The Busybody

Retrospective: Riders of Rohan

2012-01-30T00:09:00.000-08:00

I adore this module inside and out. On the outward side, it was Angus McBride's first and best cover piece, spotlighting a bleak culture in an amazing freeze-frame. The Rohirrim are the closest to the Anglo-Saxons or even Norse in Tolkien's world, courageous yet hopeless, "riding to ruin" to embrace that Ragnarok-like annihilation of all that is good. The long defeat runs in their blood, and in this sense they share more in common with the seers and rangers of Arthedain than most would think possible. But where the northern Dunedain are resigned to it, the horse-lords seem to thrive on it. It's as if their history of repeated migrations and awful-odds warfare forged a culture of exultant fatalism, and Peter Jackson nailed this perfectly at Dunharrow, when Theoden calmly tells his men they can't possibly prevail against Mordor's armies: "But we will meet them in battle nonetheless." That's three millennia of the long defeat talking, and I could practically hear Vidugavia and Fram being channelled from the great beyond.

Meaning, indeed, that Riders of Rohan covers more than indicated by its title. It chronicles the complete history of the horse-lords in their three stages: the Eothraim years of 1-1856 (Southern Rhovanion), the Eotheod era of 1856-2510 (the Anduin valley), and the Rohirric time of 2510+ (Rohan). This makes the module exceptionally easily to use anytime in the Third Age. Players can throw themselves into the Wainrider Wars, go against the Balchoth Confederacy, or bare their teeth against the Long Winter after the slaying of Wulf. It's comprehensive in the way more ICE modules should have been; I'll never understand the heavy reliance on a 1640 default setting.

The personalities of famous huithyns like Vidugavia and Marhwini, althegns like Fram and Eorl, and kings like Helm Hammerhand and Theoden are provided, and it's easy to see how the original six tribes became increasingly centralized to embrace a monarchy. Their foes -- whether the Sagath and Logath chariot-riders, the barbarically matriarchal Asdriags, or the Dunlendings -- are the stuff of Bronze-Age barbarity; Rohan's unity was forged in its fires. I particularly like the breakdown of the six Eothraim tribes (totaling 38 clans), and how their ambiguous social order seems benign by Easterling standards but grim compared to other Northman cultures. This work-out complements the Eothraim material in Southern Mirkwood perfectly, without wasteful redundancies.

The mapwork gets a pass but certainly doesn't shine, another reminder of Rangers of the North. That being said, there's some good stuff here, notably Helm's Deep, which is more fine-tuned than Aglarond in the Isengard module. There is also the Juggler's Hall, a shadowy bardic school of "noble" smuggling and other roguish activities. The capital-towns of Framsburg and Edoras are presented for the Eotheod and Rohirric years (Buhr Widu for the Eothraim period was covered in Southern Mirkwood), and Druadan Forest is also showcased with a Wose village and circle of standing stones. The Wain-town of Ilanin is covered, inhabited by mostly Sagath, the closest Easterling outpost to the Eothraim. Finally, the two-page centerfold details the Deeping Coomb, a close-up geographical of the Helm's Deep area and Juggler's Close a few miles south. For my money though, you could almost scrap all of this and still be left with an awesome product. Riders exudes so much resonant culture that it leaves me burning to ride to ruin myself.

History & Culture Rating: 5
Maps & Layouts Rating: 3

Next up: Dunland.

Retrospective: Dol Guldur

2012-01-28T00:09:00.000-08:00

At the halfway point of these retrospectives we come to ICE's crowning achievement. This is the 220-page monster that completely revamped Sauron's abode from Southern Mirkwood, doubling the size, quadrupling the detail -- all of which was fine to begin with, but who complained? Most of these remakes in the '90s were uninspired, but with Dol Guldur ICE not only surpassed an excellent original, it landed the mixed equivalent of TSR's Return to the Tomb of Horrors and Queen of the Demonweb Pits, pitting intruders against fears unfathomable (and unfaceable), and the maia demigod who sat in its bowels. It's one of those once-in-a-blue-moon modules you read and feel utterly sorry for the players in advance, while also laughing your ass off at their foreordained misery. I cringe to think how my characters would have fared in this version; they barely escaped with their lives as it is in Southern Mirkwood's.

This time a complete history of the hill is provided, starting in the Second Age when the sixth house of the dwarves called it home. We also learn the origins of Celedhring: Sauron's student in Eregion, sent to corrupt and curse and wipe the dwarves out. The politics of Dol Guldur are now intricately convoluted, with Khamul the Nazgul commanding the war host and the smiths, the Mouth of Sauron overseeing the Conclave and slave masters. The backbiting between these two, and the lickspittling lengths they go to in order to impress Sauron, are bloody fantastic. Khamul manages to stay on top for the most part, until Gandalf penetrates the hill's defenses in 2850 and learns Sauron's identity -- at which point the Easterling is railroaded by the Dark Lord and put under the Mouth's authority. Only in 2951 when Sauron moves to Mordor, would Khamul be left again in charge of Dol Guldur (with two other Nazgul), a period which provides for "safer" adventuring opportunities. Other "safer" periods are described in the timeline, when Sauron is on sabbatical during the Watchful Peace, or when Khamul is off raising hell in the east or assisting his fellow Nazgul at Minas Morgul. As for Gandalf, his two visits to Dol Guldur (in 2063 and 2850) are described in vivid narrative detail, his exact path to every room and every encounter.

The reworked design is on such a staggering scale I can hardly do it justice. We are now to understand that the original layout in Southern Mirkwood applies only to the period of 1100-1258 (though it was clear at the time that it was meant for the entire post-1100 period), for between 1258-1382 Dol Guldur is hugely expanded. Instead of eight levels, Dol Guldur now boasts a whopping sixteen: three precipices (the upper halls), seven levels (the middle halls), five strata (the lower halls), and the hidden Necromancer's Hall. Radiating out from the seventh level, furthermore, is the Web, a vast network of orc warrens and warg dens extending for miles. The three precipices serve as a constellation of watchposts guarding the upper lip of the volcano, with the Fell Beasts' Eyrie and Clouded Bridge guarding against airborne intrusions. The seven levels quarter all of Dol Guldur's warriors save the common orcs (found in the Web): Uruk-hai on the first level, men on the second, trolls on the third. The fourth-sixth levels remain similar to those of Southern Mirkwood: the fourth is Celedhring's residence with forges and labs, and also Sauron's viewing chamber; the fifth is the residence of the Grimburgoth (the Warlord-Ranger who commands the war host when Khamul is absent), his elite guard, and the foul Black Lake; the sixth is the domain of the Snagagoth (Slave-Master), the thralls' dungeons, torture chambers, and prison cells. Finally, the "central keep" of the seventh level houses over 4000 Uruk-hai and guards three avenues: the tunnels to the Web, the descent to the five strata, and access to the Necromancer's Hall. This last is hidden between the seventh level and the first stratum, and was Southern Mirkwood's original seventh -- the deadliest, unholiest throne room in all of Endor.

Moving way below, the first stratum was the original eighth level, the breeding pits. The second stratum begins the expanded territory, with massive treasure vaults moved from the original second level, as well as dungeons for special prisoners not destined to become thralls up on the sixth level. The third stratum holds the Great Temple; the chamber of the Conclave (an elite group under the Mouth's command) who enforce worship of the Necromancer, and who are charged with recovering the One Ring; and naturally, the residence of the Mouth himself. The fourth stratum is grim beyond words: Khamul's abode (moved all the way from the original third level) where he cultivates a Black Forest of perverted Huorns and other vicious horrors. Finally, the fifth stratum, both the heart and bowels of Dol Guldur, is a single colossal domed cavern of bubbling acids and noxious steams, which Sauron calls home, with side caverns leading to treasures beyond sane imagining.

By my count, this all adds up to over 520 rooms keyed with incredible detail, about 1200 rooms total, and none of that includes anything in the Web. It's the most insane place in all of Middle-Earth to venture into, but then role-players are a pretty insane lot. My only quibble is that the Hall of Many Deaths from the original first level isn't carried over anywhere into the expanded version. That sadistic homage to The Tomb of Horrors was one of the best parts, and I'd sure retain it somewhere if I ever ran this thing.

History & Culture Rating: 5
Maps & Layouts Rating: 5+

Next up: Riders of Rohan.

Retrospective: Southern Mirkwood

2012-01-27T00:09:00.000-08:00

Southern Mirkwood is pure classic. Every RPG has its mother of killer dungeons, and in the case of Dol Guldur, the designers went the full nine and enjoyed the hell out of themselves. Take the sadistic commentary on the pit-and-tilt trap from the Hall of Many Deaths:

"Assuming the wily and clever PCs have discovered and disarmed the trap, and are marching across it, thinking themselves truly wily and clever, they may discover to their dismay (unless they are truly wily and clever) that there was a secondary trap, which is the next fifteen feet of corridor floor beyond. The second section of the trap is made of carefully painted paper, resembling very closely the stone of the floor. The paper conceals a pit trap which is actually a chute, routing the luckless victim out a hole in the side of the central shaft of the cone and sending him plummeting to (almost) certain demise nearly 3000 feet below. This section is Extremely Hard (-30) to detect. However, there are artfully carved hand and footholds on the left wall. Only the most wily and clever will discover the Absurd (-70) to detect trap eight feet out on the hand and footholds; three in succession are trapped, which not only flip the wall to horizontal, summarily dumping all creeping across through the paper floor and down the chute, but also triggers the original pit and tilt trap just 30 feet back, no doubt catching a few more cautious adventurers."

I ended up on the receiving end of these iniquities, since my friend bought this product before I, and this was perfectly just since I usually DM'd ridiculously unfair projects like Tomb of Horrors. Still, I regret not ever having the malicious pleasure of inflicting Sauron's terrors upon others.

Many lament that ICE never got around to designing a module of the Barad-dur, but if I had to choose, I'd pick Dol Guldur any day. Mirkwood forest is far more insidious than Mordor's wastelands, noxiously alive as I think of it, and it's also under Sauron's power throughout the entire Third Age. Adventures involving the Hill of Sorcery can thus be set in any time (after 1100), while Barad-dur isn't even rebuilt until 2951. Not only that, the atmosphere of Dol Guldur is one of mystery: the Dark Lord hasn't declared himself yet.

Of course, there's more to Southern Mirkwood than the Necromancer. The Eothraim of Rhovanion are found here (the module is geared, like many, for the 1640 period), long before they acquired the territory of Rohan, in the towns of Burh Widu and Burh Ailgra. Their Easterling foes are also given treatment, tribal Asdriags and Sagaths with fierce customs. Then there is Radagast the Brown, who is far from the senile fool most believe, indeed a force of salvation keeping the Necromancer's influence at bay with druidical powers. Point counterpoint is the presence of the One Ring which has blighted the Gladden Fields over the centuries, banishing the river spirits that once existed, turning mud to quicksand, and killing enough morale to cause emigrations out of the area. The Necromancer rightfully steals the show, but the module is faithful to its overall region. Like Hillmen of the Trollshaws it stands as a model which ICE should have followed more often, offering a major dungeon that pays off big-time with all the sandbox auxiliaries.

