Lands of Cantona - New Campaign!

 Last Sunday I started a new campaign for my two nephews, my son and my wife. I introduced the kids to the game some time ago (you can read about it here) and played sporadically at best, but now I wanted them to play regularly. They were thrilled when I dropped the idea on them and, to be honest, it's always refreshing as a DM to run the game for new people.

The campaign is set on the Lands of Cantona, a relatively undeveloped region of the Wild Coast, in the World of Greyhawk 576 CY. I developed the village of Baz on the fringes of the Welkwood forest, in the style of the famous village of Hommlet, surrounded by several nearby locations for them to explore: an abandoned mine on the hills, an ancient cemetery among dead trees, a supposedly haunted tower deep in the forest, and some ruins sunk in the marshes. The first three are short low-level Labyrinth Lord scenarios (Den of the Morlock Shaman, The Tomb of Sigyfel and The Gibbering Tower), while the ruins were initially going to be the Ruins of Ramat adventure, which I have ran before, but then discarded it and I have not yet decided what to do about that location. I also expanded the tunnels under the mine with another dungeon (Lair of the Morlock Chief) and put, a bit further away, the Castle of the Mad Archmage. 

I had the players randomly roll on Rogues Gallery to see what characters the would be playing. The party ended up being Ragnar the elven fighter, Larry the human fighter, Tak the human cleric and Cesar the human druid. 

So, after hiring some men-at-arms (3) and torchbearers (3) they left early in the morning heading South looking for the Gibbering Tower. After a couple of hours they reach an ominous 40’ tall tower, built out of black stone, lying hidden in a small valley among the dark woods. 

Upon entering, they found a room with rotting chairs, couches, and rugs. A fireplace at the west wall, spiral staircase at the north wall leading up, and a staircase at the south wall leading down. On the fireplace mantle is a terrarium filled with a silvery fungus. They took the stairs down. 

Exploring the tower dungeons they find an ossuary, three cells (two empty, one with a shackled skeleton), a torture chamber and a cauldron chamber, both with two undead (ghouls), bodies of adventurers and two more undead (zombies), a trapped hall and some giant rats, a winery that they proceed to plunder, and finally a room with a 10” diameter glass sphere, on a metal stand. Someone touched the crystal ball and all were teleported somewhere else…

They found themselves in a circular room with a secret door that exits into a circular staircase with steps leading up and down, and an opening into a large square room with exits on the three other walls. They went straight ahead, opposite to where they entered and took the corridor until they reached a Y intersection with the corridor continuing ahead.

They took the right  passage until an X intersection where they came across a group of dwarven warriors. They were led by Hilding Ironhelm of the Bloodaxe clan. He told them they were in the first level of the dungeons of the Castle of the Mad Archmage, known as the Storage Rooms. The dwarves held the northern section, the elves the southern and the kobolds the east. They controlled the access to the lower levels and charge adventuring parties with a percentage of the treasure found.

There ended the first session.