Adventure Site Contest: Lost Vault of Kadish

Written by Jonathan Becker.
AD&D, Levels 3-5
Hidden tomb at an oasis.
  Some 50 yards from the waterline, partially obscured by vegetation, stands a time-worn statue of what appears to be a prancing centaur (closer inspection reveals it to have been a horsed rider, but the horse’s head has been lost, and erosion has removed most of the rider’s legs). The stone statue is about 3’ tall and stands upon a stone pedestal; it holds a curious black iron spear (easily removed) pointing away from the water towards the featureless desert. Anyone following the direction the rider points will find themselves dropping through a large sinkhole some 60 yards away from the tree line of the oasis, landing them in area #1...
  We’re back to the deserts, children, this time with a site from Jonathan Becker of the great B/X Blackrazor blog. In a remote oasis plagued by aggressive centaurs, we have another “point to where the tomb is” introduction, in this case a stone statue with a black iron spear as noted above. The touch that it’s an old horse-and-rider statue that’s weathered down to be centaur-looking, thus the reason for the centaurs holding the area to be sacred, is nice. In any case, following the spear gets the party dumped into a sinkhole holding the titular Lost Vault, now let’s go loot it silly.
  The adventure is formatted in the by-now standard two-column, not wasting much time with backstory, rumors, or hooks beyond the oasis context. Muscular and direct prose, technically in bullet points but really just paragraphs…there’s an occasional wry interjection here and there but the writing is here to convey the site with precision, and that’s what it does. The site’s actual content is nicely imagined, so ignoring the sizzle we have quite a nice steak.
  The map, produced by one Sophia Becker (one suspects nepotism in the hiring of this cartographer), is fine for the scale of the site, hand drawn but very clean and clear, good line work. The place is almost completely linear, which is logical for the vault setup, except the great weight of time has begun to wear down the walls in some places, meaning a patient group could actually dig their way in to the main vault goodies, bypassing some of the defenses.
  …and those defenses are pretty gnarly. The initial tumble into the sinkhole dumps the PCs into the pincers of a quartet of large scorpions, with excessive noise and light summoning blood hawks from their roost high in the walls of the entrance cavern to swoop in and try to eat the PCs and the bugs. After that frantic encounter there’s a nice bit where you need the black iron spear from earlier to open the vault’s huge doors, introducing the idea of keys, and tricks to open the doors to the next portion of the vault. There’s next a flame puzzle, then a trick with polymorphed huecuva, then an antimagic room and a library where the loot starts to trickle in. No !egyptian tomb would be complete without a secret door of course, leading to a throne room with the titular Kadish, who bears the bulk of the loot to be found in the area. No mummy fight, actually, but the “final boss” of the place will most likely be the dune stalker that gets summoned when the party attempts to remove the two most prominent bits of loot from the vault.
  Said loot (a turban-gem and a nice ring) is accompanied by some very sweet consumables, like a wand of lightning and potion of longevity. The library has some useful magic scrolls, which is logical, and then there’s the much-appreciated inclusion of valuable ancient books that require gentle handling to retrieve. A side-room gives the opportunity to free an efreeti from his bottle but unless groveled to the efreeti will just attack, freeing him does grant XP as if the treasure was “retained”. At an average of about 7,090 gp, it’s a worthwhile day at the office for level 4’s, particularly with all the magic consumables also available.
  Any desert “pyramids and tombs and mummies” location can easily have the Lost Vault of Kadish placed. A little work with either hooks and/or rumors would have been appreciated, but as a classical desert adventure site the place has a lot to recommend.

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