TSR's module A2, Secret of the Slavers' Stockade (Fort Level)

TSR Module A2: Secret of the Slavers' Stockade

Harold Johnson with Tom Moldvay

At a couple of climactic points in module A1, Slave Pits, the adventurers can find documents that will lead them to the next adventure in the series. Moving away from the chaotic half-ruined town, you find a self-contained fortress in the wilderness, a staging point for the slavers' operations. This stockade is bounded by four intact walls, less of a ruin than the Highport temple. But inside, it's a fixer-upper, with ungoverned areas that continue the theme of the unruly stronghold. The troops are mainly goblins and hobgoblins, not orcs and half-orcs. Two independent bosses with powerful assistants run the place, one in the fort above ground, and two in the dungeons. 

Like A1, A2 was originally run as two parallel tournament adventures, with the above- and below-ground levels as the respective settings. The module's maps shade in the paths of each tournament version. It''s not hard to see how the requirements of each one-track, twisty gauntlet got in the way of realistic defensive architecture. However, even in the limited tournament mode, the fort level threatens the kind of barracks-clearing pitched battle I mentioned in the opening essay as a catastrophic failure for a fort infiltration. As always, full spoilers ensue.

Sure, go ahead, spoil one new monster on the front cover ...

FORT LEVEL: MOATHOUSE

The tournament starts with an easy if improbable way in. Just like in A1, an escaped slave, "Lady Morwin Elissar," shows you the route of her escape - an open window in the outer wall of the moathouse, with a convenient rope left dangling. This device is more interesting because the slave is an NPC who might go with you but is kind of unreliable. Still, it is only the first instance of a repetitive tendency that crops up throughout the module.

This moathouse is one of three buildings on the flat hill where the stockade sits, all held together with outside walls. It's also, you guessed it, an unruly stronghold. Garrisoned by a couple of hobgoblin squads, half of one floor is home to a haunt - more of a Victorian-story ghost than an undead monster. It's the haunting that keeps the troops scared of this area, justifying the lack of attention paid by the garrison. The challenge with this entity must have felt fresh at the time. But by now, dealing with a ghost's past-life obsession and present-day possession is part of 5th edition, and quite a few supplements have extended the Gothic notion into an adventure genre (link, link, link).

In this unruly zone, we are introduced to an unfortunate theme: the defender love silly traps. Here, they have acquired some fancy glassware and alchemy to blind intruders and trip them up with hundreds of glass marbles underfoot. Arguably, these traps sit at the outer limit of plausibility, but worse is to come.

One good point of the writing throughout this module shows up here. As in Albie Fiore's early White Dwarf adventure "The Lichway," each bivouac of troops throughout the fort has some kind of action ongoing, be it eating, gambling, or less wholesome sport. I've described this approach before as the "diorama encounter," but it seems to be a priority of the Johnson/Moldvay authorial team that gives welcome flavor. 

FORT LEVEL: GATEHOUSE

The next building along the railroad is a gatehouse on the far side of a courtyard where a wild anhkheg will pop out of a patch of mud and attack. Why do the defenders allow a powerful monster to sit athwart the only line of communication from moathouse to gatehouse (the walls connecting them have no walkway)? Here's the greed for variety, any fight that's not with hobgoblins, at the expense of naturalism. Other hard-to-believe premises: the fight can go on without the guards on the walls noticing, until the monster lets out a dying screech; and in fighting, the party will become so caked with mud that they suffer a -2 to hit until they can wash it off in a fountain some way down the railroad.

The gatehouse itself was only developed for campaign play. Its inner buildings are more hobgoblin guardposts and barracks, again with diorama activities going on. Beyond the gate that the anhkheg guards, there is another courtyard, which the players can gauntlet-run or sneak across, while guards patrol the walls above. A couple of patrols come with another new monster, an oil-sweating Gollum-like wretch known as a boggle, whom we see on the front cover. Here there's little opportunity to use the boggles' weird abilities. They are just being led around as sniffer dogs, bringing to mind another Tolkien character, the orc tracker Snaga of Isengard. Then on to the keep's courtyard garden where carnivorous apes and hobgoblin archers jump the party. A dead end -- unless they can open the locked door that leads into the keep proper.

