The Alchemist's Eyrie, Online Additions

I forgot about this one. This is one of the monthly free adventures WotC would post on their website. It's called The Alchemist's Eyrie, for 6th- or 7th-level characters. Once again, it's a dwarven thing. A dwarven tower, specifically, where the party is on a fetch quest. It doesn't use the Map-a-Week maps for December, though. And it turns out that the tower is currently occupied by renegade dwarves who are also...wererats. Remember in older editions where only humans could be lycanthropes? Welcome to 3rd edition, where anyone can be anything.

There really isn't a lot to this adventure; as I said, it's a fetch quest. The goal is to find some medicine for a contagious illness threatening the nearby dwarven stronghold. It turns out that the dwarf who has been making the medicine is dead, killed by the wererats who are seeking a way to control the side effects of their lycanthropy. So, the party is going to be fighting some sneaky dwarves in what is a pretty straightforward adventure.

The map is not too big; the whole adventure clocks in at 13 pages. There are a few tricks and traps around, as is appropriate for a dwarven tower occupied by dwarven wererats, and some decent treasure, although nothing exceptionally interesting. The biggest deal is that this tower is sized for dwarves, not for humans, so anyone over five feet is going to be cramped and ducking pretty much all the time. I've seen this before; the boxed Dragon Mountain adventure from 2nd edition did the same thing. This one doesn't have a huge nasty dragon in it, though. Nor does it have a dragon's hoard, which is more disappointing, I think.

We also get another Celebrity Game Table article on the website, this one about Rich Baker's Return to the Tomb of Horrors campaign. This was a 2nd edition adventure that was a follow up to the legendary original, now updated by Baker for 3rd edition. I don't know if that's a good thing or not; I don't think 3rd edition can match the true lethality of the original.

However, reading Baker's recap of the campaign, Gary would have been proud. By the end of it, Acererak had possessed one of the party and trapped his soul in the lich's mouldering body, enthralled a second, and slaughtered the rest with a single sequence of spells (the classic time stop followed by wail of the banshee and domination, plus a 9th-level death spell). So yeah, it was pretty darn deadly. Good for Rich.

There are a couple of Forgotten Realms articles linked as well. One of them is The Circle of Vehlarr, but the articles appear to have not been archived, so I have nothing to review. The second is the end of the Realms by Night series, The Cache Dwellers. There's a brief story about some 'ghosts' that can actually be fought located near Umberlee's Cache, which is a huge gorge in Waterdeep harbor. And we actually get monster stats for the Cache Dweller. It's a Medium-sized Undead with 5 HD and a CR of 7. They are incorporeal and can turn their victims into cache dwellers. Their primary attack is to engulf their victims, then squish them until they are dead. They are very difficult to see (+10 bonus to Hide checks), but they are powerless in sunlight. A decent little critter to make characters on the water nervous.

And...that's it for December. And, it's the end of 2000's material! I'm going to take the rest of the year off, and I'll see you all next year. Don't be afraid to comment and let me know what you think of the blog! I'm looking forward to an even more interesting year in 2026 as we go through the 2001 material. Until then, have a wonderful New Year, and may your dice always be true.