We had six players for the second session of Castle Amber (and I’ve lost count of how many session we’ve had of the AD&D campaign in general; it’s over 30 now). The group was:

Dave, the C4/F4/M3

Tait, the henchman fighter 4 (as his main character died last session)

Shane, the Magic-User 5

Jesse, the Magic-User 7, with his Cleric 4 henchmen

Rich, the Thief 8

Reece, the Thief 6

This gives about 40 total levels for an adventure recommended for 6-10 characters, levels 3-6 and total 26-34 levels. We’re a little over the recommendation, but the lethality of this adventure is such that, especially after this session, I wonder how anyone could have survived it!

We resumed by investigating the chapel, where the group once again summoned monsters (giant rats appeared) to see if any of the statues would animate – none did this time. Instead, upon further investigation, they discovered sounds from beneath the paving stones: someone had been buried alive. That someone was Madeline Amber, who had been buried by her brother. There’s a bit of problematic editing here: the description of the chapel reveals that the floor is wood, but Madeline is beneath paving stones. Hmm.

Madeline had a long discussion with the group, although she was most confused by what had happened to her and where they were, but she was able to let them know a bit more about how they might break the curse. One thing is certain: I had to use a lot of my own inspiration for role-playing these characters and their motivations, for there was little aid in the actual module text.

Madeline described what lay to the north – the library, bedrooms, and meditation chambers – and the group accompanied her to the library, where she found her brother Charles who had buried her. She attacked, almost killing him, before Jesse cast a web spell that entrapped everyone in the room for 140 minutes – and, according to the spell description, would have an almost certain chance of suffocating the low-strength characters (like Dave) who had failed their saving throws! Oops.

Jesse applied a torch to the web to get everyone out (those trapped took 2d4 damage) and Madeline resumed her assault on Charles. Shane then used a Levitate spell to incapacitate her, and Charles fled to the chapel. The group tried to calm Madeline down, but had no success with that.

Investigating the other chambers, they came across Simon Amber, whose description makes little sense – he’s meant to attack the party, but he will use the quest spell on one? Sigh. I had him quest Jesse to find the tomb of Stephen Amber, and otherwise let the party go unharmed – Simon went to tend to Madeline. He’s also a 14th level cleric with spells like finger of death, so I didn’t really want a combat to continue.

Another chamber saw skeletons and a bone golem attack the party; the skeletons were easily turned by the two clerics, but the bone golem gave them some trouble before it was brought down – mainly by magic missiles. I should note that Jesse’s fourth level spell is one I’ve never seen used before: Rary’s Mnenomic Enhancer, which he uses normally to regain three magic missile spells. It’s actually a very, very good spell, we’ve discovered, far better than most of the rest of the fourth level list and it enhances his spellcasting significantly. The golem yielded to the group a second ornate Silver Key, which would be needed to leave the castle. (Madeline had let them know they’d need three).

A final chamber had some holes in the roof which Jesse prodded with his staff, but he withdrew it when he felt a membrane above, not willing to bring whatever was above down on their heads. A wise wizard!

With that, they’d explored most of the chapel, so they went south, back to the garden, though they passed by the choir loft on the way (full of statues that sung when the organ was played). More dangerous plant-life tried to eat Reece as they continued, so Jesse used another potion of plant control to get them by; Reece was unconscious for some two hours!

The group needed to pass under a dolmen dripping blood to reach the east wing of the chateau, which they did. The blood gave the weaker members of the group a blessing in the next room: the throne room. What was a weaker member? One that failed a saving throw versus Spells, which half the group did.

The throne room was a superbly deadly encounter: all these skeletons, fused into position as they were when some great catastrophe overtook the chamber. However, Catherine Amber had used  magic jar to survive, and her soul was held within a gem on the jewelled sceptre on the throne. Reece retrieved the sceptre, and Catherine began her assault, taking over one of the party members.

Luckily, the group were able to restrain Catherine’s victim, until Catherine relinquished her hold and took over Shane. At this point, Dave realised what was going on – I was describing a flickering in one of the rubies on the sceptre – and after Shane made his saving throw against Catherine’s possession and she fled back to the gem, David destroyed the gem and the sorceress with it.

That encounter – with Catherine possessing such spells as death spell and invisible stalker – could have so easily turned into a TPK. The only spell she was able to cast was confusion, which led to Jesse and Rich standing and babbling for part of the encounter. I was extremely careful to not let the encounter overpower the group. (And this is a high-level group! What would a group of the recommended levels do?)

We ended the session with the party investigating the first two rooms to the south: a blue room, then a white room with a frost salamander. The salamander didn’t survive very long, although it took minimal damage from Jesse’s fireball spell, as he rolled really badly on his dice (about 10 damage!) and it made its saving throw. It was getting late, so the amber forcefield came up around the group, allowing them to heal and recover spells for the next session.

There are a lot of great and memorable encounters in this adventure, but there are also some arbitrarily deadly ones that I’m ameliorating somewhat when the fault lies with random chance rather than player choice.