The First Floor of the Castle

Wandering Monsters

There are few wandering monsters while the goblins remain. Eliazu has decided that the goblins are worth keeping, now that he’s taken away their leader. Eliazu feeds off of their fear. The chance for a wandering encounter with a non-goblin will be 10% every two hours. If the goblins are killed or chased away, the chance for random encounters increases to 10% every hour.

On nights of the full moon, and on Hallowe’en, there is always the chance that the ghost of Tragos d’Illus haunts the castle. See The Scepter of Tragos d’Illus for details.

Entry Hall (1)

You will need to adjust this flavor text depending on how recently the goblins have been here. This assumes that the goblins literally just left. For example, the entrance doors won’t swing shut unless the goblins just passed through them.

The smell of fried food permeates the air. Discarded bones are piled in the corners and scattered on the floor. Straight ahead, two large double doors swing slightly and stop. To their left, skittering noises emanate from a dark, jagged hole in the stone wall.

Two smaller wooden doors lead to the north, and one to the south.

The entrance doors swing shut with a ringing thud. The bones and the walls waver beneath the flickering light of your torches.

In this room, the characters will find discarded fried and heavily salted rat bones and a couple of makeshift four-sided dice with goblin markings (characters familiar with goblin lore should recognize the markings).

One to three minutes (3d6 rounds) after the guards see someone or something they consider a threat, there will be eight goblins stationed in room 3. Of the other 19 goblin fighters ten of them will, one minute afterward, be in the hallway opposite area 6, and the other nine will be with the twelve noncombatants (eight younger goblins, four goblin females) in room 4. One minute after that those nine goblins will have left the noncombatants and be moving toward area 6. One minute later, they will be in the Gaming Room (6).

All of this travel will be done through the tunnels except for the nine goblins who will use the doors to go from area 3 to area 4, then from area 4 to area 5, and finally from area 5 to area 6.

If the characters proceed beyond the Entry Hall, the goblins will attack. If they go down the main hallway, the goblins in room 3 will rush out the main doors to initiate the attack. If available, the goblins in area 6 and across the way will join the attack one round later. Similar strategies will be used by the goblins if the adventurers take a different route from the Entry Hall, except that it will take the goblins from room 3 three rounds to join combat in one of the side areas.

At night, the goblins will act similarly, except that d20 of the fighters and d12 of the non-fighters will be off foraging. They will still divide their forces up relatively evenly, but will not divide into groups smaller than their opponents, nor will they fight if outnumbered. Because they are not tired, they will be able to muster their number in one to six rounds after seeing someone they consider a threat. They will also consider using the goblin holes to attack characters on the castle grounds if they have the time—but they won’t do this unless they are sure that the characters are going to be attempting an entry of the castle. They’d rather not fight a battle they’re not sure of, but they will defend their new home.

If the goblins lose seven or more of their number with no loss from the party, the goblins will run in any way possible, including the goblin holes. They will escape down the cliff, and come back later hoping that the characters have left or are more vulnerable. Two will escort the non-combatants out if possible.

None of the goblins speak Anglish. All speak a little hobgoblin, and some speak it fluently. All speak goblin.

Goblins: chaotic evil; faerie 1; move 8; short sword d6; defense: +4 (leather/shield).

Main Ballroom (2)

Clearly, this room was once the main ballroom of a wealthy order. In the dusty light from high windows the pillars and columns futilely fight decay and ill use, like aging thespians who refuse to admit the death that lies on their faces. Shutters on the windows droop loosely.

Wooden stools and chairs that look almost made both by and for children are scattered about the room. The sour smell of old fruit and the rank smell of old meat permeates the air. Beneath the heavy stink is the faint smell of good wine.

Where once-ornate tables and chairs stood, there are goblin-made stools and tables. The tables are slightly rotten, the chairs mostly busted, and there are goblin-leavings everywhere. This includes fried rat parts, fruit cores, unleavened bread, and tattered clothing. The goblins didn’t even clean out the place before moving in, so the corners and floors beneath their junk is still scattered with old, dried rat turds, dirt, rat skeletons, and a couple of giant rat skeletons (the characters may not recognize the latter, perhaps mistaking them for a large rodent they’re more familiar with).

