Adventure Site Contest 3: Dweller in the Mist

​Written by Alex Edwards
For AD&D, levels 6+
FREAKING VOLCANO DRAGON LAIR
An extinct volcano on a tropical island is home to Cavemen, Rango (a huge ape) and an Evil Mist Dragon: Kotomon the Hidden.      
   Okay, we just need to stop for a moment and admire this cover. Holy cow. Call me to adventure, baby. This is not an art contest, once again, but MAN did Sandbox Sorcerer knock this cover out of the park. The module is going to be a little terse up ahead, but this sucker communicates at least another thousand words. I could probably run the site based on the cover alone.
   Story is your typical tropical-island-giant-gorilla-cult-of-fallen-Altanteans-taken-over-by-a-mist-dragon-who’s-allied-with-pirates-who-also-lair-in-the-extinct-volcano. The island is only half a mile long and less than a quarter mile wide, so we’re trading a little heavily on tropes, but it’s a fun compressed space to encounter Polynesian-flavored adventuring, good setting. My only story complaint is that “extinct” word. All ingame volcanoes should be “dormant” at least…just like every waterfall should have a secret cave behind them, every volcano should be ready to erupt if the players monkey around with things Men Ought Not Mess With. Even so, if site has dragon, that makes site 100% better by default.
   This map might be too much, but it’s so bonkers that I don’t really care. Just wildly imaginative location, but it actually works for exploration gameplay, while making sense as a sort of hyperreal environment. The shapes here are oddball but there’s an explanation and we have neglected neither verticality nor water features, so of course there’s a lot of interest. Multiple means of ingress/egress, tons of space to crisscross, and the misty environment in the lower two levels means that despite the wide spacing you don’t feel exposed. 
   You are exposed, however. This thing will murder a few PCs if they neglect careful scouting and intelligence-gathering. Kotomon the old mist dragon is the most terrifying threat, but there are a bunch of other monsters, including the pirate crew, wights, an ettin servant, carnivorous apes, treants, dryads, giant crabs and octopi, plus a whole tribe, split 50/50 between evil dragon-worshippers and CG Noden-worshippers who consider Rango the huge ape his avatar. If players are careful, they can probably ally with the good faction but they’re not going to be inclined to be aggressive in fighting the bad faction and they’re sitting on some decent loot too, so players being players there will be added complications inevitably from their own greed. I’m always looking for interactions though, and everything here has a level of “talk to me” that’s rare to see. Oh, also there are wandering pterandons.
   Treasure is also suitably nutty. The dragon’s hoard is only 95,000gp in value with a few other choice magic items, but there are idols, narwhal tusks, pirate treasure chests, pearls, jewelry, etc for cash, while for other magic items there’s a load about the pirate ship plus a hidden crystal ball, a crossbow of speed, a +2 Megalodon Tooth battleaxe…it’s huge. It’s all great.
   It’s also, frankly, probably too big to be a proper adventure site. I don’t know how he fit this much stuff into two pages, but the sheer size and scope means even if you’re one of those competition crews you’re going to be hard-pressed to finish this one in a single session. And if you do, you’re kind of doing it wrong, this is a place that would reward multiple delves to fully appreciate the depth here. That’s not really a very substantial criticism, but it’s really the only thing that gives me pause. Everything is very high-level, 10,000ft view, which means there will inevitably be more effort on the DM’s desk to expand it once we get down to the nitty-gritty. There’s enough here to do the expansion work, but that is a problem.
   This sucker’s still going on my map ASAP though. 

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