FORT LEVEL: MAIN KEEP

The position of this building in the hill fort is beyond absurd. The ramparts have no connection to its interior, even though that's where many of the troops and leaders make their home. What's more, the ramparts loom over the keep - the better to shoot at the roof, allegedly -- but vision to the outside world is blocked by tall palisades cut through with infrequent arrow slits. It's as if the fort is prepared for an infiltration, more so than an attack; but even that goal is bungled in the execution, so that a dungeon-crawling party can take on one group of enemies at a time. For example, if the players make it to the courtyard, there's no line of sight to the fight there from archers on the walls, only to the roof.

The interior layout is also absurd and not remedied in the campaign version. A single path spirals around, kinking up a few times, before ending up in the central room where the main leaders and troops are found. Cut a single door to break the spiral, and the leaders would have easy access to the entrance and be able to reinforce the defense. But where's the fun in that, compared to dungeon crawling?

Worse yet, the dungeon crawl is fixed up with tricks and traps worthy of a Scooby Doo haunted house. You have the stuffed bear rolling down a ramp to frighten you backwards into a pit. Then the hobgoblin ambush where some of the troops dress as mummies and run at an angled mirror so you'll waste spells and missiles on their reflections. Not just silly, these traps make no sense placed across the only route of reinforcement in an active stronghold.

Off the tournament track, there is another haunted area shunned by the soldiers. But this ghost is just a set of gimmicky manifestations engineered by the escaped slave who lives in the rafters. All these hijinks aside, the final encounter area has a memorable leader in Icar. He's a fire-loving blind warrior who fights with super-senses, taking after Daredevil or Zatoichi. Some of the diorama encounters in the central area are likewise good, and there's a new monster, the cloaker, whose hypnotic droning works as an opiate of the masses for the enslaved. In the boss area, whose defense the module illustrates with an innovative (at the time) tactical map, are a couple of ways down to the dungeons.

...and on the back cover, another new monster to spoil

Can we fix the fort? Maybe, but extensive changes to the map would have to be made. And then the module becomes something different. Raising the alarm no longer causes a temporary pressure situation before the party can scoot on to the next isolated area. It activates the whole beehive of the garrison, acting all together in a mass of close to 100 hobgoblins and powerful leaders, and certain to overpower the mid-level party it is rated for.

Next: The dungeon level

TSR's module A1, Slave Pits of the Undercity

TSR module A1, Slave Pits of the Undercity, is the first and the most coherent of the Slavers modules: inventive and challenging while being the most sensibly drafted of these disorderly villain lairs.

The history of the series further emerges from a thread on Dragonsfoot remembering the specifics of the GenCon tournament that gave rise to the four A series modules. The temple and dungeon levels of A1 and A2 each were a single, linear adventure. Player groups in the first round were randomly assigned into one of these four qualifiers or a fifth one corresponding to the early section of A3.  From these five, the best-scoring made it to the semifinal and final rounds, which respectively used versions of the later (city) part of A3, and all of A4.

From such a genesis we can trace the design of Slave Pits of the Undercity (and here, perforce, the spoilers begin). Helpfully for our archaeology, the module includes the original tournament railroad maps for the top and dungeon levels.

New monsters, meant as a surprise, were regularly "spoiled" on the A series covers - here, the aspis

TEMPLE LEVEL

The tournament scenario gives the players inside information about a secret door in the wall of the temple. This door is trapped but not guarded - such is the security protocol of a disorderly fortress - and leads to a twisting corridor through an abandoned area of the building. The "railroad" takes the party past some well-set fights, and other situations that act like puzzles without seeming contrived, such as a deceptive plank over a pit, or a combat dilemma involving a new plant monster, the giant sundew, that becomes much easier if the party realizes how the fortress forces manage this menace in its midst. After this gauntlet, the party will run into the actual slaver forces, and these encounters are devised with the same art, combining trickery, interesting combat problems, and traps.

