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BACKGROUND: A bandit gang had laid an ambush in the Hole in the Wall. About an hour ago, an Osiran serpent squad attacked the bandits. The Osirans were disappointed when the bandits fought to the death, denying them living prisoners for their nano-embalming vats (Encounter 4).

LAY OF THE LAND: This encounter was designed for a battlemap from Keep on the Shadowfell. (It can also be found in Fantastic Locations: Fields of Ruin.)

• The bodies of a half dozen bandits lie scattered around the hole in the Wall. Any inspection of the bodies will reveal distinctive circular brands on their shoulders.
• Conspiracy (Easy): The tattoos mark these as members of the Circle Gang. They’ve nomadic raiders who cycle through these parts every few months.
• Nature (Easy): There are clear signs that other bodies have been dragged away from the area.
• Perception (Easy): In a nearby copse of trees, the PCs can find another 6 bodies wrapped in cerecloth.
• Science (Moderate): There are puncture marks on the corpses. They look like snake bites, but the snakes must have been huge.

ENCOUNTER: Once the PCs have spent a little time investigating the scene, the Osiran serpent squad returns to finish collecting and prepping the bodies. They include a Serpent Commando, a silver drake, and three giant silver asps. All of them have silver scales that glisten like mercury. The serpent commando wears a tunic formed from bands of ebon and lapis lazuli

REWARDS:

• Bandits carry 1d6 pieces of Ancient Junk (Gamma World, pg. 81). (It’s strange that whoever killed the bandits didn’t loot the bodies.)
• 1 Omega Tech card per PC from the Osirans.

CLUES:

• The Osiran Snake-Warrior has a Ford Family Militia Badge pinned like a badge of honor to the front of his tunic. (Moderate Conspiracy check to recognize the badge as belonging to the Ford Family. See Encounter 3.)
• The serpents’ trail leads to the Nano-Embalming Compound (Encounter 4). Following the trail requires a skill challenge (complexity 1, 4 successes, moderate DC).

Next: The Crater

This is a quick scenario I threw together in a couple of hours for Gamma World. It was designed to serve as an introductory adventure for 1st level characters.

BACKGROUND: Over the past few months, intermittent meteors have been hitting the area around town. The force of the meteor impacts (or perhaps something special about these particular meteors) have been tearing open interdimensional rifts. Locals have started referring to them as “techno-meteors” because high-value tech has often been found in the area around the impact craters.

THE OSIRANS: A meteor struck down around 10 PM last night. The rift it opened pulled through a Lesser Emperor of the Osiran Empire and his entire funerary chamber. (Osiran Emperors retire into a state of cryo-torpor, sending their virtual consciousness into the Land of the Dead while continuing to wield great influence over the Empire through their religious cults. But that’s largely irrelevant for the purposes of this adventure. The visual motif you’re looking for here is Techno Pulp Egyptian.)

Bereft of his crystalline pyramid, the Lesser Emperor is less than amused. Having determined that he has no way of returning home, however, he has decided to launch a Conquest. If he’s successful, the result would be a Neo-Osiran Empire of papyrus cults and Art Deco pyramids in which the dead serve as eternal slaves. (Or some bastardized, post-apocalyptic fiefdom built in its image.)

OSIRAN TIMELINE:

• 10 PM – Appear in Crater.
• 1 AM – Leave crater and establish a new Tomb for the Lesser Emperor.
• 4 AM – Move equipment to Nano-Embalming Compound.
• 8 AM – Attacked Ford Family Bunker.
• 10 AM – Attacked the Roadside Ambush.

NOTE: Most Omega Tech scavenged during this adventure should be given a distinctly Egyptian flavor if possible.

THE HOOK AND SET-UP: The PCs are based out of Hogtown. Hogtown is your standard, post-apocalyptan settlement. It’s a thin veneer of civilization that’s trying to stretch itself out over as much territory as it can manage.

