Following up from the adventures in the Keep on the Borderlands, that party has since continued their adventures in the classic adventure: Against the Cult of the Reptile God. For a bit of background on the previous events of this mini-campaign see the "reviewcap" of that module. It is worth noting that this campaign is set in the world of the Hill Cantons, so certain setting-specific adjustments were made during the course of the adventure.
Written below is a recap of the events of this particular playthrough, with a brief review of the module itself at the very end. Happy reading!
Characters
- Bear Stormpissed - Level 5 Fighter
- Jarno Ironbraid - Level 5 Dwarf
- Pearl the Reckless - Level 5 Magic-User
Followers
- Dromat - Level 3 Fighter
- Ranulf - Level 2 Fighter
- Galdrel - Level 2 Elf
- Argo - Loyal Dog
- Mika - War Ocelot
Graveyard
- Hillcox - Level 1 Fighter
- Banjo - War Dog
Note: Character levels are taken from the end of the adventure.
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| Cover Art by Tim Truman |
Action Report
Following up their adventures in the Caves of Chaos the party travels northwards to investigate the mysterious village of Orlane. The group had previously heard rumours of people of the village mysteriously disappearing only for some to return acting strangely, seemingly without memories of their previous lives.
On their way to the village the party find two dead elves. Upon further inspecting these bodies the players find a letter wherein the local boyar of Orlane asks for help in uncovering a supposed conspiracy.
Arriving in the village the party find it to be very still and near dead place. Villagers seem to hole up in their houses and visiting the nearest inn they find it to be occupied by many unsavoury patrons. Regardless the party purchase a room though they refuse all offers of free drinks from one of the other patrons.
Following up on the letter they found on the road, the party decide to pay a visit to the local boyar. Meeting with the man who is named Zacharias and after dispelling any suspicionsm, they are told that the village seems to be under some sort of a curse. For a year the people have periodically been going missing with only some returning, many people have also packed up and left the town due to this. Zacharias himself suspects an old sorcerer living in a nearby grove named Ramne to be behind the disappearances.
Before heading back to the inn the party investigate the grove but are turned back after Pearl is temporarily blinded by the sorcerer himself who shouts for the party to leave.
The groups rest is interrupted by a sudden ambush during the night, luckily both Dromat and Argo are able to hear something approaching and warn the rest of the group. The ambushers themselves are a duo of strange ill-smelling lizardmen whom the party are able to easily dispatch.
The party leave the inn only to hear the screams of several people echoing across the nearby hills. Following the sound the party discover tracks which seems to lead from the now ransacked boyars manor all the way into a large and fetid marshland.
The party spend their night in the manor and the next day once again decide to try and follow the tracks into the marsh. In this they are ultimately successful and the party finds themselves entering into a strange barrow-like structure dug into a mound of earth. After fighting some guards and exploring the first few rooms finding nothing, the party make their way back to the village.
Once again the group visit Ramne the magician who learning of the partys excursion into the swamp immediately warms up to them. According to him the village is plagued by a strange cult dedicated to some sort of serpent known only as Explicitica Defilus. The village sun-dome Ramne says,is one of their headquarters and he urges the characters to mount a raid against it, offering to help himself.
The characters take him up on his offer and together they discover what Ramne has said is in fact true, as the temple houses several chaotic monks whom the party manages to defeat before concluding their scouting mission.
Realizing that this cult must be the very same the party faced at the end of their adventures in the Caves of Chaos they decide to leave the village and head north to the city of Dregendorf to rest up and gather supplies and men-at-arms before mounting a proper assault against the village temple.
Arriving in the city of Dregendorf itself the party purchase both supplies and spend some time in the alehouse carousing. Finding the city much to their like they all pool their resources and buy a townhouse in the city. Through having a bit too much to drink Bear manages to drunkenly marry a woman working at a nearby "house of pleasure". Luckily for both parties the match is in fact a good one and the two fall in love.
With their larders stocked and with three new hirelings and several animals acquired, the group make their way back to the village of Orlane to wrest it from the cult of Explicitca Defilus.
A Return in Force
As the group ride into Orlane they are saddened to find the grove of Ramne burnt to the ground with no trace of the wizard. As it is nighttime they all decide to immediately take revenge for the old mage and mount an attack against the corrupted sun-dome.