That's the end of the railroad; but even the tournament scenario has a couple of distractions and dead-ends. One of them, a roughly patched wall that if broken through leads to a face-to-face encounter with a basilisk, had the distinction of taking out a player-character in my own 5th edition campaign.  And in the campaign version of the module, more areas are added branching from the tournament path - a stable guarded by slaver forces, a haunted cemetery and a garrison of terrified orcs, and a spacious courtyard, possibly a shortcut, but where more undead lurk. The reissue of the module in 1986 added a gate from this courtyard into the midst of the organized opposition area, further adding options for the attack.

This expansion allows different approaches to the temple complex. Jason Thompson's cartoon walkthrough of the module shows two of these: one party sneaking in through the tournament entrance, the other masquerading as slave-buying customers to go through the front door. Entering by the stables, by the graveyard orc door, or simply climbing the wall in an unguarded spot are also possibilities.

DUNGEON LEVEL

There are ways down from the temple, most obviously at the end of the final boss fight of the temple railroad; but the full module places two more descents to vary play in the dungeon level. This underground jams together four quite different areas: the eponymous slave pits, with slaves, slavers, and minions; a set of caves that hosts a tribe of orcs allied with the slavers; another set of caves that hosts a population of another new monster, the fearsome four-armed insectoid aspis folk; and a network of wet and filthy sewer passages that ties the whole place together.

The railroad version of the dungeon has the players first encountering some nasty larvae in the acidic spawning pool of the aspis; then crossing the sewer to muscle through a protracted fight with most of the orc tribe; then finally engaging the slavers, including some of their aspis allies, before confronting the slaver leader - who, it has to be said, is less formidable and treacherous than the final encounter of the temple. 

The open version develops the aspis zone and has more connections to approach the bad guys. While the temple is infested with ghouls and a wight, the underground is only semi-unruly - these are groups cooperating with the slavers for now, but if a way can be found to communicate, faction bargaining in the classic big-dungeon style can happen.

BEST OF THE SERIES

My current party cleared out most of A1, using a conversion to 5th edition. Running it was a delight -- the combat challenges tough and packed with surprises, but not in a way that felt forced or unfair. The tricks and traps have a gritty, naturalistic feel to them, and the different areas of the complex are balanced between abandoned/haunted, main bad guys, and side factions. We see how the garrison of orcs, half-orcs, and evil humans deals with the unruly forces in their midst - finding a way to tame the sundew, cringing in fear from the haunted cemetery, hiring some of the aspis. This was also the deadliest module of my campaign, claiming two PCs. Probably, this is just due to incautious player mistakes snagging on two of 5th edition's few remaining teeth. One, doppelgangers have an absolutely deadly surprise attack if they can catch a party member alone; two, even with two saves, there is no easy answer to petrification until characters hit ninth level.

As we'll see in the pieces to come, the other A-series modules, in my opinion, are less deft at presenting an unruly stronghold: A2 is ambitious but strained, A3 a mess, and A4 returns to better form but famously hangs on a railroading premise that may not sit well with new-old-school values.

TSR's "A" series of adventures in unusually unruly strongholds: Introduction

Illustration from Slave Pits of the Undercity (1980) by David S. LaForce

D&D was born in the castle. The Castle and Crusade Society of wargamers brought Gygax and Arneson together over miniature battles fought at Bodenburg, a scale model of a medieval fortress. Castle sieges were one suggested scenario for the Man-to-Man section of Perren and Gygax's Chainmail rules, the predecessor to D&D's combat system. But despite the genesis of Gygax's and Arneson's dungeons as the cellar levels of castles, it was these underworlds and not the upper rooms that captured the imagination of generations going forward.