Being Sauron's home, the mountain is worth touring: It starts at the top with a dungeon crawl of impossible traps (the Hall of Many Deaths, the Chamber of Subtle Demise, etc.), blatant shades of The Tomb of Horrors, and keyed with the sadism cited above. The second level finds the orc garrison, along with staging areas, armories, treasure vaults, a nasty demon tomb, and a maze trap. The third is for Khamul, Second of the Nine Nazgul -- his throne room and audience hall, his private and ceremonial chambers, and his unspeakable sacrificial altar; The Mouth of Sauron also resides on this level. The fourth is for the renegade elf-smith Celedhring, with forges and labs, and also Sauron's special viewing room where he gazes out across Mirkwood, brooding, planning. The fifth has a poison lake which eventually feeds into the Anduin River, the effects of which reduce memory and self-discipline; also troll quarters and herb storages. The sixth level is a horror show of torture chambers and prison cells which suffocate spell-casting ability. The dreaded seventh level is the throne of the Eye (where no one in Endor wants to find himself), surrounded by eight guest rooms for the other Nazgul, and Sauron's personal quarters which are rich beyond royal imaginings. And the bottom level ends in breeding pits where Sauron commits the foulest crimes against all manner of living beings. Thankfully I didn't have to descend below the fourth level (the target of my mission was Celedhring's lab), but I didn't escape without facing off Khamul, and it was bloody harrowing.

Southern Mirkwood is one of the true high points of my gaming years. I can only imagine the ecstasy my friend and I would have derived from the incredible remake of the mid-'90s...

History & Culture Rating: 5
Maps & Layouts Rating: 5

Next up: Dol Guldur.

Retrospective: Halls of the Elven-King

2012-01-26T00:45:00.000-08:00

This fortress module atones for the astounding display of incompetence in Northern Mirkwood, and basically pretends that it's the first stab at Thranduil's halls. In a sense it is. The scribbled-up campaign version isn't remotely close to what could be thought of as the seat of Silvan royalty, and I'm not surprised ICE ditched it (along with the author's putrid prose) in a later '90s revision of Mirkwood. By comparison this product belongs in the Louvre. The only thing that grates on my nerves is the first-person narrative style used in the map key, told from the point of view of a Dale merchant who visited the elves. It's a nice try at something different, but memoirs are distractive to a DM who just needs the facts.

Thranduil's abode is now grounded imperatively in the memory of Thingol: "Both housed great halls built under large hills on the banks of a river. Both halls had limited access over the river by a single stone bridge. The borders east and west were protected by rivers, and both were situated in a deep forest." While certainly no rival in size to Menegroth's thousand caves, these halls can still accommodate several thousand elves with a endless water supply from its underground springs, and the appropriate sense of a subterranean paradise is conveyed on every page. The front gate opens by command of song; Thranduil's throne room is subtly lit by torch and lamp, dominated by a throne of oak, the floor etched with floral images native to Mirkwood, its walls with tapestries of "birds and beasts frozen in flight and halted leap"; the feast halls are luxurious; the treasuries staggering. This is all prefaced by a brief history of the wood-elf realm prior to the construction of these halls in 1050-1100, particularly relating to Oropher's dispute with the Noldor, his abandonment of Lorien in the late Second Age, and the way his coming to Mirkwood blended Sindar and Silvan cultures.

Because it's a fortress module (like Weathertop and The Teeth of Mordor), it benefits immensely from the mega-zoom shots of key rooms with detailed drawings. Every anvil, work bench, forge and barrel can be seen in the foundry, every tree pillar in the throne hall, every table and fire pit in the feast hall, and more. The two-page center displays an impressive 3D look at the halls through the outside hills, doing everything possible to bring to life ancient Sindarin architecture now fused with the primitive Silvan. The halls are given four levels (against Northern Mirkwood's pitiful single one), a ground, an upper, and two below. There's an apothecary hall filled with potions that heal more powerfully than anything mannish or dwarven, derived from herbal lore and songs of healing dating back to the mists of time. The weaving hall contains garments of amazing design and function. And of course, there is the wine cellar with flavors unique to Mirkwood -- right above a hill stream that would provide escape for a certain hobbit and group of captive dwarves.

Put simply, these are the Elven-King's Halls as they should have been done in the first place.

History & Culture Rating: 3
Maps & Layouts Rating: 5

Next up: Southern Mirkwood.

Retrospective: Northern Mirkwood

2012-01-25T00:05:00.000-08:00

And so we move from the best Tolkien module to the very worst. I don't know anything about John Ruemmler other than as the author of this travesty, written in a sophomoric and exclamatory style, nothing at all like the other ICE writers. "The lowly flea, mass murderer of Mirkwood? Impossible! No, it's true." Or: "Perhaps no creatures in Middle-Earth have tingled so many spines and inspired so many 'Yechs!' of disgust as the Giant Spiders of Mirkwod." Still worse: "Enough of gruesome, loathsome, evil creatures! Consider the mighty monarchs of the woods, the Great Bears." There is also plain incompetence, even silliness, as found, for instance, in this unbelievable description of orcs: "If they accidentally hack off a fellow orc's limb, the injured orc is likely to say, 'Hey, that's okay! I have another!'" Does anyone remember those April Fool parodies in the '80s issues of Dragon? That's what I thought Northern Mirkwood was on first reading.

Unfortunately, the entire module is as bad as the prose, for it doesn't offer much beyond a bare-bones geographical sketch of the region and superficial overviews of the cultures of the wood-elves, dwarves, and the men of Long Lake. There is some useful background here, but not much; it's very possibly the worst Tolkien accessory ICE ever published. That's a double shame considering that it's Mirkwood, one of the grandest icons of Endor. Some might accuse me of a jaded perspective, reviewing this product in between top-notch modules like Lorien and Southern Mirkwood. But frankly Northern Mirkwood is so bad that positioning it between any other modules, no matter how dire, would amount to little more than trying to polish a pile of feces.

The mapwork continues in offenses, though in its favor there is a four-page color detachable that's very well done. Beyond this lies pure failure. First and worst are the Halls of the Elven-King, which are more like TSR's Caves of Chaos, and what's amusing is that the author seems acutely aware of how poorly he represented Thranduil's home: "After reading this one might think that these halls are cold and damp, having perhaps visited natural caves; but this is not true." But declarations of this sort mean nothing, for indeed these caverns do no justice to what the elven structure should look like; on top of this, the rooms are given almost no detail whatsoever in the key. It's no surprise that ICE would later completely redo The Elven-King's Halls in a fortress module (to be covered next). The Lonely Mountain isn't much better. Like Moria it's portrayed with unsatisfying route maps (only the Chamber of Thror is given a proper layout), but Moria at least detailed the room contents. Erebor leaves almost everything to the DM like the Elven-King's Halls. Really the only thing given a proper, detailed layout is the minor tower of Sarn Goriwing. The towns of Esgaraoth and Dale are displayed but not described. If not for the four-page color insert, the mapwork would have gotten a rock-bottom rating of 1. What a waste.

So who is John Ruemmler, and what are his excuses? Oddly enough, he authored Rangers of the North two years later, which for all its faults is a good module. By this time evidently something happened to discipline his prose, if not inspire better architectures. But really, the editor of Northern Mirkwood is as accountable as the author of this fiasco. I'm glad nothing this bad was repeated in future modules.

History & Culture Rating: 1
Maps & Layouts Rating: 2

Next up: The Halls of the Elven-King.

Retrospective: Lorien and the Halls of the Elven Smiths

2012-01-24T15:05:00.000-08:00

My cards are face-up on the table: this is the best Tolkien module ever made, better than even Dol Guldur, and I can hardly begin to enumerate the reasons why. But let me get its single imperfection out of the way, which pertains to the cover. It's an Angus McBride piece, and for the most part fabulous -- save for Galadriel. I don't know what the artist was thinking, but her hair is the long-straight ghastliness of the '70s, and her face looks like a sow. I'll never understand the objections to casting Cate Blanchet in the later films; she was a perfect Galadriel. But this sketch is dire. With that out of the way...

Lorien is a bible for all things elven, and has a joint focus on both sides of Khazad-dum: the Golden Wood and the Jewel Halls. The latter makes this module completely unique in devoting heavy space to a Second Age setting, and I remember breathing the antiquity as a DM; Eregion felt like the equivalent of New Testament times. Honestly, who could pass up the opportunity to visit Ost-in-Edhil during the forging of the Rings of Power? These were the days of the Noldor's last realm, when magic was still unbridled, dwarves were good company, and when Sauron himself, in the benevolent guise of Annatar, "the Lord of Gifts", walked among the firstborn and guided their labors. In these pages, Noldor culture is wonderfully detailed, the personalities of legendary figures like Celebrimbor brought so convincingly to life, and the magic items to be found in the Jewel Halls make TSR artifacts like Daoud's Wondrous Lanthorn look like baby toys.

As if these riches weren't embarrassing enough, on the eastern side of the mountains lies the most precious domain out of any fantasy, and where Galadriel wields the power of her elven ring to enshroud it. I gave Nenya's powers a Gygaxian overhaul so its wielder could cause tempus fugit (one week outside = one day inside) or dreamwalk in a 50-mile radius, in line with its protective function; mirror of vision for scrying purposes; and water-breathe & water-walk, create water, wave of water, and part water or cause tsunami once/day, per its relationship to the element of water; plus generic bonuses common to the other elven rings. Nenya is easily my favorite of the three rings; there's something, I don't know, ethereally unnerving about its effects on the Golden Wood (and something Peter Jackson nailed perfectly, despite protests that his cinematic treatment of Lothlorien was too creepy). Vilya heals, and Narya emboldens, but Nenya mystifies with its time distortions and uneasy visions.

The centerfold color map of Ost-in-Edhil rules the module, and many of its buildings are laid out: Galadriel and Celeborn's house (before Galadriel moved to Lorien, distrusting Annatar), Celebrimbor's island house, Annatar's house (where intruding fools can find themselves teleported to the Barad-dur if they're not careful), other houses and outside estates, the council hall & library, fountain baths, inns, and finally, the prized Mirdaithrond, or Halls of the Jewelsmiths, which is to the Noldor what the lower deeps of Moria are to Durin's folk: "Designed by Celebrimbor, it is a strange marvel of architecture, combining a love for nature with a lust to conquer the mysteries of science as the elves know it." This of course is where the Rings of Power (aside from the One) were forged, and the continual production of mighty artifacts is staggering. There is a table outlining all minerals, elements, metals, alloys, and glasses, their value, and their use in enchanted creations. On Lorien's side of things, Caras Galadhon and Cerin Amroth are displayed, keying the high points of the tree-cities: Galadriel and Celeborn's tree palace, Galadriel's mirror, orchards, and fountains.

