Adventure Site Contest 3: Emerald Caves

Written by Patrick Dolan
For AD&D, levels 4-6
Druid Cave (vermin-flavored)
Rhodofon, a half-elf druid, found the Emerald Cave, a large chamber of smooth green stone located deep within a cave system, inhabited by giant beetles and a trapper. Rhodofon learned to communicate with and control the creatures with tapping sounds. She developed it into a language, which she taught the highly-intelligent trapper. Before Rhodofon died, she placed her prized possession, a pale green ioun stone (DMG 147, adds 1 level of experience), at the apex of the Emerald Cave. She told the trapper that it could eat well just staying in that spot, but Rhodofon wasn’t satisfied with the trapper as the stone’s only guardian.      
   Mad wizards are a dime a dozen, and in this contest especially evil priests are getting their day in the sun, but what about deranged druids? Unlike their more civilized magic-antagonist counterparts, a druid will tend to go crazy out in the wild, which leads to resulting dungeons a bit more…squamous. Nice to see Mr. Dolan shake things up a bit and add a druid lair to the mix.
   The story is as above, with the druidess dead and gone but her intelligent pet trapper still running the caves using her invented tapping language. There’s a fun and slightly sad little detail where 5-6 on the random encounter table is rhythmic tapping from the trapper, and Comprehend Languages has a little nugget where it’s asking if the druidess has returned. D’aww. Beyond that it’s a bunch of bugs and other verminous things living in the caves and just doing their thing.
   So last week we saw the unusual “series of rectangles” approach to natural caves, this time we’re going with the slightly more traditional “blobs connected by lines” approach, which, while not realistic, at least feels realistic. I believe the extremely faint squares in the background at 5ft but scale would have been nice. Now, I often will complain about maps like this where there’s no clear direction to go with each fork, but in the key descriptions we do have good indicators with stuff like “a dwarf or gnome will see this branch was constructed more recently”, so that gets a pass. The treasure chamber (9) being reasonably easy to see but inaccessible unless you grease up the hobbit, that’s great.
   Your love for this adventure’s monster roster is going to be entirely up to how you feel about giant bugs in D&D. Boring beetles, bombardier beetles, carrion crawlers, giant slugs, and purple worms join shriekers, violet fugus, shambling mounds, and that trapper…this is a chance for your druid to really shine and your illusionist to weep. Which, uh, I’m going to call bull on that “level 4” minimum unless you have a bunch more hirelings than those suggested up top. Like, squads of them. I do like how the boring beetles aren’t hyper-aggressive, just interested in defending their fungal farms, while the slug/shambler results are outsiders looking to eat said fungus. More interest and interactability than normal for “bug enemies”. The shriekers and violets are among the fungus in one of the caves and as usual that’s halfway between monster and hazard.
   Eating the fungus is similarly a boon/bane. Purplish (different from violet) is just rations, but there’s a brown fungus that functions as a cure disease and a bluish-green that works as healing the first couple times and then nauseates afterward. These are good for a week unless an alchemist figures out how to dry them/reconstitute, that’s a quest in and of itself. Surprisingly enough, there are no traditional traps but plenty of ways to make extra noise to get those random encounter rolls.
   Treasure here is pretty solid, and also waaaay higher than level 4. Most of the cash is in easily-moved jewelry, and there’s some decent magic too, with a pile under the trapper including +1 plate, +2 shield, and scrolls/potions (including one of halfling control, hah) and the narrow-crack treasure room even containing pipes of the sewers. All treasure is under hard monster fights or heavy concealment, with the pale green ioun stone lodged in the ceiling of the trapper’s room; chiseling it out summons those purple worms. Good treasure placement.
   These caves can be placed anywhere, with solid rumors and a nice backstory. Just really, really don’t think the level range is right on this one. 

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