Side Trek #4: Court of Bones

They can't all be winners. After three genuinely excellent side treks, the fourth and final encounter presented in Dungeon #156 is merely average.

The Court of Bones has two interlocking hooks; if the DM is using the Random Encounters from the as-printed module, the players may encounter Az'Al'Bani, a deathlock wight. Az'Al'Bani is searching for the hidden tomb of a minotaur necromancer, and he's managed to discover the sole key that will open its ancient doors.

Az'Al'Bani's not the only one looking for the Court; the drow merchant Gendar is on its trail also, and when players return from the Horned Hold with Urwol's skull scepter Gendar is quick to send them on another quest - this time to break into the Court and recover a valuable crystal which was entombed with its occupants.

As written, the side-trek has players hunting down Az'Al'Bani to obtain the key and then assaulting the Court - or, alternatively, players can just anticlimactically pick the lock. That skips over the various intriguing scenarios involved in bargaining with the wight or even joining forces, but to be fair to author Greg Bilsland it's reasonably clear that those aren't explored for reasons of space rather than any blindness to the idea as a whole.

In any case, when players finally reach the Court they've got a textbook undead battle in store. The minotaur necromancer in whose honour the Court was built is, of course, clinging to unlife, and when players arrive he animates in the form of a lethal Specter. He's attended by a pair of axe-wielding minotaur skeletons and a duo of fireball-throwing undead mages.

It's essentially just a hackfest. If the party doesn't have some divine classes available to totally trivialise these undead, victory still requires nothing more clever than a bunch of damage output and some competent tanking. As is, by now, a Wizards trademark, there's a mosaic in the middle of the floor that provides a trivial regeneration boost to enemies who stand on it.

It's not a bad encounter; it's just not inspiring. It's much like any number of other encounters published both in the retail modules and Dungeon Magazine, and it's probably not worth wasting your players' time on now that the Well of Demons is in sight and we're finally getting to the good parts of Thunderspire.

In short, Thunderspire has more than enough average for go around; we don't need to go to Dungeon Magazine looking for a top-up.

Side Trek #3: Houses of Silence

The Houses of Silence is another side-trek from Dungeon Magazine #156, which takes players to a kind of minotaur graveyard far to the west of the Seven-Pillared Hall.

The impetus to come here arrives from another resident of the Seven-Pillared Hall. Terlen Darkseeker is an explorer who does work as a guide for travellers, operating out of the Seven-Pillared Hall. Recently during his travels he stumbled across the Houses of Silence, where he activated a lingering curse intended (in a rather vague way) to dissuade graverobbers.

Now when he delves too deep into the Labyrinth the curse transfigures him into a violent, uncontrollable werewolf. Terlen doesn't remember these transformations and no-one who's witnessed one has survived to tell the tale. The quest starts when PCs engage Terlen as a guide, fall victim to his lycanthropic attack, and then presumably subdue him until he changes back into a human and learns of his affliction.

Terlen's condition has a charming resonance with the idea of the Underdark as the human subconscious; when he "delves too deep" he loses his ability to reason and becomes a creature of pure instinct. There's not really a lot of chance to play that up but it's still a nice touch.

In any case, players who attempt to help Terlen out will be directed to the Houses of Silence.

Much like the other side treks, the Houses of Silence break the pattern of doors-and-runners that Thunderspire has so comfortably settled into. It relies on an extended (and very dramatic) trap to engage player interest. The main chamber is divided into three forks; the left and the right forks end at single minotaur statues, while the main passage terminates at two minotaur statues holding a gong.

When players approach the gong, or when either of the side-corridor minotaurs make "eye contact" with a PC, the trap springs. Starting from the single statues, oil filled cressets on the walls burst into flame, blasting everyone nearby and engulfing the corridor in an ongoing inferno. On subsequent rounds, the flames progress up the corridor, driving players towards the room with the gong, where the next threat waits - a pair of flame-resistant hellhounds and a wraith that can walk through walls. All three take advantage of being able to enter terrain the PCs can't to deliver vicious attacks with only minor fear of retaliation.

