Adventure Site Contest 2: The Bridge of Ptelemegesser

Cute fish monster

Written by Peter McDevitt
OSE, levels not listed (HD 8+3 monster present)
Fish in a lake near a lair neath a bridge o’r a gorge in a hill in a land on a log in the bottom of the sea.
  The party may find themselves hexcrawling across mountains. The only way to transverse a particular hex is by crossing a narrow bridge above a gorge with a long, narrow lake at the bottom. The bridge is flat and thin, 80’ long and 10' wide. It appears to have been molded from a single piece of stone, as if it was a natural extension of the cliffs.
  One of my earliest posts here is on dungeon scale, where I talk about the simplest and most humble of the dungeon family, the lair. Not something as big or impressive as a lofty dungeon, nor even a single-session adventure site, there’s nevertheless a very real use case for tiny locations with 5-ish rooms, stuff where a little sleuth of owlbears hang out, where a roc is nesting, or, in this case, where a giant catfish lurks to eat bits of victims from a lurking rhagodessa. A good lair is golden, worth an hour’s enchanting diversion in the midst of a hexcrawl or urban investigation. Mr. McDevitt, a contributor to last year’s compilation, goes smaller than an adventure site here with a little lair offering, just a single page plus map.
  There’s not much to this beyond the opening blurb. It’s a bridge where a rhagodessa ambushes people. Try to get past it. There are ancient petroglyphs and a shrine too, but no deep story interacting with the rest of the content.
  Just because they’re tiny doesn’t mean lair mapping isn’t also important. Good environment for an ambush, nice verticality, good flow, charming monster catfish illustration. My critique in general is going to be on scope for this submission, and that’s clear here, where we could have used this general layout expanded to a full-fledged adventure site…but evaluating just as an ambush location/lair? Perfect, 10/10, no notes.
  For the location’s threats, you’ll see the second verse, same as the first. Neat monster in the giant rhagodessa (whip scorpion, camel spider), which is a wall-crawler designed to snatch the luckless last man over the bridge and take him back to the cave to get et. The big catfish is hanging out at the bottom to attack those who fall in. It’s a good pitched battle, but that’s about it. There’s a nice jumpscare with an apparent second rhagodessa that’s actually a molted exoskeleton, but that’s a potential trap. Nuthin. Nor is there anything in the lower cave by the lake, traps or tricks here would add interest.
  Treasure is also very paltry, which isn’t the worst thing but it’s a little sad given danger level for the rewards to be victim-treasure, including a very valuable gold belt in the catfish’s belly. The eggs might be worth something, the glyphs might point to something…nope, that’s all too much, and would in fact be scope creep if we’re just using this as a lair.
  I hope you can tell my difficulty in judging this one, because I’m delighted with this as a little ambush site. Put in on your map if you have the geography, it’s a fun encounter. I’m just tantalized at the shadow of the full adventure site that could be here instead. 

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