Worth discussing is the figure of Annatar (Sauron), who in the hands of a good DM can be exploited to maximal effect. In my poor friend's case, the effect was shocking, as he had no idea who "Annatar" was -- any more than I did before buying the module. I kept the secret from him so that he was stunned by the reveal in game play; I think he accused me of inventing a charismatic version of Sauron just to be malicious. It reminds me how much we learned about Tolkien's world through gaming products. (We'd each read The Silmarillion, but the Lord of Gifts evidently didn't make an impression.) Annatar is used so well here, fomenting discord and factionalism among the smiths, like an incarnation of Baal mingling among the twelve apostles.

What can I say? Lorien the module is as unassailable as the Golden Wood itself.

History & Culture Rating: 5+
Maps & Layouts Rating: 5

Next up: Northern Mirkwood.

Thomas and the Gospels

2012-01-24T11:08:00.000-08:00

Don't miss Mark Goodacre's Thomas and the Gospels, due out in May. It's a wave of sanity in Thomas scholarship, demonstrating with relative ease the gospel's derivative nature, and loaded with spoilsport wisdom that makes Goodacre so refreshing and necessary in this field. It's also the perfect sequel to The Case Against Q, and just as convincing. I had the privilege of reading a draft, so I know... But here's the Eeerdmans blurb:

"The Gospel of Thomas -- found in 1945 -- has been described as 'without question the most significant Christian book discovered in modern times.' Often Thomas is seen as a special independent witness to the earliest phase of Christianity and as evidence for the now-popular view that this earliest phase was a dynamic time of great variety and diversity.

"In contrast, Mark Goodacre makes the case that, instead of being an early, independent source, Thomas actually draws on the Synoptic Gospels as source material -- not to provide a clear narrative, but to assemble an enigmatic collection of mysterious, pithy sayings to unnerve and affect the reader. Goodacre supports his argument with illuminating analyses and careful comparisons of Thomas with Matthew and Luke."

Of Bibles and Balrogs: Earliest Isn't Best

2012-01-23T01:11:00.000-08:00

Over a year ago, at the SBL convention in Atlanta, I attended a session on reception-history in the Old Testament. One of the speakers made some preliminary comments that struck me. First, when asked why he didn't study history ("what was originally meant") instead of reception-history ("what was later made of the bible"), he replied that he simply didn't have the imagination it took to be a historical critic. But second, and in support of his cheeky comment, is that historical critics -- whether of the historical Israel, or the historical Jesus, etc. -- tend to operate under an implicit assumption: that what is earliest is, somehow, best. And this is silly. The apocalyptic worldview of Jesus and his disciples wasn't necessarily better than, say, the gnostic one of the second century. Not least since Jesus was wrong about the world's imminent destruction... but aside from even the question of mistaken beliefs, visions cry out for reinterpreation lest they stagnate.

So too in the field of Tolkien scholarship. Interpretations of The Lord of the Rings found in film, art, and role-playing games are often blasted for no other reason because they contradict what the author intended. I've been strongly reminded of this lately in the debate as to whether or not Balrogs have wings and/or can fly.

Let me be clear. It is about 99.98% certain that Tolkien's Balrogs were wingless and could not fly, despite continued protests to the contrary. I won't go through every piece of evidence, just the highlights:

(1) When Gandalf confronts the Balrog of Moria, the text speaks of demon's "shadow reaching out like two vast wings". That's obviously a simile, not a description of literal wings. The text goes on to say that this shadowy form of the Balrog "stepped forward slowly onto the bridge, and suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall". The wings here must be metaphorical, poining back to the simile just made. This conclusion can be rather easily drawn from other passages in Tolkien. To wit:

(2) If Balrogs could fly, Melkor would not have needed to try obtaining the secret of flight from the Eagles (see HoME II: The Book of Lost Tales II, The Fall of Gondolin). He would have already had it.

(3) Tolkien wrote of "the Eagles dwelling out of reach of Orc and Balrog" (see HoME IV: The Shaping of Middle-earth, Silmarillion). If the Eagles are inaccessible to Balrogs as much as to orcs, that pretty much puts to bed the idea that Balrogs can fly.

(4) Melkor eventually created breeds of dragons that could fly, and their description bears on the question at hand: "Out of the pits of Angband there issued the winged dragons, that had not before been seen; for until that day no creatures of his cruel thought had yet assailed the air." This obviously means that Balrogs, who existed prior to this time, could not fly. And certainly Tolkien never mentioned later breeds of Balrogs that could.

(5) The following text is often brandished by the opposing side: "The dwarves roused from sleep a thing of terror that, flying from Thangorodrim, had lain hidden at the foundations of the earth since the coming of the Host of the West: a Balrog of Morgoth." But "flying" in this context is an archaic term for "running from" or "escaping". We know that Tolkien often preferred the archaic, for instance when Gandalf cries out to the fellowship, "Fly, you fools!" -- not, obviously, telling them to grow wings and fly, but to haul ass before the Balrog kills them all.

(6) The following passage has wreaked havoc: "Far beneath the halls of Angband, in vaults to which the Valar in the haste of their assault had not descended, the Balrogs lurked still, awaiting ever the return of their lord. Swiftly they arose, and they passed with winged speed over Hithlum, and they came to Lammoth as tempest of fire." (HoME X: Morgoth's Ring, The Later Quenta Silmarillion, (II) The Second Phase, Of the Thieves' Quarrel). "Swiftly they arose" refers not to flying, but to the Balrogs' ascending or climbing out of caverns far below; and "winged speed" is yet another metaphor.

All of this evidence taken together proves, to me, beyond sane doubt that Tolkien's Balrogs were wingless and could not fly. Now, it may very well be that Balrogs could fly in their non-incarnate forms like any other ealar in Middle-Earth, as argued, for instance, by Thomas Gießl (see Other Minds Magazine, #10, Aug 2010, pp 4-12). But that point is so esoteric as to be trivial. Interestingly, Gießl thinks the Balrogs described in point (6) were indeed flying in their incorporeal state: "They flew to Lammoth because there is no reason to assume that they had taken on a corporeal form...since Manwe himself had slain them before" (Ibid, p 11). I somehow doubt even this, but at least Gießl gets the basics right. Substantively speaking, Balrogs didn't fly, and certainly the Balrog of Moria showed no capabilties on this point.

Having settled this matter (though I'm under no delusion the question has been settled in the minds of the opposing camp), let's take it to the next level. Is there anything wrong with giving Balrogs wings, as so many filmmakers, artists, and role-playing gamers have done? Absolutely not. Readers of this blog know that I believe the worst adaptations are those which slavishly follow their source material and hang on the text's every word. This level of faithfulness, ironically, avoids interpretation itself, and usually kills artistic spirit in advance. Going back to the analogy of biblical studies -- "earliest isn't necessarily best"; what Jesus did, the gospel writers saw fit to change; and what the gospel writers decreed, later chruch thinkers upended in turn. This is a natural healthy process. But we need to acknowledge what we're doing. If we like interpretations of Balrogs with wings -- as I certainly do -- we should be comfortable acknowledging our departure from the canon, rather than twisting Tolkien's original meaning to suit our tastes.

I leave you with some artistic interpretations of the Balrog. Click on the images to enlarge, and pay your money and take your choice.

This is my favorite Balrog portrayal of all time, by Flavio Hoffe. But it's obviously not true to Tolkien.

I really like this one too, by John Howe. It's a mighty aggressive wingspan.

This is another one by John Howe, his second swing at the Balrog when working on the films for Peter Jackson. And of course, this is the image burned in the minds of millions of people for over a decade now. That's not a bad thing, even if it has little to do how Tolkien envisioned his creature.

Here's Ted Nasmith, another renowned Tolkien illustrator, and one of the very few to eschew wings. Now, obviously this portrait is faithful to Tolkien unlike the above three. But that doesn't make it the better interpretation. I don't know about you, but I think this one not terribly impressive. (Ted Nasmith is superb with Middle-Earth's landscapes, but not always so with its peoples and creatures.) Put it another way: Ted Nasmith is a great "historical critic" but perhaps not the most outstanding "receptionist".

Here's Stephen Hickman's vision, which leaves the matter ambiguous, doing justice to all the shadows Tolkien harped on, but not boasting the best aesthetic.

This one's curious. It's the cover of a role-playing supplement put out by Iron Crown Enterprises, which clearly avoids wings. Yet ICE assigned the Balrog dreadful flying abilities (as I mentioned in yesterday's retrospective on Moria). Even in the text of the module there is no mention of wings. So here's an interpretation that allows Balrogs, apparently, a magical power of flight (even in their corporeal forms) but not wings.

Retrospective: Moria

2012-01-22T00:00:00.000-08:00

I'll be upfront: I'm not wild about Moria. It's a thorough enough treatment of Durin's folk from their blasphemous creation under Aule down to the Fourth Age, and many things you'd think to ask about their customs, religion, military structure, and women. But it somehow never feels like ICE's heart is in the project. On the other hand, it was a module I remember having very high expectations for, and maybe I just haven't gotten over the letdown. In retrospect it's certainly not bad; it just could have been a lot more. That the dwarven rings of power aren't detailed is an astounding criminal omission -- Durin's, at the very least, demands the same meticulous attention given to the elven and Nazgul rings in other modules.

Moria does score points for its versatile setting: it can be used in any age with few adjustments. Khazad-dum was founded in the misty days of the first, absorbed the tribes of Belegost and Nogrod in the second (the Golden Age of trade with the elves of Eregion), and hit by demonic calamity in the late third. The Balrog period naturally offers the most in terms of dramatic conflict, and the module commendably extends beyond the usual 1640 focus to describe orc tribes (the "fire-ruler" and "slaver" groups), trolls, cave worms, and water-drakes that fill Moria's halls in its time of darkness. It also does well in depicting dwarven technology, such as the elevators, fire wagons, and water wheels that make the mountain kingdom go round. The expected enchantments are also detailed: light stones, watchers (the infamous stone sentinels with piercing gazes), and rune keys like the one on the West-Gate ("speak, friend, and enter"). Those who can overcome these will find a variety of traps around every corner -- chute, dart, plate, spike, steam, pit, wheel -- and the wheel traps are particularly nasty.