Given the history of the place, the wraith is, presumably, a minotaur wraith, which sadly is not illustrated with the awesome piece of artwork that that concept brings to mind.

It's also worth noting briefly that both the original Thunderspire writers and Greg Bilsland on the side treks have managed to keep their devils and demons straight, which is noteworthy mostly because I always forget and use them interchangeably. Devils hail from the Nine Hells and are associated with gods such as Asmodeus (and indeed, two appear in the Horned Hold). Demons come from the Abyss and pay homage to masters such as Baphomet - and, as expected, both here and in the Well of Demons we'll find only demons, not devils. I've never really grokked the arbitrary distinction but it's nice to see that they're at least keeping their story straight.

My guys didn't get to run the Houses of Silence, so I don't know how it works in practice; it seems like it could either be dramatic and exciting, or misfire and end up with players either locked out of the encounter by a wall of fire or frustrated by the cheap tactics of the hounds and the wraith.

Side Trek #2: The Cisterns

I cannot express with the English language how glad I am to be done with the Horned Hold.

But before we move on, let's take a look at another Side Trek from Dungeon #156. This one's called the Cisterns, and takes players to an out-of-the-way shrine to Torog, god of the Underdark.

Like much of the optional content of Thunderspire, the Cisterns has a pretty excellent backstory. It draws on Vadriar, one of the characters featured in Thunderspire's description of the Seven-Pillared Hall.

Vadriar is a human sage who has recently stumbled upon a secret trogolodyte temple located near the waterways beneath the Hall. He's discovered that the trogolodytes are planning to collapse the upper levels of the Labyrinth as a tribute to their god Torog (killing everyone within), but upon being detected by the trogs he's become the victim of an evil curse that prevents him from telling anybody what he's discovered or leaving the mountain.

As a result, players are going to find Vadriar as a trembling wreck, absolutely terrified of the apocalypse he knows is coming but powerless to do anything to prevent it. He is, though, able to point players towards a vague threat in the general vicinity of the Cisterns and hope that they're able to join the dots and save the Labyrinth.

The encounter itself doesn't intially seem as good as the set-up. Neither the Trog Maulers nor their pet Grick (a kind of subterranean snake-worm) are very exciting - they're just your basic bruisers. Instead, the encounter relies on a Trogolodyte Curse Chanter to provide flavour and character to the fight, and dual-level terrain to provide mechanical interest.

The players start on an upper level, with the Maulers and the Grick. The lower level has the Chanter, along with yet another instance of the cliched defence-boosting magic circle. There's a 20 foot drop separating the upper level from the lower, which can be safely traversed using a conveniently located slippery slide. In short, the players can get down easily, but getting back up is tougher.

The cleverness here is that the encounter reverses expectations. Up until this point, players have been taught to get into melee with casters as soon as possible and dispatch the hired help once the brains of the operation are squashed. The caster, however, turns out to be entirely un-worried by meele - between its aura and the circle it has a staggering effective AC of 26 - and players who head straight to the lower level will find themselves bombarded by the Maulers' javelin attacks as they struggle to escape the Curse Chanter and return to higher ground. In short, the Chanter is bait in a cleverly executed trap.

In the event players engage both levels simultaneously, the Chanter is able to teleport his allies to his side, where they can all gain the defensive bonus of the circle - not ideal, from the Trogolodytes' perspective, but a strong answer to divide-and-conquer tactics from the players.

I really like this encounter. It does a lot with only a handful of enemies and a very small map. Much like the Tower of Sunset, it's a nice change of pace from the main module content and, provided you can find room in your XP budget for it, it's well worth running.

Side Trek #1: Tower of Sunset

As with Keep on the Shadowfell, the material presented in Thunderspire Labyrinth is supplemented by a couple of articles in Wizards' online Dungeon Magazine.

Dungeon 156 presents a series of "side treks", additional encounters to be inserted between Thunderspire's main hubs. Unlike the ones for Keep, the Thunderspire ones are reasonably decent. They've got new enemies and situations, and they do more than just remix battles the players have already beaten.

