Adventure Site Contest 2: The Two Spires

Written by Louis-Joseph Benoit
OD&D, levels 3-4 (with hirelings)
Desert outpost
  Situated in a desert and flanked by a cliff, this outpost is visible from afar (and vice-versa). Two 100’ spires dart towards the sky, like shiny needles. They seem linked at their third by a hanging rope bridge. To the East, two domed buildings, a hut and an encampment. A couple hundred people must live there. To the West, a pasture with bushes and eight-legged beasts, studded with white dots in the sand. This outpost was built on the site of a battle won with the Hammer of Glory and is a safe place… for the daring. It is occupied by pariahs of the Copper Men and (recently) by orc mercenaries.
  This one’s fresh, my friends, and weird as heck. OD&D makes for some pretty original content in general, but when coupled with a non-Anglophone play tradition like happens here, there’s some very different to experience. I don’t know much about the French D&D scene but it seems like we’re into gonzo in a retro-scifi kind of way, it’s not my favorite vibe but I respect going this hard in the paint for it.
  We have here a visually impressive site, a twin set of rocky spires rising out of the desert next to a cliff. A neutral group of Copper Men, ancient telepathic desert people who use special crossbows (in the author’s own game, radium-powered pistols), hide from their fellows while negotiating with a band of orc mercenaries for help in genociding their oppressive fellows. The majority of the site is dedicated to these generally non-hostile people, with a little bit of undead nastiness beneath the spires in the form of swarming undead all guarding a Hammer of Glory. Neat.
  The map is…confusing, to be honest. The idea of mixing a side-view and a top-down view is good, but, well, YOU try and make sense of this:

  Biggest issue is that the main “crawl” portion of this site is only three keys, despite that very loopy cave map. You wander around facing the pretty dangerous undead without traps or treasure in most of those blobs, while the spires are too abstract to be run as a full assault if you’re of a mind to. The map is rough enough that it is actually more confusing than theatre of the mind. I had to read the text to picture where we’re going.
  When I say dangerous, I mean dangerous. Multiple wraiths, a mummy, a spectre, and zombie/skeleton swarms averaging 24.5 individuals. My gut on OD&D balance isn’t perfect, but I’m pretty confident that those are pretty rough for level 3-4 characters, even though the wraiths and the mummy are very low-HP per hit die. There are also hundreds of Copper Men and orcs if your party is foolish enough to kick things off with them. Couple that with traps like a lightning bolt trap, a finger of death…yeesh these are gnarly. I like the custom “Reptoctohorses”, which as the name would suggest are eight-legged lizard horses, cool. Interactions with the NPCs are great, all the named NPCs have personalities and different interactions based on different reaction rolls. I especially like the dhampir witch/alchemist with her big stock of boons and banes (fake healing potions are actually green slimes with continual light cast on them).
  Beyond potions to steal and worn equipment which gets valued, the bulk of the treasure here is in the undead underground section, and it is pretty cash-light overall. There’s a trend of the real treasure being the friends we found along the way, with sage services, arms and armor for sale, hirelings and food offered in a desert environment, and of course the alchemist witch offering the good stuff if she takes a shine to your heroes. I’d say that, but the Hammer of Glory is a campaign-altering weapon, +1/+3 vs goblins, Chaos, and magicians, additional d6 damage for lawful fighters and clerics, 1/day casts of fly and cure serious wounds. I love this weapon and I’m going to use it.
  Using the entire site is going to be…complicated. It’s weird enough that adaptation would definitely lose some of its not inconsiderable charms, while there’s a ton of effort here both in the running (communicating the map) and the playing (that threat roster). It’s a thing both wild and attractive, but, much like a telepathic milksap-eating lizard octo-horse, it is going to be a beast to saddle up and ride.