Where the module lets down is with its mapwork. On the one hand, the treatment is comprehensive, showing all seven levels and seven deeps, and detailing important areas in the key. The problem is that this is done almost exclusively on route maps, with very few rooms zoomed in with standard dungeon layouts. In fact, those rooms can be counted on two hands: The Second Hall and Durin's Bridge, the West-Gate and Western Entry Hall, the East Entry Hall, the Chamber of Records on the seventh level, the Balrog's Lair in the sixth deep, the Chamber of Teeth in the seventh deep, and the King's Chambers & Armory in the seventh deep. Rooms and areas covered on the route maps are described adequately enough but can barely be envisualized. This contrasts sharply with Mount Gundabad, The Grey Mountains, and Goblin-Gate, which present their mountain cities in the close-up way gamers expect. The Balrog's Lair (formerly the dwarven king's smithy) is a highlight, boasting a hall of enchanted mirrors, the grim hall of questions, and animated dragon columns. And this Balrog can fly, unlike Tolkien's, a departure from the canon I always approved for gaming purposes.

There's certainly enough in Moria to please fans of huge subterranean kingdoms, and the post-1980 material provides rounds of ammunition for DMs to murder PCs under cover of fire and darkness. By rights this should be a module to brandish with enthusiasm. For all its diligence, regretfully, it comes up a bit short. Then there's the cover from the dreadful '70s film, of which it's best I not speak at all.

History & Culture Rating: 4
Maps & Layouts Rating: 3

Next up: Lorien and the Halls of the Elven Smiths.

Retrospective: Goblin-Gate and Eagles' Eyrie

2012-01-21T01:00:00.000-08:00

The best old-school D&D modules managed to pack a lot in short space, and Goblin-Gate reminds me of that effortless economy. First, there's the mountain city of the orcs, spanning close to forty miles; second the Northmen town of Maethelburg east of the mountain range; third the sky citadel of the eagles; and last a giant's isle in a massive lake to the north of the High Pass. All of this in a 40-page module declares its business with little fanfare, and confirms my general confidence in the adventure-sized approach. The eagles' lair doesn't have much to it, and is described in a single paragraph (which I'll remedy below), but aside from this point, the module delivers pretty much as it should.

Goblin-Gate is essentially Mount Gundabad in miniature, with a quarter of the population (around 3000 orcs) but the same infra-structure. The Great Goblin is as nasty as the northern Ashdurbuk, has a pair of warlords on hand just as treacherous and a priest whose sacrificial knife is just as busy. The warlords command gates instead of spires: the Wolf Gate, the Back Door, and (after the dwarf war of 2793-99) the concealed Front Porch that would ensnare Bilbo and the dwarves. Goblin-town itself is classic D&D nastiness, a network of caverns and twisting passages ending in wild feasting halls, torture chambers, and (again like Gundabad) a gladitorial arena where slaves and captives battle hideous creatures for their lives. The layout of the mountain is excellent, with route maps of Goblin-town's three levels, the ice caves above, the fungi caves below. Goblin-town is then fleshed out with standard dungeon layouts for all levels, as well as the entrance areas of the three gates.

The wild card of Goblin-Gate is of course Gollum (during the 2470-2944 period), an invisible predator who hates orcs as much as the Free Peoples, and he can be put to extraordinarily good use. His wretched rock-island evokes pity in a way that always catches me off guard. Here's the bearer of the mightiest artifact of the Third Age, living in the foulest habitat, hate-filled yet craving the company of his kind: "Lone intruders are 90% likely to be ambushed by surprise, but there is only a 20% that Gollum will attack a hobbit outright." The wheels are spinning to any Tolkien fan. To run Goblin-Gate without at least one hobbit PC is a wasted opportunity; DMs can get plenty of mileage replicating the bickering and backbiting dynamics out of The Two Towers, let alone The Hobbit.

After terrors below the mountains comes a ray of hope from above, at Eagles' Eyrie, the impregnable sky-citadel of Manwe's servants. The eagles are fascinating but an ongoing bone of contention. Some complain that Tolkien used them inconsistently to get out of jail free, while apologists rationalize their every move. And of course there's the classic "plot-hole" of them flying Frodo and Sam away from Mount Doom, underscoring how easy it would have been to fly them to the cracks to begin with. It's not a plot-hole at all actually, though the issue isn't as tidy as the apologists think. My view of the matter is this: The free peoples have to fight their own battles as responsible beings, and the eagles, as servants of the gods, can't (or won't) do their heavy-lifting for them anymore than the Valar can (or will). Yet they are permitted (or willing) to intervene in rare cases, mostly for rescue operations -- like Maedhros from Thangorodrim; Hurin and Huor from Dimbar; Bilbo and the dwarves from Goblin-Gate; Gandalf (twice) from Orthanc and the peak of Zirakzigil; Frodo and Sam from Mount Doom. They can also lend help in battle when the stakes are highest -- as they did in the War of the Wrath (which even the Valar joined), and when the Black Gate opened (which by rights spelled the end of the world). So far so good. But that doesn't account for the Battle of Five Armies, which was a pinprick on the map of Endor's conflicts, and which I don't think the eagles had any business getting involved in. I think it safe to say that at the time of writing The Hobbit Tolkien's intuitions on the nature of the eagles were crude at best. Take my philosophical detour for what it's worth. I advise simply treating the eagles as "of the gods" in game play, and remember too that they're not always kind; they feast on the livestock of poor decent people.

Goblin-Gate is a solid installment, and shows that without Gandalf, Bilbo and the dwarves wouldn't have stood a chance in escaping Goblin-town. Word to the wise.

History & Culture Rating: 4
Maps & Layouts Rating: 4

Next up: Moria.

Retrospective: Rivendell

2012-01-20T01:36:00.000-08:00

Only in Middle-Earth can you get an entire module out of an inn without it feeling like a cheat, but even here I'm pushing it. Rivendell may be where great decisions are made and Elrond wields the mightiest elven ring, but it isn't the masterpiece it deserves to be. Yet I can't think of a way it could have possibly been done as outstanding as the Lorien module. Unlike the ethereal Golden Wood or the transcendent Grey Havens, Rivendell is rooted in a simplicity so pure it's almost banal. It makes me regret even more that ICE never got around to the Grey Havens module it promised in the '90s. I would have much preferred Mithlond over Imladris, and to see Angus McBride wrestle with more ineffable visions in his cover art. But I digress.

The vale surrounding Rivendell is a pocket paradise, as it functions according to Elrond's command of the ring. Its powers are completely detailed, and I was so obsessed with the elven rings as a teen that I reworked the properties in more Gygaxian terms (and I always translated MERP statistics into D&D terms anyway). So as I had it, a competent wielder of Vilya could control weather or cause hallucinatory terrain in a 10-mile radius, in line with its primary ability to conceal and protect; heal, exorcise, and restore, fitting its secondary focus on healing; and also fly, create air, gust of wind, and either control winds or cause tornado once/day, per its tertiary relationship with the element of air; plus some generic bonuses common to all the elven rings. Vilya was a definite highlight for me, so much that I entertained scenarios of self-serving characters infiltrating Rivendell to wrest the artifact from Elrond as if that were remotely plausible. Imladris, by rights, is a place of respite, healing, and counsel.

The inn is home to the northern rangers as much as the elves, and of course the seat of the Wise. Stats and bios are provided for many elves besides Elrond: Arwen, Glorfindel, Elladan and Ellrohir, Gildor, more. The surrounding culture of Rhudaur is briefly revisited, and the module works perfectly in tandem with Hillmen of the Trollshaws, and there are suggested adventures involving spying for Elrond in the region. It's also perched on the doorstep of Goblin-Gate for any who want to depart hobbit-wise into the Misty Mountains. As neither an open colony like the Grey Havens, nor a secluded realm like Lorien, Rivendell is hidden yet accessible, but on a small scale to make just finding it a major task, and this is probably the kind of scenario I'd run, with enemies hot on the PCs' heels a la "Flight to the Ford".

The layouts treat fans of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings to architectural details so often imagined: Bilbo's suite on the second floor, Frodo's room of recovery on the third, Saruman's guest state suite, the dining hall supported by majestic wood vaults and filled with tapestries and chandeliers, the hall of fire, Elrond's library (one of the most extensive of Middle-Earth, second only to that of Annuminas), and of course the council chambers where the fate of the One Ring was decided. While some gamers would call all of this a wasted indulgence, it's a treat to Tolkien fans, though I have to admit there's something about this kind of approach that overdoes things a bit. I'm sincerely fond of Rivendell, but you'll never hear me rhapsodizing about it.

History & Culture Rating: 3
Maps & Layouts Rating: 3

Next up: Goblin-Gate and Eagles' Eyrie.

Retrospective: The Grey Mountains

2012-01-18T02:30:00.000-08:00

The Grey Mountains are a playground for Morgoth's drakes, and as such they're an endless source of adventure for fools, the mega-experienced, or vengeful dwarves wanting to take back what's theirs and retire fifty times over. I suppose you could say that dungeons and dragons are what the module is literally about, though if we're magnanimous, "dungeons and dwarves" is more respectful of rightful claims. Regretfully, I never got to use this beast, as it was published in the '90s when I was hardly gaming anymore. But I remember wanting to play it very badly.

The dragons of Middle-Earth are twice as lethal as those of classic D&D, and fall into six breeds which I prefer over the rainbow kinds (yes, Dragonlance, I'm looking at you): cold-drakes, fire-drakes, ice-drakes, cave-drakes, marsh-drakes, and rain-drakes; and there are winged variations of the cold- and fire-, able to create local hurricanes just by stirring the air as they fly. The module provides stats and bios for 28 of them, including really nasty brutes like Scatha, Smaug, Ando-anca, Itangast, Throkmaw, and Uruial. And if this menagerie isn't enough, there are also ice orcs, of all things, terrorizing the northern range with a priest-cult more terrifying than its military.

Then there are the dwarves. The module can't seem to decide whether it's situated in the year 1640 or 2589, but of course it's only during later times (2210-2589) that dwarves lived here until crushed by the cold-drake Ando-anca and forced to return to Erebor. There's a real feeling of suspense conveyed by the Norr-dum setting and the splintered society under Dain I, as its about to replicate the tragedy of Durin VI in its final hours. And while the Balrog horror is far more epic than that of Ando-anca, The Grey Mountains is a surprisingly better module than Moria.

