DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 40C: Malleck’s Last Stand

Nasira had turned her attention to the boy. She found that his heart was failing him. The process that was transforming him was obviously botched and incomplete and now it was killing him.

Hearing this, Agnarr couldn’t contain his rage. He was furious over the boy. With a grim look of determination he charged back out through the secret door.

Magic is cool because it brings a lot of flashy bling to the table: Balls of fire. Personal aerobatics. Magic missiles.

But what I think makes magic awesome is that it lets you explore unique and impossible situations, and some of the most powerful of these are moral dilemmas, because they provide a really powerful crucible for character to express itself. Who are you? What do you value? When put between a rock and a hard place, what will you choose to do?

What makes magical moral dilemmas special is their novelty. Most of us are probably familiar with the trolley problem, and we’ve each literally spent a lifetime figuring out our moral and ethical compass when it comes to the situations we encounter in our lives. We likely even have long-settled opinions on big issues, even though it’s unlikely we’ve ever personally had to, for example, make the decision to declare or not declare war.

There are nevertheless, of course, ways that we could challenge and explore these moral issues through play. (And, of course, our characters will not necessarily share our moral or ethical outlooks.) But we’ll be walking through familiar territory either way.

With a fantastical dilemma, on the other hand, the fantastical element immediately confronts us with a parameter we’ve never had to deal within our own lives, and likely have never thought about before. Even when there’s a fairly obvious and direct parallel between the fantastical dilemma and a set of real world ethics, the mismatched edges will often crop up and challenge our trite, preconceived answers in the most surprising ways.

For example: Is it ethical to use an invisibility spell to eavesdrop on a private conversation? And, if so, under what circumstances?

Here we could probably draw a fairly direct connection to wiretapping. But what if you’re just coincidentally invisible and people walk into the room you’re in? Do you have an ethical obligation to reveal your presence?

And consider the moral situation the PCs find themselves in with the Children of the Hand. What moral obligation do they have to children who have been fully transformed in monsters? Does the same hold true a child that has only partially been transformed? What if that child is in agonizing pain and no longer able to communicate?

To see how the PCs dealt with this, here are some minor spoilers from the beginning of the next campaign journal:

They regrouped in the laboratory. The boy, whimpering in pain, was fading fast.

“Is there anything we can do for him?” Tee asked. Nasira shook her head. Tee, wanting to spare him the pain, slid a dagger through the boy’s ribs and into his heart.

Even as Tee’s dagger was coming free, Agnarr was dumping Silion’s body out of the bag of holding, removing the iron collar from around her neck, and placing it on the boy. A debate immediately broke out: Some wanted to preserve Silion for a second round of questioning. Others wanted to do the same for Malleck.

“We need Malleck to tell us what he’s done with the missing children,” Elestra said.

“We know what he did with them,” Agnarr said. He was adamant that they keep the boy alive, and it looked like the iron collar was the only way to do it.

Here we see another magical element — the iron collar that preserves dead bodies so that they can be raised at a later time — add new facets to the dilemma.

You can draw some parallels to medical ethics, of course, but they’re not straight lines. Is this more like a medically induced coma, temporarily stopping someone’s heart when they have tachycardia, or illegal medical experimentation?

And while we’re here: What, exactly, are the ethics of keeping a bunch of dead corpses in a magical netherspace between dimensions so that you can periodically yank them out and question them under compulsive sorceries?

Asking for a friend.

Campaign Journal: Session 40D – Running the Campaign: The Villain Who Doesn’t Escape
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 40C: MALLECK’S LAST STAND

July 25th, 2009
The 22nd Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

While Ranthir collected the books, the others were dumping the cultists’ bodies onto the lighted panels, which sucked the blood out of them and schlepped it down to the sewer.

“That’s gross,” Elestra said, watching the blood run in twisting rivulets away from them.

“Remind me not to stand on these things with an open wound,” Tee said.

