I have a love of B4, The Lost City, a classic adventure if ever there was one. Can't tell you how many times I ran it and played it. However, one of my early and formative memories of it, and how I handle pre-written adventures, was the 4th or 5th place I had adventured into it. I knew it pretty much cover to cover but my friend Dan O was running it for us - and he deviated from the adventure as written. I didn't call him out on it, just wondering what was going on, as he described the fervor of the priests of Gorm and then introduced the god himself and actually affecting the party was eye opening to me. The gods actually took an interest in the adventure and their priests? Not just a cartoon overview of one? For a 14 year old me who was playing A-RAW it blew me away.
I make it my business to do the same for everyone else who plays any pre-written adventure I happen to run - making the broad strokes of it canon - the rest of it personalized. This adventure is no different.
Follows:
We moved closer to the grove of twisted trees between the overgrown compound and the Temple itself. It was an Uskfruit grove, easily 5 or six trees deep and maybe 500’ wide or then some. And the trees were polluted. Rowan, or druid, advised the party to NOT touch the fruits, the trees, or any of it. We surely weren’t going to risk eating them. And the Ravens had returned, croaking at us from the branches of the trees. We passed through a wider section and then proceeded to the Temple.
The building was monstrous, sprawling over 450’ in any direction. The faces and reliefs had been twisted some time ago to agonizing figures wailing their cries. However it was impregnable except for the main entrance and it was there we headed off to. A raised set of stairs went up to the entrance of the Temple where 3 doors were located – each was 26’ tall and 20’ wide. The door on the east had a series of runes and glyphs on them that when we went to investigate, blew one of our mages off the platform with a crack of thunder.
A Detect Evil quickly overwhelmed Opehlia but not before she confirmed the eastern door not to be touched.
It took a few of us to actually get one of the doors to open revealing the Vestibule of the Temple. Stained Glass ceilings and beautiful works adorned the area – ceiling was 30’ tall in places, racing up to 50' in the center of the temple itself. We listened and echoes came back to us – the place was palatial. We went through the Vestibule and continued on to the temple Main. Two large wings, East and West were seen, pews and altars.
Across the main Temple was a deep open face 20’ diameter well and an altar stone with some stains upon it, giving it the look that someone in the past had been sacrificed upon it. We could continue further in but wanted to check out the wings first, the party yelling at Albert to NOT touch the Murder knife. The knife on the altar stone that makes you want to murder someone. Yeah – we left it.
The western wing had a series or dun coloring to it and we eventually spotted through a closed door a private sanctum and then stairs going down. There were robes here, along with feces upon them, so we opted to move on and away – not going downstairs for now. We went to the eastern wing and again, the same look was there but the coloring scheme was blues and greens. It was in here that we saw an armoire had been dumped over. Pestle volunteered to reach around within.
There were some mirror shards in there and some light and when she touched it, time stopped. A voice was talking to her, identified itself as Poseidon. Was looking for his high priest who apparently died here a century earlier. The god of oceans, hurricanes and horses – this was pretty far from his home base – but he and his two brothers Zeus and Hades had been chased from here and their works despoiled . Poseidon was willing to help out the group to get rid of the demonics and Pestle was chosen as his pick.
A pool of glass fused to the gnomes’ palm and she also managed to get a figurine of a horse as well. She thanked Poseidon and assured the god that he would do all he could to rid the temple of the evil. Poseidon pledged to offer what help he could in exchange.
Time started and the group all shared what happened. So we had all 3 gods contact the party in their own way: Aredhel had Hades. Furd had Zeus. And now Pestle had Poseidon. Ok – all 3 original gods of the Temple were accounted for – let’s go!
We went down the stairs 30’ to the underside of the Temple. There were many passages from here but the group wanted to avoid being seen, so we went south where it was quiet. The passages eventually led to two different armories where we grabbed a few arrows. There was a longer sloping passage that we took next that went on for many scores of steps, came to a landing that went FURTHER down to a 2nd level under the temple, AND another slope that went up and to the west.
We went that way. Eventually it came to a mirror of what we had seen the other way, and we went south to check out the armories. While here a search was also enacted and we discovered a Blessed Bolt of Zeus in here. Nice – we took it and after eating, took stock of what to do. We figured we’d have to head northward at some point as it was a bit after 2 PM on Birthmonth the 11th when we were ready to head to the dungeon under the Temple at long last.
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