Indeed, it's not hard to see how attacks on fully manned fortresses can fall flat as an adventure. The horn is blown, the defenders stream forth from their barracks. Pitched battle on unfavorable terrain ensues. One might, perhaps, set up a night-time infiltration. But then the play only becomes catastrophic: one failure to sneak takes you to the pitched battle again. The appeal of the dungeon environment is precisely its disorganization. There, the adventurers control the tempo of exploration, deciding whether to push their luck, encamp, or retreat.

Still, TSR's first published adventure module was a stronghold assault, the enemy being hill giants (G1, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief), and the next two continued on to fortresses run by frost and fire giants. This choice joins the wargaming castle instinct with a wish to recreate the adventures of De Camp and Pratt's protagonist Harold Shea, guest and prisoner in the stronghold of the frost giant Utgardaloki. Also, the high character levels capable of taking on multiple giants at the same time can access the kind of magic - invisibility, illusions, distractions, knock spells, and the like - that'll support effective infiltration. 

In aid of this goal, the steading is not exactly on a war footing. Giants are drunk, feasting, asleep, on errands: plenty of gaps in the defenses for smaller folk to exploit. As well, the cellars play  more like a classic dungeon - one retrospective has called the lower level a "monster motel" -  - a pattern  followed in the Frost and Fire sequels. If they win through to the underground, the party can take back control of the tempo, switching to the more usual room-by-room exploration.

But let's turn to the next major series of campaign modules after the high adventure of the G-D-Q series. The A series was based on four adventures that made up the AD&D tournament at GenCon XIII in 1980, run on consecutive days as qualifier rounds, semi-finals and finals, at huge scale: 40 tables to start with. Each adventure had a different authorship, but the connecting plot was simple enough: you were mid-level characters infiltrating and attacking the bases of a ring of slavers in the failed state of the Pomarj, World of Greyhawk. 

A word about tournament play. Although this style has largely fallen out of favor these days, it was a well-subscribed activity at early conventions, an answer to the question, "How do I win at D&D?" Tournament mode differed from home-campaign D&D in design choices that equalized experiences across tables, so that in theory, the most skilled player groups could prevail. In the 1980 tournament, each group ran the same set of pre-generated player characters; the adventures were linear, presenting the same challenges in the same order; and sometimes, DMs were told to apply a standard amount of damage from traps and the like, instead of rolling dice. To determine winners, each run was scored by awarding points for dealing with enemies, bonus points for discoveries or anticipated clever solutions, and points deducted for party casualties along the way.

The linearity in these adventures, in particular, deserves comment. It's an innovation that appeared at Origins 1979 with the Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan; the previous year's tournament module, the aforementioned Giants series, was more open-plan. TSR realized that what was good for the tournament might not be good for campaign play, so when the A series was published, some alternative paths were added to give players more of a sense of agency. For the most part, these revisions work, although the final chapter still presumes an escape from having been thrown in prison -- a plot fiat that shines notoriously in the gallery of Railroading Through the Ages.

In reviewing these A adventures, I'll examine how each one spices up the organized stronghold concept by presenting it as an unruly place -- factions that chafe, distracted guards, abandoned areas that follow their own rules, and clever defensive tricks that sometimes try a little too hard. The quality of this series, unfortunately, falls off from A1 to the later modules. It's not that the creativity is lacking. Rather, the idea of the unruly stronghold starts to repeat itself and challenge the limits of plausibility.

Night's Dark Terror 14: Funny Things Happen on the Way to the Horse Market

This is part of a series of posts with a scene-by-scene critique, appreciation, and improvement of the 1986 TSR module B10, Night's Dark Terror. 

After Xitaqa, the players are finally released from the chain of time-sensitive adventures leading to the rescue of Stephan Sukiskyn. It's up to you how much breathing room they get, to go on some of the side adventures mentioned earlier. But logically, the Sukiskyn family would be very eager to get their 24 white horses sold before too much time passes. Nor would they be at all happy to see the adventurers, still bound by their agreement with Stephan, march off to raid some goblin lair or haunted tomb, never to return. 