They joined Ranthir in the library. Tee checked the doors, finding them all locked. Picking the nearest one at random, she flipped open her ring of lockpicking tools and set to work.

She had just gotten the door unlocked, however, when a piercing scream ripped its way through the complex. She sighed and relocked the door.

The scream sounded as if it came from the far end of the complex. They headed up a short flight of stairs and down a long hall that seemed to head in the right direction. Nearing the end of the hall, Tee caught the faint sounds of conversation coming from somewhere ahead and she waved the others to hold back and hold silent. Peering around the corner she looked through a door into what appeared to be one end of a larger barracks. There was definitely someone in there, but they were out of sight. In the opposite direction – the direction she felt the scream had come from – was another short flight of stairs leading up.

At Tee’s direction – and following Tor’s lead – they rounded the corner and headed up the stairs. These led into a large, open common room containing several tables, a few divans, several cushioned chairs, and a number of deformed stone idols.

Two cultists were on guard duty here, but they seemed lax in their duties: One was leaning lackadaisically against the wall while the other sat on a chair, sharpening his sword. Tor, still under the camouflaging effects of Elestra’s communion with the Spirit of the City, was able to sneak along the wall and kill the first without the other even noticing. When he went for the sword-sharpener, however, the cultist got a turn of good luck, narrowly dodging Tor’s thrust. But his luck lasted for only a moment: As he opened his mouth to give a warning shout, Tor cut him down in a gasping gurgle.

Another scream rended the air. They whirled towards the source, heading down a long flight of stairs that opened into a long, wide, sconce-lit hall. The staircase emerged above the floor of the hall and descended through open air, although along the nearest end it was flanked by two broad ledges which could be reached by independent stairs from the chamber floor.

The walls and the floor below were of black-and-red swirled marble. In the center of the lower floor was a large table of inclined stone. Strapped to this table was a young boy, his body wracked in the midst of some sort of horrible transformation: One arm had grown bulbous with rippling black muscles, his skin was mottled with a sickly green growth, and pus-filled sores were sprouting across his entire body and blood streamed from wounds that seemed to open and close of their own accord. His face was rictused in agony.

Standing nearby were two priests in white robes marked with the black hand of the Ebon Hand. They were manipulating syringes and checking injection tubes that had been plunged into the body of the transforming boy. Their work was being overseen by another man with mottled grey skin streaked with serpentine green wearing an ebony headdress.

Two more priests were standing near the end of the stairs. Their attention was given wholly to the grim proceedings before them. Tee – barely suppressing the rage she felt at the scene – was easily able to pass silently down the stairs. The priests weren’t aware of her until she sent one of their heads flying down the length of the chamber.

It landed near the feet of the man with the mottled grey skin. The priests stared down at it for a moment dumbly, and before they had a chance to process what was happening Tor had charged down the stairs and thrown them into complete disarray.

The grey-skinned man turned to one of the priests, “Give me your potion! Now!”

“Yes, Malleck.”

“It’s Malleck!” Tee cried with triumph.

Malleck swallowed the potion and disappeared.

“Dammit!”

MALLECK’S LAST STAND

Tee and Elestra laid down a volley of dragon pistol fire, forcing the remaining priests to backpedal rapidly as Agnarr moved to engage them. Tor, however, had shut his eyes, thinking back to the long hours of blind-folded training he had practiced back on his ranch. It seemed so long ago, and yet—

His sword lashed out. A spray of arterial blood spread across the wall and the venomed curses of Malleck could be heard clearly over the sounds of the nearby melee.

Tor opened his eyes with a grim smile. But suddenly a secret panel in the far wall slid open… and slid shut again. Malleck had escaped! Tor threw himself at the door, but was left searching helplessly for the mechanism to open it.

Two of the remaining priests called upon dark gods in a sibilant, twisted tongue. Hands of crackling black energy appeared in the air before them—And Agnarr’s flaming blade ripped through them and turned the priests behind them into smoldering ruins. In their last instants, the hands actually tried to flee from the enraged barbarian as they flickered out ineffectually. Elestra summoned lightning from the air itself to immolate the last of the priests.

