Last week we concluded the 3rd edition published module, Barrow Of The Forgotten King, which fitted my requirements for a small self-contained dungeon crawl as the culmination of a wilderness-based adventure set in The Tors, a wild and woolly area of rocky hills on the south-east border of the Yeomanry in the World of Greyhawk.

I was very pleased with the way this adventure ran, and the players all seemed to enjoy it too. Though I say it myself, the mix of elements in the adventure - story, roleplay, decision-making, problem-solving, skills usage and combat action - seemed ideal.  Or almost so.

In this part I’ll talk about the wilderness trek, and in part two I’ll talk about the dungeon itself.

The party who embarked on this escapade were the lower-level characters who featured in the Falcon Series (WGA1-3) set in Loftwick, which you can read about here and here.  Namely:

  • Jonathan Flynn, an urban ranger (non-spellcasting variant)
  • Hakash Thomasson, a half-orcish cloistered cleric of Thoth and seeker of knowledge in all its forms
  • Sylvian Keys, an elven ranger/scout/bow initiate
  • Vee, an elven rogue / favoured soul devoted to Horus, on a quest for vengeance
  • Snorri Halfbeard, a bard / rogue who pays his respects to the Norns
  • Dylan, a machiavellian wizard with a strange talent for talking to the dead
  • Echo the Pixie - actually an NPC, familiar to a powerful sorceress called Cerys Landry, who has been tasked with keeping tabs on her nephew Jonathan Flynn

No longer under the aegis of the higher-level characters (Thorbjorn Hrolfsson and Cerys Landry) who featured as diplomats and heavy-hitters-on-call in the previous adventure, our heroes are now around 6th-7th level, and starting to really gel as a team.  Indeed, they’ve started using two Teamwork Benefits (as described in the PHBII and various other supplements that followed) and this has lent even more of a sense of togetherness to the group -

1) The Infiltration benefit (DMGII) which allows team members to move at normal speed while hiding and moving silently provided the team leader directs their efforts, and which also allows them to always remain visible to each other when hiding.

2) A new benefit we made up called Getting Our Story Straight - the team leader spends time briefing other team members on a cover story, and then other team members can use the benefit of the leader’s Bluff skill instead of their own when someone questions them.

On to the adventure.  The premise was that the party had been sent into The Tors to convey the body of Peter Chamberlyn, the Burgermeister of Old Hardwick, to a legendary rock formation known as the Singing Tor.  Peter Chamberlyn died fighting against the coup faction in the Loftwick adventure, and was singled out among the casualties as being worthy of raising.  So why the trek to the Singing Tor?  Well, in our campaign, resurrection magic isn’t the push-button affair of the rulebooks - there are various mishaps that can occur, and sometimes you have to go and find out where the soul is and reunite it with the body within a certain time period.  A divination had revealed that Peter Chamberlyn’s soul could only be reunited with his body at the Singing Tor.  So there you go.

The Burgermeister’s body was transported in a wagon and given a small military escort, plus the PCs for the benefit of their more esoteric skills.  The question was raised, why could his body not be slung across the back of a swift horse, rather than having to drag this cumbersome wagon through the hills?  The answer, of course, was that this would be disrespectful…

Crossing the bridge over the River Thornsrush, the party headed up into the hills.  They became aware that they were not the only travellers heading in that direction.  They were passed by three hunting parties of the finest mettle despatched from the ranks of the nearby Keoish army (which had now peacefully entered the Yeomanry, thanks to the party’s efforts in the previous adventure).  Apparently, a seer, a priest of Istus the god of fate, had consulted the omens regarding the course of the war, and prophesied that if the army entered the Hold of the Sea Princes without taking with them a beast known as the Golden Boar, then disaster would befall them.  The Golden Boar had been rampaging around the Tors, according to rumour, so these hunters were heading up there to try and catch it.

The party wished them luck, though this was not their quest.  Though they couldn’t help but wonder whether this Golden Boar would happen to cross their path.  (Well, fancy thinking such a thing! ;) )

A visit to the local druids at Lasker’s Circle proved instructive.  The druids being a minority faith in the Yeomanry, they decided that helping these people in their quest to revive an influential political figure might yield some dividends.  They provided information about the Singing Tor, which had a tendency to move from hilltop to hilltop in an unpredictable fashion, but always remaining within The Tors.  A commune with nature, expanded to cover a larger area than usual through the power of their stone circle, was unable to pinpoint the Singing Tor’s exact present location but narrowed the search down somewhat (to an area of about 700 square miles).