In the corner adjacent to the entry hall is a small hole that the goblins can use, but that anyone human-sized would have trouble getting through.

Salvageable treasure includes a large barrel of salt stolen only a month ago. It is still good under the crusted top and could be worth as much as fifty shillings in Biblyon or seventy in Black Stag. In Crosspoint it would be worth no more than forty. The barrel weighs sixty pounds.

There is an open barrel of wine here, half empty, and an empty barrel as well.

Small Ballroom (3)

If there are goblin noncombatants in here when the characters enter, they will rush out of one of the far doors, either the one to room 4 or the one to the main hallway, depending on where the characters enter from.

A large fireplace dominates this large room. Tall pillars rise to the ceiling some ten yards up.

Small creatures, mockeries of human shapes, huddle in the far corner, a slightly larger creature herding them quickly through a door in the far wall.

Like the main ballroom, this room is in disrepair but was clearly once grand. There is a large fireplace in the wall adjacent to the old kitchen. During a battle, the noncombatant goblins will hide here.

Old Kitchen (4)

A huge, rusty, black kettle sits in a large fireplace. A pile of rocks on the south wall leans heavily against a wooden door. Another door across from you lies slightly ajar.

A hearth on the wall adjacent to the small ballroom (and part of that room’s fireplace) still holds a large, rusty, black kettle which the goblins use. There are the remains of a rat mushroom stew in the kettle. The utensils in this room have long since been scavenged by the townspeople.

The door to the servant’s quarters, which opens toward the kitchen, have recently been blocked by rocks taken from outside to keep the spiders out.

Servants’ Hall (5)

If they attempt to enter this hallway from the outside, the door is blocked shut by rocks. A strength roll, at a penalty of 3, will be required to open it enough to get through. The characters will receive a slightly different description depending on whether they come in on the north end or the south end.

A long, thin corridor leads down to a door at the far end. The long west wall is heavy stonework, the east wall a lighter stonework. A pile of (what may be) rocks leans against the (walls or door) (far down or to your right/left) in the hallway.

The doors to the servants’ quarters and to the outside have been recently blocked by rocks, placed there by the goblins to keep the spiders away. The goblins rarely use this hallway, and are only likely to come here as part of their attack plan.

Gaming Room (6)

Brightly-colored circles abound on the walls. On one wall, a circle of triangles with numbers and symbols stands out. On another a series of circles of varying sizes each contain triangular sections. The room is almost bare, except for a few barrels and an occasional spider web in the corners. There is another doorway on the opposite side, through which you see darkness.

Behind the barrels are a pile of dirt (the hole in the ground), the chest, and some piles of money. The door to the main ballroom is gone.

The Knights of the Order were heavily into games of chance and games of angles. There is a pool table here, although all the pool balls are gone and the legs as well. A wheel, sort of like a roulette wheel, is embedded into the wall, although it no longer turns. A tattered chess board has been tossed into one corner, though this was not original. The goblins stole it from elsewhere. You can still occasionally find pool balls, chess pieces, and dice from the castle in the Biblyon bazaar. The tables are in the same shape as everything else in this castle.

The goblins are using this room as their treasure room. They recognize treasure in their raids, but they don’t know what to do with it yet—goblins are not welcome in the towns of Highland. The hobgoblins used unscrupulous human intermediaries; the goblins haven’t figured this out yet.

There are piles of money: 159 shillings, 123 pennies, 298 half pennies, and 989 farthings. There is a small, fancy chest. It has no lock. It contains a silver set (i.e., forks, spoons, knives). It weighs 30 pounds and is worth 225 shillings in Black Stag or 175 shillings in Crosspoint.

They are also storing two wine barrels and two ale barrels here. The goblins think they’re all wine barrels, or they would have the ale out in the main room along with the one opened wine barrel. The barrels state clearly what is in each barrel, but it is written in Anglish, and the goblins don’t know how to read. One of the barrels of ale has gone bad. The other is worth five shillings. The two wine barrels are worth as much as thirty shillings.

