outpost of the greater dungeon, which would eventually be the Temple of Elemental Evil which, by the way, had turned from a monastery sacked long ago by forces of evil to a temple sacked long ago by forces of good. 

So if you've ever wondered what the original "Hommlet" dungeon Gygax mentions in the intro to T1 may have looked like before it was infiltrated with PCs, sullied by Lolth and/or Zuggtmoy, and afflicted with battles over at Emridy Meadows, the answer may have been right in front of you all along.  This humble, seemingly unfinished dungeon hidden under a monastery is actually a vestige of the campaign that spawned one of the great modules of the AD&D era.  The dungeon from which The Moathouse, Lareth, the Cult of Elemental Evil and its affiliated Temple all sprang from this unassuming labyrinth on page 95 of the Dungeon Masters Guide.  Sadly, this connection to the very roots of the game was one of the things we lost as Gygax's creative impact at TSR diminished.


*Well, as "for real" as you can get without confirmation from anyone who actually knows the score.

**In T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil the zombie:cubicle disparity was resolved by hiding the two extra zombies--who presumably had just lost a game of musical chambers--behind one of the pillars in area 21, nee area 4.  

***Case in point: in the used copy of T1 I now own (acquired at a used book sale a few years ago), the previous owner left pencil markings recording the dwindling hit points and ultimate demise of the first 10 zombies while the last two zombies  are unsullied by graphite.  Perhaps the players suffered a TPK at the hands of Wimpy and Gimpy, or, perhaps, lacking a sixth cell to release them from, the DM never put them into action.

****This is based entirely on my recollection of how slender those modules were; I don't have the modules on hand and thus don't know the exact page count.

*******This wasn't intended to be a footnote but since you're here, it just so happens that monastery and moathouse have the same amount of letters.  I am unaware of Gygax's stance on numerology or alphabetology or whatever, but I'm going to write this one off as coincidence and nothing more.

DMG Sample Dungeon Part 2: Down the Stairs

Continuing where we left off last week, today we'll be looking at rooms 1 & 2 of the Sample Dungeon provided in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide.


The Dungeon
Room 1.  Spider webs including a large spider at 1A, some moldy sacks, a garnet in a goblin skull over in the corner (B); it all sets the tone of rot and refuse that permeates the place.  That goblin may have been a member of the raiding army that took down the Monastery--or he could have wandered in at any time since.  How the garnet got in his head is a curious mystery to consider.  Also, please mind the yellow mold (25%).


One other thing of note is the oak door over at  1.C: Moaning can be heard behind it and, if opened, a gust of wind will extinguish all torches.  Where did the wind come from?  Sure, there's a subterranean stream running through the adjacent room--typically a great venue for creating air movement in a cavern, except that the stream "fills entirely" the tunnel through which it both enters and exits the room.  Which is to say, there's no room for any air movement, much less wind forcible enough to extinguish all torches.

Those brave enough to enter the dark, windy cavern will find:


Room 2. WATER ROOM: Although the room is described as holding only "8 rotting barrels" (over at location A) from the hoard of casks and barrels which were once stored there, several of the barrels in the room "hold water" as they were "new and being soaked to make them tight" at the time of the downfall. This might give a sense of the passage of time to those familiar with the decay rate of wooden barrels.  

2.B:  The limed-over skeleton of the Abbot lies at the bottom of the stream that passes through the chamber.  His corpse has undergone a "sea change," a reference, as the ensuing narrative example of play points out, to Shakespeare's Tempest:

Full fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange. 

Amidst the remains of the abbot the attentive adventurer will find a scroll tube and a key.  Acquiring these items is not a sure thing as Characters who dislodge the scroll tube have to make a successful "to hit" roll as if hitting AC 4 in order to successfully grab the scroll before the current of the stream takes it down stream beyond return.  Is this a nascent action resolution system using "to hit" as a means of determining success at non-combat actions?  Sort of a proto-SIEGE engine for you C&C fans?

Inside the scroll tube is a map of the underground portion of the monastery, but it is almost entirely smudged beyond use; showing only the two areas that the PCs will already have seen by the time they find this map along with an 80' section of hall in the "crypt area" to the south with "miniature sarcophagi" depicted in it.  Not super helpful, but it will definitely aid parties in finding the crypt area which is accessible only via the elevated secret door in room 3.  (Or the stairs at are 39).

The key in the abbots calcified hand allows the secret door in room 28 to open toward the "treasure room" (29) rather than to the stairs (30) down to the caverns, which is, presumably, the default.  Is this where the fabled fire opal can be found?

