Of course, I'm talking about a published adventure, of the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil magnitude. Okay, maybe not that big, but something that is too long for a magazine article.
Lerara [COR3-16]
By Ron Lundeen. The fabled Passage of Slerotin leads deep beneath the Hellfurnace Mountains, rumored to hold mysteries and treasure. Your group has prepared for a cautious and perhaps lengthy expedition deep under the Flanaess. The town of Dark Gate is your last stop in civilization before leaving on your sunless journey. As you approach Dark Gate, however, you see an ominous column of smoke reaching into the sky. And where there.s smoke. An adventure for Average Party Level 2-16. (This Adventure is the lead-in to the Winter Fantasy 2004 Special set in the Sea of Dust.)
Originally posted by StevieS
One of the new LG scenarios is set in/around there but thats the only thing I've heard of
Lerara [COR3-16]
That adventure is exceptionally bad.
First off, The Mother shouldn't even be there anymore. It is plainly assumed that Gygax intended the mother to be sought out, destroyed and looted by the PCs in the adventure hook given in the 83 box set.
Hell, even if the first party to try it in your game failed, the original hook takes place in CY 573, we're to assume that noone bothered to try again for 20 years? (a 3rd year core module, Lerara takes place in 593)
Of course, if they're ignoring the logical outcome of that adventure altogether, then why isn't the Juggernaut still guarding the tunnel entrance?
Anyway, let's forget that nitpick and move on to the climax of the thing.....
LG SPOILER WARNING!
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The PCs invade the tunnel to meet the Lerara and fight some Lerara high cleric (of the mother). They defeat him, right on the verge of a "pit" where, it's assumed, the mother resides (funny, because Gygax clearly said "cavern" not "pit", but anyway). One would assume a heroic party would take the next logical step and go kick Mother's butt, right?
NO!
You can't. No, it's not that she's not down there. It's not that she's invincible. You can't go down there. Direct quote: "The evil is actually palpable and prevents further progress" (into the pit).
That's the single worst piece of writing for Greyhawk I have ever seen, period, hands down.
Do yourself a favor, unless you're a diehard LG player itching for a few more XP, don't bother with this poor excuse for a Greyhawk adventure.
Anyways, I never even heard of this tunnel, what is it? Sorry if I'm off topic but I'm wondering if someone could tell me about the tunnel...
Originally posted by Greyhack
Direct quote: "The evil is actually palpable and prevents further progress" (into the pit).
So what if you're evil? Can you go in then?
Slerotin closed the tunnel to prevent pursuing Suel houses from apprehending him and the Zolites. But, he trapped a branch of the house, the Lerara Family, in the tunnel in his haste to close the shaft. Slerotin and the Zolites moved out, eastward, not waiting for anything on the eastern side of the mountains. So the Lerara's remained sealed in the tunnel, trapped in total darkness in a frighteningly alien Underdark. Nobody knows there fate.
I don't know about COR3-16. I don't play LG - that's for another thread. I am hoping for a commercial product with someone replying, "Yea, S.K. Reynolds is working on a mega adventure," etc...
Here's one note for anyone working the "Slerotin's Tunnel" angle - Keep the Silent Ones in mind. They will have a very keen interest in anything regarding the old, Suel, subterranean thoroughfare.
No, that's not the point of the adventure at all. It's not even a side trek. The module may take place in the same setting and location as the original modules, but that is about the extent of the connection. The "point" of the module is something entirely unconnected to the Mother.
As for the "point" of the module, what remains is that players are allowed to do something utterly suicidal and not be punished for it. If they didn't want anyone going down to see the Mother and die, they should have just had someone tell them it was forbidden, and shooed them back on track. As presented, it destroys any sense of balance between actions and consequences, as the Lerara won't even do anything as they watch someone walk in to see their entire reason for being, then walk out, without even blinking. That is a joke. Anyone who walks down there should die, or at least flee screaming, the victim of some horrible curse or phobia, as happens to anyone doing similar ridiculous things in other modules.
