Be advised there are spoilers galore below.
To introduce another employee into are game at work, my assistant manager Paul created a first level elven ranger to go along with her character she rolled up. A first level knight named Lady Emerald and her light warhorse, Titanium. Our lady gamer, who I will call Miss X until she either reads this and lets me use her name or she comes up with a screen name she likes, is the niece of one of our gaming buddies at work, Chris, aka Sayid the Exile, and was very excited to join the game. Chris was unable to game for several weeks so this allowed our newbie to really be front and center as the primary “meat shield.”
I debated for a while about which module to take these two first level characters and could not think of a better short adventure then “The Beacon at Enon Tor.” I love the feel of this short little gem.
So I read to them the background, how the seaport of Borth had problems and needed dowdy fighters with the pluck to go to Enon Tor and see what has gone wrong. It seems that many years ago a powerful, and seemingly dark, magic-user, named Karthedon the Wizard, came to Borth and wanted to conduct his research there. The Guildmasters wanted none of it. In time, they agreed to build a needed beacon out at a nearby hill known as EnonTor where he could do his unnatural experiments. In return, Karthedon agreed to “operate a navigation beacon at the tower and [would] be available to the town should his help ever be needed.” This agreement worked well for over a decade. Than a week ago something went very wrong at the beacon. A strange glow surrounded the sturdy structure and that night the beacon was not light, but the foghorn sounded for two solid days following this before suddenly stopping.
The Guildmasters turned to the lady knight errand and her elven ranger “side kick” to investigate EnonTor for the princely sum of one hundred pieces of gold each.
I read the blurb that gets the PCs to the Beacon of Enon Tor and gives a good description of the place. The place has a wooden door build into what seems to be the ground floor of the tower or separate underground structure as well as a second wooden door located in the tower itself. Paul and Miss X discussed what to do. Neither were rogues and both doors turned out to be locked. They also pondered about throwing a rope with a hook up and try to scale the tower, but discarded that option quickly.
Miss X asked me about how trained was Titanium. I explained as a warhorse, the animal was both well trained and quite intelligent. With that, Miss X devised a plan with Paul’s approval to have the horse simply kick in the door on the ground floor. Before they did this Paul had his ranger (I don’t recall his name) examine the ground about the door for tracks. Several sets of booted prints were found to have come and gone through the door recently, long after the mysterious glow. Something was up for sure.
Lady Emerald leads Titanium to the door, pulls her bastard sword and commands the horse to kick the door in. The ranger has his bow nocked and ready for action. Titanium delivers a powerful back kick and smashes the door in badly, but not enough to knock it off its hinges. Miss X is really excited and has her PC tell the horse to do it again. The door shatters into the room beyond at which point the lady knight rushes in ready to do battle followed by the elf.
Inside the darkened room, three humanoids are trying to pull themselves together an provide a defense. All three of these creatures had their wits scared out of them and they were surprised. I told Paul his elf recognized the beings as orcs which was their death warrant to the lady knight! The fight was on. The elf got a free attack with his arrow during the surprise round, but Lady Emerald could not see anyone well enough since she had just rushed into a dark room from the daylight. We rolled initiative and started melee. Since each player has only one PC each, we roll individual initiatives which are a fun change of pace for me. I no longer remember the details of much of this fight but it was great with the elf standing in the doorway plucking arrows and the lady knight chasing the orcs about the room as they tried to get furniture between them and her, for her 20-sided was smiling favorable with to-hits and damage rolls. The fight moved from the players advantage to the monsters when a side door opened and another orc charged in throwing a spear into the elf and hurting him. Following the orc was a large seven-foot tall hairy humanoid that I would not tell Paul what sort of creature it was. This beast took a solid hit from Lady Emerald and laughed about the abilities of women, especially human women.
Paul called a quick conference with Miss X. With the original three orcs dead, his elf wounded, and with two new opponents he advised they retreat from the room and make them chase them into the sun light. And that’s what they did. The elf continued to shoot arrows into the room forcing the hand of the hairy giant and the now hurt orc. Out the blaggards rushed. Miss X also had a plan. As they fought about the front of this structure the orc went down with an arrow but the neatest part of the fight is when Miss X and Paul got the huge hairy fellow to fight Lady Emerald blade to battle axe just behind the relatively still form of Titanium. Miss X called out that her PC ordered the horse to kick which it did. The monster’s side caved in from the blow and went down.
With that they proceeded to explore knowing that if anything else inside was alive, they had given enough noise to alert them. They also found the key to the door in the remains of the lock. It had been kept in the lock in the inside.
More to come.
The Beacon At Enon Tor--My Work Game
The Beacon At Enon Tor--My Work Game
In the words of my good friend Trevor, "Hey, put an arrow in that flying mummy! What could possibly happen?"