The PCs work as a team of specialized troubleshooters for Boss Hog. They’re called into his office first thing in the morning: He’s got a job for them. Last night his observatory (a huge, rickety structure in the center of town that Boss Hog refers to as being “three stories tall” although no one locally knows why he’s measuring it in tall tales) observed a meteor strike to the west. The PCs need to head on out there, secure the site, and gather up any valuable tech in the area before other scavengers show up and pick it clean.

(Boss Hog can either be a petty tyrant who just wants the stuff to aggrandize himself. Or he can honestly be trying to make Hogtown into a place where people can get by just a little bit better and the tech will be serving the community. I dunno. See where the snout-nosed little bastard takes you.)

HEADING OUT: The meteor strike is on the other side of Cataclysm Wall. This is a weird wall of jagged rock about thirty or forty feet deep that was thrust up out of the ground during the Big Mistake. It runs for dozens of miles and is a real pain in the ass for navigation in these parts. Fortunately, during the Militia Wars that wracked the region after the Big Mistake several holes were blown through the Wall. There’s a dirt road that runs through one of these holes not far from where the meteor went down.

Conpiracy (Easy): The road is kept in pretty good condition. There are quite a few farms north of the Wall, and they all bring their goods to Hogtown on this road.

Conspiracy (Moderate): The hole in the Wall is a natural chokepoint for trade. Which means that bandits are known to lay ambushes there.

Next: Roadside Ambush

Go to Part 1 – Go to Map

The key posted over the last several days for the Ruined Temple of Illhan represents the temple as it was discovered by my players. If you’re interested in running through the temple in the days after that hardy group of wanderers passed through it, you’ll want to make the following changes:

AREA 9: The secret door has been wedged open with iron spike.

AREA 20: The stone block has been propped up with three iron chests, holding it far enough off the ground for halflings and unarmored characters to crawl under.

AREA 21: Portcullis has been raised (using the control level in area 23).

AREA 26: The ceiling of this room has collapsed, leaving behind a solid wall of rubble in the doorway.

AREA 30: The iron chests and treasure have been removed.

AREA 36: Spear has been removed.

AREA 43: All of these doors have been chopped through with axes.

Thanks again to Dyson Logos for giving me permission to share his re-keyed map. I very much recommend checking out his site; he’s got a plethora of terrific stuff over there ripe for pillaging.

Go to Part 1 – Go to Map

AREA 32: Empty chamber.

AREA 33: The angled wall has the chipped remnants of what must have once been an extravagant mural; but it is now too damaged to make out any pertinent details. On the wall opposite the mural there is an iron rod bracketed to the wall about seven feet off the floor and running perpendicular to it.

AREA 34 – PIT TRAP (30’ deep): 1 in 6 chance of opening when crossed.

AREA 35: These rubble piles will shift ominously as people walk over the top of them (but there’s no real risk).

AREA 36: A metallic pole covered in runes stands upright from the floor in the middle of this room.

Pole: The runes are arcane. The pole is actually a +1 spear of charged lightning, which can hurl 1d6 lightning bolts which deal 4d6 points of damage each. When the charges on the spear are exhausted, it remains a +1 spear but cannot discharge lightning again until it has been returned to the depression in this chamber. The weapon can be used normally by any follower of the Norse or Neo-Norskan pantheon (despite being a bladed weapon).

Each time the spear is used (whether to throw lightning or in melee) by a character who does not worship the Norse or Neo-Norskan pantheons, there is a 1 in 6 chance that its curse will be revealed: Black lightning will run up the spear and into the arms of the character wielding the spear. The black lightning will sap the strength from their limbs, inflicting a -4 penalty on attack rolls on damage until the spear has been returned to this chamber or they have received a blessing from a Norse cleric.

AREA 37: Empty room.

AREA 38: Partially collapsed chamber.

AREA 39: Room is empty. Door is wooden.

Secret Door: On the wall here there are two small, concealed lenses. (See area 40.)

