Adventure Sites 3: The Mystery of the Floating Rock

​For B/X, Levels 3-4
By Adam Szabo
The laboratory of Zhaggarog, the Chaos Mage, is located deep within a rock floating 30 feet high, visible only in the moonlight. He uses a teleportation spell to abduct creatures, including humans. Beyond developing special mutagens, he aims to conquer the region with an army of experimentally created perfect beings. The unknown floating rock has recently been sighted nearby, and the city has commissioned its exploration and destruction due to the disappearances it has caused.
   Floating castles can be conservative things, static locations under the command of cloud giants. Jack and the Bean Stalk stuff, basically. There's another option, though, in which floating fortresses pull from UFO/abductee literature, flying locations devoted to capturing victims for unknown (but always sinister) purposes. The passive flying castle is something to be infiltrated and robbed, the flying slaver ship is something to assault more aggressively. Themes are themes, that's just how it goes.
   In this particular case we mix the abduction UFO with "crazy alchemist wizard's lair" and have ourselves a floating rock. Said chaos mage is obsessed with making "perfect creatures", which mostly seem to be kind of umber-hulky. Mutagens make you buggy, this is established in the lore, it's fine. Fine little rumor table to wind you up, and there you are. Go there and fix the issue, my little level 3 darlings.
   Your first challenge is to understand these map interconnections. The shape is good, the layout is fine...but how do these stairs interact? Well, let's just look at the keys ohcrapnonumber. There's a lot of interconnection that just isn't keyed, because this map is too big. It's not bad in and of itself, but its too big for two pages, hate to say. Really do like the mix of stuff, and more sites need to do the thing where pit traps/holes drop you down below. 
   Going to note a great little piece right here: "-Character replacement: Opportunity for replacement characters in the cells of rooms 11 and 16." This is a very good thought for any dungeon that's remote/hard to reach, like this one. Those prison cells also have "four henchmen" as an offered benefit too, great stuff. 
   Beyond that, most of your interaction on this one is "stab" and "don't die to trap". That's not terrible if the fights are interesting, and most of the baddies have a little something. Random encounters are servants (crazy cultish fellas), slaughter beasts (bug monsters), and insidious gnome assistants (treacherous crazed little dirtbags). A few rooms have nasty fights contained by stasis fields; those are wonderful because the players see the danger, but of course no player ever can resist pulling a lever. Evil mage Zhaggarog has troll blood for regeneration and his spell loadout includes stinking cloud, fireball, and mirror image...level 3s must be pretty adroit over there in Hungary. 
   How much loot are you getting for this? Well...you won't go hungry. Straight coinage is a little rare, but you'll have stuff like "robes woven from pearls" (on dryad in stasis), or a jewelry box containing a diamond (5000at) (scorpion underneath because HAH)...it's solid stuff. Like everything else, slightly crazy. 
   Ease of campaign integration? Despite the zany premise and gonzo flavor, this is actually extremely ease to include in most games with magic. Floating monster-filled wizard rocks are a frequent and understandable problem that'll crop up in most such worlds.

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