Last week I ran the players in my Swords & Wizardry Rules campaign through a D&D 5e adventure. Specifically, "Wizard in a Bottle" by M.T. Black. I have purchased a few adventures from this author on the DM's Guild site and I think a few more might get converted for use in my campaign. The adventure was meant for 2nd-level D&D 5e characters but I converted it to 8-10th level for Swords & Wizardry. In this case, I changed the monsters. I used similar creatures but kept the plot more or less the same. I switched an ogre for a feral hill giant, a spider swarm for a spider collective, and a lesser water weird for a 16HD Water elemental. This method works well for most 5e adventures. The traps and secrets can usually be left as they were written. Where this becomes a problem is with creatures like goblins - there is not really an easy way to scale up goblins from the 2nd to 8th level.
Session 113: The wizard in a bottle
Lakima (human magic-user), Eathwund (human fighter), Alrix (couatl sorcerer), Aldus (human cavalier), Joe Boxer (human monk), Fenris the Filch (human thief NPC), Domago (human cleric NPC).
The members of the Company of the Black Dragon have taken their new flying boat out on a maiden voyage a short distance to the ruins of a wizards’ tower south on the south bank of the Dolm river. They have been hired to return the body of an adventurer to Edgerton for burial.
Meanwhile, a lone wandering monk, named Joe Boxer follows the trail of a marauding creature through the scrub lands south of the Dolm River. The creature has attacked several people along the Wilderness trail. The tracks look to be those of a large ogre or small hill giant. The tracks lead to the ruins of a stone tower.
The flying ship descends from the sky a short distance from the ruined tower. As they are descending, they see a man step out from under a tree and wave a greeting at them. Lakima halts the descent of the ship at 20 feet above the ground.
“Who goes there,” Lakima calls out.
The man greets them and tells them his name is Joe and he is tracking a creature that has waylaid travellers on the wilderness road. Lakima yells that he will come down to meet him. Ropes are cast over the side of the boat and one by one the adventurers descend to the ground. Joe greets each of the adventurers and introduces himself. Lakima suggests they team up to kill this marauding ogre or giant as the Company of the Black Dragon wishes to search the ruins.
Lakima shouts some instructions up to Cowan and Dagmar the crew of the flying boat. While they are shouting back and forth, the door to the ruined tower is shoved to one side and an ugly hill giant steps out and roars a challenge at them. Eathwund, Joe, and Aldus move forward to defend the company. Lakima casts charm monster and easily charms the dumb giant. The giant invites them into the ruined tower and offers them some rotted meat that appears to be from a human forearm. Domago readies his mace to strike the giant but Lakima manages to persuade him to wait. The giant lives on the ground floor of the tower. The room is open to the sky except for an area under a crude lean-to of wood beams. The giant tells them that he does not think there is a dungeon or trap door under the floor. They do notice a large tarp of animal skins over a statue.
When the tarp is pulled aside, they find a life-sized iron statue of a robed man clutching a tablet in his hands. Etched into the table are three words (I will refrain from spoiling it in case someone plans to run this adventure). Suspecting immediately that this is a command word, Lakima loudly speaks out the words. Nothing happens. Joe, Eathwund, and Lakima then spend a quarter watch trying to figure out command words based on the letters. They eventually deduce the command word but when they utter these words nothing happens. Lakima asks the giant to slide the statue to one side but the giant is unable to budge it. Eathwund busies himself studying the statue and as he touches one of the etched letters it glows blue. They realize they need to touch each letter in turn spelling out the command words. Lakima does this and the statue swings to one side as if it is on a pivot point on its base. Beneath the statue they see a narrow spiral staircase descending into darkness.
Fenris takes the lead and warns everyone that some steps are loose. Joe comes behind Fenris and is followed by the hill giant whom Lakima persuades to squeeze into the stair. The giant soon becomes stuck. Lakima tells the giant to wait in the tower and not to let anyone enter.
“I eat anyone who come!” the giant says.
Meanwhile, Fenris calls out asking if anyone has a light. As he descends the light from the sun is cut off. Lakima summons a glow minion and sends it down to lead the way. The light from the glow minion illuminates a 40-foot-long, five-foot-wide corridor leading to a chamber. The corridor is draped in spider webs and cobwebs. They can see hundreds and hundreds of fist-sized black spiders crawling about. The spiders seem to want to avoid the light from the glow minion and do not advance toward them.
After a short debate, Lakima decides to summon an ice storm in the narrow hallway. Rain, sleet, and ice pelts the hallway, and hundreds of spiders are killed. Hundreds and hundreds of the spiders crawl together into a large mound completely blocking the corridor. The top layer of spiders is killed by the storm but the rest emerge as the storm passes. The spiders form together into the wriggling shape of a giant spider 5 feet in diameter. The spider moves toward the group. Aldus and Eathwund are able to hold it off. They slash at it several times killing hundreds of spiders. After a brief fight, the spider collective collapses and the few remaining spiders vanish into cracks in the walls.