AREA 40: On one wall of the chamber there is a kind of iron coffin or sarcophagus which is flush with the wall (where the secret door is indicated). On the other side of the room, a set of open stairs goes up, takes a turn to the left across a short landing, and then heads up another flight (to area 24).

Iron Coffin: This is hinged and can be opened if six clasps down the opposite side are removed. Affixed to the wall within the cavity of the sarcophagus are a set of “viewing glasses” (similar to binoculars or opera glasses), which look through the lenses into area 39. If the viewer is sealed inside the sarcophagus (with all six clasps being shut from the outside), the view in area 39 will shift to show the same room several hundred years ago when the complex was still in use.

Vision: Three maidens wearing blindfolds (one of crimson red, one of royal purple, and one of pale blue) sitting around a large brass bowl filled with burning incense. Priests of Illhan will enter, drop tokens of intricately carved wood into the burning incense, and ask questions. There’s no sound, but those who can read lips will be able to decipher a prophecy describing the temple’s destruction.

AREA 41: An empty room.

AREA 42: In the center of the room there is a large pile of dry wood. (Those looking through it will discover the remains of broken furniture.)

Closet: The wooden door on the far side of the room has been hit with an axe several times, but is still mostly intact. The closet beyond it has a skeleton slouched in one corner; it has a small, badly rotten pouch with 6 sp and 76 cp.

AREA 43: All of the rooms in this little complex are empty. The doors are made of wood, several of which have swelled from moisture and jammed shut (3 in 6 chance).

Continued tomorrow…

(Original cartography by Dyson Logos.)

Go to Part 1 – Go to Map

AREA 24: The arches at either end of the long hall here are formed from the upper halves of a spinning wheel. A half chipped mural on the ceiling depicts white clouds in a blue sky.

Stairs: Go down, turn right across a short landing, and then descend again into area 40.

AREA 25: The arch to the south has the top of a hammer serving as a capstone (with its handle pointing up). The arches to the north both have a pair of horns curving up from their capstones.

AREA 26: The room opens off to the left. There are still two columns left standing, but you can see a third one further down the length of the hall which has fallen onto its side. Beyond that the room has collapsed. And as the door opens, you see some dust drift down from the ceiling.

Pillars: Disturbing a pillar has a 1 in 6 chance of causing the room to collapse. Removing one of the pillars will automatically cause the chamber to collapse. Everyone in the room will take 8d6 points of damage.

AREA 27: This room contains a stone well raised about three feet high. There’s potable water 30 feet down.

AREA 28: The arch leading to the stair is formed by two large hammers (see area 16). The archway leading towards area 29 has a large, stone eye serving as its capstone. The archway leading towards area 30 has an empty socket at its capstone (a missing eye).

Capstones: Moving the capstone from one arch to the other will cause the (currently secret) door leading to area 31 to become visible and the door to area 29 to vanish.

AREA 29: Hanging from a long iron rod on the far side of the room there is a single red curtain in perfect condition. (The curtain benefits from a mild enchantment to render it immune to the passage of time, but is otherwise unremarkable.)

AREA 30: The archway in this chamber is formed by two spears. There are three iron chests at the end of the chamber. Their lids are thrown back and they have been completely emptied. The chests have been bolted to the floor, although the one on the right is slightly loose.

Secret Compartment: Beneath the iron chest on the right there is a hidden compartment. Loosening the bolts allows the chest to be removed, revealing the compartment. The compartment contains 9 thin strips of gold, each worth 100 gp. There is also a small flask of crystal filled with a reddish liquid (potion of fire resistance).

AREA 31: The door to this room only becomes visible if the capstone in area 28 swaps its position. On a small, circular altar of white marble at the far end of this chamber lie two silver hammers worth 250 gp each due to their high craftsmanship.

Those familiar with dwarfcraft will recognize the hammers as being of dwarf-make. One of the hammers has the dwarven rune for FRIENDSHIP engraved upon it; the other has the Norskan rune for FRIENDSHIP on it.

(Note: These hammers can be used in area 19.)

Continued tomorrow…

(Original cartography by Dyson Logos.)