Ranthir waved a hand over his feet and set off with expeditious speed back up the long stairs, hoping that he might be able to cut Malleck off from his escape.

Tee, meanwhile, was racing in the opposite direction. She hit the wall where Malleck had disappeared with her ring and in a burst of blue energy the panel slid open. Passing through it, she found herself back in the library. The blood trail ended abruptly (Tee guessed that Malleck had magically healed himself), but Tee’s sharp nose caught the passing of his scent. With something of a wild guess, she directed Elestra to send a burst of lightning in that direction—

And struck the invisible Malleck!

Malleck howled with pain. He was still invisible, but Tor followed his voice and caught him in another spray of blood.

“May the Galchutt consume you!” Malleck appeared, his hand outstretched towards them. A pillar of fire erupted around Tor.

Malleck turned to make good his escape, but Ranthir – racing down the hall from the opposite direction – stretched out his own hand and enmeshed Malleck in an impenetrable web. Malleck managed to wrench his way free from the sticky mass, but found himself trapped and backed into a corner as Tor and Agnarr closed in on him.

“Help! Help! To arms! The compound is under attack! We’re under attack!”

THE FALL OF THE TEMPLE

Agnarr, having burned his way through the web using his sword, plunged his sword into Malleck’s body. Tee, meanwhile, had heard the commotion of reinforcements drawn to Malleck’s final rallying cry. She called for the others to fall back through the secret door… only to discover that her ring had, unfortunately, disabled its mechanism. They couldn’t shut it.

Tor, taking up the rear of their retreat back into the laboratory, heard a door slam nearby and the rush of footsteps drawing nearer. Then voices cried out: “Malleck is down! Get him!”

During Malleck’s last stand, Nasira had turned her attention to the boy. She found that his heart was failing him. The process that was transforming him was obviously botched and incomplete and now it was killing him.

Hearing this, Agnarr couldn’t contain his rage. He was furious over the boy. With a grim look of determination he charged back out through the secret door.

“Agnarr!” Tee screamed. “What are you doing?!”

Agnarr found two cultist guards trying to haul Malleck out of the web. He cut them down with a single furious sweep of his blade.

But there were at least a dozen more of the cultists charging down the hall towards him. Agnarr whirled towards them…

And was joined by Tor, who gave him an ironic nod. “Well, since you’re out here anyway…”

Side-by-side they charged up the stairs and into the long hall. Tee, meanwhile, had gone back up the long-stairs and circled around to the far side of the barracks. She was waiting for the waves of reinforcements to run dry, but they just kept coming.

Elestra joined Tor and Agnarr in the hall, using the last of her lightning to chew up the back ranks of the cultists. For a moment it looked as if their morale might break.

But then a woman in red and black full plate – a red cape with a black hand embroidered upon its swirling across her back – emerged from the barracks. She started barking orders and rallying cries to the nearest soldiers.

Agnarr held his ground to keep the cultists from converging on Elestra, but Tor began to cut a path towards the woman. As Tor drew near, the woman saw him isolated from his companions. She carefully circled their skirmish, trying to flank him… but she was caught completely off-guard as Agnarr surged his way forward and came up behind them with preternatural speed. She was cut down before she realized the danger that was upon her.

Tee, thinking the woman to be the last of the cultists coming from that direction, emerged from her place of hiding in an effort to circle around the others and flank them. But as she did, two cultist priests came rushing out of the barracks and caught her standing in the middle of the hall. They sneered at her. “Trying to flee, eh?”

They took two steps towards her and then glanced down the length of the hall… where they saw the devastation wrought by Agnarr, Tor, and Elestra.

They turned and ran back into the barracks.

Running the Campaign: Moral Dilemmas of Magic – Campaign Journal: Session 40D
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Atlas Games’ Penumbra line of D20 products continues to lead the field in D&D supplements.

