Adventure Site Contest 2: Wailing Tower

​Written by ShockTohp
ACKS, levels 4-6
Waterlogged clockpunk grave tower.
  In the salt district of the city, an old moldering water clock sits rusting. This marvel of hydraulic engineering, a gift from the local dwarf vault, was created as a heroic burial site of a human general of great renown, who once saved the dwarfs from a horde of lizardmen. The hero was interned with his spoils in a crystal dome, located in the basement of the tower (and surrounded by its reservoir) but in such a way as to allow admirers to look down on the interred from the ground level viewing gallery. However, its glory days are long gone, and the clock has been abandoned by its keepers. Now its ancient waterwheel creaks and groans, the machinery inside screeches like a tormented beast.
  The [blank]punk aesthetic is what we (meaning the internet, hi, I am The Internet) started to call any form of technology appearing in a premodern setting. First we have Steampunk, with its Victorian England stylings mixed with zeppelins and steam engines being used all over the place. Famously, the Eberron setting in D&D 3rd Edition era took the “DungeonPunk” art comment about early manual illustrations and leaned in on that hard, making a world with all the magic taken to a technological extreme. “Clockpunk” is the slightly sillier even earlier cousin to Steampunk, where instead of steam being used at absurd power/weight ratios it is gears that provide all your handwavy power needs, wound up either by hand or by magic. Dwarves and gnomes are frequent perpetrators of clockpunk, and it is no different here in the Wailing Tower, which is a giant enchanted water clock. Some may run away screaming from this; Warhammer Fantasy fans are licking their chops right now.
  The site’s story is pretty simple outside of the aesthetic…human general helps dwarves in a famous battle, then much later dies. Dwarves make ridiculous water clock tower tomb for general, complete with animated terra cotta statue guards and a crystal display case (as we all learned from Snow White, dwarves make see-through coffins for their human friends). General’s neglected peasant girlfriend haunts the tomb as a banshee. Tower falls to disrepair, now it’s lootin’ time. Sic transit gloria mundi.
  The map is a somewhat scribbly pair of phone pictures, which would normally be okay but given that the main thrust of the adventure is about disabling the mechanisms holding the tomb bubble underneath the water, which means we’re going to have to grade this as a diagram in a way…and it’s a little bit confusing as a diagram. With key access it’s workable, but I’m a little worried about how an exploring group of PCs organically grok the mechanism in the course of exploring it. 

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​  By default, while the players stand around gormlessly discussing things, the dungeon solves itself violently. There’s a dungeon clock that goes on, with gear doors shifting, giant hawks roosting on the tower’s top come back from a hunt, a rust monster inside eats a spindle and locks the door into one configuration, and then finally on Turn 10, a rival thieving party breaks dirt within a proscribed radius and half the statues animate for a royal row. I don’t object to clocks. I like clocks. But I hate sites that are held in perfect stasis until the players hit the encounter button and start the clock…if you want a set-piece that’s great, and the timeline works fine for a racing exploration/looting of a tower, but more effort going in to how the players poking the site starts the clock would be appreciated. Potential energy, good, but something about how knocking on the door (or whatever) kicks of the sequence would be good, because that kind of sequence thinking also helps when player zig instead of zag.
  Monster roster is light, just said rival thieves, rust monster, yellow mold, animated statues, and of course, the banshee. She’s not the classic elfin Bane Sidhe here, more of a much gentler ghost with a temporary level drain and a fear effect. Pretty sure the author is channeling childhood fears of the library ghost in Ghostbusters there, but custom monsters are welcome here and she’s a good NPC/threat. As is only right and proper, the players #1 threat is the players themselves; they can very easily screw things up and wash away a ton of treasure in their enthusiastic attempts to get at it.
  Treasure feels just about right for level 4, although level 6’s might feel a touch underpaid. The whole of the site’s cash loot (no value given for all this dressed stone, ACKS-fail) rests on with the general in his crystal tomb, so players walk in and see it first thing…if the players go in the front door, which no players ever do. Good idea, though, and it’s a nice hoard, including an unlisted-at-first Sword +3 Frost Brand, that’s something huge at this level. Just getting to it is the difficulty.
  This is a very ACKS adventure, going into the precise volumes of water needing to be lowered, all kinds of Roman history, clockwork craftsdwarves…but none of that is in direct conflict with baseline D&D. The banshee, being called a banshee, might really mess up some genre-savvy players, but it’s a fine level 4 boss monster as it is, and the % chance of human PCs being the general’s offspring is really a solid idea. Would go up to 6 with it, but some 4’s would have a good night here.

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