Dang, I screwed up in my answer. At least I got the person who made the tunnel correct. I forgot the Zolites were named after Zellifar-ad-Zol, who was the emperor's son. So the Zolites comprised the "rebels" Samwise named above. Okay, I think I'm getting that part right, now. But, they did go through the tunnel at least 25-30 years before the cataclysms. They becasue cleric's of Beltar were predicting doom three decades before the terrible events, during the Year of Prophets. So ad-Zol led his Zolites out of the Imperium as rebels, not refugees, because the Rain of Colorless Fire was still 30 years away.
Did I get it tright this time? Whew. So much history, and so little help from the Silent Ones...
Over the Kendeen (Harsh) Pass.
I forget what year, and would have to go digging for that myself.
The rest is from both the '83 set and the LGG.
The LGG, despite several flaws, is actually rather useful for consolidation a lot of this stuff. You just need to know where to look, which is often in multiple places. Any book that put it in one place would wind up missing something else.
-447 CY Suloise Migration begins (5069 SD)
(LGG and indeed the SB book mention that these begin with Zellif and his followers doing a legger over the Kendeen Pass IIRC).
-446 CY Commoners and a few noble houses of the Suloise move across the Harsh Pass to the east (5070 SD)
-445 CY Zellif, son of the last Suel Emperor, and his followers begin settling Tilvanot Peninsula (SD 5071)
-422 CY Invoked Devastation and Rain of Colorless Fire
Slerotin, Last Mage of Power, opens tunnel in Crystalmists. Kevali Mauk, founder of the Scarlet Brotherhood, and his disciples, also escapes the devestation of the Imperial Capital.
I've been in touch with Steve and we've pooled our datelines btw. As soon as his system recovers from being blown up by lightning (!), he's going to post it on his website.
Cheers
P.
So I'm going to hold to the idea of Slerotin escaping the Imperium with the Zolites through the tunnel 25 years before the cataclysyms. Tilva, Uhas and Lendore broke from Zol after passing through the tunnel. Rhola and Neheli, of course, founded Gradsul and Niole Dra. The Cruskii, Schnaii and Frutzii definitely pased overland in pursuit of the Zolites.
I have never heard of the Greychrondex. It looks like a different account than Mr. Wilson's OJ1 History of Oerth article.
(-448 CY) Year of the Prohpets - Priests of Beltar predict the doom of the Imperium. A general exodus of Suloise migrations begin, travelling over the Kendeen Pass.
(-447) Zellifar-ad-Zol and Slerotin flee with their "rebels" through the tunnel. Schnai, Cruskii and Frutzii are dispatched over the pass to apprehend Zol and bring his entourage back to the Imperium (-446).
(-422) CY Invoked Devastation and Rain of Colorless Fire.
I think that will work nicely. That's my take, and it doesn't suck, lol.
Indeed, the RoCF did reduce the Imperium to the Sea of Dust. Some few people still managed to gather along the slopes of the Hellfurnaces, and those are the ones Slerotin led out.
And remember, Slerotin bored a tunnel through over 200 miles of a mountain chain. I think he could shield some people from the RoCF along the way.
Oh, and Uhas was a Neheli who lived during the reign of Gillum the Mad, the King of Keoland before Tavish I.
The Greychronodex is a timeline that Mr W. complied from all the extant published canon sources.
Of course for a home campaign anything goes.
My call on it would be that Slerotin - perhaps foreseeing what would happen after the Invoked Devestation - warned the other Mages of Power and the Emperor, but was ignored as a crazy doomsayer ("The Imperium destroyed in a single day? The ravings of a madman!").
Thus ridiculed and banished from the Court, Slerotin may have preached that the end was nigh. Most citizens of the Imperium ignored him and his followers as some sort of doomsday, survivalist type cult It's possible that strange cults and fads were common in the decadent last days of the Suel Imperium - so another one wasn't going to make much of a stir - even with a Mage of Power at its head.
