Castle Amber VI: The Tomb of Stephen Amber
Continuing the Campaign Narrative
Touching the Ring of Eibon to the viper's tail on the mirror results in the serpent uncoiling enough so that the ring can be slid onto its body. It then undulates like a living thing and the ring travels up to near the snake's head, effectively turning into a collar. Dipping the Sword of Sylaire into the Eldren potion turns the blade of the sword golden colour. A high pitched humming now sounds as the four artefacts resonate with one another, and touching the sword to the mirror shatters them all; the party is now surrounded by a familiar amber haze.
When the mist clears, the four adventurers find themselves standing on a seemingly endless plain in front of a 50' square tomb made of amber marble; carved over the entrance is the name of Stephen Amber.
Opening the doors to the tomb reveals that its inside is much larger than its outside. This is because the antechamber to the tomb is itself 50' square, with a door to the left and another to the right. The entryway is guarded by an enormous blue lizard chained to the far wall; the characters smell ozone, which Sir Blanque identifies as a hint of electricity. Not willing to risk a confrontation, Marion brandishes the Runestaff and the creature backs off completely. It watches them warily, but does not interfere as they take the door on their left.
The theme of the tomb is at least partly based on the elements, as the group now realises; they have just entered a blazing hallway that turns to their right, continues off into the distance, and then turns to the right again. In the middle of all of this is an enormous fire lizard, one of the fabled salamander creatures - and far more powerful than an ordinary elemental. Destiny steps forward and invokes her sorcerous skills as an elementalist, driving the creature away from her. It eventually merges with the walls and the harrowing experience is over.
The enormous fiery hallways ends in a single door, so they go through that one. They are now in a room that is functionally similar to the one they entered at the beginning, this time with a door ahead of them and another to their right. The guardian here is a huge stone giant, a mythical creature associated with the earth, and supposedly capable of speech. Rather than fight it, they engage it in conversation, and Destiny reveals that she has spoken with King Grome himself, Lord of the Earth. The stony giant lets them pass to the right; they reckon that the tomb sort of spirals in upon itself, and guess that they need to move towards the centre if they can. This is starting to take them around in a sort of inward loop, so far as they can tell.
The next room contains a manticore, a fabled creature rumoured to exist in the Eastern Realms of the Young Kingdoms. These are extremely dangerous, and can whip tail spikes like arrows at their victims. There are two doors: one to the party's left, and another to their right. Marion uses the Runestaff to hold it in place while everyone passes through the left hand door.
Continuing with the elemental theme, this room is huge: 50' across, and stretching at least three times as far to the group's right. They can just make out another door about 100' down, on the same wall as their own entrance. Something very large is lurking in the waters, and Sir Blanque says, "Leave this one to me!" Sure enough, a megalodon surfaces. It must recognise Sir Blanque's watery heritage, because it turns and backs up towards the door. One giant shark ride later sees everyone safely deposited at the exit. The giant shark turns gracefully and dives out of sight.
This chamber has a door ahead and another to the right, which is where Marion guesses they should go; however, a large lizard with five heads is in the way. It attacks immediately, but after fending off the heads (with Destiny slicing one of them off entirely with her magically sharpened axe), they try to manifest their fire elementals to keep the thing at bay. It turns out that Destiny is able to do this; she reckons that since this is a bubble plane, she will have to go sparingly, but at least the idea does the trick for the moment.
Marion was right; they are now at the centre of the extra-dimensional tomb:
A large tapestry covers an entire wall, showing the degenerate family Amber in the act of attacking Stephen. The group approaches the large, ornate sarcophagus and lifts the lid:
The desiccated body inside does not attack or anything like that (this is not that kind tomb), and a message is stretched into the lid of the casket: Burn the tapestry to break my curse. The party does so, and the fiery cloth turns into a gateway through which steps a richly dressed man wearing a coronet; the body in the coffin disintegrates.
