My ongoing AD&D campaign, which I’m currently running every second Saturday at my FLGS, just finished playing through C3: The Lost Island of Castanamir. It isn’t part of the main storyline of the campaign, but was played more as a side quest to allow a number of newer characters to gain experience so they can be properly integrated into the larger campaign. Thus, the Lost Island appeared somewhere off the coast of Ratik, allowing the characters (mostly from the land of the Frost Barbarians) to visit it.
Attendance recently has been rather erratic; it’s quite possible the dreadful weather we’ve had in Ballarat has had a major impact on this. Yesterday was cold and wet, with a top temperature of 10° Centigrade (that’s 50° Fahrenheit), so it isn’t so surprising that various people weren’t wanting to venture out. The group was six players, three of whom normally play in a RIFTS campaign that also was missing players. The resulting group didn’t have a magic-user, which meant that the group didn’t have a knock spell to open the final door and thus escape.
And so they all starved to death.
No, not really. I’m not that cruel.
We’d played most of Castanamir over the previous two sessions; the first level in the first session, and the second in the second, but the group had not quite been able to finish it so we were left with the group just trying to find the final way out. Castanamir is an old tournament adventure, and it’s full of rooms full of fun toys; the actual combat is fairly light, but there’s a lot of investigation going on. It’s a fairly whimsical (if deadly) module from a style that I tend to lump into the “Basic” style of adventures, despite the fact that it’s an AD&D adventure. Beings such as the Gingwhatzim really add to that whimsical tone – but the naming conventions can push it into an area where you just can’t take the adventure seriously.
A particular highlight of the adventure came when the group, who had picked up someone who claimed to be the wizard Castanamir himself (though old and senile) tried to communicate with someone trapped in stasis, using a potion of ESP to do so. They couldn’t reach the person in stasis – but the ESP allowed them to pick up that the wizard was an imposter who was scheming to kill them! Little serendipitous moments like that are great fun for everyone.
However, this session was mostly the group, having explored almost everywhere, trying to find the way out. (It lay beyond a wizard-locked, secret door). Eventually the group were forced to sacrifice a large amount of treasure to a spirit of information to learn about the door. I waived the knock requirement but even so, after opening it, they were faced with a flesh golem. As two of the players were playing brand-new characters (a fighter and a monk), they were useless in the combat. The others were just – but only just – able to defeat it. Following that, they grabbed a belt of flying, an amulet of the planes, and a way onto the rocky island they’d originally been ship-wrecked on.
No command words for the two items could be found, so the group tromped back to the information spirit and sacrificed even more loot to discover the word for the amulet. Then they stepped onto the isle… and discovered that the way back was blocked and there was still no way off!
Well, it was time for the amulet – the group all placed a hand on it and spoke the command word. Unfortunately for them, the amulet only transports one – which turned out to be Brian’s druid – and as he had no idea of how to use it, it deposited him on a random plane. I rolled dice… and got the Prime Material Plane. If you start on the same plane, do you move? The AD&D DMG didn’t say, so I just said he ended up in his home village. The others looked forward to starving on the island.
Brian activated the amulet again… and once again ended up on the Prime Material. (It’s something like a 1 in 6 chance). Unlikely but possible, so I said he returned to the group. A third trip sent him back to his village. I pointed out that a bad roll could have sent him to Hell or the Abyss, and he stopped using the amulet. Instead he contacted his circle of druids and organised for a ship to pick up the rest of the characters. They starved for a few days (as no-one had much food) but survived and eventually returned to the mainland, in possession of a talking sword and a few other baubles.
Jesse and Shane were now able to reunite their henchman characters with their high-level magic-users, and the group considered what to do next. They were still somewhat lacking in the firepower to take on the lower dungeons of the Oracle, where they expected to find the fifth key to Bifrost – in my campaign, Odin has been imprisoned and the party are seeking to free him – so instead they had a look for jobs on offer. I quickly came up with two jobs – either to clear out problematic ogres, or to go an a ship voyage guarding some merchants. Remnants of the Viking theme of this campaign survived with that voyage – Vikings were great traders in addition to raiders – but the group decided they’d had enough of ships and decided to take on the ogres.
I quickly drew up a small cave system, inhabited mostly with ogres, while the group perused the two copies of the Players Handbook on hand to work out what equipment they wanted to take with them; they’d discovered very quickly on Castanamir that key items weren’t available to them. Like food. After the group had bought a lot of equipment, I put my foot down about encumbrance and the players discovered that taking 10 flasks of oil and 10 iron spikes on an adventure (as well as 10′ pole) wasn’t quite so easy! Some redistribution of equipment occurred. I also started adding in the rules on spellbooks from Unearthed Arcana, but mostly just let Shane and Jesse know about them.
Actually dealing with the ogres didn’t take that long, although it wasn’t without amusement. The three ogres on guard met with a fireball from Shane, which killed them all. (Shane and Jesse had 8th level Magic-Users, or thereabouts). After that it was in to melee with the remaining ogres – about 12 in all, including their leader. I’d designed the cave system as a ring, which allowed the ogres to attack from ahead and behind. It was a fun fight, and the group could have been in a lot of trouble as they were attacked from both directions at once, but a stinking cloud spell gave them some security.
Meanwhile, Shane was discovering how good the combination of two characters was: his magic-user kept casting Invisibility on his thief henchman, who’d then go and backstab with two weapons (sword and dagger) for triple damage. Eventually, that’s what killed the ogre chieftain, who otherwise might have given the group some trouble.
It was pretty late by the time we’d finished with the ogres, so the remaining encounters I’d sketched out (wererats, who were actually the organising force behind the raids, and a passage deeper into the earth) went unused. The group gathered up a large amount of treasure, and headed back to town. What will happen in two weeks when the next session is scheduled is anyone’s guess!
You might have noted above one of my changes to Greyhawk lore; for this adventure in the lands of the Frost Barbarians, instead of the Greyhawk deities (Vatun, etc.) I’m using Odin and the Norse gods. This is mainly because the names give immediate resonance to the group. While I’m really familiar with the core Greyhawk gods (Nerull, Ehlonna, Pelor, St Cuthbert, Iuz, etc.), there are a lot that really don’t come up that much. So, why not use some classic pantheons instead?
Odin’s imprisonment is a shout back to the old adventure Five Shall Be One, which I ran back when it first came out – my brother’s PC was a Frost Barbarian, and he eventually became king, only to vanish sometime later (especially when it was revealed that Iuz had set him up whilst posing as Vatun/Odin). This campaign builds on that old story, and I throw in occasional references to Brunak the Mighty; referring to old campaigns helps me bring out that all my campaigns are set in the same version of Greyhawk.
Brunak’s first adventure took place almost 30 years ago in the timeline of my Greyhawk – and about 24-25 years ago in real time. I haven’t played in that world continuously since them – but the campaigns in that Greyhawk have been pretty constant since 3E came out in 2000. Both my 4E and AD&D campaigns are set there, with the year now about 606 CY.