The Pillars of Pelagia

 

The Pillars of Pelagia by Chris Doyle is my daughter's favorite module so far. It's got a lot going for it. A cool setting at the rocky seaside cliff lair of a wizard, lots of thematic puzzles, an intricate, interesting dungeon map, and a high-stakes boss fight. I ran this for the Riverport Rebels in person, around a live table, and had made all the puzzles into actual hands-on escape-room type challenges. When I ran it later for the Class of  '81, I had re-invented all the puzzles into formats that could be worked in real time on the Roll20 virtual tabletop.

When I ran this for the Rebels, the hook was that Duke Orsino, their patron and employer, had sent them to deliver a mysterious note to his friend the Countess in Blue Haven to the south. Now, I'd made an actual note to give to the players. It was on parchment and sealed with red wax, so I figured my daughter, who plays a fast-talking grifter of a sorceress, would naturally pop the seal as soon as she was out of sight of the town and dig right in. 

This plan was almost foiled by my husband, playing an uptight paladin, who declared that it would be wrong to violate the Duke's trust by breaking the wax seal on the later. 

I mean, he wasn't wrong. 

Anyway, after much argument, the seal was broken and the letter was found to contain an embarrassingly bad bit of love poetry. And after much mocking and hooting, the poetry was discovered to be an acrostic telling the Countess that the Duke was in trouble and needed her help. 

So off to Blue Haven they went, and Countess sent them to seek out the wizard Arcadianus, her advisor and helper, and escort him back to Riverport to help the Duke. 

When I ran this module for the Class, I believe the hook was simply that they were supposed to seek out Arcadianus to advice on what to do with the Eye of Death, and maybe how to destroy it, since it was now in their possession and they were a little freaked out. 

SPOILERS: The players must get past an angry harpy to enter the keep, where a convoluted, multi-level keep features all kinds of interesting puzzles and challenges that will keep a party of adventurers on their toes, exploring and thinking. A trail of clues left by the wizard's pet faery dragon, Myricia, leads them on while telling them an increasingly urgent story about what's going on in the keep. 

The module as written has Arcadianus dead already, and the players confronted with having to battle a drow priestess with a contingent of koalinth and goblin sharks. Myricia has been captured and is in a cage, about to be roasted alive. 

When I ran it for the Rebels, Arcadianus was still alive, and hiding in the underwater trunk that is in the water below this chamber. When the Class ran, it was closer to how it was written and he was dead already. Also, since the Rebels consists of two kids who were pretty young at the time we ran it, no cute little faery dragons can be burned to death in front of them. This is D&D, not How-To-End-Up-Paying-For-Therapy-Later. 

Anyway, this module contains a mechanical submersible! It's supposed to only hold one person, but when young kids want to excitedly pile in and drive it back to Riverport, you let that happen. They named it the "S.S. Bumblecrab" and drove it home. 

The Class didn't do that. They used the submersible to hide the Eye of Death underwater in the ocean until they could get some intel on what to do with it or how to destroy it. They did, however, take Myricia with them when they left. 

Back to The Riverport Rebels page.