Adventure Site Contest 3: The Monastery of the Fallen Star

Written by Armitage
For Basic Fantasy, levels 2-3
Gnolls in a monastic cave
Grim tales of a band of pillaging beastmen have haunted the border town of Tathor for weeks. Word spreads that the raiders are drawing closer, led by a savage called Gor the Toothtaker. Yesterday, the town’s most famous resident, the halfling minstrel Wallace Grimfoot, vanished while on a fishing trip and the townsfolk fear he has been kidnapped by the beastmen. Rumors say that the beastmen have taken refuge in the abandoned monastery by Lake Ire, a place long whispered to be haunted.    
   Thank goodness, more religious buildings. In this case, an abandoned one, but that’s fine.
   Twelve rooms over two pages on this one; single column gets a bad rep, it’s perfectly fine in something this scale. Everything’s pretty clean here, and I don’t usually comment about editing unless there are some gaps…and sadly here there are a couple gaps. Having a pool with coins glinting at the bottom but no value given for them is annoying but easy enough to miss, as an example. One can make guesses, but it’s a lot of additional friction for the reader.
   Story is pretty much what it says on the tin. Monastery built around a fallen star (actually the egg of a volcano demon, oops, hate it when that happens) is now owned by a gnoll and his “warband” (like six guys and a tagalong MU). Friendly local bard got himself captured, apparently he’s a rare NOT-Cacofonix, so there’s your added motivation. All we need, away we go.
   Our map was apparently originally a Dyson Logos joint, but it’s been modified and redrawn in DungeonScrawl, adding secret rooms and connectors. The dropped dozenth key leads to the natural cave (11) off to the side, as an always-appreciated semi-hidden secondary ingress. Loops are properly doopy, and this is a about as good as a non-vertical-component map can be. Now I could object to the usefulness of the alternate paths, but that’s about key details, not baseline layout. Fine functional map.
   We’re in low-level world, so as you might expect we’re in kiddie-land for the monsters. Gnolls are encountered in a pair, a pair with the MU, and a pair with the gnoll-boss along with aforementioned hobbit bard. The boss is a fearsome murderous raider but he’s also embarrassed by his singing ability. Variety is provided by a librarian’s shadow who gets mad at noises and an escaped pet baby owlbear who’s hungry and scared. Yeah, this does seem like a somewhat child-focused roster, with the notable exception of the demon-egg, which is only accessible via magic weapons cracking it (or waiting a year for it to hatch)…this is a horrible demon-spawn creature that’s also controllable by an item found elsewhere. How you’re supposed to learn about this item is less than clear, but it’s a cool monster/concept. Similar thing with the owlbear chick, who’s getting close enough to read that collar until dispatch? Maybe the pool with an unspecified number of coins that inflicts a geas to protect the egg if drunk from also imparts this knowledge.
   Beyond the possible loot of an owlbear, a grateful halfling bard, and/or volcano godspawn, the raider Gor Toothtaker does of course have some raided coins-an-things, but disappointingly no teeth are in the cache. The sub-boss magic user has a tiara, some pocket-rubies, and a scroll so that’s nice. Her spellbook is [404 File Not Found]. In the shadow’s library the usual boon-and-bane combo of nice magic scroll plus book of madness are found, but perhaps most controversially there’s also a map to another dungeon (5,000gp, Amulet of Controlling Volcanogodspawn). I like seeding in treasure maps among loot, but it’s a curiously specific thing here. Use with care.
   The placement of this site is as easy as pie. Obscure monastic retreats captured by gnoll raiding parties? Sure, no problem, seen a million of ‘em, always room for one more. Tone will probably fit many if not most campaigns, just punch up the menace a bit more here and there.