The Borderlands of Kern

I think that a lot of people who purchased the 1981 Moldvay Basic D&D rules decided to expand upon the example dungeon, The Haunted Keep.  It was my first dungeon as well.

“In the distant past, the Haunted Keep was the castle of the Rodemus family. It was abandoned many years ago when the family mysteriously disappeared. It is now rumored to be haunted. Strange lights and sounds are often seen and heard in the ruins by passing townspeople.” (D&D Basic Rulebook (BX) 1981).

With this paragraph the example dungeon began. The example dungeon only detailed one of two lonely towers set on the road. There was also a fragment of example of play that occurred in the dungeons beneath the Haunted Keep.

Below is dungeon level 1 the version of the Haunted Keep (which I called The Two Towers) that I developed.  It was created in 1982 but I created this digital map in the 1990s. In total believe there ended up being 3 levels of dungeons with the Rodemus family wererat tribe in the lowest level. The first level was stocked almost completely randomly with giant bees, troglodytes, goblins, you name it.

The Two Towers Level 1

The Haunted Keep was placed in a sandbox setting I called the Borderlands of Kern. The borderlands took the outdoor map from B2: The Caves of Chaos and expanded them to include the haunted keep, a town called Newmarket and the town of Kern.  I was going from the brief setting description of the Realms in B2: The Caves of Chaos which placed the Keep on the edge of human lands.

The Borderlands of Kern