Review Originally Published December 15th, 2000

There are two primary functions that a review serves: First, it lets people know about a product they might otherwise have been unaware of. Second, it tells them enough about it to let them know whether or not its a product they should buy.

The Black Amulet is a free promo offering for Atlas Games’ Penumbra line of D20 support products (which, as pretty much everyone reading this probably already knows, means that they’re compatible with the third edition of D&D). It’s a single magic item described in two pages – so why am I bothering to review something it’s going to take you less than five minutes to read for yourself?

Just to give you a quick head’s up that it exists.

The amulet is a unique magic item, which possesses a couple of unique twists to confound the unwitting players you let have it. In addition to the basic routine of stats and a description of its powers, Nephew has also taken the time to include a detailed history for the item – not only giving some depth to what would otherwise be yet another magical knick-knack, but also unleashing some good adventure seeds and roleplaying fodder.

That makes the Black Amulet yet another Penumbra product that takes the extra step necessary to take something typical and make it something noteworthy. This consistent ability to give you more than you bargained for, coupled with strong production values and an extremely competitive price point, helps Penumbra – in my estimation – lead the field when it comes to D&D supplements. The only company who’s even coming close at this point is Wizards of the Coast itself.

You can check The Black Amulet out (and keep an eye out for future promo material) here.

Title: The Black Amulet
Authors: John Nephew
Company: Atlas Games
Line: Penumbra
Price: Free!
Pages: 2

Style: 5
Substance: 4

Originally Posted: 2000/12/15

If I recall correctly, part of my motivation for reviewing free PDFs like The Wizard’s Amulet and The Black Amulet was because I was a poor college kid, and so just literally affording new RPG books to review was tough. I was trying to use my newfound reputation as a reviewer to get review copies, but I never really got those to flow at a rate that would support my ravenous desire for both reading RPG books and reviewing them.

John Nephew at Atlas Games, it should be noted, has always been a savvy fellow: Produce third party D&D supplements using the OGL? He was one of the few who saw the opportunity. Using free PDFs to promote your third party D&D supplements? Smart. Let’s do that, too. I also remember reading a post he made on RPGNet that broke down the reality that RPG publishers need to swap from softcover books to hardcover if they wanted to stay profitable. Atlas made the leap immediately; the rest of the industry followed.

It also says something about Atlas Games and its values that the link for downloading The Black Amulet has never changed.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Third Edition Rules, First Edition Feel. Although not a full product in and of itself, The Wizard’s Amulet (W0) provides an excellent preview of what Necromancer Games is bringing to the table with their D20/D&D releases.

Review Originally Published November 15th, 2000

“Third Edition Rules, First Edition Feel.”

That’s the tagline that Necromancer Games is using for their line of D&D supplements (developed under the Open Gaming License), and it highlights one of the real strengths of the open gaming philosophy that Ryan Dancey (one of the VPs at WotC) has been championing over the past few months: If you feel there is a segment of the roleplaying fan base which is not having its needs addressed by the current roleplaying industry, there’s no need to go out and publish your own game to remedy the situation.

For example, if what you think is missing in the gaming marketplace are modules that feel and play like those produced for the first edition of AD&D, then publishing an entire roleplaying game so that you have something to supplement is entirely superfluous. And a licensing deal still, ultimately, leaves it up to someone else to determine what is and is not seen on the market.

The Wizard’s Amulet is was a free sample available from the Necromancer Games website.

THE PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for The Wizard’s Amulet. Players who may end up playing in this module are encouraged to stop reading now. Proceed at your own risk.

Lest there be any confusion, The Wizard’s Amulet is clearly designed to function as a prequel to Necromancer Games’ first series of modules. Taken by itself it feels bit like putting cream cheese on your bagel – it’s an accomplishment, but you haven’t actually eaten anything yet.

Basically the plot plays out like this: Corian, a sorceror fresh out of his apprenticeship, has stumbled across an amulet which once belonged to the wizard Eralion. Corian believes that Eralion attempted to become a lich and failed – and that his keep, to which the amulet will grant access, stands unguarded. So Corian gathers together a group of adventurers (the PCs) to go the keep and unlock its secrets and magical wonders.