Re: The Beacon At Enon Tor--My Work Game
They had their PCs look about the now destroyed living room as well as an adjacent bedroom finding some coin, several doses of cure light wounds, and a silver dagger in an iron box that seems to have belonged to the hairy giant. Deciding between three doors to further explore they went east and found themselves in a kitchen. Nothing much here, although I think Paul toyed with the idea of his elf taking the meat cleaver as a weapon. They left the kitchen and went down a short corridor to the pantry. Poking about here they disturbed two giant rats. After the original combat between the orcs and their leader, this was anti-climactic but it did peel a few more hit points, he-he-he.
The door on the north wall of the pantry brought them to yet another corridor, this lead to one of the more memorable encounters of the adventure. Up ahead was a room that held “ten boxes, each about seven feet long and about two feet wide and deep, with hinged lids.” Coffins perhaps? Some of them were on the floor, others propped along the walls. One of them was open but the lid obscured the PCs view of what, if anything, might be in the box. Furthermore, they could see two bodies facedown on the floor.
Brittany (she told me to use her name instead of Miss X) was ready to explore the room with Lady Emerald so both PCs carefully walked in ready to attack anything that moved. The open box held the corpse of a man. The body had numerous wounds, yet there was no blood, it was as if the body had been hacked by someone long after the man had expired. Paul’s elf pushed the two bodies on the floor over with his boot and found out that both were recently slain orcs. His PC figures they haven’t been dead more than a week.
Brittany wants to know what’s in the boxes. It quickly becomes an obsession for her. I ask her how Lady Emerald planned to opening the boxes. With that question, she paused a bit and looked at Paul for advice. Paul, on the other hand, I don’t think was nearly as keen to open the boxes, figuring that something, other than cool treasure, was hidden within the boxes. He pointed out the dead man in the open box and the two dead orcs on the floor. Brittany would not be detoured from these boxes. So, in the end, the two came up with having Lady Emerald use her short sword to slide into the edge of the lid and attempt to lift it up and over, exposing the box’s interior, while the elven ranger had an arrow nocked and ready to fire if something within attempted to rise.
The plan worked great and they fought against two dead men who came forth from two of the boxes. When I told them that the arrow did not seem to do much more than make the undead being climbing out of the box slip a bit, there was nervousness among the players! Fortunately they only had to fight one at a time. These two fights were hard as the creatures just would not go down and did some damage to the lady knight. After all was said and done, Brittany was quite upset about the fact that this wizard had dead men, zombies, in his employment and that he “did not label his zombie boxes.” I can’t decide if the fact that the wizard was doing some horrible thing by re-animating people or the fact that he did not keep a more orderly home (unlabeled zombie boxes) was what got to Brittany more. To this day, the “unlabeled zombie boxes” still turns up at work.
Looking about they concluded they had examined the ground floor. Off the zombie box room was a door that opened to a stairwell leading down into darkness and a corridor that, just around the bend, led to a stairwell leading up to the tower. They chose the stairs upwards.
The door on the north wall of the pantry brought them to yet another corridor, this lead to one of the more memorable encounters of the adventure. Up ahead was a room that held “ten boxes, each about seven feet long and about two feet wide and deep, with hinged lids.” Coffins perhaps? Some of them were on the floor, others propped along the walls. One of them was open but the lid obscured the PCs view of what, if anything, might be in the box. Furthermore, they could see two bodies facedown on the floor.
Brittany (she told me to use her name instead of Miss X) was ready to explore the room with Lady Emerald so both PCs carefully walked in ready to attack anything that moved. The open box held the corpse of a man. The body had numerous wounds, yet there was no blood, it was as if the body had been hacked by someone long after the man had expired. Paul’s elf pushed the two bodies on the floor over with his boot and found out that both were recently slain orcs. His PC figures they haven’t been dead more than a week.
Brittany wants to know what’s in the boxes. It quickly becomes an obsession for her. I ask her how Lady Emerald planned to opening the boxes. With that question, she paused a bit and looked at Paul for advice. Paul, on the other hand, I don’t think was nearly as keen to open the boxes, figuring that something, other than cool treasure, was hidden within the boxes. He pointed out the dead man in the open box and the two dead orcs on the floor. Brittany would not be detoured from these boxes. So, in the end, the two came up with having Lady Emerald use her short sword to slide into the edge of the lid and attempt to lift it up and over, exposing the box’s interior, while the elven ranger had an arrow nocked and ready to fire if something within attempted to rise.
The plan worked great and they fought against two dead men who came forth from two of the boxes. When I told them that the arrow did not seem to do much more than make the undead being climbing out of the box slip a bit, there was nervousness among the players! Fortunately they only had to fight one at a time. These two fights were hard as the creatures just would not go down and did some damage to the lady knight. After all was said and done, Brittany was quite upset about the fact that this wizard had dead men, zombies, in his employment and that he “did not label his zombie boxes.” I can’t decide if the fact that the wizard was doing some horrible thing by re-animating people or the fact that he did not keep a more orderly home (unlabeled zombie boxes) was what got to Brittany more. To this day, the “unlabeled zombie boxes” still turns up at work.
Looking about they concluded they had examined the ground floor. Off the zombie box room was a door that opened to a stairwell leading down into darkness and a corridor that, just around the bend, led to a stairwell leading up to the tower. They chose the stairs upwards.