Mystic Spiral

The Fates are not with you

The entry from this contest’s founder, Ben Gibson from Coldlight Press. This is an AD&D 1e entry that describes the lair of an oracular cyclops. Written for some number of characters of levels 3-5, this site reads to be as a brazen attempt to make a tower layout interesting without resorting to magical nonsense or non-euclidean geometries. We shall see if it succeeds.

Somewhere in an idyllic vale, there is a stinking camp of tents crowded around a hut. The hut is hastily built over an excavation of a shrine to an obscure fate goddess. The shrine is now home to a drunken oaf a Cyclops who can interpret the ethereal whispers of the Fates and give prophecy or hidden knowledge of questionable accuracy. However, this arrangement is threatening to come apart at the seams. The cyclops has taken a giant blooded consort who is becoming more an more paranoid of her Medusan guest. The Mystic’s prophecy skills are declining as he drinks, but thankfully he keeps two more cyclopes chained in the basement who can also interpret the whispers of the fates. I assume he uses them to his advantage when the situation permits.

Overall, I really like this site. It would make for a good transition site to early game wilderness adventuring. The cyclopes is a very easy slot in for a Sage, who are very important NPCs to have floating around for your players to know about and want to visit. This is an excellent site to put just outside the immediate starting region to give the players a goal to reach when they finally get that big, but unidentified magical item, or need some direction on their more esoteric player goals. The danger here is pretty low, but the treasure isn’t massive either so it works out.

This is extremely portable, as Cyclopes and Medusa and Giantesses are ubiquitous. It’s also very easy to reference and run. There’s even an Order of Battle which will be needed if the players siege the place.

There are some little flourishes I like, for example the stairs confer a small bonus or penalty depending on which direction you are fighting, but only to martials. The Medusan hair whip is really funny, even if I’m not entirely sure that the snakes are what petrify people. This site makes for a really good off-session of D&D, where the adventure is simply seeing the site and interacting with it’s various inhabitants. The players could choose to simply smash and grab, but I think they would be wasting their own time and missing out on the charm here.

The one major issue I have with this site is there is a bit too much fill in the blank worth with regards to the plotted rebellion by the Mystic’s followers. It’s mentioned, but I couldn’t find any information on who is leading it and why. That could have been fleshed out a bit more in the module instead of asking the GM to do all the work. Maybe cut the ghost encounter for space.

All in all, I really like this one. It’s a well done functional site to introduce an important NPC archetype and maybe give the players a bit of a lighter evening for research and negotiation instead of the normal smash and grab antics.