Things become complicated, however, because Corian’s fellow student – Vortigern – wants the amulet (and Eralion’s secrets) for himself. Vortigern sets out after the PCs, along with his demonic familiar and a couple of hired thugs.

The Wizard’s Amulet comes to an end after a short, and somewhat indecisive, conflict with Vortigern. It is then directly continued in the first commercial adventure available from Necromancer Games, The Crucible of Freya.

HIGH POINTS & LOW POINTS

I think The Wizard’s Amulet is something D&D players should take a look at. Not so much because its actually playable in and of itself (because it really isn’t), but because it is a good sample of what Necromancer Games is capable of putting out. A number of good features are to be found here:

First, the module aims to introduce new players to roleplaying – and it does this very well. A clear-cut act/scene structure provides the same simplicity as an event-by-location guide, but with a greater emphasis on the narrative. Each scene is carefully handled and presented in a way which makes it easy for newbie DMs to use it with newbie players – good advice, combined with lots of options, makes the whole thing very accessible.

Second, they do a nice job of handling challenge options – addressing not only how two encounters which are identical in terms of challenge can be harder or easier to run during gameplay, but also addressing how to adjust endgame encounters based on the current status of the PCs. This is something which the structure of 3rd Edition makes very easy to do, and the authors have taken advantage of it.

Finally, the overall lay-out of the module is utilitarian without being ugly – a package which is not only pretty, but usable.

I would’ve liked to see a standard Challenge Rating/Encounter Level summary, though. Taking us through the steps for each encounter is fine, but it would have been even easier to modify the adventure if they had given us a clearer peek behind the curtain. I also think The Wizard’s Amulet would have better fulfilled its purpose (as a promo for the game line) if it had actually been a complete adventure (instead of an unfinished prequel) – it could have still led directly into the published adventure, but I would have liked to have seen a fully developed plot here, with a distinct beginning, middle, and end.

All that being said, I do think that you should take a look at this. It’s a solid package.

Style: 4
Substance: 3

Grade: B

Authors: Clark Peterson and Bill Webb
Company: Necromancer Games
Line: D20
Price: Free!
Page Count: 21
ISBN: n/a
Production Code: NCG1000

Originally Posted: 2000/11/15

From a quarter century later, it can be a little difficult to grok just how exciting and novel and strange the fall of 2000 was. The OGL was transforming D&D, the RPG industry, and our gaming tables in ways that were as clearly monumental as they were also uncertain. With Three Days to Kill, Death in Freeport, and the Creature Collection leading the way, by November, when I wrote this review, it was clear a gold rush was under way.

Less noticed at the time was that PDF e-books were ALSO beginning to transform the industry. It started in the mid-’90, when the internet and faster download speeds allowed every GM with a home system to share it online. (By 2000, I had likely downloaded literally hundreds of these.) The idea of “real” RPG publishers releasing books in the format was novel enough that The Wizard’s Amulet actually prompted a lot of discussion upon its release. Would we see more publishers release e-book adventures as free samples or promos? (Yes. And, of course, much more than that.)

Now, of course, every GM with a home system uploads it on DriveThruRPG, e-book releases vastly outnumber physical releases, and PDFs have even down yeoman’s work in unlocking the once out of print and inaccessible history of RPGs. This review is a little peek back at the cusp of a new world.

The Wizard’s Amulet, Crucible of Freya, and The Tomb of Abysthor are currently available in The Lost Lands: Stoneheart Valley, a collection published by Frog God Games.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Chaos Lorebook: The Bloated Lords

Some among the zaug were transformed by the Galchutt and “turned to a new purpose”. As the zaug were made living receptacles for manifest corruption, the zaug soulharvesters became living prisoners for captured and tormented souls.

“Their very flesh burned with the fire of the souls which screamed within them.”

