Although I remember the beginnings of the Elemental Evil campaign well, I don’t remember all that many of the details. Well, it was nearly 40 years ago now! It’s an odd thing revisiting my memories of this time, because I’ve read the source adventures many times since then – but at the time I was coming at them as a player.
In my later revisitings of The Village of Hommlet, I’ve never been much impressed. Honestly, I think that started when I played the adventure. There are DMs and players who will bring out all the intrigue in Hommlet – doing a lot of work from the rather poorly developed ideas. (The idea of enemy agents is great, but most of the heavy lifting is on the DM). I can’t even remember if we had duplicitous NPCs accompany us. Maybe? Briefly? But mostly it was just the four of us making our way towards the Moathouse, dealing with the bandits there, and then killing everything in the dungeon level as well!
What made an impact on me? The cover of The Temple of Elemental Evil. When our DM showed it to us as we finally beheld the dread place, I was inspired. This was a place to venture into and cast down the evil that inhabited it! Oh, and rescue Prince Thrommel!
I do remember looking at the sealed gates and wondering, “How do we get in?” Eventually we broke the seal and entered the main temple. Did we notice there were side doors? We did not. Was that because our DM omitted them and thought it’d be more fun if we broke one of the four seals keeping the demoness Tsuggtmoy imprisoned? Entirely possible. I don’t know for sure.
And then there were the mazey corridors and rooms to explore. And get lost in. Was one of us mapping? I don’t remember – it’s entirely possible we weren’t. Or we got frustrated early on. For a lot of us, this was our first major campaign with D&D (we’d played a lot of short stuff or solo), and we weren’t coming from a bunch of experience. We learnt as we went along. But, as others have noted over the years, the concept of the Temple of Elemental Evil is a lot better than its execution.
This means that while I know we were having fun in the moment, it wasn’t generating a lot of moments that I’d remember now.
But not no moments. Because during the adventure, I got my wand of fireballs. Want to make a low-level wizard happy? Give them a wand. And back in AD&D, this meant I could cast fireball 90 times before I ran out of charges. Oh wow, did that make a difference to play. Our DM was not particularly happy seeing his trolls going down. But we’d reached the climax of the adventure. Our foolishness had seen Zuggtmoy nearly released, but we’d managed to get the artefact that would help defeat her, and both Iuz and St Cuthbert had shown up and then disappeared, taking their eternal conflict elsewhere.
I remember my character, Meliander the Mage, standing back-to-back with Brunak the Barbarian, as he protected me from any trolls that got too close. With the wand in hand, I burned the rest, throwing fireball after fireball. I think Scarlett and Bardal were also involved, but honestly it was my brother and me winning the whole thing. (My memories are 100% accurate!)
Having faced off against the hordes of Elemental Evil, we ended up facing Tsuggtmoy, the demon goddess of Fungi. I think I wasn’t that effective. AD&D had this thing called Magic Resistance. By this stage, Meliander was about 7th level, which meant that any spell had a (85+(11-4)*5)% chance of failing. Oh, that’s a 105% chance of my magic not working!
Did we fight her? I can’t remember. Did we destroy the Orb of Golden Death instead and banish her to the Abyss? I know we retrieved it, and I must presume we destroyed it. This is one of those areas where I think our DM retooled the adventure. “Hit it with a mallet of granite” – nah, can’t remember that!
Did we save Prince Thrommel? I think so. Except, in my later campaigns that took some of the lore from this one, we hadn’t because it was more fun that way.
Tsuggtmoy was banished back to the Abyss. Of that I’m sure. I just can’t remember how we did it.
Do you know what I also don’t remember? Being frustrated with playing a magic-user with only a limited number of spells. I played Meliander from first level, so through the worst levels of the AD&D magic-user experience, and I was having fun all the way through.
The Temple of Elemental Evil made a much bigger impact on me with its lore than the events of us playing it. The idea that armies had risen to put down the initial cultists, but that though evil had been imprisoned, it still lurked there and had an insidious effect on the lands around. That the cultists kidnapped the Prince of Furyondy, throwing into disarray the grand alliance planned between Furyondy and Veluna. That, perhaps, the elements could be evil and harnessed to destructive ends.
We’d stopped the rise of the Temple. It was time to go on to new adventures. But before we made it to Against the Slavelords, there were other adventures to play!