Delving through the upper levels the party discover many normal amenities such as a kitchen and common room, though importantly also a trapdoor which leads the party into an underground complex. Here they fight and defeat a half-ogre and also come into conflict with a group of robo-dwarves. These almost kill the party by collapsing the ceiling on top of them, though the party are able to flee before this happens.
Heading further down into a natural cave system, the group find two cells with a prisoner in each. One is one of Zacharias' two daughters and the other a man simply calling himself Frank. Both had been captured and taken below, being used as servants for the evil clerics above.
Heading back up to the temple proper the party take an alternative route and come face to face with the turncoat head cleric. She is paralyzed by use of a wand and slain, but not before she is able to kill Frank.
Finding no other routes the party take a large staircase leading up to the top floor of the temple. Here they encounter and defeat a large group of skeletons and are almost ambushed by a group of goblins throwing burning oil. As the characters are busy fighting the goblins a woman with scales and snakes eyes appear in one of the doorways, beginning to weave a magic spell. Thankfully she too is paralyzed by use of the wand and captured as the group defeat the last of the temples inhabitants.
As the group discuss their next course of action the paralysis wears off and the woman is able to take the form of a large snake and slither out of her bonds, fleeing into the night. As they still consider the village to be hostile territory the players once again travel to Dregendorf to rest up.
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Returning to the the marsh for their final assault against the cult, the party are overjoyed to find Ramne waiting for them! Being a mage of great power he easily escaped the mob of angry villagers who burnt down his house, now joining the party to free Orlane of its curse.
Delving through the lair of the reptile cult the PCs encounter many strange creatures; a caged woman with the appearance like that of a songbird, several more lizardmen, one giant weasel and several giant snakes, loosing their hireling Hillcox on the way. The party also encounter the ghost of the mayor of Orlane. Speaking with him, the party swear to defeat the reptile cult and rescue his remaining family.
Heading through a secret door the party come face to face with the snake-eyed priestess they had previously captured. As battle is drawn she turns into a giant snake and summons undead to aid her against the party. Though Bear is bitten by her poisonous fangs he is able to resist its effects, Jarnos dog Banjo is sadly not so lucky and perishes. The party are ultimately able to slay the priestess and take from her the keys needed to open the nearby prisons.
Inside the cells the party find Zacharias eldest daughter and wife but also a magician none of them recognize going by the name Glamdalf, claiming he had traveled north looking for an oracle to answer several cryptic dreams. All three have managed to resist the hypnotic gaze of Explicitica Defilus, and have been kept here awaiting whatever grisly end the cult has planned for them.
After enlisting the captives the party tacitly enter the chamber of the serpent goddess, readying themselves for battle. They hears a loud hiss as the horrific creature appears, slinging a deadly fireball towards them. Realizing the grave danger the party is in, Ramne throws himself before the front line - absorbing the attack and getting brunt to ash. Little time is left for the party to grieve as the hypnotic gaze as all who are clear of mind can hear the approach of many angry lizardmen.
As another spell puts many of the hirelings to sleep, those awake make a desperate effort to defeat Explicitica. Jarno and Galdrel are turned by Expliciticas hypnotic gaze and begin attacking their party members, leaving Bear to fend for himself in the front row. With the aid of a clutch light spell from Glamdalf, Bear is able to duel and slay using his enchanted blade Moonblood.
The party gather what they can from the hoard of Explicitica and rush their way out of the underground temple, before they are overrun by lizardmen. Arriving on the outside they let out a sigh of relief as they are greeted by the morning sun.
As they travel back to Dregendorf the party reunite Zacharias family and say their goodbyes to Glamdalf. Before leaving he helps identify the PCs magical items, telling them to beware of events in the south. The party decide to spend their next few weeks in the city, taking some well earned rest.
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| by Jim Holloway |
GM Thoughts
By jove was this adventure a banger! It should be noted that as of me posting this, it has been a little less than a year since the events described herein were played through, the campaign having ended since then. In total the adventure was played through in eight total sessions, being sessions eight though fifteen of the campaign.
Using keep on the borderlands as part of the set-up for this adventure worked really well, especially since this adventure is not as low-level friendly as you might expect (more on that later). The final battle against Explictica Defilus really felt like the culmination of a an epic quest against the cult as a result of this interweaving (one of the players even cried when Ramne sacrificed himself). I would absolutely recommend this approach to anyone else who wants to run both these modules in succession.
