Session Report: Deep Carbon Observatory in Dolmenwood Pt 1

Introduction

The group I've put together for this B/X campaign (a combination of Old-School Essentials and Lamentations of the Flame Princess) is filled with several players who are new to RPGs. I first ran for them the Ravenloft module Night of the Walking Dead. Once it was clear the group was going to stick together and we wanted to keep playing long-term I decided to put them into a setting I was excited by and to start seeding the setting with old-school adventures I had been wanting to run. The setting I picked was Dolmenwood (by Gavin Norman, author of Old-School Essentials). Their first foray into the setting was the adventure Winter's Daughter which did an excellent job of introducing Dolmenwood.

Once Winter's Daughter was finished and they spent some downtime in the settlement of Prigwort, they journeyed North to where I had placed the town of Carrowmore and the beginning to Deep Carbon Observatory.

The River Journey

We played several sessions that started with the introduction to Carrowmore as-written and then moved up the flooded river basin towards the broken Dam. In the adventure, the Dam was built by an ancient civilization long ago and it was beginning to break, overflowing the river's banks and flooding the communities built along it. My goal here was to slowly introduce strange elements and give players a gentle introduction to the odd nature of this adventure and the potential to uncover ancient secrets for Dolmenwood, while also making the journey up river seem quite arduous. This is a fine line to walk, because it should feel like their characters struggled on the excursion while keeping the adventure fun for the players.

I am going to move quickly onto the time they spent in the Observatory itself and not detail the encounters they had on the river. I encourage you to go pick up the adventure yourself to see all of the interesting encounters your PCs can have.

Into the Pit

I wanted going down into the Observatory to feel like crossing a threshold from the normal world the PCs are used to into the Mythic Underworld. The descriptions of the pit and the journey downward are critical to communicating this transition.

Once they reach the Observatory itself, I made every attempt to describe the locations with as alien a feeling as I could. Exploring this underground place is also extremely dangerous due to its primary inhabitant: the Cave Giant. My players proved to be extremely lucky and despite by-the-book encounter rolling (1-in-6 chance every other dungeon turn), they completely avoided any encounters with the creature. I still described some strange noises echoing through the Observatory every so often to try to keep tensions up.

I am going to focus on two specific locations that I think were most interesting for them: their reaction as they approached the Tektite Lens and their encounter with the Nightmare Librarian.

The Lens Room

The entire complex of the Observatory is contained within two giant stalactites which hang down into the gaping maw of the underground world below Dolmenwood. They spent much of their time exploring the right-hand region but they did make an excursion to the left-hand side and delved down towards the tip of the stalactite. This is where the Tektite Lens is housed and what makes this complex an Observatory.

A normal telescope, not like the Tektite Lens...

 

The Lens is a means of scrying deep into the Underdark. Its magical properties allow it to gaze through solid rock and through the deepest darkness underground to observe locations and creatures impossibly deep and far from the Observatory itself.

This scrying allowed the Observers to gather a tremendous knowledge of the underground world around them, but not all creatures in this Mythic Underworld were passive subjects. Some creatures were powerful enough to know when they were being scried upon, and one such creature was the Cave Giant. This creature climbed up from the depths of the world below and invaded the Observatory itself. He was barricaded into the Lens Room to try to keep him out of the complex, but he broke through the barricades.

When my PCs discovered these broken barricades and the warnings left behind about the monstrous intruder, they decided to skip the Lens Room and move on to explore other areas of the Observatory. They were scared, and not without reason. Now, the odds of the Cave Giant waiting for them in the Lens Room, as opposed to any other areas of the Observatory were small. They skipped interacting with the Tektite Lens which would have been a source of powerful plot hooks for further Underdark adventures. That was all skipped because of the foreshadowing of the danger and because the terror of the Cave Giant worked extremely well.

Nightmare Librarian

One of the most important and well-guarded artifacts in the Observatory is the tome held by the Nightmare Librarian. She is described as having skin "negative-image black... her hair is white... Held in her frozen hands, is a book." In my mind what is being described is a Drow, frozen in magical ice, clutching this critical grimoire. Since most of my players are new, the description of this woman and the word "Drow" meant nothing particularly special to them. It was another room with another strange sight.

However, my players already knew that there would be a powerful artifact in the form of a book somewhere in the Observatory, so when they saw it frozen in ice, they knew it was desirable. As they approached the block of ice to get a better view, the ghost of the frozen Drow woman emerged and threatened them with a horrible death if they got any closer, or in any way tried to retrieve the book. She told them that only the Inner Circle of the Observers could claim the book.

They decided to bypass the Librarian and search other areas of the Observatory before returning to attempt to claim the book. In actuality, they would not return to confront the Librarian. They correctly surmised that the Librarian was an extremely powerful guardian and without discovering some way to circumvent the Librarian and extract the book from the ice without dying they ended up abandoning the book for whoever else came along to claim it.