Of significance here is that the abbot's body is a) located where it would easily be found if it were still encased in flesh, and b) still in possession of the ring and scroll case.  Presumably anyone who had reason to seek the Abbot out--such as would be the case if the besiegers were either politically motivated or looking for the fire opal in his possession--would have searched every corpse to find him; either to make an example of him by trying him posthumously and impaling his corpse on a stake for all to see, or searching his carcass for the gem or some clue as to its whereabouts--like, say, a key or a map.  That his body is lying in what would have been plain sight at the time of the siege and yet retains these two possessions indicates that the marauders were probably neither aware of the fire opal nor concerned with the political significance the abbot's corpse.  Rather, the raiders who took down the monastery were more likely foreigners looking for obvious treasure; much like the first Vikings who raided the Monastery of St. Cuthbert* at Lindisfarne in 8th century Britain.  Whoever these dudes were, they were in it for a quick score; snatching gaudy, jewel-encrusted religious implements, potential slaves, and casks of wine and beer would have been their prime interest.  Rifling the pockets of an ascetic monk probably didn't rank too high on their to-do list. 


*Yes, I did intentionally reference the real St. Cuthbert as a not-so-subtle nod to T1 Village of Hommlet and its sequel T2 Temple of Elemental Evil.  This place is a religious edifice sacked by an army years ago, now an unholy ground inhabited by lowlifes, critters, and the undead; doesn't it maybe seem like it might have been an early version of the Temple of Elemental Evil? Sure, pretty much every dungeon had a background that sounded a lot like that back in the day, but considering that the DMG was published around the same time as T1... maybe this is what T2 might have looked like before it spent the next 6 years simmering on the back burner.

Next up: Room 3 and the Wandering Monster Tables

DMG Sample Dungeon Part 1: Background

It should be no secret by now that I like to analyze the crap out of esoteric stuff that only a few members of our species care about (see The Restenford Project as further evidence), but that's kind of what the OSR blogosphere is all about, right? No, you say? My mistake.

Class, please turn to page 95 of your Dungeon Masters Guide.

Anyway, the latest object of my obsession is, if you haven't guessed already, the sample dungeon provided in "The Campaign" section of EGG's DMG beginning on page 94.  As you're probably aware the sample dungeon included a map of a single "dungeon" level and a write up detailing the first few rooms along with a smattering of background information that indicates that the dungeon is beneath the ruins of an abandoned abbey.

To describe the sample dungeon as "unfinished" would be an understatement; on appearances, this thing was barely even started.  But even in the tiny amount of material provided there is a wealth of detail that will help the obsessive DM to extrapolate an entire adventure out of this tiny fosselized finger bone of a dungeon.  In today's edition, I intend to dig into the background information found primarily in the first three paragraphs of the "The First Dungeon Adventure" section on page 96.

Background:
Rumor has it that "something strange and terrible lurks in the abandoned monastery" located in a fen outside of town.  The monastery was sacked sometime in the past and now lies in ruin, but we know not the identity or the incentive of either the monks who lived there or the marauders.  Was the abbey a warren of  heretics besieged by their own papal leader--a monastery gone wicked?  Or were they the last true believers brought to ruin to erase the shame of the fallen majority?  Or was it something entirely different?

There is another rumor circulating, though somewhat less well known--that there is treasure to be had as well:

"A huge fire opal which the abbot of the place is said to have hidden when the monastery was under siege... the fellow died, according to legend, before revealing it to anyone, so somewhere within the ruins lies a fortune."  

Always good to know.  But this could be more than just a potentially apocryphal tale to induce adventurers to explore the region; this could be evidence that avarice had overtaken the monks and they had deviated from their monastic cause. 

Environs:
A "two mile trek along a seldom used road" brings the party to the edge of the fen.  There is a  causeway to a low mound on which lie the ruins of the monastery--sounds reminiscent of the approach to the moat house in T1.  A few tamaracks grow sporadically on hillocks that barely rise above the mire of the swamp.  There is also a "fairly dense cluster" of tamaracks and "brush" about "a half mile beyond the abandoned place" indicating another area of high ground nearby.  There is no hint as to the significance of this "cluster" in the abbreviated text of the dungeon, but it seems unlikely that such a detail would have been included without some significance given to the matter. Perhaps it was once linked via underground tunnels to the monastery grounds? Just something to consider if you're re-creating this dungeon for your own use.

Also: It may be worth noting that tamaracks are unique among coniferous trees in that they lose their needles in the winter; an adaptation that makes them the most cold-hardy of trees.  Which is to say we're probably talking about a boreal climate here. If you want to move this thing to a warmer clime you might want to change the trees to mangroves or cypress.

 ...
That's all for today but pack your gear folks cuz tomorrow--I use that term loosely--we'll be searching the ruins. Kind of feels like a real adventure, right?

References:
Gygax, G. Dungeon Masters Guide.  Lake Geneva, WI: TSR Games, 1979