Occluded Keep of the Doomed Elementalist

For as long as we can remember, the landmark has been a facade of solid stone. False windows and doors carved into the rock. But Sly Diego found a way inside. He says it's hollow, there's a whole building in there. And now he's telling anyone and everyone the way in. So... who will be the first? 

First to plunder the creations of the mad elementalist and discover his strange fate?

The Occluded Keep of the Doomed Elementalist is a wizard’s funhouse-style location intended for a roughly 3rd or 4th level party. Most groups take about 3-4 sessions to finish the delve. The keep has multiple intersecting routes with tons of hidden doors, unexpected pocket dimensions featuring different biomes, slumbering guardians, weird artifacts, interesting situational riddles to solve, and map/portal trickery involving a hidden floor of the structure. There are roleplaying opportunities, puzzles and secrets, many encounters that can be avoided (but some that can't, including a couple tough ones), and there's lots of interesting magic items for your players to get creative with like an enchanted mining pick that melts through stone. 

The module tends to play out with the PCs connecting those intersecting routes and slowly figuring out just what kind of wizard put this place together, until eventually they put that knowledge to use when they find themselves being hunted by a rival group showing up to steal their glory.

I've always loved wizard's workshop scenarios but I also have a real desire for adventuring spaces to 'make sense' and a lot of the funhouse adventures just don't do it for me. This was my attempt to create a weird sorcerer space that was a bit inscrutable, but still cohesive enough for the story of the wizard's downfall to shine through in the environment.

This one is bigger than my other modules and it took a long time to playtest and draw up, so it costs a little more. It's really good, though- this adventure got a special shoutout on the Between Two Cairns podcast with Yochai Gal and Brian Kerr so let me just brag about that, okay? I've gotten a lot of mileage out of this adventure at my tables and I hope you will too. You can preview the entire thing before buying.

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"I'm a huge fan of these, these are awesome. They read so easily
and they're so funny and like, I just really love them...
I think they're wonderful and people should check 'em out."
- Yochai Gal (Cairn), Between Two Cairns podcast

"I feel like these books need a series name, y'know?
I need some kind of identity to assign to these things."
-Brad Kerr (Hideous Daylight, etc), Between Two Cairns Podcast
(my guy, I'm open to suggestions!)

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This adventure is part of a series of lovingly handcrafted zine-style OSR modules with intricate hand-drawn maps, intended to showcase unique and consequential locations for low-level parties to experience in the oldschool, exploratory style. All the art is hand-drawn by real people and always will be. My goal is to show off low-level adventures with some real depth and interaction, more than simple dungeoncrawls. They are generally compatible with Basic Fantasy, Old-School Essentials, Labyrinth Lord, DCC, Five Torches Deep, and most other OSR-style rulesets. You can easily convert them into modern systems if that's your thing. Every adventure is thoroughly playtested with multiple groups at my own table so you can be sure that you're not getting some dashed-off nonsense here, these are gonna give you a good time. 

Don't let the small page count mislead you, this module is formatted to be as compact as possible for use during a game session. It's designed to be printed on four sides of Ltr/A4 paper and folded in half, zine-style, easy to reference. The dungeon map is the center spread; you flip upward to see the threats and downward to see room descriptions. Screen and print versions are both included with purchase but seriously print it out, it's all black&white and intentionally cheap cheap cheap to print.