The main obstacle to using these side treks is pacing. Thunderspire is operating on a fairly strict XP budget which it's already significantly blowing. The module is supposed to take players from level 4 to level 6 but most groups will be a high level 7 or low level 8 by the time they're done, even without harvesting XP from quests or random encounters. As it turns out, the final encounter of Thunderspire is tough even for super-players, but the next module (Pyramid of Shadows) isn't so robust, and is really expecting PCs to have only just hit level 7.

One solution is to water down the XP. Dropping the reward-per-encounter lengthens the Thunderspire experience without over-levelling the characters. I've mentioned before, though, that the level 4-6 range isn't something worth prolonging, so that might not be the right option here.

In any case, if you do find time to use the side treks, the first one (entitled "Tower of Sunset") is pretty good. A witch and her two gargoyle pets have been harassing travellers on the roads near Thunderspire, and players are sent to the very peak of the mountain to find the witch's lair and defeat her.

This is the only time that players will get to see the upper reaches of the mountain, or traverse a portion of its exterior, so it's a great opportunity to provide a sense of scale and context to Thunderspire's typical gloomy corridors. The witch herself is a Shadar-Kai, a race native to the Shadowfell, and that forms a nice way to tie things back to the party's experiences in Keep on the Shadowfell and to further foreshadow their eventual campaign against Orcus in the paragon and epic tier modules.

The witch is a speaking, sentient creature; players might contemplate diplomacy. If they do, though, they haven't learnt Thunderspire's lesson - swords first, questions later. The side trek has the witch launching into combat mere seconds after players enter her tower. She fights with the aid of a "shadow hound" and a pair of iron defenders (a rather silly kind of metal dog-golem), and then retreats upstairs to gain the aid of her gargoyles.

The gargoyles are problematic. The quest hook suggests that the gargoyles are the real problem here, and calls for their "elimination". However, the encounter doesn't provide their stats and they're not included in the XP budget. A quick look at their write-up in the Monster Manual reveals they're significantly higher level than the players and even if the PCs have a way of assaulting their near-impenetrable defence stats it will be a long and tedious process to bring them to justice.

In my game I changed the goal to "loot the tower" rather than "kill the gargoyles"; after the witch was defeated the gargoyles fled, and everyone got to do a victory dance. It's hard to see what the writer actually intended, though.

Puzzling gargoyles aside, this is still a strong encounter, and it's a nice change from the hobgoblins and duergar that the first half of Thunderspire is drowning under.

Improvements:

[1] Getting your players involved in the side quest might be tricky - after all, those slaves aren't rescuing themselves - and the implied time-limit may dissuade characters from taking on busywork. In this situation, you can substitute the rather lame quest hook with something more story-centric. Possibly the Witch is the only one who knows where the Chamber of Eyes can be found? Or maybe the assault on the Chamber turns up no clues, and only the mystical powers of the Witch can alert players to the Duergar being their next target?

Sidetrek 4: Hidden Victims

Before we move on to the final encounter of Keep on the Shadowfell, let's take a quick look at the last of the Dungeon #155 side treks.

This one's called Hidden Victims, and it's an addendum to the Ghoul Warren. It expands on the apparently useless room on that map, by tacking another whole area onto it.

Hidden Victims posits that in the keep's past, refugees from Keegan's mad rampage took shelter down in this area, and then bricked themselves in (hence the room's apparent disconnect from the rest of the level). For some reason they were unable to demolish the wall that they'd made to keep Keegan out, and ended up starving to death down here. Their undead remains continue to haunt the area.

This encounter really frustrates me. It directly addresses several key problems with Keep - the fact that Keegan's story really isn't reflected in any of the printed encounters, the lack of a "lived-in" feel to the entire complex, and the (admittedly minor) issue of the useless room.

Having put those difficulties squarely in its sights, it completely misses its mark. The enemies here are zombies - common zombies, exactly the same sort that the players have just killed fourteen of in the Ghoul Warren and, for that matter, the same sort as in the Crypt of Shadows. Even the most enthusiastic of players are probably tired of this particular undead by now. It's a bit disappointing, too, in that it gives up the atmosphere of vicious monsters living in cramped tunnels and trades it for yet another stand-up fight in a series of rooms.