The mapwork is generally in top form. In addition to the detachable color map, detailed layouts are provided of Norr-dum (the dwarven capital from 2210-2589), Kala Dulakurth (the ice-orc palace present throughout all of the Third Age), and Celeb-ost (the dwarven smithy founded by the renegade Narvi V in 2086, who went insane and massacred his own colony, and whose ghost haunts the ruins after 2110). The nice thing about dwarves is they're such treasure-mongers that their halls serve as opportunistic dungeons in the classic sense, which of course they become anyway when the drakes drive them out. Two particular dragon lairs are laid out, with treasure and magic items out of a Monty-Haul campaign. Way too much attention is given to the Northmen town of Buhr Thurasig, which ceases to exist by the end of the 1600s, but which for some reason is used as the basis for three adventure scenarios. On whole The Grey Mountains stands as one of the better campaign products of the '90s, and I wish I'd gotten to use it.

History & Culture Rating: 4
Maps & Layouts Rating: 4

Next up: Rivendell.

Retrospective: Mount Gundabad

2012-01-17T02:27:00.000-08:00

It might be an exaggeration to call Mount Gundabad the greatest Tolkien module ever produced, but it's certainly one of them, along with Lorien and the Halls of the Elven-Smiths, Dol Guldur, Bree and the Barrow-Downs, Erech and the Paths of the Dead, and The Court of Ardor. At the very least it's the best orc dungeon ever designed, in or outside of Middle-Earth, and true to the spirit of both Tolkien and classic D&D. The Angus McBride cover is my second-favorite in the ICE series; I even had a nightmare as a teen walking into Mount Gundabad's hellish maw.

The orc capital of Endor screams aggression: its triple-peaked structure punches the sky up to 13,000 feet, its interior shelters almost 13,000 goblins. That's a bigger population than Fornost's -- a lot of hate to come pouring out the front maw. But that hate turns inward too, and the seething factionalism within Gundabad provides players with striking opportunities to mess with orcish politics. I'm a long time fan of modules that do this, like TSR's Lost City, where it's practically inevitable that characters will sympathize with (or even join) one of the Cynidicean cults who are at each others' throats. Of course, these are orcs we're talking about, which makes things, well, interesting, though the scenarios are sound. The Free Peoples would have perfectly legitimate reason to help the Warlord of the Cloven Spire, who seeks greater independence from Angmar and would thus undercut the power of the Witch-King. Alternatively, evil characters allied with Sauron could have fun throwing in their lot with the Warlord of the Twisted Spire, who not only favors stronger ties to Angmar and open war on the Dunedain, but gives new meaning to sadism. (I sure as hell wouldn't trust him regardless of my allegiances. Some of the rooms in the Twisted Spire make my stomach hurt.) Self-serving neutral types might opt for the safest course and just back the current Goblin-King reigning from the Great Spire, since the odds are with him and he can offer richest rewards. None of this political intrigue is essential to a Gundabad campaign, by any means, but it does offer excitement beyond hack-and-slash dungeon crawls which in this case invite almost certain death to all but most experienced characters.

The cast of Mount Gundabad is out of a film-noir horror: the Goblin-King Zalg; his sons, mentioned above, warlords Hurog and Bralg, who despise each other worse than elves; the High Priest Karagat, who becomes a giant bat by drinking living men's blood; the Warlock Akargun, a half-orc mage sired by Zalg on a tortured woman; the Spymaster Ghardak, whose true face is unknown; and (my favorite) the masochistic consort Saviga, who thrives on being abused by Zalg but has bardic skills in reserve to keep him at least somewhat charmed. These personalities are set in the usual 1640 period but could be used really anytime between c. 1300 and the fall of Angmar and the migration of the Eotheod to Framsburg (1975-77), which saw a containment Gundabad's power.

When I DM'd this module I remember being taken aback by some of the artifacts to be found here, not least the Ulukai of Morgoth, which is as deadly as the One Ring:

"A huge gem, multicolored and ever shifting in hue, the Ulukai seems to pulse with a horrid life of its own. It is the very essence of evil, embodying a portion of Morgoth's own foul being... From wherever it is concealed, darkness emanates like ever-widening ripples in a pond, engulfing surrounding lands... The possessor acquires the focused will necessary to rule over masses of evil beings, driving them to cooperate in ventures and to reproduce. Focused will differs from domination in that the subject beings retain the power of independent action and individually are capable of betraying their master; they are merely motivated in accord with the ruler's general desires and will be thrown into confusion at his death... In a very real sense, Mount Gundabad exists to perpetuate the evil that the Black Enemy first spawned in Middle-Earth."

The Crypt of Skorg is where the Ulukai resides, and not so subtly evokes the demi-lich's room in Tomb of Horrors; the Wraith of Skorg (the first Goblin-King of Gundabad) is nearly as hard to destroy as Acerak. Gundabad is more than just a beehive of orcs; it's a taloned organ of malignancy.

The layout of the peak couldn't be more rewarding. Right away its unique structure distinguishes itself from most underground caverns which somehow manage to look the same after a while (or at least to players and DMs). The ground-level Drake Gate consists mostly of barracks and stores, plus a huge cavern inhabited by a cold drake to greet intruding fools. There are four rises (levels) to the Great Spire, including the royal maze packed with nasty tricks and traps, the great temple of darkness where blood sacrifice goes on daily, the incredible royal treasury, the throne hall, grim trophy halls, and finally the crypt of Skorg just mentioned. The Cloven Spire has two rises, each of which is divided by a chasm thousands of feet deep, while the Twisted Spire has two rises blending into one, with passages continually ascending and descending. Under the Drake Gate come the pits (or sinks), four levels of them, dominated by forges, craft halls, and particularly foul places like the arena in which captives are forced cruelly to play in "the Games of Gundabad", hideous variations of gladiatorship. The folks at ICE went over and above the call of duty with Mount Gundabad, and I count it a gem.

History & Culture Rating: 5
Maps & Layouts Rating: 5

Next up: The Grey Mountains.

Retrospective: The Northern Waste

2012-01-16T01:25:00.000-08:00

The last campaign module published by ICE is the one most overtly steeped in antiquity. I was dubious when it came out, wondering how you could possibly get 180 pages out of an arctic wilderness, and the general quality of these modules in the '90s didn't inspire confidence. As it turns out, I was pleasantly surprised. Despite the title, nothing is wasted here, and the fact that Tolkien provided so little information about the icy north gave the folks at ICE free reins to their imaginations. In this sense the module reminds of those set in the far south, where thinking outside the box yielded wonders.

The Northern Waste could be justly described as an "aftermath of Morgoth", and is given fascinating history involving demons haunting mountain peaks, sled-horde invasions led by Hoarmaruth the Ringwraith, dragons ready to pounce where you least expect, and Morgoth's Well itself into which only fools or the most experienced players descend. There are pockets of hope, to be sure: in the Vale of Evermist, Noldor mystics work the will of Yavanna to heal a wounded land, and at the north pole stands a snow-elf (Nandor) paradise, of all things, kept warm by a shard of one of the lamps from the First Age. Amidst all this, the Lossoth do their best to eke out a living and hold off the terrors of the Urdic invasions. I'd always loved the Lossoth and found their treatment in Rangers of the North disappointingly brief, so was glad to get their full story here. For those who like to play barbarian characters, this module is rather essential.

There's some tasty cultural background on display, for instance in the war customs of Hoarmaruth's minions; they don't even believe in taking slaves and just throw all their captives (men, women, elders, and children) into bear pits for awful entertainment. Then there's more insidious evil, like the Witch-King's blight, extended on sorcerous winds from Angmar and turning Lossoth shamans into undead thralls. The cultures of these snowmen, icemen, and sea-hunters (the three Lossoth peoples) are worked over in great detail, and I'm particularly fond of the song-duels they use in place of violence to keep blood feuds under control: scurrilous insults prized as a high form of art. Readers of this blog know my obsession for various arts of flaming, and the Lossoth song duels are reminsicent of Anglo-Saxon flyting, Black American sounding, and Mediterranean forms of challenge-and-riposte.

The maps and layouts are something of a mixed bag. There is an excellent 17" x 22" detachable color map which is covered by the gazeteer summarizing highlights of notable areas, and again, far more of which than one would expect out of a region called "the northern waste". The layouts of particular sites, on the other hand, could have used much more fleshing out. The snow-elf city of Helloth is hardly detailed at all, though the Noldor Vale of Evermist is adequate. Morgoth's Well is the best of the bunch, a volcanic crater with a schizophrenic feel, its upper circles burgeoning with floral healing engineered by Yavanna's servants, its lower circles still the hellish domain of Durlach the Balrog. Beyond these, there are layouts covering a typical iceberg delving for the sea-hunter clans, a tomb, a haunted iceberg, some general stuff. This is clearly a module that excels for its rich cultural matrix more than its architectures, but so strong on the former that it's a success, and a triumphant last gasp from ICE before it went under.

History & Culture Rating: 5
Maps & Layouts Rating: 3

Next up: Mount Gundabad.

Retrospective: Empire of the Witch-King

2012-01-15T01:24:00.000-08:00

It's fair to say that I was more infatuated with Arnor than Gondor in my gaming days, my campaigns more Angmar-centric than Mordor-focused. And there's something about Carn Dum in its cold, barren isolation that haunts me still. Angmar is a natural vacuum of life and all things joyful, where Mordor had to be fashioned that way. In such a landscape I can easily see a tribe like the Uruk-lugat taking root and thriving: gruesome even by orc standards, in thrall to the rejuvenated and beating heart of a vampire slain back in the First Age, and walking a thin line by holding their shaman in higher reverence than the Witch-King. The orcish and mannish factions on display in this module reek of an obstinate ugliness that goes beyond even those found in Gorgoroth and Dol Guldur, and this contributes to its success as much as any donjon ruled by Sauron's right hand.

The Witch-King is a piece of work, and his bio fills eight pages. I always loved how ICE made him the brother of Tar-Atanamir, and the product of an insidious envy occurring around the inception of Numenor's downslide. His inner circle is a horror show: the Angulion (the sadistic sorcerer who commands in his absence), the five top generals, and the three high priests (one of whom is a renegade elf). The militarized culture of the Angarim (mannish inhabitants of mostly Rhudaurian and Dunlending heritage) is described at length, as well as the various tribes of orcs directly in service to the Witch-King. The priesthood's practices are less about blood sacrifice and more about subtle brainwashing (unlike orc priests who revel in sacrifice), but are to me just as chilling. And the assassin cult under command of the Angulion is a nice touch, rather reminiscent of the Amida Tong from ninja folklore in our world. Special orc communities are also given attention, including the bloodthirsty Uruk-lugat mentioned already, and the brutally efficient Uruk-kosh. It all adds up to a hellish landscape that only a Nazgul could hope to keep under control, and even that imperfectly.

