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Sunday, November 5, 2017

Origins of Sterick's Tomb

The PCs solved the puzzle of Sterick's Tomb, and slew the still-living (or still-undead, or still-something) Sterick.

Before the rescue/revenge mission, though, the church provided an accurate map of the area. This was because:

- the area had been thoroughly mapped, marked, annotated, and largely cleared.

- the players had been asking to "someday" see the real map so they could compare their usable but wildly inaccurate map.

So I gave it to them.

Sterick's tomb was set in one of a couple of areas I directly swiped from published adventures and previous campaigns' dungeon maps that I quite liked. This one?

It was the second level of The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. I couldn't find a good picture it online, but this 4e version is pretty sweet:




The "dragon cave" was added below the map, connecting to the area in the bottom-right hand corner of the map.

The stairs up to the lesser caverns of Tsojcanth are the stairs to the next level of the dungeon.

The "behir" sits in the upper-right hand corner of the map - another place where I added an exit.

The blue-glowing area is the destination point to a number of teleport traps that bring in monsters.

The main puzzle was taken intact from the module, then modified to fit the game. Monsters summoned in by gates, compelled to stay and guard the area, teleports rigged with silent alarms and attraction magic to increase the security of the area. And a special area designated as safe for those close to the church.

I gather that Gary Gygax swiped this map, or portions of it (like the central chamber) from a Rob Kuntz map. I wish I can find where I read that. So this is a map swiped multiple times. Like I said, The World is Your Geomorph. Just add stuff you like directly into your megadungeon.

2 comments:

  1. There's info about the origins of the S4 Greater Caverns map in Rob Kuntz's El Raja Key Archive at http://www.tlbgames.com/collections/archive and I discuss it (as well as the various additional entrances/exits) in my S4 page at http://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/gh_s4.html

    I'm sure others have discussed it as well, Peter!

    Allan.

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    1. I may have read it about it on your page - that's where I've filled in a lot of what I know about Greyhawk's history. I know I only found this out long after I put this into my game back in 2011 or 2012.

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