Adventure Site Contest 2: The Moldiwarp’s Burrow

Written by WoadWarrior
AD&D, levels 5-6
Village and gnomish dungeon
  Located not 10 miles from the borderlands of civilisation and visible from Skepeside, rising ominously above the windswept moors of the wild lands, Gnomish hill has long been a symbolic landmark in the division between wild and civilised land. 10 years ago an adventuring party by the name of the Blue Band laid claim to the hill and built a home for themselves to civilise the wilderness, but were slaughtered to a man by a gnomish army. Now the hill has only its black reputation, even as the wounds left by the Blue Band slowly heal.
  Oh boy. I might have been defeated by this one.
  We’ve all had that experience, particularly in a hobby this nerdy, of someone very enthusiastic, and very creative, excitedly explaining his last awesome session to you. Rather than a tightly wound pitch, a back-of-the-book blurb, your impression from his recounting of the session is a soup of scenes, images, anecdotes, rather than a coherent sequence/plot. I think Woad Warrior’s games are probably a blast to play in, if he’s running something go play with him. I’m just a little confused as to what I’m supposed to do with the document to run it at my own table.
  Plot is a few disconnected things. There’s a little village on the borderland with some gnomes, the village is designed to be a frequently visited by adventuring parties with all the amenities a young party needs, plus a plot ticker about a bad seed lad getting into trouble. There’s a Beltane ritual that some bad guy (where) wants to corrupt, using bad lad as his agent. Gnomes will get mad if this happens and attack from somewhere? There’s also a hill with a bandit tower and a ruined village and giant dire mole tunnels to explore and maybe I’m stupid but I’m not sure how they connect to the plot and it’s all very confusing. At least the site as a site does work as a place to bump into, so…let’s judge that.
  Maps are twofold. There’s a little regional hexmap that shows exactly what I’d expect hearing “village on a hilly borderland region” and then there’s the ruins with mole tunnels all around them. I don’t know where the bandit tower is for sure but careful parsing of context clues would indicate that it’s the unlabeled and disconnected central structure? I’m fine with the layout of the area, nice to see a couple entrances to the lower level plus some mole-hole spots where a party armed with shovels and a willingness to work can also break in and/or find neat stuff. The lack of numbers for keys, instead using labels, is nonstandard. This works (unless you forget to label, ahem, TOWER), but the standard is a standard for a good reason. 

I do love me an MS Paint map.

  Our threats are fey, keeping with the mild sub-theme of this contest so far. In addition to the giant moles and almost expected giant ants, there’s a moldiwarp (evil fey dwarfmole), other giant bugs, the chance of quicklings, the bandits (assuming they’re actually where I’m guessing they are), and a reasonable salting of captive/dead/confused NPCs to chat with. Maybe they understand what’s going on and will let the rest of us in. Level six won’t have too much of an issue with what’s here, amusing time fighting giant snails aside. The titular moldiwarp is reasonably dangerous unless the players somehow divine his long list of weaknesses. There’s a little think the adventure does where it nerfs some of the random encounters by having them default to being slowed, which is a clunky but workable method of nerfing monsters that really don’t seem like they need a nerf. Only major environmental note is that there are custom rules making fighting in the tunnels annoying for anyone who went into long weapons.
  Despite our fey theming, most of the treasure is muddy coins, but there’s also stuff like a solid gold rocking chair, special fungus, a pretty flower, royal banners, etc. Amounts look about right with tens of thousand of gold available to properly pay a fireball-level party, all over the place as it is. Magic items are mostly book with special flavoring, which is a good way to go with it. I do like a +1 Shillelagh as a nicely Celtic magic weapon. The rewards for engaging with the timed story element(s) are a warm fuzzy feeling and frustrating the bad guy plan with the power of friendship. There’s a neat custom spell dangled in front of the magic user but you’re unable to figure it out canonically, that’s a bummer.
  My mixed feelings about the involved baseline aside, the site will work as a fey location to bump into, if you’re in a game that has fey locations. That’ll do, just wish it was a little clearer.