As the characters were more mid-level no one had the displeasure of having their PC die throughout this adventure. In contrast to general OSR attitudes I actually do think this is quite a nice thing. It is rare that having your character die is a positive experience, though I think the risk of character death is important to establishing stakes in any given situation. A few deaths on the part of the party hirelings or animals only reinforce these stakes whilst not harming the PCs themselves.
This is not to say that I "went easy" on the players or fudged the dice. The PCs survived the adventure mostly in part to their own burgeoning player-skills (and of course a little luck considering the high amount of instant-death poison in the adventure). The growth of the Players themselves was quite notable when put in contrast to the groups previous adventures. Considering their approach and plan of attack when encountering monsters, as well as keeping a good feel for whether they were in over their head is the biggest reason for why this adventure did not see any PC deaths.
At the end of the keep of the borderlands i bemoaned me not throwing in more Hill Cantons specific creatures and concepts. This time around was a little better, as i filled the Orlane with various enemies emblematic of the setting. Still more could have been done, and I feel like the campaign was not really served by setting it in the Hill Cantons as opposed to some other generic fantasyland.
The one caveat is the crossovers that were made possible by having the game set in the same world as the "main" hill cantons campaign. The appearance of Glamdalf at the eleventh hour of the adventure was a happy surprise to the player who knew who he was, as well as a fun bit of colour for the other players. I made extensive use of fantasy calendar to keep strict time records and keep track of events. This way I was successfully able to provide a sense of scale and distance between the two games, with characters in one game hearing about events taking place in the other.
I have written about having high level NPCs in the party before, and I applied the lessons learned from then to now (both Glamdalf and Ramne were left for the party to control like hirelings for example). It should be noted that when the party found Glamdalf he had no spells memorised and the party had to expend a rare potion to generate him a set of new ones randomly, thus requiring the party to spend a rare resource. No player complained about the railroad-like death of Ramne, and I think that if he had been allowed to take part in the final battle it would have felt like a deus ex machina.
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| by Harry Quinn |
The Module
Against the cult of the reptile god is a module that successfully meshes an investigatory start with some classic dungeon-crawling. At 36 pages it presents both a couple smaller dungeons and a nicely fleshed out village, with better layout than other modules of a similar ilk (the Village of Hommlet comes to mind). I find that the beginning of the module is the stronger part, having a very strong hook for the party to investigate. This investigation is however not without its flaws.
I would suggest removing one or two of the friendly NPCs in the adventure (the wizard, the mayor, the two elves), as having too much assistance at the very start of the adventure lessens the need for the players to run their own investigation. For this reason I actually think that the wizard Ramne makes for the best ally out of these three as he needs convincing to aid the party. His assistance essentially serves as a reward for the players once they have identified the village temple as the centre of the conspiracy. As an added benefit he can also help lead the party towards the main complex if the GM doesn't want to bother with the party searching the marsh. If the GM thinks that their players would feel overshadowed by having a high level NPC in the party you might de-level him to alleviate this.
This adventure is not very 1st level friendly, regardless of what the cover might state. The troglodytes that are a main enemy in the adventure make for very powerful opponents, and even a few of them might easily overpower smaller parties. As the cult will actively send agents to combat the PCs there isn't always a lot the players can do to prepare themselves for these battles and as such they should not be able to simply crush the party. Explictica Defilus herself makes for an incredibly imposing opponent for a party who might have only reached second level, being able to potentially wipe out the party with her fireball, sleep, or web spells.
Having this adventure be the second or third in a larger campaign solves a lot of the issues with the adventure. A lot of the scenarios are not nearly as deadly, and even the high level NPCs do not outshine the characters as much if they are of a more comparable level to the party. This way the GM can also seed rumours about the village before the characters arrive.
I think this adventure has aged very well when put into comparison with other contemporary adventures. A lot of the mainstream discussion around RPGs these days are very focused around the story as something pre-prepared by the GM, though heavily influenced by the backstories of the PCs. This module certainly has a very strong narrative while still being a very open-ended adventure. Running this for players more familiar with 5th edition I don't think it would stand out, in fact I would say that AtCotRG shares more with Lost Mines of Phandelver than it does the Village of Hommlet.
Running this adventure a potential second time, I would most likely run it the same as here. The focus on roleplaying in the first half will undoubtedly make any new playthrough very different than the last. This I think is what earns the adventure it's status as a classic.
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