Servants’ Quarters (7)

As if a tailor’s shop gone awry, translucent grey threading covers this room in a web-like pattern. A fat, bulbous spider a foot wide at least stares at you with red, unblinking eyes.

The spider skitters into the mass of webbing, disappearing from sight. The gray filaments ripple outward, as waves on a lake, with the great spider’s passing.

Dim shadows dance across the walls and ceiling from your light and from an opening in the south wall.

Thick webbing covers the servant quarters, which was once a set of bunks and compartments, the walls of which (like bankers’ walls) have been removed. Unless some spiders are already dead, there will be d3+2 large spiders.

Large spiders: animal 1; survival 6, 5, 4, 6, 6; move 10; bite 1 (poison); defense 2.

There are two goblin skeletons in here, a half-eaten goblin child, and an adult human skeleton. Scattered about the human skeleton are 5 shillings, 4 pennies, 12 half-pennies, and 30 farthings.

The spiders, unless they have recently fed (and if possible, they will drag any large kill to this room), will very likely attack any large flesh that moves in here.

A crack in the south wall leads to the old stables.

Old Meeting Room (8)

Light from a high window illuminates a deserted room, devoid of anything except a large pile of dirt several yards (ahead of you or a few feet to your left). Even the spiders seem to have left this room alone, although there are rat droppings and a few dead birds in the nooks. There is a (doorway to your left and a door straight ahead or door to your right and a door far to your left or a door on the far wall and a doorway next to it on the right wall).

In the castle’s heyday, this was where mighty warriors and great tacticians met to plan battles. Unfortunately, they didn’t plan well enough to keep the hobgoblins from the gates. The table is still here, but some farmers have tried to axe it apart. The goblins have dug a hole into the floor for entrance into their tunnels.

This is what the villagers thought was the library. They took not only the books, but the shelves as well.

The goblins originally had their tunnels going to the old stable, but after a scene reminiscent of Alien where they had to fight off a large spider in the tunnels, they’ve blocked off the tunnel going south from this hole to the stables.

Storage Room (9)

What first appears to be an irregular far wall, you quickly realize is the mountainside. This triangular room is empty except for scraggly, thin weeds growing in clumps at the edges. There is another doorway to your (left or right), through which you can vaguely see the outlines of another room.

The far wall of this room is the mountainside. While it was once used for storage of extra furniture, weapons, and decorations, all of the useful stuff has long since been ransacked by the townspeople, farmers, and now the goblins. There are only a few broken pieces of furniture that were too large to scavenge.

Bathrooms (10)

Tails and grey bodies lay tangled about the floor, chittering at you in a high-pitched, squeaky whine. The floor seems almost carpeted in rats.

One wall comes in at a sharp angle, and the other wall is irregularly shaped, a dingy plaster cracking off of it. Thin fissures crack the floor, far wall, and ceiling of the room, leading down and into unending darkness.

The original builders took advantage of a natural fissure to the Old Deer River and built the bathrooms here, making this one of the few castles, if not the only castle, to have a semblance of indoor plumbing. The same fissure goes up as well as down; at one time, the fissure in the “ceiling” was covered, but the covering has fallen in. Some giant rats are using this little cubbyhole as their home. The goblins have been planning on ridding the castle of the rats, but haven’t figured out how yet. They don’t know about Tragos’s eternally decaying body. There are hundreds of rats throughout the bathrooms and the fissure.

The rat’s lair is about ten feet into the fissure, where it widens for a bit and then also heads toward the fissures around the “secret entrance” near the old stable.

In the rat’s lair is the dead body of Tragos d’Illus, still in the shiny clothing of the leader of the Order. His body is unnaturally preserved in a rotting state, richly arrayed in rotting clothing. He wears an emerald on an iron ring (100 shillings) on his left pinky, a beautiful intricately-patterned gold ring (250 shillings) on his left ring finger, and a pearl rosary (400 shillings) around his belt. Clenched in his right hand is a scepter of gold and silver (500 shillings). The gaping hole in his right side, if examined, reveals that his right rib is missing.

