Adventure Site Contest: The Tower of the Elephant / Tower of the Malphyr

​Written by J. Blasso-Giesseke (21st Century Games)
OSE, Levels 6-8
Tower in Zamora or off-brand Sword and Sorcery city equivalent.
  All in Zamora know of the Tower of the Elephant and its evil priest Yara and the magical gem that is
the source of his power, the Elephant’s Heart. All in Zamora know how King Amlek fears Yara and keeps
himself drunk to forget his fear. And, like their king, all in Zamora, even its thieves, fear Yara and his Tower.
  Well by Crom, if it isn’t J. Blasso, winner of the Wavestone Keep Adventure Contest and of No-Artpunk II. He has sent in a submission that’s less an homage to the Conan story Tower of the Elephant, more a direct scenarioization* of the story. Hopefully, you’ve read the story already, if not, it’s free here, take a few minutes and enjoy. This thing is that.
  This thing is well-written, formatted carefully with bolding, italics, and bulleting but never crossing over to full OSE tech-manual. A point against; this thing leans hard on contest criteria, adding a fourth page of content with the bestiary and treasure total in the back. Mr. Blasso emailed adding that if the page extra was disqualifying, to feel free to omit it…but then the guards being 3HD, the evil cleric being 14th level, etc, are details lost. Nothing fatal but an official frowny-face from me. The writing has lovely details that really pop, nobody is just a name but you have an obese thief Taurus of Nemedia, the dim-witted prince Elam, and so on, just enough to give the DM a hint on how to play them. Hooks are solid, and change the objectives for the tower heist. Rumors are also excellent, evocative and helpful.
  Map is fine. There’s the usual tower complaint of linearity, meaning the party is either going up, or going down from the top. Outer walls and tower itself are described as slick and glassy, but given most D&D players are like toddlers in their drive to climb any available surface I’d expect that leads to shenanigans. Features, loot, guards, lions, and shrub/tree coverage are all called out on the map, which is appreciated. When the key tells you the order of battle responses to alarm, you can quickly see all relevant players and track movements of the whole mob. A+ for presentation, C- for geometry.
  The real story of the adventure, helpfully outlined as “Actual Story”, is that an elephantine malphyr is using a cursed gem to control and evil priest guy and feeds on dude’s acts of wickedness. This is a good twist for parties with at least one player who’s read the Conan story, where the titular elephant was actually a benign entity. Individual bits interact nicely with hooks…one hook is that Elam the prince has disappeared, poor idiot has been polymorphed into a giant spider. He’s friendly but forgets that when he's rushing to give a hug that he’s a terrifying giant spider, a curveball that’ll lead to a dead prince 9 murderhobo parties out of 10.
  Most of the gameplay, of course, is going to be tackling the tower in practical, level-headed D&D problem solving mode. I am going to have to express skepticism on the level 6 portion of the stated range, encounters can be steeply challenging on this one, the level 14 cleric and the deceptive malphyr are both TPKs waiting to happen even when approached cleverly. Although any group of level 6’s that does tackle this thing, the survivors sure won’t be level 6 any longer.
  Treasure is…astounding for the size. Consulting the Forbidden Cheat Page yields a grand total of 453,500gp, or 203,500gp if parties don’t manage to uncurse the Big Honkin’ Elephant Gem. Flavor dripping here, with jeweled carpets, goblets filled with acid, grinning golden faces, a marble couch, the whole works. Magic items are surprisingly absent (assuming we ignore the Staff of Locusts in the Extra Page of Ignoring), but there are a couple of nifty magic incenses, yellow that enhances clerical magic’s range or purple that transforms wicked ugly things into appearing beautiful. Both very good.
  Will it fit in most worlds? Well, given that this is a direct expy of perhaps the most Appendix N story that exists, yes, this should be easy to fit in any city. Just place anywhere debouched and degenerate, and you’re golden.
*new word, patent pending. 
Other reviews:
Shocktohp
Grutzi
Owen Edwards

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