Adventure Site Contest 3: The Hypogean Oracle

Written by Michael Strauss
For ACKS, levels unlisted (high)
Hags lairing in a wizard’s ruins
Generations ago, an Opelenean mage named Balthazar built a quiet cottage from which to study a buried edifice of elemental earth. He worked alone and eventually died alone, leaving his home and basement workshop to decay.      
   I’m xtremely amused by the shrine/temple/chapel/etc theme ongoing this ASC III, but it seems like the theme did not penetrate the ACKS community, who have otherwise really stepped up and delivered this time around. This time we're got a lair produced by what I'm assuming are a related team, Michael Strauss doing the writing while Brooke handles the art. As always, not going give extra points for a nice illustration, but I found them charming. Beyond that, we have a well-written two-column affair that only slightly exceeds the page count limit by listing random encounters and enemy spells on the map page. One frowny-face of scolding for that.
   The site's story is that we have an old earth mage's tower, fallen into ruin, now taken over as a lair by a trio of hags. In addition to a rumor table (hunter got got, hag baby left on temple steps, etc) there's a suggestion of having this lair crop up with random encounter rolls of "hag", "galdrtre", "cave bear lair", and/or "elemental place of power". I like that. The hags and the evil tree and the cave bears all interact with each other at the site, with things like the tree having made deals with the hags, or the larger of the cave bears a transformed and enslaved hunter. Good stuff. 
   Map is simple but because it's got a vertical component there's a lot more exploration choice than a simple 11-key would have without that z-axis. In addition to the basic entry via trapdoor there's a bear cave backdoor into a room with a perpetual darkness effect. The secret door links to the titular oracle room but there's also a couple-inch-wide crack leading to it from a second room, which given this is a site high enough level for gaseous forms, polymorphing into earthworms, etc...solid. 
   As mentioned, this is a high-level adventure site, with appropriately gnarly defenses. The Galdrtre isn't a monster immediately familiar to me but it's a tree-monster, those are always tough. A pair of cave bears in tight quarters is also a big nasty fight unless the hunter-guy gets his curse dispelled. Ant swarm is unpleasant because swarms. Even the humble cave locust is given a fair shake thanks to being encountered by the dozen in the aforementioned darkness room. And the hags themselves are horrifying enemies, level 9 spellcasters loaded for bear...hitting them all at once would be lethal for even maxed out ACKS parties with a bad set of saves. Good.
   All the traps are just runes of warding with ugly spell blasts, plus the semi-trap that is unlabeled potion/vial loot with some strong curses if you glug the wrong one. This is fine for something this scale.
   Besides the alchemy, we're loaded with a very decent loot sheet here. Coins from the old departed mage, of course, but also "blessed thistle" and other spell component supplies, the youngest hag's spellbook, and of course the hunter himself...he'll be a valuable henchman if he's freed (let's be honest, he's getting murdered by the PCs). The biggest "loot" is a spell-crystal-generating giant crystal geode that has a few present already but generates more at a rate of 500gp/month. I love that. Then there's the oracle itself...using it lets the user discover the nearest buried undiscovered lair, which is great, I love having something to seed even more dungeons. Of course this thing can be looted quickly at the price of destroying it forever. Very solid treasure design. 
   You can put this thing anywhere, either as a random encounter as suggested or in the seeded rumors. Just don't send your lowbies in there, they'll get mangled.