"Thanks; I've been stuck in there for ages," he says, "and I believe this is for you." He tosses the final segment of the Runestaff to Marion, then turns and waves farewell - not one for formality, then. The Runestaff is newly knitted, and a moment of transition finds the characters back in Y'shath, exactly where they were when they stepped through the portal into the mansion of the Amber family. The gateway has vanished, and they find that they have been gone two weeks, according to The Chantryman and Nadjana.
Umpire's Notes
I know that Castle Amber is a well-known 'Funhouse' dungeon, but it lends itself well to Stormbringer shenanigans. It also has an overall organising logic, if that's the right term. Everything in the mansion is related in some form or other to the titular family, and clever players can work their way through the place by diplomatic means at least as much by fighting. In fact, an over-reliance on combat could be fatal - there are some powerful people and things in the place, and the same is true of its catacombs. My players are extremely focused, and although they know that they could easily explore the entirety of a locale such as this, they will maintain their primary aim. This means that they never did bother with the East Wing of the mansion, and avoided most of the Chapel area and half of the catacombs.
The Province of Averoigne presents a different set of problems, effectively being a point crawl, despite the hex map. Again, the players preferred diplomacy to violence, and managed to work their way through the various elements without risking too much. They are not murder hobos; for example, Sir Blanque insisted on sparing the life of the defeated necromancer Nathaire once he was captured, and Marion provided the solution in the form of an oath taken on the Runestaff.
The Tomb itself is deadly, but I slotted it into the elemental magic of Stormbringer in a way that allowed the characters to think their way around the place.
It took the group four sessions to play through the module, which is really more of a mini-campaign. I divided the narrative report into six because of the sheer volume of material; I'm hoping that it makes more sense as a narrative in sections. Besides, blog posts don't work well as enormous walls of text.
This module is a really good example of how I convert D&D material to use in a percentile skills-based system (in our case, we have boiled it down to D20). All of the characters are becoming good at scouting around things, with decent stealth and perception scores. This is crucial for us, since most of the time there are only three players. The game has become more on the order of heroic fantasy, but the players are still cautious because they know that a mistake and some poor luck can be deadly in this game world.
The overarching campaign has turned into a classic pointcrawl. It is organised by events, people and places, and the players choose which elements to follow. Fortunately, I have a huge number of old modules from all sorts of systems, many of which do not exist any more. I have also been acquiring more thanks to the availability of Lulu and PDF downloads from sites such as RPGNow. I pick and choose carefully from the available material to slot something appropriate into the campaign when needed. Strangely enough, I'm not at all precious about anything the group manages to avoid; the most important thing for me is to maintain momentum. I have to use modules because I really do not have the time, energy or mental capacity to come up entirely with my own material. However, I have run much of this before, and I am experienced enough to be able to meld appropriate materials into the campaign. I had plenty of practice back in the day.
This, if you like, is the strategic layer of module conversion. The other is of course the tactical. Or, rather, the tabletop implementation. I just convert stats, abilities and armour as I go. The base armour class in D&D seems to be 10, either ascending or descending. Depending on the generation to which the module begins, then, AC5 or AC15 is roughly equivalent to chain, which in Young Kingdoms terms is half plate worth 1D8 protection or thereabouts (assuming a helmet). Unlike D&D, the BRP family of games has both defensive skills and armour absorption, so it's easy do do on the spot. I run skills as 10 +1 per level on the D20 so that, for example, a Level 6 NPC hits or parries or dodges or whatever on 16 or under. Unless specified by the scenario, I also assume that stats are 10 +1 per level. To continue with the Level 6 example, this gives 16 DEX and 16 hit points or thereabouts, derived from CON.
The main difference comes with magic, which in Stormbringer cannot be cast unless one has INT of at least 16 because that's what is needed to understand High Melnibonean. This means that I have to fudge spellcasters, but in practice it's not too difficult to do. More important is the POW stat, which is similar to INT in that, generally speaking, one needs POW of at least 16 to be effective at magic. Therefore, unlike hit points, DEX and so on, I rate a mage's POW at 15 + Level, and the same goes for Clerics. This is because Stormbringer Priests are not to be trifled with by anybody; not only do many of them qualify for sorcery, they have varying levels of divine help as well. Magic is either by Stormbringer rules; runes traced in the air; magic items, including scrolls; or divine help. This gives me enough variation to fudge pretty much everything from a module. Summonings and rune casting are skills, just like any other. I've basically used the eastward direction of travel to open up the magic types available from standard Young Kingdoms sorcery; Destiny, for example, is learning a few runes as she goes. I'll make use the BRP magic points system to manage this.