It's also another encounter that tells rather than shows. The backstory of frightened, starving people is strong, but it's not much use unless the players learn it, and it's simply not apparent on the face of the encounter. From the player perspective, these are just going to be another mob of nameless undead.

Finally, because this is the last time I'm going to get to make this criticism of Keep, I'll say it again here - the encounter is repetitive. The Ghoul Warren is a good area, and the side-trek ruins it by immediately following it with the exact same battle, minus the Ghoul and the Clay Scout. That is to say, it's the same fight without the interesting bits.

That's the last of the side-treks from Dungeon #155. The same issue also features a fairly average article about converting the module to Eberron, and an absolutely excellent conversion to the Forgotten Realms. In case I don't get to doing a specific post on it, the Forgotten Realms one is well worth the time of any Keep DM as its improvements are largely setting-neutral and address many of the module's biggest problems, specifically the lack of NPC depth. Check it out.

Sidetrek 3: Graveyard Exterior

The Dungeon #155 additions to Keep on the Shadowfell are by Peter Schaefer and, with all due respect to the man, he just keeps getting it wrong.

Side Trek 3, entitled "Graveyard Exterior", takes place immediately after the Dead Walk interlude. It turns out Kalarel has come to the (correct) conclusion that Ninaran is rather crap, and rather than relying on his Obvious Spy to take out the players alone, he's sent reinforcements - specifically, a one-of-a-kind animated corpse called Maw, and a small legion of zombie minions.

I've mentioned before that Kalarel is rather rubbish, so it's no surprise that Maw and company not only don't get to Ninaran in time to help, but fail to find any sort of beneficial terrain whatsoever. Players leaving the graveyard find the monsters milling around aimlessly in a largely barren field.

Okay, let's talk about the good before we launch into the bad. Maw, as a named undead, is a welcome bit of spice in what has otherwise been a dull blend of zombies and skeletons. If you're going to run several encounters around the same monster theme, you absolutely need to throw some personalities in there to differentiate the battles.

Maw's great. In addition to his evocative name, he also has an encounter power that lets him spawn four zombie minions in the spaces adjacent to him, which makes for a nice surprise for any solo characters who attempt to tank him. He's also got a ranged attack that lets him slide a target in a way that specifically provokes opportunity attacks from his allies.

Unfortunately, like Ninaran, he's relatively fragile, and if you've got a ranger in your party he'll be dead before he can show off what he can do. Also, as the centerpiece of this encounter, he's completely wasted on a map that offers him no favourable terrain whatsoever.

One thing I like about the Graveyard Exterior is it's entirely minions. The fun of minions comes from smashing them to bits at high speed. There's 18 of them here, plus another 4 from Maw's power, so if your players have ever had the slightest interesting in battling a real zombie horde, this is your chance to deliver.

The main problem with the encounter is this. The Dead Walk didn't need a follow-up encounter. It's almost perfect as a one-off battle. By the end of the interlude, the players are likely sick of zombies, and want to take a moment to feel good about killing Ninaran. There's no better way to ruin your session than by following something that worked with its identical and monotonous clone.

It's worth noting that nobody here except Maw has a ranged attack. Given that their express purpose is to kill the players, rather than ransack the countryside at large, there's nothing to stop the players pulling back through the graveyard gate, sticking a tank in the doorway, and blasting the zombies with AoE attacks when the undead group up at the choke point. To some extent, that's the charm of the minion-heavy setup, but a quick look at the map suggests that this probably wasn't intended to be the dominant strategy.

Improvements:

[1] The Graveyard Exterior is a very poor follow-up to the Dead Walk, but it does make for a good opening to it. Take the monsters off the horrible default map and move them to Winterhaven, and have the players fighting the horde of zombies at the very gates of their home base. Once they've lifted the undead siege, the villagers direct them to the real source of the problem - the Graveyard.