Rats mill around a rotting corpse, richly arrayed in tattered, stinking clothing and jewels. It clenches a scepter in one hand. Tiny maggots burrow and crawl from a gaping hole in its side, as well as from its eyes, mouth, nose, and ears. As the maggots writhe about the face, the head flops to one side and gazes at you with maggoty orbs. A beetle drops out of the mouth. Rats feed on the maggots and the insects and chew at the corpse.

See the description of The Scepter of Tragos d’Illus for more about the scepter.

Rats: animal 1pt; move 8; bite or claw 1pt; defense 0.

Grand Kitchen (11)

The huge double doors swing open to reveal a wide, deep room. A great fireplace in the far wall opens to the outer corridor, and a huge pot-bellied stove nestles in the far right corner, its empty doorway gaping at you. What was once a counter ringing the room has been torn away and is mostly gone. The wind whistles from an empty hole above the stove.

The stove has been stripped bare of anything removable, including the chimney. Once the bustling kitchen of a great order, even the goblins have no use for this kitchen today. There are recent ashes in the great fireplace but it uses too much wood to keep going. Most anything of any value has been taken from the room already, although a pot-bellied stove remains, which the ransackers couldn’t figure out how to remove. They tried, though.

There is a recipe plastered by age to the counter. It’s called Venison Stew, but it’s the same as the Illustrious Stew which the townsfolk are proud of. It is hand-written, and was being made at the time of the summoning.

Egyptian Hall (12)

Stone benches line the wide hallway, flanking an engraved pyramid, open to reveal the books and scribes inside.

The castle has shifted slightly in its foundation over the past few hundred years, and the secret doors to this section of the castle are stuck. A strength roll at a penalty of 10 is required to open the secret door. The door is hidden in the engraving. One of the books in the engraving must be pulled out to unlock the door. The door then opens inward if pushed hard enough.

The Elite Troop’s Lounge (13)

The double doors fall to your assault and burst open. Two sets of plate armor sit, rusted and bent, on a fuzzy bench to your left. Swords dangle by their sides, and skeletal fingers lie broken around short halberds that lean against the armor. Behind them a snake twines itself around a fruit tree, almost like a mosaic in the rocks of the left wall. On the far wall, a text is inscribed above a great pyramid.

To your right are a pair of small double doors.

Here, the rotting and decay has gone on as in the rest of the castle, but less has been ransacked. Two chairs flank what was once a sofa on the north wall, and two armored fighters sit in the chairs. They are skeletons now; they wear ceremonial plate and carry long swords and a ceremonial halberd.

The pictures are painted on the wall’s rocks, which are embedded into the dirt. In fact, they are almost a mosaic, although many of the rocks contain multiple colors.

On the far wall, a picture of a pyramid, with a great army around it and a king, and the inscription:

“Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where the philosophers of this world? The learning of the wise shall perish. I will make drunk the princes, and their wise men, their captains and rulers, and their mighty men. They shall sleep for a thousand years while I lay low their pyramids, and make secrets of their wisdoms in the mountains.”

There are other chairs, sofas, and tables scattered throughout the room.

On this side, the secret door to the main part of the castle is not secret, and opens with an obvious lever on the west wall. It still requires force to open or close, however.

To the right are double doors leading to a hallway. They open normally, though they are slightly stuck (strength roll at a bonus of three to open). On opening the door, cold wet air meets them:

You force the doors open, and find yourself in a cold, wet hallway that reeks of sweat and mulch.

To the left a single hidden door leads to a stairway. The door is hidden by the edges of the mosaic’s tiles. On opening the hidden door, dry air meets the characters. See the flavor text in The Basement. The hidden door is to the right of the sofa and the guards, and is activated by pushing in on one of the stones. The door will pop open slightly.

