UNHOLY ABOMINATION: GO!!!!!!I have fixed "The Slaying Stone"--the thoroughly uninspiring Type IV adventure I was whining about yesterday via the simple expedient of hybridizing it with The Emira's Necklace, a short adventure James Hutchings was kind enough to post today on his awesome blog.
All is well in the world! View it!!!!:
-Wolves and tower and other things from The Slaying Stone not mentioned below stay pretty much the same. Plot-dispensing NPC wants the necklace for the same reason she wanted the stone. It kills whoever wears it if they're in the town.
-Approaching the goblin town:
*Through the forest: roll once on the Emira's Necklace forest encounter chart (first two pages Emira's Necklace document) of. If the PCs aren't sneaky and make noise during this encounter, a goblin patrol (d4 goblins) will come out and investigate the noise.
*Over the river: there's a 4 foot wall with d4 goblin archer guards awake at any given moment on the far side of the 30' wide slow-moving, muddy river. There will be d12 guard awake or asleep total.
*The gatehouse: 20'x20'x10' tall rectangle. A steel cage between city walls. 2 guards. (Was that so hard, WOTC?)
-There's no "kobold slum". That area of the map is actually the miniature city from Emira's necklace, room 2. The goblins used evil magic to shrink the foes they could not subdue and built on top of them. It's a very extensive miniaturized city, with goblin buildings built on top of it (the tiny city just covers the streets--in some cases the residents have built onto the sides of the new goblin buildings). The kobold encounters that are supposed to happen here are basically the same, but with goblins.
-Each round the PCs fail to be sneaky in town roll d10 + the number of times the PCs have fucked up so far. Any number over 5 indicates that many goblins are prowling nearby. Doing what? We have a table for that.
-The goblin monster pens contain Hollow Mockeries as per Emira's Necklace room 4. The goblins ride them.
-A crawling armwyrm (like the giant arm in Emira's Necklace) replaces the chatty dragon in the hot springs. Its lair is like rooms 9 and 10 of Emira's Necklace, though the mouths speak goblin, not dwarvish. It has half of the necklace--the other half is in the temple.
-The temple is like room 11 in Emira's Necklace. The pillar has half the necklace. The priests are goblin priests. Attacking the temple head-on without stealth will bring d20 +6 goblins running from outside, though the door can be barred effectively for d4 rounds. The temple will need actual dimensions if the PCs are going to have a real fight here and have any real escape plan.
-Draw a town map or grab one off the web. It need to have a river border, a forest border, locations 1-9 from the original module, plus a place for encounters 9, 5, and 13. So that's 12 numbered locations inside the town. The mansion, temple, and library should be in the center of town and identifiable at a distance--decide what distance that is. I suggest a town of 30-60 total buildings.
-Rort the goblin is making a Search Engine--see Emira's Necklace, encounter 4.
-Room 7 from Emira's necklace is hybridized with the wererat encounter. The encounter will occur as described in Emira's necklace only the perps are also goblins and the victim's also a wererat. The wererat knows what the original knows.
-Room 8 from Emira's necklace is actually implanted in the center of the goblin mansion (encounter 12). The bubble pit fills most of the antechamber with only a thin ledge on the end. Hu-Jat is just a jumped-up max HD goblin with a human mayor's hat on that falls over his eyes (thus his name). He has no bullshit munchkin "rage drake"--just the monster in the bubble pit. Hitching a ride all the way up on a bubble leads to a bell tower.
-For any unlabelled building roll on Emira's Necklace wandering monster chart. A roll of 2 indicates the Severed Eyes Orc Clan only reskinned as rival adventurers or a different tribe of goblins. They fulfill the same purpose in the adventure. A roll of 3 or 4 can indicate either the skeletons and tiny ninjas from the Emira's Necklace or just a regular tradesgoblin's home, depending on the DM's gonzo level. Any result rolled a second time indicates a regular tradesgoblin's home.
-If tracked at any given moment the Clan are at a random place on the map (roll d2o--1-12 indicates they're in place 1-12, numbers above 12 indicate they're in some otherwise unremarkable random part of town).
-SORTED.
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Bonus:
*Add pig balloons to the town's defenses
*Roll d4 for goblin type:
1-White goblins: always say the opposite of what they mean, walk on the ceiling
2-Green goblins: technicolor weird-weapon-wielding Warhammer goblins.
3-Red goblins: d4 hp per die but each utters a first level spell "curse" when they die.
4-Black goblins: Walk around inside the skins of the humans they killed taking the town. The skins don't fit very well. The effect is grotesque. Inside they look like white goblins, only shiny black.
