Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Brom_Blackforge Nov 06, 2007 13:04:58	I haven't played through the original module, and really don't know much about it. But having looked at the 2007 version in the October "issue" of Dungeon, I wondered how many changes the 2007 version introduces and whether it does any violence to established Greyhawk lore? For instance, has there ever been anything established about who or what Tsojcanth is? (My impression is that there wasn't, until now.)
#2 extempus Nov 06, 2007 14:31:25	I don't recall there being any mention as to the origin of the name "Tsojcanth" in the original module, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't later explained elsewhere... I've had extraordinarily little interest in 3e and 3.5e and have had zero desire to check out the new stuff, so I have no idea what's changed and what hasn't. Maybe someone else would know...
#3 ripvanwormer Nov 06, 2007 17:03:44	This was the first official suggestion of who or what Tsojcanth was. From the original module, Tsojcanth might not even have been a person. It could have been an animal, a plant, a place, or even a mood. It could've been Old Oeridian for "horror," for example, and simply translated as "the lost caverns of horror." Gary Gygax wrote, in answer to Paul Stromberg's email some years back, that Tsojcanth was a good-aligned human wizard who played a role in the binding of one of Tharizdun's avatars. The authors of this adventure seem to have read that and given it a twist. I was interested in the alternate worlds you end up in from room 9. In the original module, these were a Greek mythology world with centaurs, a mysterious, timeless, nigh-infinite temple with mysterious chanting in the background, a maze with minotaurs in it, and a room where you have to fight endless automatons. Now they're a demon centaur in a valley on what is probably either a layer of the Abyss or one of the moons, a sphinx, a single minotaur in a maze, and a medusa. Some of them might still exist on a world of Greek mythology, in theory, but there's nothing as cool as the Hall of Pentacles from the original. The "solutions" to the puzzles are a bit clumsier this time around - "the pillar doesn't work until the medusa is dead" doesn't have the same flair as "you can get back by wearing one of the empty helms." Roger E. Moore, in his essay "Gates in the World of Greyhawk," had a plethora of suggestions about where the alternate worlds were - he thought the temple could've been on the moon Celene or on an asteroid, and he thought the minotaur maze could have beneath the moon Luna. He suggested that Iggwilv might have rested on the Greek Mythology world while she recovered from her battle with Graz'zt. Oh, and Drelzna wasn't originally a samurai, but that's not really a "lore" issue.