Night's Dark Terror 10: Xitaqa 1, Round the Houses

This is part of a series of posts with a scene-by-scene critique, appreciation, and improvement of the 1986 TSR module B10, Night's Dark Terror. 

Neolithic ruins at Ҫatalhöyük - an inspiration? World History Encyclopedia.

The ruins of Xitaqa are a very difficult location, even for super-powered 5th edition D&D heroes. The party has to make their way through a platoon of hostile goblins who cohabit with a troop of rock-throwing baboons. It's likely the PCs have no real effective area damage spells, so infiltration should occur to them. When they get to the tower there are three tough fights in succession as they seek the captive Stephan Sukiskyn and chase his captor, the evil wizard Golthar. This bad guy will surely kill Stephan out of spite if he is given any time to react when alerted of the players' approach. Luckily he is cooped up in a windowless tower. Still, with Stephan's rescue in mind, there's little time to rest and recuperate in between bouts of combat.

First, though, there's a logical course of action for Golthar that the module authors missed. Stephan's capture creates a stalemate: the wizard knows that the tapestry he seeks belongs to his captive's family, but the strongest army he could command failed to take it by force. Why doesn't he just let the family know (by a message wrapped around an arrow shot into the front gate of the homestead) that he has Stephan and is willing to trade him for the tapestry? He'll try to disguise his intentions by asking for both tapestries in the hall, the secret map one and the one of a horse, passing the request off as a consolation trophy in acknowledgement that he was defeated, a small price to strike a peace. He'll also be explicit that any attempt to ambush the exchange or rescue Stephan will result in the captive's death. Such threats, for adventurers, were made to be ignored. But if the heroes do let the exchange go ahead, they will have more leeway to attack Golthar in stages. Not infinite leeway; the wizard will likely leave Xitaqa to mount his own expedition to the Lost Valley a few days after learning of its secret.

Some editing is also needed to have the defenders of the ruined village make sense. As Loshad told the party before the werewolf fight, creatures leave their lair during the active period -- but this isn't reflected in the three groups inhabiting Xitaqa, and we're led to believe that bats are active in the day. Here's a more sensible disposition of Xitaqa's home team that, incidentally, gives the infiltrators a bit more of a chance.

1. The baboons are massed and awake around dawn and dusk. By day most of them fan out into the hills around the ruins looking for forage. Only 5-8 apes -- those that are injured, unwell, old, or caring for very young ones -- stand guard on the top level of the canyons, but they will make noise if they sense strangers approaching. By night the baboons are all at home and have holed up in their designated building lairs, with only 2-3 insomniacs keeping watch up top.

2. The goblins sleep indoors by day, with a patrol as described going through the canyons - perhaps with makeshift parasols if the day is sunny? By night most of the goblins go hunting, and 12 or so of them are left doing various household tasks, going through the streets in groups of 1d4 individuals.

3. The bats from the tower flit around by night and will harass the party if they hear strangers moving about above the canyons. Fortunately, any fight with bats does not need to make noise as their screeches are infrasonic, and the combat will only be noticed within a range of 30' by creatures moving in the canyons below.

4. Don't forget the mounted Iron Ring operatives who lair in the ruins. They ride out in the morning to patrol the area between the hills and the river, and at night can be found in the tower, leaving their horses in the stable building S.

5. Finally, there is the retinue of Vlack, and these hobgoblin soldiers watch the entrance to the tower at X4 night and day, a pair of them on the steps in front of the double doors.

From these dispositions it becomes clear that the party will have a hard time sneaking up to the tower, but if they do so it should be at night, given the limited range of goblins' dark vision. A single alarm going up will likely alert the whole complex, and although goblin squads will likely arrive in dribs and drabs, the graver threat to the mission is Golthar being alerted by his hobgoblin lieutenant Vlack. All the same, there is a plausible sequence of events that makes the rescue of Stefan a possibility, if a difficult one...

The next two episodes will focus on the rooms in the base and the main part of the tower. They involve much speculation beyond the "facts" in the adventure as written, helping to add weight to what the Hutaakans were up to and weave a golden thread of meaning through the players' encounters with their artifacts.

Hex Crawl 23 #273: Tila'a and the Memory of Tilillu

Twelve hexes northwest, two north of Alakran.

  

The village of Tila'a is fifty-odd houses bult from massive stones of ancient times, planed down and cracked, reassembled as walls. But the roofs are of oiled cloth and goatskin stretched tight, for the dwellers have not the craft to vault a ceiling in such ponderous material. Some of Tila'a tend sheep and others goats, taking them to the broad pastures around the houses, which are not as poor as the desert around the roads, but not so rich as the fields to the north. Many fowl are also kept there, in chicken runs built of ancient stones piled low, and the children go out in the grass to find grubs and worms to mix with the chickens' meal.

These ancient stones recall a time, as those who know may read on their remaining incisions, when this was the counting-house, the tax-point and nexus to the road Nama'a of the land of Tilillu, a province of Wahattu that stretches to the salt sea, west of Pnokath. Tilillu remains, seen as a place of little ambition and less interest; and the former ruling status of this place is remembered only by its name, Tila'a, "Road of Tili." But if there was a road, its paving has been covered, worn down, or taken away.

Adventurers may come here to chase miscreants fleeing from the Caravanserai, or perhaps drawn by rumors of significant inscriptions on the stones. They may think that to the northeast, where the fields are better watered, they will find more of interest. But they are mistaken.

Hex Crawl 23 #193: Jagged Temple Ruin

Three hexes northwest, four southwest of Alakran.

In any campaign where players are given free will, there will be a number of sites that are dangled tantalizingly within eyesight, but passed by for greater glories or the simple needs of the day. Such a site is the Ruin of the Jagged Temple, or Jagged Ruins of the Temple, which sits atop a rocky hill and can be glimpsed from the Road of Flowers over the heat and haze of the dry plain.

The original design of the temple is forgotten. The fused and glazed ribs and melted walls of its structure, somehow, speak to the kind of inspired or fanciful architecture that answers to the rigorous demands of a theology, rather than the comfortable or defensible needs of a price, and so it is known as the "Temple." What could have transformed the strangely colored sandstone into a bubbled and jagged amalgam of seawater-colored glass? 

At any rate, the upper structure is passable and quiet enough, but an opening underneath a slumped, fused cylinder -- was it once an altar? -- leads down. Carved into the stone of the hill is a small chamber, made smaller by the shaking and dripping of the temple superstructure. There, if the light of the sun or moon shines straight down, can be seen tiny scraps that with good eyesight resolve themselves into small animal parts carved of yellowed marble -- paws, tails, snouts. These scraps are clues that a cockatrice dwells here, who petrifies then eats its small prey, but always leaves a little something for later. 

To get to the treasure in this place, explorers must haphazardly smash at the glass pillars and curtains that have dripped down to seal off the ends and corners of this cellars. At various points they may find the following objects:

* A jade figurine of the lizard-headed god once worshipped here, worth 80 gp.

* A bull's horn, stoppered at one end, with ony foul-smelling residue within, but engraved with 5 generations of a now-prosperous family that still can be found in Gesshed and will pay 100 gp for the heirloom.

* Buried in a crevice completely sealed over by glass, 25 pure golden kuzen of a bygone epoch, each one worth 5 gp.

* Folded into the two leaves of a woven asbestos folio, a singed papyrus, "The Preamble to the Great Invocation and Exhortation of the Phoenix" -- a protection from fire spell usable by clerics, warlocks, and wizards at level 3, that may have saved its casters from whatever conflagration destroyed the place, but did nothing for the temple.

*