However, some did harken to Slerotin and followed him to the mountains (perhaps in a desperate race against time)
Slerotin began to bore the Tunnel as his former peers were unleashing the Invoked Devestation. Then as the first drops of the rain begain to fall, those that were destined to survive sheltered in the first portion of the Tunnel (assuming that Slerotin didn't bore it all in one go - even for a Mage of Power drilling a massive hole in the Hellfurnaces is no parlor trick).
P.
All just my take, non-official canon type info at all
And instead of the Lerara, you'd just get to look at things like "Slerotin's Bird Droppings".
Nah, the tunnel is a much better legacy.
Oh, it also leaves a way for the people you brought out to go back home.
Originally posted by Robbastard
If Slerotin was powerful enough to bore a hole through 200 miles of mountain range, why didn't he just fly everyone over?
IMO, Slerotin was an Earth Elementalist. Of course, when Gygax wrote the Lost Passage of the Suloise adventure hook in which most of the concepts about Slerotin and the Suel migrations were born, such mechanics didn't exist, but once 2nd Edition AD&D came along, I turned him into an Earth Mage without hesitation.
Of course, this choice makes the spell selection in Slerotin's Manifessto (Dragon Mag. 241) rather silly, but IMO that article and the SM book itself are rather trite canon and I gladly ignore them, assuming the book wasn't written by Slerotin at all, but by someone who was with him on the migration (possibly an apprentice) and keeping a journal of the trip (which is primarily what the SM book is, a notebook of observations on the migration with a couple spells thrown in at the end) The author's constant references to Slerotin could have led to the popular misconception that the Last Mage of Power himself wrote it. Remember that only a handful of living beings have ever seen the book, much less given it an in-depth study, so taking some liberties with the description won't cause many problems with campaign continuity.
Besides, with the arduous tasks of boring the tunnel through some epic magic, creating the Juggernaut guardian for the eastern end of the tunnel (and, logically, the western end too, though this isn't canon fact), sealing the tunnel at both ends and trying to keep the bickering noble 'tribes' in line, Slerotin surely had his hands too full to spend much time penning a diary, and since canon pretty much states that he vanished from mortal Oerth right after the migrations, explaining it away as a memoir is also improbable.
I say attribute the book to someone else, an apprentice charged with the task specifically makes sense, actually. Slerotin might well have intended that a record of the migration make its way into the hands of the lorekeepers of the new suel society he was leading the people to.
And now that I think about it, if you want to use the SM book as canon, the best bet would be to drop the spells from it altogether. The only unique spell in there is Slerotin's Fortitude, and it's entirely logical that any temple of Wee Jas or safehouse of the Silent Ones of Keoland would have other sources with the formula for that spell anyway.
If yall are interested in Slerotin, the migrations and the ancient Suloise empire in general though, Dragon 241 is a great source of little bits of Greyhawk Lore. Crack open your Dragon Archive cdrom or find a copy on EBay and enjoy.
Originally posted by Greyhack
Besides, with the arduous tasks of boring the tunnel through some epic magic, creating the Juggernaut guardian for the eastern end of the tunnel (and, logically, the western end too, though this isn't canon fact), sealing the tunnel at both ends and trying to keep the bickering noble 'tribes' in line, Slerotin surely had his hands too full to spend much time penning a diary,
Even if it were - it'd probably be really dull:
Starday: Got up early. Cat ill again. Imperium destroyed by Rain of Colourless Fire.
Waterday: Took cat to the vet. Vet vapourised by RoCF. Went and made tunnel through Hellfurnaces instead.
:D
First off, The Mother shouldn't even be there anymore. It is plainly assumed that Gygax intended the mother to be sought out, destroyed and looted by the PCs in the adventure hook given in the 83 box set.
Well, we don't always do what Gygax "intended" in LG. Not to mention that Dragon 241 (Nov 97) clearly indicates that the Mother is still there.