The four-page color map of Angmar (and northern Rhudaur) is well done, but the layouts tend to be rough around the edges. Carn Dum itself is both rewarding and disappointing, its architecture impressive, the details of the rooms' contents surprisingly sparse and leaving much for the DM to flesh out. Sometimes the key provides nothing more than a subject heading for a room ("Ceiling Trap", "Rune of Absolution", etc.) with literally no elaboration whatsoever. Other places of interest include the Tower of Lughilsarik (the Witch-King's secret retreat where he disappears every year to work sorceries manipulating weather and climate), the Lugata settlements of northern Rhudaur (where the hideous Uruk-lugat conduct unspeakable rituals), the town of Litash and its college of evil priests, and plenty of mannish and orcish strongholds.

Empire of the Witch-King is an arousing product, but I wouldn't accuse it of having the strongest aesthetic. This is all the more surprising given that it's a revamping of the first Tolkien module ever published, Angmar: Land of the Witch-King; areas in need of fine-tuning were neglected. (Usually I cover the earliest version module in these retrospectives, but make an exception for Empire since on whole it's a worthy remake.) It doesn't bother me much though; the crude aesthetic even complements the rudimentary feel of Angmar as a nation. Ultimately, I think my assessment of this product is influenced as much by what I brought to it as how it stands on its own, and by the truly awful feelings it engenders when I think of orcs who worship that pulsating heart, and man-priests who suck the life out of their students with litanies of hate.

History & Culture Rating: 4
Maps & Layouts Rating: 4

Next up: The Northern Waste.

Retrospective: Hillmen of the Trollshaws

2012-01-14T01:55:00.000-08:00

For whatever reason, ICE decided to cover Rhudaur in an adventure module instead of a full-blown campaign, possibly because, unlike its sister kingdoms, it never managed to assert itself with any glimmer of promise. Rhudaur's "height of power" in fact came right after Arnor's split, and from the tenth century on steadily declined. Still, I always thought it deserved better, though Hillmen of the Trollshaws admittedly does justice to the northern-central region and its reputation as the "evil wood" swarming with primitives who despise Dunedain and Angarim equally, and trolls in alarming abundance.

The beauty to Trollshaws is its flexibility. It's suitable for almost anytime before the fall of Arthedain and dissolution of Angmar, whether during Rhudaur's inclusion in Arnor (1-861), its independence as a sister kingdom to Arthedain and Cardolan (861-1349), its subservience as a puppet state of Angmar (1349-1410), or its complete dominance under Angmar (1410-1975). Rhudaur changed a great deal throughout these periods, and the module is designed to show its growth and decline, particularly at the capital of Cameth Brin. The primitive culture of the Hillmen contrasts sharply with their Dunedain overlords, notable for its inflexible rejection of both the Valar and Black Religion of Sauron in favor of ancestor worship, with a particular reverence for ghosts. Of which there are plenty to be found; the Ta-Fa-Lisch (dwarven ghosts) haunt Cameth Brin in the early days before the Dunedain take control. There are other unpleasantries too, not least of which the trolls. Between the tumultuous politics, an inhospitable land, and the overabundance of Hillmen and mercenaries, it's no wonder the Dunedain of Rhudaur fell so swiftly under the shadow, and the adventure-sized module conveys this with terrific economy.

The layout of Cameth Brin ("The Twisted Hill") dominates the product, and even its early structure is provided for those who wish to get involved with ghosts working in cahoots with Hillmen. After the Dunedain expansion of 166-339, it becomes Rhudaur's capital, though no less ominous, and the look is naturally sinister: "Its base is a steep hill, but from this foundation erupts a tortured outcropping of naked black granite that leans impossibly far over the southern face, as if a sparrow's sneeze would send the craggy top tumbling down". The inside of it lives up to its appearance, with halls of enchanted darkness, surprising traps, and a generally schizophrenic feel that betrays haunted roots underneath an advanced Dunedain architecture, which in turn becomes usurped by Hillmen much later after the Great Plague. The barracks settlement of Tanoth Brin below the hill is also detailed, as well as the nearby town of Talugdaeri. Then there's an exemplary troll lair for those desiring adventure outside of Cameth Brin. Add to all of this the color map of central Rhudaur, and the end result is pretty much what's needed for a solid Rhudaur campaign any time pre-1975.

This wraps up my first stage of retrospectives (Eriador), and I've come to an interesting conclusion so far. The adventure modules tend to rate higher than the campaign, and I wasn't expecting this. Bree and Trollshaws are near flawless, while Rangers and Cardolan, for all their greatness, are marred by certain shortcomings. Whether that reflects a difficulty in living up to campaign-sized ambitions, or a relative ease in excelling when there's less ground to cover, I'm not sure, but what's surprising is that I have mightier memories of the campaign modules; maybe it's just what I made of them. And whether this pattern continues in upcoming retrospectives I can't predict. I'm writing these reviews as I reread the modules, and finding their enduring value not necessarily squaring with my nostalgia for them. Next we'll move into the evil territory of the far north, where nostalgia promises a goldmine...

History & Culture Rating: 5
Maps & Layouts Rating: 5

Next up: Empire of the Witch-King.

Retrospective: Thieves of Tharbad

2012-01-12T02:27:00.000-08:00

The "eighth principality of Cardolan" is an ironic curiosity, steeped in nobility, but saturated in corruption; nominally ruled by the Cardolani king (861-1409) or Gondorian Canotar (1414-2052), but effectively a free city; a riverport that survived almost to the end of the Third Age (2912), long after the rest of Cardolan ceased to exist (c. 1700). It's the closest thing to Lankhmar that exists in Tolkien's world: a decadent overcrowded melting pot so unlike the grand cities like Annuminas, Minas Anor, and Minas Ithil we associate with Middle-Earth -- a point to which we will return shortly. I almost think Tharbad should have been done as a city module, and it probably would have been if the city series had existed at the time. It's fittingly set in the year 1410, during the chaotic aftermath of the Second Northern War, offering scenarios of extortion rings, food smugglers, and all levels of sordid thievery.

The two-page color coded map of Tharbad is essentially the entire module, with certain buildings and sites laid out in more detail. The Gwathlo River divides the city into three parts: the north and south banks, and the island bridging them. The north side is dominated by guilds like the glassblowers, lampmakers, masons, gravediggers, and singers, while the south boasts more educated talents such as guides, scholars, healers, alchemists, and shipwrights. The center island, meanwhile, is the heart of the city, with dockyards on the far west (the oldest part of the city founded by Tar-Aldarion in the Second Age), and the merchant's quarter and its moneylenders adjacent to it. The east side is the high point, and assaults with contrasts: King's Row closest to the center, including the mayor's office and townhouses of the seven hirs (princes) of Cardolan, as well as luxury shops and homes of the richest merchants; this area segues into the commoner's quarter where the city is actually run by servants and artisans; finally, at the far eastern end is Middle-Earth's version of Lankhmar, the poorest quarter of the entire city, a decaying labyrinth of streets swarming with thieves, whores, and drug-dealers. This last in particular, and the corruption of Tharbad in general, forces interesting questions about the supposed incompatibility of Tolkien's "pure" high-brow fantasy with the gritty pulp universe of classic D&D.

This was often claimed back in the day, and the point must be taken to an extent. And of course Gary Gygax despised The Lord of the Rings, and only used creatures like orcs and halflings in D&D to capitalize on pop culture. Aside from a few Middle-Earth trappings, classic D&D is significantly anti-Tolkien and steeped in the morally ambiguous worlds of Conan the Barbarian, Elric of Melnibone, and Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser. But with enough imagination you can make anything work, and in my strong opinion, pockets of pulp within an overarching highbrow myth isn't necessarily contradictory (even if Tolkien would have been displeased by it). Just the opposite, it breathes sordid reality into a world that's -- let's face it -- too damn pure for gaming purposes. The MERP rulebook struggles with the problem, for instance, in accommodating spell casters:

"There are two principal dangers that help to restrain the use of magic in the Third Age. The first of these is the Shadow of Sauron -- drawing the attention of the Lidless Eye has led to the downfall of many a spell caster. For gamemasters who want to encourage a restraint in spell casting, Section 15.3 presents a mechanism for reflecting this danger [i.e. every spell has a 'risk factor' for drawing evil attention]. The other danger is the corrupting influence of the use of significant magic for 'non-pure' goals. Unless a spell is cast for the purposes of combatting Darkness or maintaining the Balance, there is a chance that the caster will be corrupted, drawn towards darkness. This is what happened to Saruman -- he used too many powerful spells, too often. Section 15.4 presents a mechanism for reflecting such corruption [i.e. every spell used loosely applies a certain number of 'corruption points' to the user]." (Merp Rulebook, p 70)

Now, as a DM I certainly never imposed these mechanisms on players in Middle-Earth, nor were they imposed on me, but the message is loud and clear: wizards like Gandalf don't go around fireballing and shapechanging as they please; magic in Endor is precious and subtle, and even a threat to one's soul.

What does this have to do with Thieves of Tharbad? Simple. More than any other ICE module, it reminds me of classic D&D adventuring where spell casters do snap away with abandon, and where characters in general are hardly subjected to an omnipresent moral ontology (unless for some bizarre reason they worship a deity who micro-manages their every move). The most compelling alignment in D&D is the chaotic neutral one, which our heroes in the Fellowship of the Ring would find anathema. The amoral leaning, in other words, of barbarians like Fafhrd and thieves like Mouser. They would have been right at home in Tharbad.

History & Culture Rating: 4
Maps & Layouts Rating: 4

Next up: Hillmen of the Trollshaws.

Retrospective: Weathertop

2012-01-11T02:54:00.000-08:00

Weathertop was first in the short-lived fortress series, whose stated intent was "to provide DMs with extremely detailed overviews of individual towers, castles, citadels, and other fortifications of particular note". It's also the best, though that's probably my love for all things Arnor talking. I was so excited when it hit the stores back in '87 that I ignored most of my college assignments that week, and spent time in my dorm room penning an adventure that would require decent characters to steal the Master Stone of the North against their will. The fortress modules cover an amazing abundance of detail in short space that I remain surprised only four were published; three will be covered in these retrospectives.

What can be said about Arnor's bastion? It was everything: the realm's greatest stronghold, home of the High Seer and chief palantir, and strategically situated on holy ground -- all, of course, tragically gone after the Witch-King's army demolished it in 1409. When I first saw Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring and the hobbits were camping at the circle of stones, I thought of what those stones used to be, and got immediate chills. There's potent history here, and the rocks are full of it. The module even traces back to the sacred times of the First Age when the hill was an astrological holy site for the Edain, though the treatment is understandably brief; the focus of the fortress series is on architecture rather than history. For the Third Age, the tower garrisons and civilian populations are detailed for all relevant periods, in particular the military forces supplied by each of the sister kingdoms (Arthedain, Cardolan, and Rhudaur) when Arnor split in 861, and possession of the hill was hotly contested.