Sidetrek 2: Slaver Encounter

The second side trek presented in Dungeon #155 is yet another ambush. As much as this is repetitive and cheap, it's probably better than just spawning monsters on the far side of the map and have the PCs spend a turn running at them. Ambushes are a dynamic way to start encounters in an up-close-and-personal fashion, particularly in the context of otherwise quite open outdoor spaces.

It's still lazy, though. It opts out of the entire milieu of ways that an encounter can start other than combat.

The Slaver Encounter takes place around the same point in the adventure as the Wagon Ambush - that is, after the defeat of Irontooth but before players get too far into the keep. Here, the players are going up against a group of Bloodreaver hobgoblins from Thunderspire Mountain.

The set-up is obviously intended to strengthen the weak links between Keep on the Shadowfell and its sequel, Thunderspire Labyrinth. These hobgoblin slavers are in the area to negotiate with the kobolds, and when the players (accidentally) discover them in the wilderness, the slavers will be trying to defend their current slaves while also fighting to subdue and capture the players.

It doesn't work for its intended purpose. The hobgoblins are, necessarily, at an appropriate challenge rating for second level adventurers, and are therefore selling themselves short. Showing the players easily killable hobgoblins now diminishes their impact later in this very adventure, and significantly cuts the anticipation of their forthcoming appearance in Thunderpsire Labyrinth.

There's a secondary problem, which is that the players might get the wrong message out of this fight. An unwary DM can suddenly find that his players want to go haring off to Thunderspire to finish off these slavers as a sidequest on the way to the keep; it'll take some careful doing to steer them away from the forthcoming level 4 to 7 zone without making them feel railroaded. Better to avoid the temptation completely.

Sidetrek 1: Wagon Ambush

Hardcopy material isn't the only source of official 4th Edition adventures. Wizards of the Coast provide Dungeon Magazine for subscribers to their Insider service, and by and large this is an excellent publication. Each issue has a handful of fully-furnished scenarios clocking at upwards of 40 pages, and their average quality is significantly higher than anything I've yet seen Wizards offer via retail.

Dungeon #155 offers a collection of additional encounters that can be plugged into Keep on the Shadowfell to, supposedly, expand and enrich the adventure. However, rather than living up to the usual Dungeon standard, these "side treks" are just as uninspired as the adventure they supplement.

The first offering is the Wagon Ambush. This is designed for a level 1-2 party and takes place shortly after the defeat of Irontooth. It sees the remants of Irontooth's kobolds launching an attack on a merchant caravan headed to Winterhaven.

It's as redundant as it sounds. This is yet another kobold encounter in a story overflowing with kobolds. It's also the third kobold ambush in the first six encounters. If players weren't already thinking of 4th Edition as "the kobold ambush boardgame" they will be now.

More importantly, it's anticlimactic. The virtue of the Irontooth encounter is that it finishes off the kobolds and paves the way to the keep. Going back to kobolds takes away the sense of progress derived from that very difficult fight.

The encounter also includes some new types of kobolds: a kobold hurler, kobold pikeman and kobold slyblade. The kobold hurler is just a level 2 kobold slinger; it's the same monster, complete with annoying glue pots, just levelled up. I'm not sure how I feel about this kind of thing - it's nice to be able to run the same monster at different challenge ratings, but a one-level difference barely seems to justify it having a new name.

The slyblade, by contrast, is genuinely interesting, a level 4 monster with the ability to deflect attacks onto allied minions and initiate a dangerous "twin slash". The pikeman, too, is pretty nifty, and fits well into Keep on the Shadowfell by introducing the concept of "reach" - using his pike, the pikeman can make melee attacks against enemies up to a square away.

The encounter concludes with the players finding a trail of bootprints leading from the ambush and heading towards Shadowfell Keep. This could be useful as a prompt to get players back on track if they've missed all the signs pointing them to the main adventure. It's not explained who made the bootprints, though. Ninaran? Some goblins or hobgoblins? We may never know.

Improvements:

[1] If the players don't defeat Irontooth, and instead proceed directly to the keep without clearing out the kobolds, this encounter would be an excellent way to underscore the consequences of their decision, while providing some of the catch-up XP they'll need to compsensate for skipping the kobold lair.