Hell, even if the first party to try it in your game failed, the original hook takes place in CY 573, we're to assume that noone bothered to try again for 20 years? (a 3rd year core module, Lerara takes place in 593)
Few adventurers who enter the Passage live. Few surface dwellers know of the existence of the Lerara, let alone the Mother. Why is it so far fetched to believe that the Mother still lives, especially given the hints that the creature is very powerful.
LG SPOILER WARNING!
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The PCs invade the tunnel to meet the Lerara and fight some Lerara high cleric (of the mother). They defeat him, right on the verge of a "pit" where, it's assumed, the mother resides (funny, because Gygax clearly said "cavern" not "pit", but anyway). One would assume a heroic party would take the next logical step and go kick Mother's butt, right?
NO!
It's an RPGA event. If the PCs go down there, they will die as she is too powerful for most LG adventuring parties. If you read the scenario, the pit leads to passages that lead to the Mother's cavern. And it isn't the only way to her cavern, just the one the PC's encounter in the scenario. And there is no wall of evil that blocks them. They are warned that they sense a great evil down there. They can go down if they choose. And if they do, they die. Simple as that. The Mother is not going to be defeated by anything less than high level PCs, higher than the ones playing this scenario at this time.
That's the single worst piece of writing for Greyhawk I have ever seen, period, hands down.
Honestly? Worse than Puppets and Gargoyles? :D
Originally posted by scon40
And there is no wall of evil that blocks them. They are warned that they sense a great evil down there. They can go down if they choose. And if they do, they die. Simple as that. The Mother is not going to be defeated by anything less than high level PCs, higher than the ones playing this scenario at this time.
WRONG!
Reread the adventure friend, the "palpable wall of evil" prevents "any further progress" into the pit. You can't go down there!
Originally written by Ron Lundeen in COR 3-16 Lerara
If any player wants his character to enter the pit, reiterate the waves of malovence emanating from the pit - which houses a creature that the Lerara worship as a god - and give the player a chance to reconsider. Any character entering the pit discovers that the emanations of evil become even stronger the further down the pit he progresses. By the time the character reaches the bottom of the pit these emanations become so strong that the characters are unable to progress further - the evil here is actually palpable and blocks any further progress.
And, yes, IMO, worse than both Gargoyle and Puppets.
Originally posted by scon40
Well, we don't always do what Gygax "intended" in LG. Not to mention that Dragon 241 (Nov 97) clearly indicates that the Mother is still there.
Not exactly. The only reference to Se Murma (what Elayne Mystica calls the Mother in her narrative to Mordenkainen) is her recollection of the events of 333 CY to 349 CY (her birth up to her escape from Lerara society at age 16.) She quite cleary states that she is unsure of present conditions there, and moreso, that she doesn't really care, seeing the Scarlet Brotherhood as a more immediate threat. She urges Mordenkainen to send adventurers into the tunnel to get information on the current state of affairs.
And, yes, IMO, worse than both Gargoyle and Puppets.
NOTHING is worse then Gargoyle... Puppets on the other hand I have seen worse stuff then... in fact I actually used that module one time, although I changed the setting to my FR game ;)
Gargoyle on the other hand is irredemable :P
Originally posted by Greyhack
Reread the adventure friend, the "palpable wall of evil" prevents "any further progress" into the pit. You can't go down there!
I don't have a final pdf of that scenario yet. But the version I have that the Circle submitted to HQ did not have that text (to my knowledge); it had similar text that allowed the PCs to proceed, but removed them from play if they did so. Either the version you have is an earlier version, or HQ changed that text on their final edit. I specifically edited that section so that the PCs got multiple warnings not to proceed to the Mother, but removed any barrier from the PCs proceeding if they were foolhardy enough to do so.