CC Public Domain 1.0 image from PickPik

The power to resist the family's pressure lies in the hands of the players, but they also have a powerful lure to make the journey. For there's easy money in it without any obvious hazards -- 50% of the sale price, if they succeeded in returning Stephan alive, and even after the recovery of his dead body they'll probably be cut in for 25%. But is the journey to the market site, the elven trading post of Rifllian, uneventful? Of course not! There are four keyed encounters along the way. All of these, in one way or another, expose the party to the ongoing plots of the Iron Ring.

1. Ambush at Misha's ferry. After the possibility of an uneventful but sentimental last encounter with Misha's bear, there's an Iron Ring attack set up at this crossing point, with a force almost identical to the very first encounter on the river.

Let's imagine what's going through the minds of these shadowy overlords as they try to put an end to your ever-so-inconvenient heroes. The river attack failed, but they can blame it on the added forces of Kalanos, his men, and the walls of the riverboat. The siege of Sukiskyn failed, but there was the whole combat-ready family in addition, and again, fortifications. It just about makes sense that the baddies would think a force totalling 13 hit dice (in Basic D&D) would have a chance against the party, alone (but for Stephan and Taras) and in the open. But by now the total party levels should number 12-18, plus 8 levels in Stephan and Taras.

This ambush should be easily winnable by the heroes. If its failure becomes known to HQ, by survivors reporting back, or by the dead being discovered, the Iron Ring as an intelligent organization should know that a bigger force is going to be needed to take the good guys down. Mostly, this logic is followed in the rest of the adventure, but never to its ultimate conclusion. Maybe that's just standard Bond-villain procedure applied to the fiction of adventure gaming. To strike from complete surprise, with numbers that cannot be defeated, would be profoundly unfair to the players.

2. Raid the Iron Ring camp. On the trail across the moors to the gnomes' ferry, the party runs into Loshad one more time, who tells them of an Iron Ring slaving camp in the hills. Attacking it would satisfy both Loshad's goals (free mistreated horses) and the party's (free mistreated people). This encounter is tougher, with 28 hit dice worth of foes, but the party might gain surprise. If you think the odds are too much, you might let the players bargain the were-horse into giving fire support. Loshad, as usual, is written well as an NPC. His pro-horse agenda makes dealing with him more prickly than your usual quest-giver.

In this and the previous encounter, it is possible that the party captures Iron Ring personnel and convinces them to talk. This is not covered in the module, which assumes a strict code of silence among this organization. But in fact, through some impressive persuasion and stagecraft of intimidation, my group succeeded in wresting some limited information out of one captive goon. You may want to have the bad guys hold their tongue no matter what. But as I'll argue below, this policy tends to frustrate the natural motivation to go on the offensive.

3. The gnomes' ferry. There's something amusingly Vancian about the gnomes' ability to sniff out a party's wealth and adjust their prices accordingly, even if the well-traveled Stephan would be in a position to warn the party. In running this place I took the opportunity to flesh out the gnomes a little, as well as introduce some more NPCs to the inn which, as they were more campaign-specific, I won't trouble to detail.

Aino Weaselbane is the leader of the gnomes, an attractive and shrewd silversmith with a nose for gold. She pours ale and cooks meals in the kitchen, and will take the lead in bargaining for passage across the river or any other goods, such as silvered weapons.

Jorma Sawleaf, a bard, plays the hurdy-gurdy in the inn. He will take requests for a tip of 2 gold, and will stop playing entirely for 10, unless outbid by someone who inexplicably appreciates his music.

Pekka Waggletop is an idler, drunk, and pub crank of the first order. If so much as looked at, he will launch into his crazy ideas about slaver conspiracies and evil wizards. By chance, he is right, but only by chance.

Vallo Gimbletooth is the waiter, a retired pit fighter with the scars and broad-bladed shortsword to show for it. Naturally, he also takes the role of security for the inn.

Symphonia, just Symphonia, is a veiled fortune-teller who uses cards for divination.  Her prophecies ("cross my palm with 20 silver") tend to be vague, but one in three is startlingly accurate.

