Written by Richard Sharpe. B/X, For levels 4-5 White dragon lair beneath a mountain fortress. The fair Princess Gwaelin needs rescuing, but the white dragon Frostfire guards her in the cavern below Black Gate Castle. With this, we’ve reached the end of our submissions…and what a rewarding trip it has been. I’m sure we’ll end it quietly, with a little trip to -NOPE DRAGON LAIR. In Frostfire’s Durance Vile we have the most classic trope of the genre…a princess, held captive by a dragon, within a fortress. Richard Shape tackles the classic with vast amounts of energy, vast amounts of thought, vast amounts of content…one might even say too much, were one a churl. As an aside, there’s an artist credited, one Luis Torres, who’s done a brilliant job on the two pieces used here; the cover art shows the titular Frostfire being confronted by a trio of PCs…the cover is great, Frostfire is grinning with predatory glee at the puny heroes, positively delighted to have them visit, supreme in confidence and utterly unconcerned. The custom monster, the psionic ghoulish batlike “Hellwing”, gets a lovely sketch as well. Show that to your players and they’ll go “oh crap…” We’re not here to grade art though, how’s the text? Single column slightly surprised me considering how much content the author’s working to cram in, but it’s not terrible to read. There are bullets inside the paragraphs dividing out features, which works, it’s not instantly parsed but a little study goes a lot way. Clearly a student of the Lynch school, the text is sure to add flashy and evocative language (bones are “moldering”, stalactites “hang like teeth”), but never to the point of obscuring the facts. There’s a challenge in organization here, given the scope of the adventure, which Sharpe charges directly at by ignoring rumors, hooks, or preamble to go directly to “you are all recruited by some knights to sneak into the site, they have multiple plans (but if this is a one-shot, use just the fastest one)”. I’m not against that as an intro for a one-shot, but if it’s a place on a map, you can make it organic. The scenario itself is dynamic and time-sensitive, which is great for plotted adventures but can be a problem for a site. The maps for this are…also a lot. The dragon’s lair proper is buried deep beneath a dungeon, within the keep, that’s within a massive castle, up in the hills, within a kingdom that has a criminal Black Legion. The focus of the adventure site is the cavernous white dragon lair, which is right and proper, but the realistic and direct maps of said castle, keep, and dungeon means an enterprising dungeon master could certainly run the full adventure that was obviously planned. By default, though, everyone gets dumped into the lair beneath, and it’s…pretty solid. Much like in the keep above, a lot of efforts have been poured into making it a plausible, semi-realistic environment, but it’s saved from being just caves-in-line-with-caves by a stream that runs throughout the environment, heralded by the echoing thunder of multiple waterfalls, accessed by ledges that lead to perilous ways around the main path (which requires its own ledge-scaling). Multiple methods of entering the lair…yeah, I’ll count it. One note on the map vs key, the keys list “11” twice and I’m not entirely sure which room is supposed to be #12. The adventure hinges mainly on using one or two of the “Orbs of Frost Shield”, spheres made of ice (and as fragile as ice) that emanate a spherical…uh, frost shield. Good item in a vacuum, although somewhat videogamey to be the lair of a white dragon, in the full module I’d recommend rumors of them being a side quest. The aforementioned hellwings are a fun threat, psionic swoopers who’ll probably focus first on your wizard and cleric. The main doors to the dragon’s lair are flanked by massive stone statues with red gems in their foreheads, rock golems with fire-ray attacks, which is a great curveball to throw against a party loaded up on cold resistance in preparation for a white dragon. All good, then it’s straight to the dragon, who is described with thunderous poetic vigor…but then we’re never told his age category. Just his dimensions, so I guess we need to go back to figure that out from our B/X bestiary? Treasure, outside of those two golem’s fire-rubies, only exists in the dragon’s hoard (located at key 11 or 12). The hoard is appropriately nice, 50k plus a frost brand sword…in mixed silver, gold, gems, and jewelry. What’s the mixture of this incredible hoard the PCs are going to have to sneak out beneath a well-garrisoned castle? Your guess is as good as mine. It’s not actually all that difficult to place Frostfire’s Durance Vile and the keep above it into most campaigns…Black Legions made of criminals, chaos-corrupted barons, and controlled white dragons are all very plausible. To use the whole thing I’d need a lot of seeding beforehand, though. This is without a doubt a wonderful adventure, either a one-shot or, as I’d recommend to the author, expanded into a full 8-page module designed as a full-fledged adventure...keep it this sleek, just assume about 4-5 sessions. As an adventure site, it definitely strains its bonds. One heck of a crescendo to end the contest on though, thunderous stuff.
3 Comments
B/X (the actual system) doesn't divide dragons by age categories like OD&D or AD&D...like any other monster, you simply roll hit points according to the creature's hit dice (6, in the case of a white dragon). Interestingly, white dragons in B/X are Neutral in alignment...not necessarily evil or chaotic in nature.
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Stooshie & Stramash
3/2/2024 02:23:52 am
That's fine cover art and the maps are interesting too with height changes, obstacles and loops. Does this really all fit into the required number of pages?
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"Writing a small (12-24 location) dragon's lair should be a standard design challenge, in that you can compare one designer's talent with another."
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