Now that the hallway is cleared of spiders, they see the mummified remains of a humanoid figure leaning against the wall. Fenris checks the corpse and guesses that it is the long-dead remains of a half-elven thief. He pockets a pouch with gold and silver coins in it from the corpse. They move forward to the chamber. Inside they find a room with walls covered in carved grey stucco. Eyeballs have been carved into every inch of the walls and seem to follow them about the chamber. A stair leads down to the east and another to the west. Lakima suggests they head east but when they start to descend, they smell a foul odor. They decide to try to the south first.
At the bottom of the stair, they find another small chamber. One wall is covered by two wooden cabinets holding all manner of strange items. The sort of items that are expected to be found in an apothecary – shells, fossils, skulls, minerals, insects in jars, preserved organs, reptile skins, and powders in jars. Against a wall are three wooden barrels and a crate. A hallway leads west. Lying face down on the floor is the corpse of a man wearing chainmail. Fenris leans over the man and tells them that the man has large gashes in his chest. Dried blood covers the floor under the body. He appears to have been dead for a long time. Domago identifies a silver holy symbol about the corpse's neck as being that of St. Kristoff.
“We should carry him out of here and give him a proper burial,” Domago says.
Lakima agrees but “after” they finish searching. They look down the hallway and see six large paintings hanging on the wall. The paintings clearly depict different layers of the abyss. At the end of the hallway, they see another chamber.
“That looks like a trap,” Lakima says. Lakima pulls the Book of Monsters out of the bag of holding and releases a thief that tried to rob them at the Blue Dragon Inn in Caster’s Ford.
The thief appears and looks about in confusion.
“Stay back!”
The thief backs away from the group and then turns and runs down the hallway of paintings. As he reaches the room at the end, two toad-like demons step from a painting. One chases the thief into the room, and the other runs toward the adventurers to attack them. It rushes into the chamber and slashes at Lakima but he is protected by the amulet of demon summoning. The demon then slashes and then bites down on Fenris’ arm crushing it. Fenris screams in terror and pain.
Eathwund charges the demon pushing it off of Fenris with his shield. Aldus slashes at the demon with his great sword. Domago also charges the demon and swings at it with his mace but misses. They hear a distant scream and then the second demon comes running down the hallway of paintings. Two demons now attack Eathwund. While Aldus pulls one demon off of Eathwund, Joe leaps up onto the rickey barrels and punches a toad demon right in the side of the head. The demon is stunned and stands dumbly. Taking advantage of this, Aldus and Eathwund hack away at the other demon until it is dead. Domago tries to help but his mace proves ineffective. Aldus and Eathwund then hack away at the stunned demon severing its head. It collapses in a heap. A few moments later both demons are suddenly reduced to piles of ashes.
“Fenris, check the hall for traps,” Lakima tells him. Fenris asks for a moment as Domago sets his wounds and casts healing magic on him. Fenris then carefully makes his way down the hallway. As they pass the painting that the demons came out of, they see a painting showing endless decrepit courtyards and withering fields, demonic figures are scattered amongst the ruins. The figures seem to move out of the corner of their eyes.
“Could these be portals to the abyss?” Eathwund asks.
“Let’s not find out,” Fenris says stopping at the entrance to the room. There is a circle carved into the floor at the entrance to the room. Lakima examines it and declares it is a protection circle but that it is currently harmless. The room appears to be a laboratory. There are many shelves with jars, vials, alembics, bowls, and the like on them. A small desk with a chair and a workbench covered in jars and bowls. Lakima goes immediately to the desk and grabs all of the scrolls and sheets of parchment lying there. They are stuffed into the bag of holding. Lakima uses detect magic to spot two flasks that glow magically.
The room does not appear to have any exits and Joe suggests searching the walls. Before they can search for anything, a flask flies off a shelf and narrowly misses everyone. It hits a wooden shelf and smashes. The liquid inside burns a hole into the wood like acid. Another flask is thrown into the hallway and explodes into flames. Joe narrowly jumps aside. Domago tries to turn undead but he senses no undead in the chamber. Lakima grabs the two flasks he noted as magical and places them into the bag of holding. There are no more flying flasks thrown at them.
A desk is moved and a shelf but they do not find any exits.
“There is still one stair we can check,” Joe says.
They return to the chamber of eyes and check out the stairway leading down. Lakima sends the glow minion down the steps and they see a raised stone bowl in another small chamber at the end of the steps. Joe goes down and climbs up a wall and into the room. From his perch, he can see a dark shape under the scummy water of the pool. It is about the size and shape of a small human. Lakima orders the glow minion to pull the shape out of the water. But as the glow minion approaches the pool, a water elemental with a sickly blue-green hue bursts forth from the pool.