So, they headed deeper into the hills towards that region, charting a path to avoid various hazards they had been warned about.  The Tors appeared to be a sparsely populated wilderness, aside from an encounter with some prospectors.  There seemed to be some sort of big cats on the prowl, tracks and spoor were spotted and the prospectors had driven them off once, but the party never ran into them.  An occasional herd of deer was spotted.

The party’s advance scouts tangled with some bugbear scouts.  One was captured, and happily revealed everything it knew to save its skin - they were part of a very large assembly of disparate bugbear tribes that had gathered in these hills following ‘The Star of Hruggek’, a celestial apparition only visible to bugbears.

A while later, the party ran into one of the hunting parties searching for the Golden Boar.  A group of barbarian warriors led by none other than Uswuld Voss.  He being a chieftan of great renown who had come down from his mountain haunts to join the Keoish army in its expedition to the Hold of the Sea Princes, hoping to earn glory and plunder from the sack of Monmurg.

Voss and his people hadn’t had much luck so far.  They stopped with the party for a short while to rest and eat, and then the two groups parted again as Voss’s search pattern took him away from the party’s route.

The party continued on.  But they hadn’t gotten very far before - as fortune would have it - the Golden Boar appeared!

It was a great swine with a hide made of stone, golden bristles and trotters and gemstones for eyes, and great curving golden tusks that seemed flattened and razor-sharp along the edges.  It burst out of the ground close by the party’s advance scouts and started snuffling and peering at them, as if weighing them up as opponents.  They unleashed a barrage of missile fire at the creature at close range, all of which simply bounced off its toughened hide with no effect at all!

A web spell was thrown over it to glue it into its hole for a bit and the party turned and ran digging heels into horse’s ribs.  It wasn’t long before it ripped out of its webby bonds and tore after them.

Fortunately, their horses could outrun the beast.  They realised that if it headed towards the wagon bearing Peter Chamberlyn’s body, it would be disastrous, so they fell back and enticed the creature to follow them - leading it over the ridge and towards Voss’s hunting party that fortunately hadn’t headed too far away yet.

The swine crashed into the hunting party, ripping up the thickly corded nets thrown over it like so much lambs’ wool.  A furious battle ensued in which it soon became apparent that nobody in Voss’s hunting party had a weapon that could so much as inflict a scratch on the beast except Voss himself, who wielded Winter’s Edge, a large magical bastard sword.  Voss and the beast slugged it out for a while with others trying to aid Voss as best they could.  Eventually, the beast decided it had had enough; it put its snout to the ground and dived into the earth as if it were water.

(DM’s note: I had already worked out the average damage that Voss and the boar would inflict on each other and how many rounds the fight would last, making a slight adjustment on the fly for player intervention to assist Voss.  I didn’t make the players sit through this NPC-vs-NPC combat in detail.  I did roll a few dice to see if either inflicted critical hits on the other.  The boar’s tusks have the sharpness property and can take a limb off!)

Healing magic flowed in answer to the prayers of the party’s clerics.  Much head-scratching ensued about how they could catch this elusive and rather dangerous creature.  Voss and his men agreed to accompany the party, to offer safety in numbers, for there now seemed little hope of following the trail of this creature over land in any case.

Further along the way, after a couple more minor encounters and events, the boar attacked once more, and again was driven off by Uswuld Voss.  However, it was noted that on its return the boar seemed no worse for wear after the previous attack, and obviously possessed regenerative capabilities; whereas Voss’ people had all sustained injuries and the party was out of healing.  If the boar continued this hit-and-run strategy it would ultimately wear the party down.

Late that day, the party came across a hillside cottage under attack from a crowd of bugbears.  The occupant, a somewhat unusual individual, was grateful for the party’s assistance in driving off the attackers.

Her name was Berna, and she was a big girl. 6′6″ tall, well muscled and with stone coloured (and textured) skin.  And entirely bald.  She showed the party her labours - the gradual restoration of an ancient dwarven runic circle atop the hill, from the time of King Theron who had ruled in these hills before the armies of Vecna destroyed this small kingdom for its defiance of his imperial ambitions.

Berna had a mysterious past, having been a foundling.  The Oracle of the Earth, Murthwanesta who resided in a cave complex a day’s journey away, had told Berna she would reveal the secret of her past after she completed the restoration of the circle.