The layout of Weathertop is breathtaking, I believe the most thorough treatment of any stronghold put out by ICE with the exception of Dol Guldur. The critical part is of course the tower, and all rooms on all fourteen levels are fully detailed and even given artistic representations so you can tell just at a glance the function and contents of each room. In addition to guard halls and guest chambers are the armories, libraries, alchemical hall, sage's hall, warden's chambers, king's chambers (for when he visits), and the seer's chambers which contain the holiest of holies, the Hall of the Stone. The outer defenses are covered just as diligently: the lower and upper gates, the prison tower, bastions and watches, stables and smithies. It's rare to see this level of detail in any gaming product.

The only weakness to Weathertop is no one's fault, just historic fate. It doesn't exist after 1409, which constrains the time period. The earliest setting for any characters I DM'd for was the Kin-Strife... but that didn't stop me. I just ended up geasing my best friend's Greyhawk characters to pay a visit to Middle-Earth on the eve of the Second Northern War and steal Weathertop's palantir. It was a hell of a ride, and I don't think he thanked me for it.

History & Culture Rating: 3
Maps & Layouts Rating: 5+

Next up: Thieves of Tharbad.

Retrospective: Bree and the Barrow-Downs

2012-01-10T02:51:00.000-08:00

This is the first in a trilogy of undead modules, as I like to think of them, the others being Erech and the Paths of the Dead and Dagorlad and the Dead Marshes. The Barrow Downs straddle Arthedain and Cardolan (though belong more to the latter), while the Paths of the Dead bridge Rohan and Gondor; and the Dead Marshes sit between Rhovanion and Mordor. The neither-here-nor-there geography suits an undead theme rather nicely, and of the three modules this one is probably the most fearsome: the Barrow-Downs would slay most beginners in an instant. Wights in MERP are more formidable than their D&D counterparts, their mere presence inflicting paralysis, their touch causing an eternal nightmarish sleep that can only be broken magically. The four hobbits wouldn't have stood a chance without Tom.

There's something primal about Bree and the Barrow-Downs, and not just because it was ICE's first adventure-sized module. It sets a haunting stage: a crossroads village where men and hobbits co-exist, surrounded by ongoing tensions -- bandits on the roads and evil tombs off them. This breathes classic D&D in a way few modules get at so simply, and I'll bet that for many MERP gamers, Bree is among the first places they got started. I never got any use out of it, and I'm baffled as to why. It's aged tremendously well, and in my view holds the near equivalent status of TSR's Keep on the Borderlands, though again, not exactly tailored for low-level characters if the downs themselves are to be attempted.

What really grabs me is the overshadowing power of the wights that goes beyond killing people who just happen to be stupid (or ignorant) enough to not stay away: "The wights are symbols that point to the waning of the Dunedain of the North since the coming of Angmar; men now lack the strength to keep their ancient graves free of unclean spirits." This is a recent phenomenon: only in 1638 were the wights sent from Angmar to animate Arnor's dead kings and princes and make the tombs their home for the rest of the Third Age. The module is set in the year 1700, making the undead presence a fresh wound, and thus primarily a killer of morale. Graphic brutality is fun -- and rituals by which the wights carry victims into the barrows and deck them with jewels in preparation for ugly sacrifice are described here -- but tone is just as important in RPGs, and Bree gets the tone perfect. There's a real feeling of foreboding evil that saturates Bree's atmosphere without going over the top.

The mapwork is completely satisfactory. There are arial views for the villages of Bree, Staddle, Archet, and Combe. The Prancing Pony is notably absent, as it didn't exist yet in 1700. A layout of a typical hobbit-hole is provided, giving the feel of the mixed hobbit-mannish population. Drawings of the barrows display different kinds: First Age barrows, the royal barrows of Arnor's kings (from 1-861), and the barrows of Cardolan's kings and princes (861-1409). These tomb layouts are where the module delivers, no less than 24 of them by my count, each detailing the treasure contents of artifacts, magic items unheard of, powerful weapons, jewels, and antiquated coin. It's a Monty Haul feast for the eyes, but removing any of this stuff without being vilely cursed is the real trick.

History & Culture Rating: 5
Maps & Layouts Rating: 5

Next up: Weathertop.

Retrospective: The Shire

2012-01-08T02:59:00.000-08:00

The Tolkien modules of the '90s were mostly a recycling of '80s products, marked by a disappointing change in trade dress and cover design that gave them a more mainstream appearance. In this sense, perhaps, the handwriting was on the wall for ICE's bankruptcy as much as TSR's at this point in time, and if the Tolkien Enterprise fascists hadn't revoked the company's license in '99 for their own reasons, I wonder how long it would have lasted anyway. This isn't to say that nothing good came out of the '90s, and The Shire -- published only four years before ICE's demise -- was long overdue. It's also ridiculously huge, clocking in at 276 pages, but then I suppose Tolkien's brainchildren deserve no less.

Middle-Earth, of course, wouldn't be half as compelling without hobbits, not least because they're so out of place. They're modern English peasants in a medieval feudal world, and The Shire fleshes out the anachronisms: the use of surnames, reflecting common property rights instead of noble; the dislike of politics, and love of meals and festivals around hard labor; and the disdain of artistic imagination and scholarly endeavors, for which Bilbo, of course, was derided as a crank. This is all superbly integrated into the Shire's geography, sandwiched in between Arthedain and Cardolan: "Hobbits have an open, cheerful nature that attracts them to Cardolani traditions -- and most Shire-folk have ancestors born in that country -- but their need for a safer life draws them to the stricter laws and stability of Arthedain." And while not taken seriously by other races, something about their inherent innocence taps into dreams shared by the Siragale elves, Arthedain philosophers, and a wizard like Gandalf, since all of these know distant pasts when people lived in relative peace and without fear. King Argeleb's granting of the Shire in 1601 makes sense in this context (even if it also played into his agenda of weakening noble rights), as well as the subsequent motivations of the rangers to guard the Shire's borders.

Famous hobbits from different eras are detailed, including Marcho and Blancho at the Shire's founding, Bilbo and Frodo during the War of the Ring, and many others. There is a fabulous section on fireworks, a dozen different kinds, and let me list them: backarappers (candles that create small flame), crackers (sudden sharp flashes and noise), dwarf-candles (colors in small fountains with musical hissing), elf-fountains (a myriad of colors spewing with complete musical phrases, with partially formed illusions of butterflies and flowers), goblin-barkers (small fountain effects with repeated growling and barking sounds, often used by hobbits to scatter flocks of sheep), punks (slow-matches that are rainproof), set-pieces (ground-based displays like the flying dragon for Bilbo's farewell party in the book), rockets (air explosions like the flying dragon for Bilbo's farewell party in the film), sparklers (fountain effects of bright sparks which can panic undead), squibs (minor hissing and squealing pops), thunder-claps (booming noises causing stun), and torches (cylinders the size of dagger handles gushing forth plumes of intense multi-colored light). I adore this catalog, and it's a perfect example of the sort of cultural paraphernalia that the ICE modules tease out so well.

The mapwork is first rate: superb color inserts at the center, with a detailed gazeteer explaining all the noteworthies. Then there are migration charts which chronicle the stages of Harfoot, Fallohide, and Stoor movements from the Anduin Vale to Rhudaur and Cardolan (1100s-1150s), then to Bree (1300s), and finally to the granting of the Shire territory in 1601. Overviews of Eriador are provided for both 1640 and 3018, as the module tends to split its focus between these two time periods. Arial views of hobbit villages -- Hobbiton, Michel Delving, Sackville, and Bywater -- are also shown for both time periods, with some interesting evolutions. Most enjoyable are the layouts of famous hobbit holes: Bag End, Tookbank, and Brandy Hall. Bag End is even larger than I would have guessed, though Bilbo sealed off a number of rooms after inheriting the place from Bungo and Belladonna in 2934. The elvish glade of Woodhall (where Frodo enjoyed a respite with Gildor) is a special treat, with its magical wards and specially woven thickets keeping it safely concealed. Also detailed are typical elvish tree villages, and the effects one suffers when attempting to follow an elvish trail in the Siragale: feelings of misdirection, treadmill sensations of not getting anywhere, passing through obstacles (like ravines and dense brush) and emerging up to a mile elsewhere.

If there's a criticism I have about The Shire, it's that it's all too easy to be misled by it and succumb to caricatures of hobbits as happy-go-lucky optimists living without a care in an idyllic paradise. In fact they were Tolkien's quintessentially hopeless heroes, as pessimistic as the other free peoples, their fatalism obscured by an eternal cheer which was the ironic byproduct. Frodo of course was a foreordained failure, ultimately unable to resist the Ring (the cause, not the hero, was triumphant only because of fate's intervention through Gollum), and he, like any hobbit, expected evil to have the final say; as he reminds Sam, reciting as a general proverb, "It's like things are in the world: hopes fail." Sam, for his part, "never had any hope in Frodo's quest from the beginning, but being a cheerful hobbit he had not needed hope". There's something weirdly liberating about the idea that since things must turn out badly in the end, they can only be better in the meantime -- and that's hobbits in a single sentence. While the module doesn't exactly contradict this theme, it doesn't convey it either. I'm not saying I expect heavy doses of philosophy on the "long defeat" in a gaming module. RPGs are about escapism, after all, but herein lies a problem: The Lord of the Rings is the opposite of escapist fantasy, and gaming is about authentic role-playing. To those who feel there's enough of the long defeat in real life, and that we retreat to any RPG precisely to escape it, I counter that Middle-Earth, especially the Shire, isn't the best sandbox for that kind of escapism.

History & Culture Rating: 4
Maps & Layouts Rating: 5

Next up: Bree and the Barrow Downs.

Retrospective: The Lost Realm of Cardolan

2012-01-07T02:21:00.000-08:00

The Lost Realm of Cardolan seizes you right away with its cover. As any collector of these modules knows, Angus McBride was the equivalent of TSR's Erol Otus. But where Otus reveled in psychedelic surrealism, McBride conveyed the solid reality demanded by Tolkien's world which for all its myth served as a pre-history to our own. His artwork, like Otus', had that rare ability to unnerve and fascinate the longer you stared at it. There are veteran gamers who claim they would have never been moved to pick up a D&D product if not for Erol Otus, and I suspect more than a few MERP devotees would say the same about Angus McBride. Since his death in 2007 I've been hoping for a kind of festschrift that compiles his best work... but that's enough by way of praising the cover artist. What about the contents inside the module? They're quite good, as it turns out.

