This is the long overdue second part of my review (that virtually no one was waiting for) of this mostly forgotten TSR adventure The Sword of Roele, for the Birthright setting. In the first part I’ve talked about how it has an absolute mess of a scenario, hilariously bad. But now I’m gonna talk about its main dungeon which I find, as the title says, pretty good.
So you’ve gone through the arduous process of the module’s disjointed, scene-based nodes and finally found the adventure’s main dungeon where the macguffin, I mean the Sword of Roele is. You stand in front of:
The Great Tomb of the Order of the Sun
- Mid-sized dungeon, 2 levels, 53 rooms
- funerary complex of knights do-gooders and some of their major figures
- designed by an evil magic-user architect to accomodate his own needs in his plans to achieve lichdom
The tomb’s only entrance is collapsed with only a narrow path to get in (shown as the « goblin path » on the map even though there’s no goblins in the dungeon, a obvious sign that the dungeon has been refurbished and changed from its original purpose). The PCs will immediately have to confront the troglodyte sentries and do some tunnel fighting.
There’s an whole tribe of 41 trogs in the rooms near the entrance. The trogs are also intruders to the dungeons.
Here’s a great bit:
« If the troglodytes lose 10 or more of
their number, they retreat into Areas 3
and 6. In the storage area they climb up
the tunnel into the audience chamber
(Area 8). They are cold-blooded so they
suffer only one-quarter damage from the
brown mold’s cold. In the hall, they hide
in the shadows behind the statues, waiting
for a chance to ambush foes. »
The trogs take advantage of their resistance to brown mold, that’s great!
When the PCs are in they’ll see large double-doors at their left (upper right on the map), they’ll feel a draft of cold air coming from the right (caused by the brown mold) and see an impressive hallway in front with rows of stone statues/caryatids on each side. They’ll probably notice the corpses of dead thieves on the floor too, at the limit of their light source. Good telegraphing for what represents the main gimmick of this dungeon: of course some caryatids are monsters (circled in red below)! As written the caryatids are the equivalent of lesser stone golems and are perfectly beatable. When I ran this dungeon I’d upgraded the stone statues to full stone golems status, they absolutely have to constitute a proper threat to force some hard choices (and clever ideas) from the players IMO.
Apart from the troglodytes and caryatids the main denizens are of the undead variety with some constructs sprinkled here and there. The dungeon definitely suffers from a gygaxian naturalism syndrome where things make sense for a tomb but there’s a lack of wonder involved.
Aside: Funnily enough there’s several mention of a resident vampire in the tomb, he’s supposed to be a big deal but he’s in fact nowhere to be found, he’s not even statted! Oops!
The rooms themselves are a mixed bag.
Some are great, like the Chamber of Shadows:
« Three of this chamber’s walls are covered
with an abstract pattern of black
lines. The fourth wall depicts a black
bridge over a misty chasm to a gate of
light. Words are carved into three of the
four stone walls. »
[…]
« The painted bridge at the far side of the
room is the Bridge of Sighs and Shadows,
a magical link through solid rock between
this room and the Divination Room. Only
those who know its secret can cross it. »
Other rooms are pretty boring. There’s several rooms in a row that are just filler; here’s a room with undead falcons, here’s a room with undead hippogriffs, the next one with undead griffons…
The second level is smaller and is designed essentially to confuse the players. It’s heavy on teleportation tricks, traps and of course it has more undeads and constructs.
There’s no faction play in this dungeon, the troglodytes are immediately hostile and other than them there’s few sentient beings. There’s an imp to be found who actually gives good advice as it serves his purpose, that’s nice. There’s also an homonculus but if you’ve met the imp he’ll feel kinda redundant. As written you may also be accompanied by the ghost of the order’s high priest that you can meet before entering the tomb and he does have useful information to provide (and some big secrets) but he’ll get angry if you fall into the usual adventurer’s tomb-robbing habbits and most people will be happy to put him to rest one way or the other before long.
So all in all, this dongeon has several weaknesses, even a few gaffes, but it has also several strong points, the hallway with the caryatids being a favorite of mine. It’s not a great dungeon but it’s good and it certainly doesn’t deserve to be completely forgotten as it is now.
Streets & Spores 