Here, too, there's an encounter with an Iron Ring agent who is smart enough to run from this party, putting them again in the position of initiative as they decide whether to pursue him. Frustratingly, though, there's little to be gained information-wise if they do; thwarting him only slows down the Iron Ring's operation to tail the party a little bit.

4. Meeting with merchants. This encounter just across the river, unlikely to end in combat, introduces two elements to be repeated later on. First, we start introducing one of several temptations to sell part of the white horse herd immediately, rather than hold out for a better deal at Rifllian. Then there's the news -- hardly surprising or worth the asking price -- that Iron Ring agents are specifically searching for the party.

After this last encounter, we end up just a day away from Rifllian, but with a contradiction hanging heavily over the adventure. Night's Dark Terror perfectly illustrates how, in the 1980's, Basic D&D was just one step ahead of its Advanced stable-mate in meeting the need for emotionally engaging adventure stories. Soon afterwards, Dragonlance (with its own, far worse railroading issues) and Ravenloft (better done, for sure) would start to fill that niche for AD&D. But meanwhile, you have the heartbreaking death of Aleena from the Mentzer Basic starter adventure. And in this module, the heartbreaking death of Mish, and after that, all sorts of human woe and destruction visibly served out by the Iron Ring and their goblin stooges. 

So, at this point, red-blooded heroes should be raring to take the battle to the enemy and root out the Iron Ring menace. But the adventure, as written, frustrates that aim. Once more, they're put onto the railroad train by one of the Sukiskyn family -- Stephan, who has no interest in seeking revenge against the conspiracy that kidnapped him, menaced his family, and murdered nearly the whole human population of the upper Volaga River. No, his only thoughts are to follow the family treasure map to that mysterious feature shown in the mountains. 

This contradiction explains why the rest of the adventure, to me, is unsatisfying. Over the next several encounters, the party will be shadowed and sniped at by Iron Ring forces, but is given no lead to take the initiative. My players weren't having it; a successful interrogation at the slavers' camp gave them the bare minimum information that the Iron Ring had a base under Kelven, and they are currently knee-deep in the first module of TSR's renowned A series, which fits the situation perfectly. The gnomes, the merchant, or documents found at the slavers' camp are also good opportunities to lay down clues for a more attack-oriented campaign.

Because of this not-unwelcome derailment, the next entry will be the last in this series for a while. I'm not going to comment on any scene I haven't played through, and Rifllian was the last scene in B10 that the party played through before getting into a more proactive adventure.

Night's Dark Terror 4: Siege of Sukiskyn

This is part of a series of posts with a scene-by-scene critique, appreciation, and improvement of the 1986 TSR module B10, Night's Dark Terror. 

Wargames and roleplaying have the kind of grudging closeness that's only seen in families. Roleplaying is the younger sibling, having grown out of the wargaming scene in the Midwestern States 50 years ago. To this day D&D, the market leader, bears the combat emphasis and even specific rules mechanics of tabletop wargames. The authors of Night's Dark Terror, as we've seen, helped originate the roleplaying line in the predominantly wargame portfolio of Games Workshop.  Still, it must have been surprising, unprecedented, and for many, very welcome to open up a fresh copy of this module and see a sheet of die-cut counters and fold-out battlemap with which to play out the siege of Sukiskyn. The secondary market value of a paper copy shoots up by an order of magnitude if it includes an unpunched copy of the counter sheet. While the rules stay D&D, the counters and map evoke the glory days of board wargaming in the 60's through 80's.

Perhaps it's the wargame mindset that explains why the players have to be guided on strict and shiny rails toward the exact setup scenario of the Siege, where they enter board left, fight their way through a couple of goblin squads, with a strong incentive to hurry into the fort where they meet the Sukiskyn family and take part in the all-night defense. The usual procedure in wargames is to have an inflexible setup, the fight being self-contained. All the same, both miniature and counter wargame rules occasionally set up sequential campaigns of battles, where outcomes have consequences down the line. It was into such a Napoleonic miniatures campaign that Dave Wesely, in 1969, inserted the free character-driven kriegspiel of Braunstein. Diplomatic play as characters in that fictitious town could influence the forces and setup of later army-scale battles.