Originally posted by Greyhack
Not exactly. The only reference to Se Murma (what Elayne Mystica calls the Mother in her narrative to Mordenkainen) is her recollection of the events of 333 CY to 349 CY (her birth up to her escape from Lerara society at age 16.) She quite cleary states that she is unsure of present conditions there, and moreso, that she doesn't really care, seeing the Scarlet Brotherhood as a more immediate threat. She urges Mordenkainen to send adventurers into the tunnel to get information on the current state of affairs.
She also states that she "would be amazed beyond words" if "these adventurers actually destroy the Mother" as she fears "the task will kill the heroes first". Obviously the threat is high level and dangerous and unlikely to be defeated by most adventurers.
The article leaves it to the DM to determine the Mother's stats. And it never states that Modrenkainen successfully sends adventurers to deal with the Mother. So I see no conflict with canon on this issue.
--Erik
Originally posted by scon40
I don't have a final pdf of that scenario yet. But the version I have that the Circle submitted to HQ did not have that text (to my knowledge); it had similar text that allowed the PCs to proceed, but removed them from play if they did so. Either the version you have is an earlier version, or HQ changed that text on their final edit. I specifically edited that section so that the PCs got multiple warnings not to proceed to the Mother, but removed any barrier from the PCs proceeding if they were foolhardy enough to do so.
I don't want to go down their! Mother is angry and you won't like Mother when she gets angry! I don't know why adventurer's are thought to always be successful. Can't the Lerara win one (or more) for the Mother?
But, after reviewing the Time Units (two) and synopsis, I do see that there is not time to get into detailed historical discourses in the adventure. As a LG adventure, the length (short) and scope (superficial) are appropriate. It's only a standard, one-round scenario. I cannot comment on quality yet, but I will after 31 Dec 03.
But, my initial question asked if there was a large-scale, commercial adventure in and around Slerotin's Tunnel forthcoming from WotC or a licensed third-party. And the answer to that question is no.
And my take on Gargoyle, Puppets and Child's Play is that they are in a class all their own: those three set the standard for banality, poor conception and just plain stupid.
Originally posted by Robbastard
I would send in the MILF Hunter to take out the Mother.
Mothers I'd Like to Fight?
:D
I actually liked the scenario. I haven't read the adventure but what bothered me is our DM let us take horses into the Underdark and into caverns.
I'm glad the scenario follows for the most part with Canon too.
I've played a lot of LG and I've played a lot worse mods. Lerra was a good one IMHO.
Mike
My Players?
Since one of our group went to a Christmas party - we ended up losing one of the two 3rd level PCs and the only other veteran gamer in the group.
So, we had one veteran gamer playing the Bard leader, one experienced gamer playing a 1st level cleric, and two novices running a Rogue and Barbarian (both 1st level).
I gave them plenty of warning how difficult it would be and to make sure to help each other with advice and recommendations.
It took them two days to leave Dark Gate - with two of them infected (and all but the Bard had 8 CHAs - luckily he made the secret Fort Save).
They trundled into the Passage and I scared the bee-jee-zus out of them with a wandering, bug-headed beast with huge claws and arms (Umber Hulk), even the veteran started doubting continuing.
They never really made it much further than the final battle - deciding to transport back to Dark Gate without completing any of the major goals.
It was sad, really.
Overall, three 1st level PCs and a 3rd level Bard is not the way to go with an APL 2 adventure like this. But I had fun telling them everything they missed and messed-up on, hopefully they will learn from their errors.
Who knows.
But, back to Lerara - far better adventure than other people have given credit for. Just took some DM work and some forethought. If you don't polish the adventures, I think you will never get to the real fun of them.
****
If you have a problem with LG not necessarily following canon (which, as we all should know by now, means something diferent to every person anyway), then you should also have problems with every other GH campaign out there in the world, since they are all slightly different. That seems a rather excessive stance to take, IMHO.
Different styles, different tastes, different methods of play and design. If you don't like the way a particular campaign is played or run, fine, don't play it. But you needn't blast those that do like it.