I use similar ideas as above for creatures, except that in their case I usually just assign an armour rating. So AC5 (or AC15) is worth five points of armour in all locations. Large biting attacks cannot be parried except by a decent shield.
There are two major areas to be considered over and above all of this when converting to Stormbringer. The first is number of opponents, since D&D modules usually assume that the players will have a powerful arsenal of area effect magic at their disposal after they have advanced a few levels. This is not necessarily the case in Stormbringer. However, judicious use of elementals, which are nowhere near as powerful as their D&D equivalents, can produce many of the same effects. For example, if you want a fireball, combine fire elementals and order them to emit a flame burst. This is not as nasty as it sounds, because it is risky for a single sorcerer to control more than two of the same elemental at any time; it tends to annoy the elemental rulers. Overall, this makes large numbers of enemies manageable, which in turn makes conversion easier.
The second issue is the undead. There are no D&D clerics in this world, and so there is no turning or dispelling of the walking deceased. I could rule that a Priest of Donblas could try, for example, but this would be a priestly Elan roll rather than a standing ability as such. I haven't looked at the material I have on the Cults of the Young Kingdoms recently, but my vague memory is that there is at least one Lawful deity who could grant abilities against the undead. When dealing with incorporeal undead, I use the BRP rules for spirit combat. Level drain becomes permanent POW loss of one or two points; not as nasty as in D&D, but still with unpleasant consequences, especially for a sorceror.
I decided to jot down these notes now that we have played through a substantial module - pretty much the campaign's first with a varied menu. To finish, here is Destiny's view of Marion's ability with daggers:
Touching the Ring of Eibon to the viper's tail on the mirror results in the serpent uncoiling enough so that the ring can be slid onto its body. It then undulates like a living thing and the ring travels up to near the snake's head, effectively turning into a collar. Dipping the Sword of Sylaire into the Eldren potion turns the blade of the sword golden colour. A high pitched humming now sounds as the four artefacts resonate with one another, and touching the sword to the mirror shatters them all; the party is now surrounded by a familiar amber haze.
When the mist clears, the four adventurers find themselves standing on a seemingly endless plain in front of a 50' square tomb made of amber marble; carved over the entrance is the name of Stephen Amber.
Opening the doors to the tomb reveals that its inside is much larger than its outside. This is because the antechamber to the tomb is itself 50' square, with a door to the left and another to the right. The entryway is guarded by an enormous blue lizard chained to the far wall; the characters smell ozone, which Sir Blanque identifies as a hint of electricity. Not willing to risk a confrontation, Marion brandishes the Runestaff and the creature backs off completely. It watches them warily, but does not interfere as they take the door on their left.
The theme of the tomb is at least partly based on the elements, as the group now realises; they have just entered a blazing hallway that turns to their right, continues off into the distance, and then turns to the right again. In the middle of all of this is an enormous fire lizard, one of the fabled salamander creatures - and far more powerful than an ordinary elemental. Destiny steps forward and invokes her sorcerous skills as an elementalist, driving the creature away from her. It eventually merges with the walls and the harrowing experience is over.
The enormous fiery hallways ends in a single door, so they go through that one. They are now in a room that is functionally similar to the one they entered at the beginning, this time with a door ahead of them and another to their right. The guardian here is a huge stone giant, a mythical creature associated with the earth, and supposedly capable of speech. Rather than fight it, they engage it in conversation, and Destiny reveals that she has spoken with King Grome himself, Lord of the Earth. The stony giant lets them pass to the right; they reckon that the tomb sort of spirals in upon itself, and guess that they need to move towards the centre if they can. This is starting to take them around in a sort of inward loop, so far as they can tell.
