Thunder Under Needlespire - Dungeon Magazine 24

Ok, Ptolus DMs, do you want an apocalyptic battle against a very powerful Galchut deep below the Spire?

OF COURSE YOU DO!

Thunder Under Needlespire just might be that adventure. The name is coincidental, but maybe it's an omen that this needs to be reworked to match your preferred game edition and run as a possible campaign turning point. In the original write-up the AD&D levels are for 8 to 12 with the main villain being 20HD and you'll be ambushed by a Drow wizard and a summoned demon at the same time you encounter the thing.

Screaming to be adapted into a higher level fracus, the module takes place deep in the caverns where Svirfneblin (deep gnomes) approach the characters for help with what the gnomes believe is a few Illithid causing earthquakes. It turns out the Illithid want help with the real cause of the problem, a Galchut about to break free of a cyst and in the process destroying vast areas and civilizations beneath Ptolus. Oh, it would also wreck the city and maybe topple the spire.

Characters begin thinking it's a few mind flayers and a handful of their servants to take care of and end up discovering an Illithid outpost with 3 dozen of them, plus dozens of servants, a Drow advisor, and a Beholder ally. The potential for an "oh, shit" moment exists when finding yourself surrounded by a bunch of brain eaters and a beholder.

Fortunately the tentacle-faced creeps don't want a fight, they want someone to accomplish what they are unable to do which is to destroy the thing causing the earthquakes. They know what is at stake. The Galchut is immune or extremely resistant to their mental powers, reflecting their attacks back at the Illithid. They need muscle of the type the party can bring to bear.

On the way to fight the big bad monster the party gets followed by a Drow out to make a name for herself. She too knows what's at stake and thinks by making sure it happens she'll earn a place at Gorgoth-Lol's (Lolth) side. When the party enters the lair of the Galchut, she summons a demon and attacks the party. (In the Ptolus setting Gorgoth-Lol is one of the Vested of the Galchut)

After the party defeats her, the demon, and then the big bad monster (assuming they manage to do so), their guide sent by the Illithid, surprise attacks them per her master's orders. She's a wererat wizard supplementing her own magic with some powerful scrolls she's saving to unleash on the party.

You could certainly expand this into a longer, more involved mini-campaign. Other under-dark, under-deep, whatever you call it, races could play a part along the way.

There's a lot of conversion work to make it ready to play, but Thunder Under Needlespire might be worth the effort.

Thursday Knights

Another Eberron session in the books.

Picking up from last session, the party had walked out of a portal right into a fight with a bunch of Drow. One was a spell caster, two were heavily armored with nasty longswords, the other half-dozen were not as powerful, but no less threatening.

We managed to catch the closest one off guard and between a couple of us, took him down immediately. The remainder were almost the death of the party. 

The fight went pretty badly with a fireball cooking most of the party. The two armored goons with the special longswords were making hash of everyone they attacked and continued attacks from the spell caster nearly took down the entire party. At one point at least two, maybe three members were out of the fight, including the healers. 

It's a good thing we had healing potions.

Eventually we managed to eliminate the last of them and collected some treasure.

We got a magic flametongue longsword, gauntlets of ogre power that Ennark now wears, three suits of flametouched armor (one scale, two plate), a nice flametouch, non-magic longsword, a fancy whip, and a metal circlet inset with bloodstones. We also came away with a few sacks of some special, rare basalt typically only found on the elemental plane of fire, where we were.

We accomplished the mission of rescuing the grey dwarves and now we're rested and on our way back to our ship.

Thursday Knights

Eberron continues.

After defeating the fire elemental the party regrouped and agreed to track down where it came from to try and prevent any more from coming out. We kind of ended up creating a situation where many more fire creatures could come through.

Following foot tracks deeper into the ruins we found a wall that had been dug through and beyond that a cavern room with an arch. Approaching the arch we determined it to be a portal. We found that fire activated the portal.

As a group we ventured through to the other side and found ourselves in a Drow controlled outpost in the elemental plane of fire. With some exploration and the quick slaying of some guards it was discovered that there were prisoners being held and forced to work in a mine beyond another portal.

We freed all of the prisoners that we were aware of and are heading back out. This is when we encountered a bunch of Drow waiting for us. They are between us and where we need to go, which is going to be very bad, for them.

Roll initiative - till next time.

Getting Hammered part 7

Dan of Hammered Game Tables is quite the passionate person when it comes to the tables he sells and the satisfaction of his customers. In fact during the course of working on my table the matter of getting the right hardware to match my vision was becoming a tiny bit of an adventure.

One week day I was sitting down to lunch in a Mexican restaurant with two of my co-workers and my phone rang. It was Dan. I was used to Dan staying in touch during the process, but rarely had he called this early in the day, and calls were usually preceded by an email in advance so the call time could be coordinated.

I had yet to order, which was fine since I really had no clue what I wanted to eat. I took the call and on the other end was a very excited Dan. He had gone to an antique shop earlier and lucked into the perfect set of drawer pulls. As my co-workers ordered lunch, I listened to Dan describing what he had been doing and how cool he thought everything was turning out. Between bits of the tale I managed to place my lunch order.

Dan went on to describe six hefty antique cast iron drawer pulls and a smaller one that would be perfect for the lift on the table top. He continued describing that he had picked up some copper leafing, had applied it to a pull, and it was the reddish copper I had been seeking. Needless to say, I was quite happy about this discovery.

 Getting to that selection of copper - I had sent Dan a series of pictures that included both finished copper items, and different types of copper ore.

 Needless to say, I like copper, and I knew it would look great against the darker stain I had picked out.

But what about the rest of the table? Take a look at the pictures below and you'll see the Phoenix at various stages of production.

The experience of having a table custom built for my hobby has been a great adventure. If I were fortunate enough to have the space and money to burn, I have a couple of other ideas for tables. Since I am unlikely to ever reach that point here are those ideas in case anyone out there gets the chance to buy a table of their own.

Mind Flayers and Drow - Purple stain with burned in images of those creatures and other underdark denizens. The under-lip lighting might work best in blue to give a cold visual. Black hardware.

Cthulhu - Green stain with burned in images of various mythos creatures and of H.P. Lovecraft himself. Painted on the top of the table a large Elder Sign, painted at points around the lip of the table or on other accessories, the Yellow Sign. (A case can be made for flipping the choice of where the Elder and Yellow Signs get painted). Purple hardware. The under-lip lighting could be done in a number of colors depending on the visuals you were after. One possibility would be UV in the event that you had very tiny runes painted in a reactive color along the top of the higher strip of cladding.

Eladrin or High Elves - A pale grey stain. Bright silver hardware. White under-lip lighting. Elven runes and leaf patterns lightly painted on with bright silver.

Well, there we are, something wicked cool, revealed.