Lakima uses his magic to summon a fire elemental in the chamber of eyes. The summoned elemental quickly consumes the wooden furniture in the room. Lakima commands it to kill the water elemental. It rushes down the stair on which Fenris and Eathwund are standing. Eathwund uses his armor to turn ethereal and run back to the Chamber of eyes. Fenris is forced to run into the chamber with the pool to avoid being burned. Joe clings to the walls and then climbs out and runs back up the stair. The fire elemental and water elemental clash in a burst of steam. They hear Fenris screaming in pain down in the pool chamber. It only takes a minute for the fire elemental to destroy the water elemental. Lakima then dismisses it. Domago rushes down to the chamber and casts healing magic on Fenris whose skin has been burned red.
“That’s it for me. I am out of here!” Fenris declares and ascends to the Chamber of Eyes. He sits down next to the corpse in the hallway.
Down in the chamber with the pool they find that the pool has been emptied of the scummy water that was in it. The skeleton of a halfling lies at the bottom of the pool. A scattering of coins lies around it. Lakima calls out to Fenris and asks if he will collect the coins. The weary thief gets up and goes back to the chamber to collect the valuables. The halfling’s sword and armor are half melted and now useless junk.
Joe suggests checking the paintings again. He uses a pry bar to remove one from the wall to check behind it but is disappointed. Eathwund tells him that once the painting was removed from the wall its enchantment disappeared. They decide to remove all six paintings but do not find anything. They go back up to the chamber of eyes again. Aldus decides to poke one of the eyes in the wall with his sword. The eye explodes in a shower of plaster.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t touch that with your hand,” Fenris says.
Joe persuades Lakima to take the jars they found out of the bag and examine them more closely. Lakima takes them out and notes that one flask holds cloudy green gas while the other holds a blue liquid. He sees a shape in the blue liquid and looks more closely. Floating about in the flask is a tiny doll like figure of a woman holding a wand.
“Ready everyone,” Lakima says and then removes the cork on the blue flask. A blue vapor escapes from the bottle and then the figure of a woman appears and grows larger until she is human-sized. A woman stands before them with still a few traces of blue liquid on her clothes. She shakes her head and opens her eyes. For a moment she says nothing just looking over the seven men standing around her.
“Get back, fiends,” she says and brandishes her wand at them.
Lakima manages to assure the woman that she is safe. They freed her. The woman tells them she is Norine Gayheart. The mage they were sent to find. She tells them of entering the ruins with three companions. Their thief was bitten by a poisonous spider and died. Their fighter was dragged into a pool by a water elemental and drowned. She and the cleric continued on but were attacked by two demons. The cleric sacrificed himself by holding off the demons while she fled to a laboratory. Being out of spells she started throwing flasks and potions at the demons as they came toward her. She last remembered uncorking a flask of blue liquid.
“You were trapped in that bottle,” Lakima tells her.
The group decides to leave the dungeons. They do agree to remove the bodies of the thief, halfling, and cleric for a proper burial. But first Lakima tells them that they are going to need to kill a giant.
“Why do we need to kill it,” Aldus asks.
“Because it is eating people,” Lakima replies.
Norine is curious but holds back. Domago notices that she has a recent, bleeding wound in her side. He casts healing on her and she thanks him. They climb up the stairs and are greeted by Lakima’s friend the giant. The giant stands dumbly in the chamber chewing on a human arm bone. Lakima waves goodbye to the giant and Alrix, Norine, and he leaves the ruins for the flying boat. As soon as Lakima leaves, the giant eyes all of the remaining humans hungrily.
“Fresh meat!” and it swings its club at Eathwund who parries it with his shield.
Aldus, Eathwund, Joe, and Domago fight the giant while Fenris scrambles out the exit. Aldus stabs it and then Joe leaps up and cracks the giant on the temple with his fist. The giant’s eyes roll up in their sockets and it keels over with a crash – dead.
They make a quick search of the giant’s belongings but do not find anything worth keeping. Everyone makes their way back to the boat. Ropes are tossed down and the entire group climbs up to the flying ship. Norine marvels at the ship having never seen one before. Lakima proudly shows off the magical tiller but when he activates it he tosses in a bunch of nonsense words so Norine, who is listening intently, will not catch the command word.
The ship ascends and turns towards Edgerton. Norine tells them she is eager to return to her fiancé who must be worried. Lakima again tries to tell her that 20 years have passed but she does not believe him. As Edgerton appears on the horizon, they see a hawk circle the ship and then come in for a landing on the deck. The hawk hops about from one talon to another and then transforms into a robed mage. Lakima demands that the mage identify himself. The man shakes his robes as if brushing off feathers and then hands Lakima a scroll.
“This is my introduction. I am the Ubin Lerthal, a servant of Earl Uther and he is most displeased with you and your company.”
Lakima ignores the scroll and demands Ubin explain himself. The mage tells them that a week ago, a few days after they left Wolford, the cloud giant castle appeared over Wolford and rained boulders down on the center of the town. Many people were killed before the area beneath the strange cloud could be cleared. The giants continued to drop boulders and smash buildings on and off for hours. Lakima opens the scroll and finds an angry message from Earl Uther blaming the Company of the Black Dragon for making things worse and demanding they put an end to the cloud giants.
“I think we are going to need more hirelings,” Lakima says.
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