So why not let free play influence the setup of this battle? Before going into the two most likely alternate scenarios, we must first review what's going with the forces already at or near the scene. In doing this, I will mix my own interpretations with the scenario as written.

The human settlements near the Volaga river have been targeted by a multi-level mayhem operation: three goblin tribes, each with their king, who answer to the hobgoblin captain Vlack, who answers to evil wizard Golthar, who answers to the Iron Ring organization. We can imagine that, since the main business of the Ring is slaving, Golthar presented the operation to his superior as a way to get sturdy civilians into chains. But he also has an obsession he keeps from them - an object learned of through ancient lore, that he believes to be in one of the settlements, and that actually is in Sukiskyn.

It's easy to believe that the settlers by the Volaga have not seen the goblins as a threat before; the settlements that fall offscreen do so quickly, and there's no system of mutual warning or reinforcement among them. A likely reason is that for years now, the goblin tribes have preferred to fight each other, making no moves northwards in fear of attack from behind. Now, Vlack's diplomacy has united them. The combined force has taken down four homesteads and camps in the preceding days. The next-to-most recent involved the Wolfskulls and Vipers, so the Redblades must have been brought in only recently.

If the combined force attacked all at once, they would easily slay the defenders of Sukiskyn, PCs and all. They number over a hundred goblins, their leader corps, the Wolfskulls' riding wolves (easily the biggest threat in the roster using Basic rules, and very strong even in 5th), and Vlack's entourage of hobgoblins, giant bats, and a terrifying ice wolf. But despite their successes, the goblins are not used to team play, and suspicious of the other tribes. The siege of Sukiskyn is winnable for the defense because the Vipers have defected from the alliance, seeing their chance to rustle that herd of 41 white horses for themselves, and decamping just before sundown after killing two homesteaders.

Thus, we might imagine at sunset the besieging forces in disarray. The goblins set to ambush the party were not expecting anyone, but alertly awaiting orders. A frantic conference ensues between the two remaining kings and Vlack. Gnahss of the Redblade wants Kloss of the Wolfskulls to send the riders after the Vipers and the horses, which they would catch easily owing to the number of Vipers who must be on foot. Kloss doesn't want to quit the field and have Gnhass steal the glory and treasure of what they think is another pushover civilian settlement. Vlack, a sound tactician, urges a united assault, but now the kings are suspicious of each other, neither willing to commit to attack until they're sure of the other's motive. After several hours, at Vlack's urging, the kings commit a section of their forces to a probing assault (SE3 on p. 8). It's likely to be less successful than expected owing to the presence of the PCs, and will lead to recriminations that Gnhass did not put his forces in danger the way Kloss did. The recriminations lead to delay, delay, delay, until the night is about to lift and the goblins, who can't stand light, need to make a move. At that point Kloss finally quits the field to chase down the Vipers, and Gnhass, as we read, seeks to purge the shame of failure with a goblin-wave assault.

With this in mind, what can we expect if the players' characters arrive early?

After establishing their bona fides by referring to Stephan, they'll be greeted warmly and treated to dinner just around sunset - Stephan himself is expected the next day. Shouts, screams, and the neighing of horses alert the diners to trouble near the pen. Because the area of grass around Sukiskyn is too small to graze a herd of 40 day-in and day-out, we can assume that Novannes was just bringing them back from pastures a few miles away on the plains, but he and Hakos were ambushed by the Vipers just outside the pens and killed. Before the shocked and angry homesteaders can mount up and ride after them, it becomes clear that the woods are crawling with goblin eyes and goblin fires, and they hastily retreat and secure the gate. Just then, they find the roof of the barn ablaze and eight intact Redblades in the courtyard. The rest of the siege continues from episode SE1.