The next room contains a manticore, a fabled creature rumoured to exist in the Eastern Realms of the Young Kingdoms. These are extremely dangerous, and can whip tail spikes like arrows at their victims. There are two doors: one to the party's left, and another to their right. Marion uses the Runestaff to hold it in place while everyone passes through the left hand door.
Continuing with the elemental theme, this room is huge: 50' across, and stretching at least three times as far to the group's right. They can just make out another door about 100' down, on the same wall as their own entrance. Something very large is lurking in the waters, and Sir Blanque says, "Leave this one to me!" Sure enough, a megalodon surfaces. It must recognise Sir Blanque's watery heritage, because it turns and backs up towards the door. One giant shark ride later sees everyone safely deposited at the exit. The giant shark turns gracefully and dives out of sight.
This chamber has a door ahead and another to the right, which is where Marion guesses they should go; however, a large lizard with five heads is in the way. It attacks immediately, but after fending off the heads (with Destiny slicing one of them off entirely with her magically sharpened axe), they try to manifest their fire elementals to keep the thing at bay. It turns out that Destiny is able to do this; she reckons that since this is a bubble plane, she will have to go sparingly, but at least the idea does the trick for the moment.
Marion was right; they are now at the centre of the extra-dimensional tomb:
A large tapestry covers an entire wall, showing the degenerate family Amber in the act of attacking Stephen. The group approaches the large, ornate sarcophagus and lifts the lid:
The desiccated body inside does not attack or anything like that (this is not that kind tomb), and a message is stretched into the lid of the casket: Burn the tapestry to break my curse. The party does so, and the fiery cloth turns into a gateway through which steps a richly dressed man wearing a coronet; the body in the coffin disintegrates.
"Thanks; I've been stuck in there for ages," he says, "and I believe this is for you." He tosses the final segment of the Runestaff to Marion, then turns and waves farewell - not one for formality, then. The Runestaff is newly knitted, and a moment of transition finds the characters back in Y'shath, exactly where they were when they stepped through the portal into the mansion of the Amber family. The gateway has vanished, and they find that they have been gone two weeks, according to The Chantryman and Nadjana.
Umpire's Notes
I know that Castle Amber is a well-known 'Funhouse' dungeon, but it lends itself well to Stormbringer shenanigans. It also has an overall organising logic, if that's the right term. Everything in the mansion is related in some form or other to the titular family, and clever players can work their way through the place by diplomatic means at least as much by fighting. In fact, an over-reliance on combat could be fatal - there are some powerful people and things in the place, and the same is true of its catacombs. My players are extremely focused, and although they know that they could easily explore the entirety of a locale such as this, they will maintain their primary aim. This means that they never did bother with the East Wing of the mansion, and avoided most of the Chapel area and half of the catacombs.
The Province of Averoigne presents a different set of problems, effectively being a point crawl, despite the hex map. Again, the players preferred diplomacy to violence, and managed to work their way through the various elements without risking too much. They are not murder hobos; for example, Sir Blanque insisted on sparing the life of the defeated necromancer Nathaire once he was captured, and Marion provided the solution in the form of an oath taken on the Runestaff.
The Tomb itself is deadly, but I slotted it into the elemental magic of Stormbringer in a way that allowed the characters to think their way around the place.
It took the group four sessions to play through the module, which is really more of a mini-campaign. I divided the narrative report into six because of the sheer volume of material; I'm hoping that it makes more sense as a narrative in sections. Besides, blog posts don't work well as enormous walls of text.
This module is a really good example of how I convert D&D material to use in a percentile skills-based system (in our case, we have boiled it down to D20). All of the characters are becoming good at scouting around things, with decent stealth and perception scores. This is crucial for us, since most of the time there are only three players. The game has become more on the order of heroic fantasy, but the players are still cautious because they know that a mistake and some poor luck can be deadly in this game world.