“Their hunger was without end, fed eternally by the torment of those who seared their flesh.”

This week’s campaign journal is The Bloated Lords, a lengthy chaos lorebook describing the zaug, one of the Servitors of the Galchutt.

In the Ptolus campaign setting, the Galchutt are lords of chaos and the Servitors of the Galchutt are demon-like creatures who, as their name suggests, serve them. Along with the strange arts of chaositech which are inimically tied to these entities, you can point to a goulash of antecedents Monte Cook is drawing from — Lovecraft, Moorcock, Warhammer, cenobites, etc. — but the result, particularly when blended into traditional D&D fantasy, is very distinct.

When I brought Ptolus into my own campaign world, however, the Galchutt posed a conundrum: I already had my own pantheon of Mythos-adjacent strange gods.

I thought about replacing the Galchutt with my own pantheon, but then I’d lose a lot of cool stuff. It would be a bunch of extra work for, at best, a neutral result.

Another option would have been to simply add the Galchutt to my pantheon: The more strange gods the merrier! For various reasons, though, they didn’t really sync. I’m a big fan of adaptation and reincorporation, but it’s not always a boon. Sometimes you shove stuff together and you’re left with less than what you started.

So what I eventually ended up doing was nestling the Galchutt into a lower echelon, as “Dukes” in the Demon Court. They brought with them the Dukes (powerful, demon-like entities) and the Elder Brood (demonic monsters who serve the Dukes). This worked really well, creating an unexpected bridge (Elder Brood → Dukes → Galchutt → Demon Court → even stranger depths of the pantheon) between the inexplicable and the mortal world. It’s a good example of how you can pull in influences from a lot of different places and gestalt them into something cool.

Another example of this was the Elder Brood: In the Chaositech sourcebook, only two examples of the Elder Brood are given (the obaan and the sscree). I knew I wanted more than that, so I hit up one of my favorite monster manuals: The Book of Fiends from Green Ronin. (Which also played a major role in my remix of Descent Into Avernus.) I pulled all the cool devils and demons from that book that had the right flavor for the Elder Brood and added them to the roster.

Along similar lines, the zaug — one of the Servitors and described in The Bloated Lords lorebook — were expanded in my campaign to include the Soulharvesters. These were adapted from solamiths, a monster described in Monster Manual V.

If I recall correctly, the specific sequence here was:

• I was looking for a miniature I could use for the zaug (since I knew that one would appear in the Mrathrach Machine).
• I found the solamith miniature and realized it belonged to a monster from Monster Manual V.
• I checked out the solamith write-up and realized thar it could be folded into the mythology of the zaug.

It’s been a while, though, so my sequencing on this may not be correct. (I may have found the solamith write-up first while scavenging monsters for the campaign and then tracked down the miniature from there.) In any case, it’s a technique I’ve used with monster manuals for a long time. It’s similar to The Campaign Stitch, but rather than melding adventures it takes monsters and asks: What if these are the same monster?

It’s kind of like palette shifting, but rather than taking one stat block and using it to model a multitude of creatures, this technique — let’s call it monster melding — takes a bunch of different stat blocks and brings them together.

Another example is that, in my personal campaign world, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, and ogres are all the same species. (Which, conveniently, gives me access to a much larger variety of stat blocks to plug-‘n-play with while stocking goblin villages.)

What I like about this technique — in addition to utilitarian stocking adventages — is that, much like gods and ventures, the melded monsters can often be more interesting than using the two separately. (For example, the implications of hypertrophic dimorphism in goblins raises all kinds of interesting worldbuilding questions and the soulharvesters, in my opinion, make zaug society much more interesting to explore.)

So ask yourself:

• What if these are the same creature with slightly divergent careers, abilities, etc.?
• What if these are the same creature at different stages of its life cycle?
• What if they live in some kind of symbiosis or parasitic relationship?

Bring these creatures together and see what you get!

Campaign Journal: Session 40C – Running the Campaign: Moral Dilemmas of Magic
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index