What if they arrive late?

Assume that the same goblin ambush and wolf reinforcements greet them, but that the barn and gatehouse have burned down and it will be harder to get to the barred-up house where the family holed up. The Redblade goblin raiders who set the fire are all dead in the courtyard and the clerics have used a couple of cure spells already.

If they are more than three hours late, the foray (SE3) has been repelled but at grievous cost. The main fighters, Pyotr, Daria and Taras, have taken 25 hits between them, which the clerics will likely have spent all their healing on. Worse, old Stelios has died to a sling-stone. A Wolfskull bodyguard, five Wolfskull goblins, and five Redblade slingers add to the dead in the courtyard.

If they arrive after dawn for some reason, all the family's fighters are dead amid a carpet of goblin bodies. The pillaged homestead is burning. The fateful object of Golthar's search as well as the captive civilian family members are on the way to the lair of the Redblades, who suffered 15 dead in prevailing. Eventually Vlack will pay a visit to them demanding the MacGuffin, once Golthar fills him in on its significance.

Some further notes on the siege:

* The scenario starts oddly, I think. The Redblade raiders have apparently punched a hole in the palisade, but if that's so, why don't the wolf riders follow through? Maybe the wolves hate the flames, but it also strains realism that the goblins could chop down a stout palisade wall in a few minutes. It's more plausible that this was a party of skilled climbers with incendiaries that let themselves over the palisade to cause chaos. The burning barn, over several minutes, then creates a gap in the wooden palisade which the later waves of attackers can exploit. Just note that in fifth edition, some spellcasters have access to utility cantrips -- regrettably, in my view -- that make the job of dousing the fires child's play.

* When adapting to 5th edition, it's only the Vipers and possibly the Wolfskull infantry who are described as using typical goblin tactics - hide, shoot or stab, and run. Keith Ammann has written a definitive guide to using the goblins' abilities, assembling their strength out of a poorly organized Players' Handbook which scatters the rules for hiding, spotting, and surprise into three separate sections. The warg (worg?) riders in any edition will be far outmatched by their steeds; in 5th consider doubling their hit points, and giving them the Mounted Combatant feat instead of Nimble Escape. The Redblades can be run as is -- Amman states that goblins sometimes do charge straight on, but only when ordered to, and this can be extended to whatever weird death-cult belief motivates their final charge. Or, for a tougher challenge in fifth edition, you might give Redblade melee squads Reckless or the orcish Aggressive instead of Nimble Escape.

* The theme of trauma in the survivors of violence continues. Masha, a young mother who has just lost her husband, is a grim presence of pathos among the defenders. I played her as swinging between desperate grief and doom-laden fatalism.

* Continuing to keep commanders in the shadows, the scenario has Vlack and his small but powerful unit lurking in the woods. He sends his pet bats to attack, probably first targeting anyone keeping watch in the stone tower. Their voices might also be heard having an argument with the goblin kings at various points of the night. When they're gone, they leave only hobnailed footprints, and a mysterious token whose meaning won't be clear for two more chapters of the adventure.

* How balanced is this fight? As before, second-level characters in Basic/Expert are at heavy risk unless the party is exceptionally large, especially if following the unkind natural healing rules. The Sukiskyn defenders have something like 15 character levels between them, so to match that force, I think 4-5 characters at 3rd or 4th level are right. Fifth edition characters will have a far easier time and it's very possible that 2nd level parties could prevail. Crucially, there is just enough time for a long rest in between episode SE3 and Just Before Dawn. Rest economy is a big issue in adapting old school adventures to Fifth edition, but the difference here is not as huge as it might be - Basic characters will also make good use of a rest to recover spells, including healing spells.

* Amid all this critique of details, I'll join other reviewers in saying this is a very well written and memorable scenario, with a variety of action - defense, fleeing, deception, skirmishing - and clues that let players put together, even if only partly, what is going on behind the scenes.

Next: Aftermath of the battle and tracking the herd.