The overarching campaign has turned into a classic pointcrawl. It is organised by events, people and places, and the players choose which elements to follow. Fortunately, I have a huge number of old modules from all sorts of systems, many of which do not exist any more. I have also been acquiring more thanks to the availability of Lulu and PDF downloads from sites such as RPGNow. I pick and choose carefully from the available material to slot something appropriate into the campaign when needed. Strangely enough, I'm not at all precious about anything the group manages to avoid; the most important thing for me is to maintain momentum. I have to use modules because I really do not have the time, energy or mental capacity to come up entirely with my own material. However, I have run much of this before, and I am experienced enough to be able to meld appropriate materials into the campaign. I had plenty of practice back in the day.
This, if you like, is the strategic layer of module conversion. The other is of course the tactical. Or, rather, the tabletop implementation. I just convert stats, abilities and armour as I go. The base armour class in D&D seems to be 10, either ascending or descending. Depending on the generation to which the module begins, then, AC5 or AC15 is roughly equivalent to chain, which in Young Kingdoms terms is half plate worth 1D8 protection or thereabouts (assuming a helmet). Unlike D&D, the BRP family of games has both defensive skills and armour absorption, so it's easy do do on the spot. I run skills as 10 +1 per level on the D20 so that, for example, a Level 6 NPC hits or parries or dodges or whatever on 16 or under. Unless specified by the scenario, I also assume that stats are 10 +1 per level. To continue with the Level 6 example, this gives 16 DEX and 16 hit points or thereabouts, derived from CON.
The main difference comes with magic, which in Stormbringer cannot be cast unless one has INT of at least 16 because that's what is needed to understand High Melnibonean. This means that I have to fudge spellcasters, but in practice it's not too difficult to do. More important is the POW stat, which is similar to INT in that, generally speaking, one needs POW of at least 16 to be effective at magic. Therefore, unlike hit points, DEX and so on, I rate a mage's POW at 15 + Level, and the same goes for Clerics. This is because Stormbringer Priests are not to be trifled with by anybody; not only do many of them qualify for sorcery, they have varying levels of divine help as well. Magic is either by Stormbringer rules; runes traced in the air; magic items, including scrolls; or divine help. This gives me enough variation to fudge pretty much everything from a module. Summonings and rune casting are skills, just like any other. I've basically used the eastward direction of travel to open up the magic types available from standard Young Kingdoms sorcery; Destiny, for example, is learning a few runes as she goes. I'll make use the BRP magic points system to manage this.
I use similar ideas as above for creatures, except that in their case I usually just assign an armour rating. So AC5 (or AC15) is worth five points of armour in all locations. Large biting attacks cannot be parried except by a decent shield.
There are two major areas to be considered over and above all of this when converting to Stormbringer. The first is number of opponents, since D&D modules usually assume that the players will have a powerful arsenal of area effect magic at their disposal after they have advanced a few levels. This is not necessarily the case in Stormbringer. However, judicious use of elementals, which are nowhere near as powerful as their D&D equivalents, can produce many of the same effects. For example, if you want a fireball, combine fire elementals and order them to emit a flame burst. This is not as nasty as it sounds, because it is risky for a single sorcerer to control more than two of the same elemental at any time; it tends to annoy the elemental rulers. Overall, this makes large numbers of enemies manageable, which in turn makes conversion easier.
The second issue is the undead. There are no D&D clerics in this world, and so there is no turning or dispelling of the walking deceased. I could rule that a Priest of Donblas could try, for example, but this would be a priestly Elan roll rather than a standing ability as such. I haven't looked at the material I have on the Cults of the Young Kingdoms recently, but my vague memory is that there is at least one Lawful deity who could grant abilities against the undead. When dealing with incorporeal undead, I use the BRP rules for spirit combat. Level drain becomes permanent POW loss of one or two points; not as nasty as in D&D, but still with unpleasant consequences, especially for a sorceror.
I decided to jot down these notes now that we have played through a substantial module - pretty much the campaign's first with a varied menu. To finish, here is Destiny's view of Marion's ability with daggers:
But she's so good at it...
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