The Smelly Pool (14)

You hear the scraping sounds of your bodies against the slanted walls echo lightly back to you, and that is all you hear. The place is deathly silent. (A rank smell grows or The rank smell continues) as you twist your way down the cramped cave. The thin pathway widens into a wider cavernous opening, filled with a mucky pool of brackish brown liquid. Two other thin pathways continue out of this opening. The slimy pool extends, completely still, through (both of or one of) them.

The shallow pool in this cave extends through the East and North Campuses, and is the home of a den of poisonous coppersnakes. If the snakes have not been killed elsewhere, there is a 20% chance per hour that d4 will be encountered here. In the winter, the snakes are almost certainly here, hibernating beneath the pool.

Coppersnakes: animal ¼; survival 1, 1, 2, 2; move 12; bite 1 (poison 0/1 round/d2); defense 2.

West Campus (15)

A brackish brown liquid covers half of this wide room, emanating a stench of almost physical force. The water flows into a thin, tall crack in the left wall. Skeletons in various states of repose lie in tattered ribbons of cloth on rotten wooden benches or bunks along the walls. Rats crawl in and out of skulls and rib-cages.

The door to the hallway that leads to this room opens outward, into the wider hallway, and toward the main door. The floor of these living quarters are covered in water from the smelly pool. There is a 20% chance every ten minutes that d4 of the snakes (if they still live) will be encountered here, rising to 40% if the muck in the far corner is dug into. Sunk into the far southeast corner, barely visible, is a small chest. It is rotten, and pulling it out of the muck is likely to tear it apart completely. Resting near the chest are a rusted dagger and sword in the muck.

Inside the chest are ten shillings, and fifteen silver pens (Coins of the Order). There is also a gold ring, with a Latin engraving inside. The gold ring is worth 25 shillings (it would probably be worth double without the engraving, which is a declaration of love to a woman named “Nancy”).

A crack in the stone wall leads to the South Campus, and another crack along the same fault leads to the caves and the smelly pool. The cracks are small, from three to four feet wide, and five to six feet tall.

There are five skeletons of warriors (unarmored) lying among various rotten bunk frames.

2d6 rats: animal 1pt; move: 8; bite or claw 1pt; defense 0.

East Campus (16)

A brackish stench mixed with brimstone almost pushes you back into the hallway. A brownish liquid covers more than half of this wide room, extending out of or into tall, thin cracks in the walls. Piles of bones rest in chairs, their skulls lying on floors or tables beside them. Skeletons lie half in and half out of the muck, and rest on what may have once been straw and cloth but now is covered in mold upon mold. Nestled within the ribcages of the skeletons strange birds turn their long-beaked heads toward you. Their eyes glint a dingy yellow in your torchlight. Two or three of them flap their dirt-red wings and take to the air, followed immediately by the flock of these screeching creatures.

These living quarters are filled with the stench of death, and perhaps a tinge of sulfur, something the characters shouldn’t really expect given the age of the last occupants. There are twenty or so skeletons sitting in eerily natural positions, as if they simply died while doing something perfectly normal (which, in fact, they did).

The birds are strigae, hellspawn and servants of the demon. They will attack any living creatures entering this room. There are up to nine of them (assuming none have been killed elsewhere). Generally, roll d8 and add one for the total strigae encountered at any time in this room.

​Strigae: demon: 1; survival 3, 5, 2, 6, 5, 4, 3, 5, 1; move: 18/3; bite d3; defense 2; paralyzing screech, blood sucking; magic resistance 1.

​In the northeast corner, sitting up out of the water, is an elven skeleton. The elf was about 6 feet, so must have been old. A headband hanging from the skull is begemmed in the middle with a garnet of deep red, worth 120 shillings. Lying next to the skeleton, in the muck, is a potion of fighting prowess at the seventh level of effect. This grants the drinker a bonus of 1 to attack and defense, and a temporary pool of 2d6 survival, for fourteen rounds. The glass vial has the emblem of a sword on its waxy stopper. A book wrapped in heavy leather is on the other side. The book is damp and many pages are unreadable. See the appendix for The Elfen Ranger’s Journal. On the elf’s finger is a silver ring carved finely with images of rabbits jumping. This is The Ring of Lemordin.