Berna had an affinity with the stones of this land and, being closer now to the area where the Singing Tor was located, she was able to use a meditative trance she called an ‘Earth Dream’ to pinpoint its location.  Being grateful to the party for their aid in seeing off the bugbears, she agreed to accompany them there and act as their guide.

The party and the hunters spent the night there.  Berna had so far not been troubled by the boar, and the party scouts could no longer detect the occasional subterranean rumblings that had followed them since their first encounter with the boar.  It seemed that the creature was somehow discouraged from entering this area.

Thereafter, and much to their relief, their journey to the Singing Tor was untroubled by the Golden Boar.  It was as if it had lost interest in them after their overnight stop at Berna’s cottage.

However, they did have to deal with an attack by some Perytons. Imaginative use of illusion magic by Dylan the party wizard split their forces and they suffered heavy casualties.  A few managed to flee the scene alive.

Peryton

Peryton

(I hadn’t used these classic D&D monsters for years so it was great fun to set them on the party!  In 3rd edition they were shunted off to Faerun - but having obtained a copy of the ‘Monsters of Faerun’ supplement, I decided to restore them to Oerth, their rightful home.)

A while later, a patrol of hippogriffs swooped to eyeball the party, and it soon became apparent that they were ridden by hobgoblins.  It also became apparent that Berna knew their leader, Grokworg, a hobgoblin of great stature.  In fact she knew him extremely well…having allayed the initial tensions between the party and the hobgoblins, some gossip was exchanged.  These riders came from the hobgoblin city of Traga Hai in the southern Tors (a locale the party had been warned of).  Grokworg was one of the Herzog’s sons.

There had been some trouble recently between their people and the bugbears who had swarmed down from the mountains and gathered here.  But some ambassadors had arrived from Monmurg - the enemy of the party’s homeland.  These ambassadors wished to unite the hobgoblins and bugbears into a guerilla force to harry the Keoish army on their way into the Hold of the Sea Princes and cut their supply lines.  Grokworg himself was skeptical of the whole affair, but a meeting was to be held soon to discuss these matters.

The party continued on their way but one party member - Echo the pixie - invisibly tailed the hobgoblins back to their stronghold to glean more information.  From this, the exact time and location of the meeting was determined and eventually conveyed back to the party, who meanwhile pressed onwards towards the Singing Tor.  Having reached the Tor, Peter Chamberlyn’s soul, called back by the Raise Dead spell cast back in Loftwick, was finally restored to his body, as the divination had foretold.

As the sun set over the hills, the Singing Tor started to sing, emitting a broad range of harmonised tones.  Snorri Halfbeard, the party’s bard, tried to join in, for his musical talents were also vocal in nature.  He gave such a fine performance, that the Tor took notice.  (DM’s note: I’d set the DC at 25 for this; Snorri got a 30).  After the sun set, the Tor unfolded itself and stood up, congratulating Snorri on his performance.  It was in fact an ancient Galeb Duhr of enormous size, called Skerrungnundoon.

The party had a fine old chat with Skerrungnundoon, who remembered the old days of the dwarven King Theron’s rule in the Tors.  It seemed that Theron had been able to command a boar-like elemental creature to do his bidding using a magical circlet.

The party wondered where this circlet might now be.  Berna now revealed that, though she had known nothing of this circlet, she did know the location of King Theron’s tomb - it was in the same cave complex that housed her mentor, Murthwanesta.

By morning, Echo returned with information about the war council between Monmurg, the bugbears and the hobgoblins.  It seemed desirable to try to kick off some kind of fracas at this meeting and scupper any hopes of an alliance.  Which was more urgent, to deal with the meeting, or the boar?  Every day that the boar remained at large was another day’s hold-up for the Keoish army.

The party discussed this with Uswuld Voss and it was decided that surely they had enough resources to accomplish both tasks in parallel - Voss and his people could follow Echo to the meeting place and disrupt the meeting, while the player character party could head for Theron’s tomb and retrieve the circlet.  Peter Chamberlyn could now be taken on horseback to the safety of the nearby city of Melkot by his military escort.   The boar didn’t appear to be trailing them now, but if it should poke its ugly snout above the ground again the party’s horses were swift enough to outrun it.

(DM’s note:  Which is rather the way I wanted things to pan out!  But the players came up with it themselves.)

So, there was a parting of ways, with a pared-down party consisting solely of player characters heading tombwards.  What they found there will be discussed in the next part.