Cardolan is wild territory. On the one hand it exudes a sombre dignity, with sites steeped in more nobility than even Arthedain: the river/port cities of Tharbad and Lond Daer founded in the early Second Age, the burial grounds of the Barrow Downs going back to the First. On the other, its politics and landscape are so chaotic, and the princes such laws unto themselves that the king had effectively little control. It was, in fact, more a smorgasbord of seven hirdoms (principalities) than an actual kingdom throughout 861-1409, that when it fell the princes hardly noticed and just carried on as usual, until forced to pack it in around 1700 and migrate to Arthedain or Gondor. The module is geared for the time of 1642 (soon after the Great Plague and the invasion of the Witch-King's wights into the Barrow Downs), long after the fall of the monarchy, but with a little tweaking could, interestingly, be applied to the Times of Trouble (1235-1258), during the kingdom when civil war reigned and the royal compound at Thalion changed hands no less than eighteen times.

Colorful personalities are detailed, with stats and bios provided for seven princes, best of all the usurping warlord Ardagor, a half-elf/half-troll abomination who hates orcs even more pathologically than men. The historical timeline is well fleshed out and does justice to a very complex nation. In my opinion, Cardolan is twice as tragic (though far less sympathetic) than Arthedain, being a victim of her own obduracies as much as outside influences like Angmar, and this is seen particularly in the fall from its peak of prosperity in the 1100's from which it never recovered. It's really one autonomy within another, with barons often barely heeding their hirs anymore than the hirs ever did their kings. For whatever reason I always saw this sandbox as ideally suited for TSR classics like Castle Amber and Ravenloft (add to that now Maliszewski's Cursed Chateau), as it's easy to imagine haunted castles perched on the frontiers of lawless principalities.

Castles in fact plaster the region, for which there is an abundance of layouts, unlike the sister module Rangers of the North. Most feature the princes' fortress capitals, but there is also the lair of Creb Druga commanded by the elf-troll Ardagor. The more general mapwork, however, is frustratingly piecemeal. The color centerfold displays the Shire to Weathertop along the north, down to the point of Tharbad in the south, which covers three hirdoms and part of a fourth; then there are two single-page color maps, one covering two and a half hirdoms, the other showing one; and it's never clear how the region of Cardolan looks as a whole. To make things worse, there are sloppy mistakes. For instance, the stronghold of Girithlin is referred to as Minas Girithlin on the maps, but Barad Girithlin in the text. While Ardagor's lair is well done, it's not clear where it is located on the arial view of the Creb Durga hillsite. On top of all this, the color-coded map of Tharbad is replicated from the adventure module Thieves of Tharbad (to be covered in due course), which is nice in itself, but without that module the codes mean nothing. Rather amusingly, the confusion from all the map and layout work seems to play into the theme of Cardolan's political confusion, and an extreme cynic might wonder if that was intended on the part of the designers. I'll refrain from offering an opinion.

History & Culture Rating: 5
Maps & Layouts Rating: 3

Next up: The Shire.

Retrospective: Rangers of the North

2012-01-05T09:28:00.000-08:00

The first Middle-Earth module I acquired will always hold a special place in my heart, and it's only fitting that it launches this series of retrospectives. I say this with the deflective irony such an accolade needs, for Rangers of the North has a lot going against it. The cover is appalling, looking more like a magazine ad, perhaps because that's exactly what it was, used on the back of Dragon in the '80s to push ICE's products. The mapwork is also a bit light (which I'll get to in due course) and the detail for Annuminas in its glory days non-existent. But it gets highest marks for its treatment of the most tragic yet uplifting nation of men in Middle-Earth: Arthedain, chief among the three sister kingdoms of Arnor.

The module actually covers the entire history of the Dunedain starting in Numenor, to the founding of the two realms in exile, to the 2000-year lifespan of the northern one. The contrast with the south is captured perfectly: "As Gondor habitually reached for the sword and shield, Arnor looked to the stars and relied heavily on wizardry, lamenting each bloody encounter in song and verse." As one built an empire, the other fragmented and died, but the latter was truly noble, in my view, and of course ultimately produced Aragorn who would reestablish both realms. There's something incredibly haunting about Arthedain which taps into Tolkien's "long defeat" theme -- that evil can't be defeated; any time it appears to be, it's just a temporary holding action -- and the module stirs tragic emotions in this regard. The specter of Angmar is always in the background, the crushing blow of 1975 waiting in the wings.

Arthedain lasted longer than it had any real right to, six centuries after Cardolan went down under the backbiting of its own princes and Rhudaur was swallowed up by the Witch-King. Granted the time it took for Angmar to recover after the war of 1409, Arthedain's endurance is a testimony to the kind strokes of fate as much as to its level-headed monarchs, prescient seers, and vigilant rangers -- not to mention a certain wizard. Gandalf's stats are provided here, along with the details of Narya, the elven ring of fire he acquired from Cirdan, a real selling point of the module. The unique features of the three northern palantiri are also described, and there's even a Fourth-Age scenario premised on the recovery of the two lost seeing stones near the ice-bay of Arvedui's shipwreck.

My enthusiasm for Rangers, however, is tempered by the underdeveloped mapwork. There is a two-page color map of the Arthedain region, on the back of which are city grids of Annuminas and Fornost. Yet no buildings of these capitals are detailed, save the royal library at Annuminas, which is admittedly a treat, as it rivals most any library in Middle Earth. But this is the only major layout in the entire module; besides a seer's observatory, and a couple of towns and villages, that's literally it. Arthedain isn't exactly a region of "dungeons", to be sure, but other things could have certainly been fleshed out. At the time of purchase I resented the fact that Weathertop of all places wasn't covered, though that was later rectified in a fantastic standalone module. There is a nice map of Numenor derived from the one in Tolkien's Unfinished Tales, and the color map of Arthedain is duplicated in black-and-white displaying the lands held by the seven noble families. The layout deficiencies end up not mattering much, at least not to me, in a module whose strengths lie elsewhere, and which deals with such an inspiring nation where rangers watch from the shadows, and scholars are esteemed as soldiers.

History & Culture Rating: 5
Maps & Layouts Rating: 2

Next up: The Lost Realm of Cardolan.

Middle-Earth Retrospectives

2012-01-04T15:10:00.000-08:00

I'll never forget the day I learned that Tolkien Enterprises revoked ICE's license to produce gaming modules of Middle-Earth. This material was nothing less than scholarly, as fun to read as to play, and completely dominated my role-playing years. I would check in at the local comic store religiously to buy every accessory I could get my hands on, and I'm glad I did: thanks to the Tolkien-Enterprise fascists, these things are now collector's items. It's a shame, because they're probably the most academic modules ever written for any RPG. It's as if Tolkien himself had taken up D&D and poured his linguistic and cultural scholarship into the hobby. The irony, of course, being that the high fantasy setting of Middle-Earth is on the face of it so at odds with D&D's pulp fantasy roots, but I never saw a contradiction.

In upcoming months I'll be doing a series of retrospectives on these ICE classics from the '80s and '90s, mostly the earlier ones. Most are campaign modules, detailing histories and cultures of particular regions, and providing maps and layouts for various sites of interest; they were typically priced at $12 back in the day. There are also adventure modules, going for $7, and have the same basic format as the campaign but cover more specific sites over less ground. The fortress modules at $6 never went far as a series but were grand, laying out incredible detail of castles and strongholds. And only two city modules were ever published, at nearly $20 each, for which extraordinary detail was worked out, more than for the cities typically presented in the campaign modules. Of course, any of these can go for well over $100 today if you're lucky enough to find one on eBay.

I've divided my picks into eight geographical sections, working roughly from northwest to south: Eriador (7), Angmar & the North (4), The Elven Refuges & the Central Misty Mountains (4), Rhovanion (4), Rohan & the Southern Misty Mountains (5), Northern Gondor & Mordor (6), Southern Gondor (3), and the Far South (4). That adds up to 37 modules for review, and it should be fun looking back on this stuff. Unlike my top 20 list of D&D modules, this isn't a favorites series, but a comprehensive overview of "essentials" adding up to a grand atlas of Middle-Earth. Some are better than others, of course, but all mine Tolkien's world without raping it, and deserve the honor of acclaim rather than the shame of extinction.

First up: Rangers of the North.

Ancient Honor and Bisexual Norms

2012-01-03T03:58:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of essays to jump start the new year:

"Reading Biblical Narrative with Its Ancient Audience", by Philip Esler.

"Paul opposed Roman (bisexual) norms, not gay marriage", by Richard Fellows.

Esler looks at some basic stuff, such as honorably appropriate responses to battle (failed by David in II Sam 10-12)), the bitter animosity between co-wives (causing Hannah to shame Penninah in I Sam 1-2), and other things which in typical Context-Group fashion "wash away modern, Northern Atlantic understandings of what the biblical texts mean and find something very different underneath".

Fellows puts to bed a particular modern western reading of Paul, namely his condemnation of homoeroticism. "When reading 1 Cor 6:9 and Rom 1:26-27, it is natural for us to assume that Paul has in mind the actions of a group equivalent to modern homosexuals -- a persecuted minority who represent about 2% of western society. Rather than having such people in view, Paul is attacking the sexual practices of the majority of Romans, and that these practices can better be described as bisexual and unfaithful." A lot of data in this well-crafted post.

Happy New Year to all.

The 69 Stories of Doctor Who

2011-12-26T03:43:00.000-08:00

Each and every one of them are ranked on this page -- from the crown jewels (5 jelly babies) to the very good (4 jelly babies) to the decent (3 jelly babies), to the mediocre duds (2 jelly babies) to the absolute stinkers (1 jelly baby). There's a good portion on every step of the ladder, as it turns out.

Of these 69 stories, 26 were penned by Russell Davies and 12 by Steven Moffat, which means that over half the stories of the new series were scripted by one of these two men. It's worth contrasting their quality:

Davies -- 0 crown jewels, 5 very good, 7 decent, 7 mediocre duds, 7 stinkers

Moffat -- 4 crown jewels, 4 very good, 3 decent, 1 mediocre dud, 0 stinkers

So it's no mystery that Moffat is a superior writer, but I don't know that makes him a better captain at the helm. His overall vision as producer seems about as strong as Davies'. If we contrast their entire eras:

Davies Era -- 22% crown jewels, 24% very good, 12% decent, 22% mediocre duds, 20% stinkers

Moffat Era -- 16% crown jewels, 37% very good, 33% decent, 7% mediocre duds, 7% stinkers

This confirms what I've always said about the Davies era, that the highs are really high, and the lows are really low, with very little in-between. The Moffat period, on the other hand, hasn't sunk as low as his predecessor's, but there are also less pinnacles, with the weight falling in the very good-middle categories.

My favorite season is actually from Davies (season 2); aside from a couple of lemons, it's near unassailable. Moffat's debut (season 5) would be a close second, however. Davies' last (season 4) is the absolute worst: literally half the stories are duds and stinkers. And somewhere in between these fall seasons 1, 3, and 6. Off the cuff, I'd probably rank the seasons 2->5->1->6->3->4. So I'm certainly not of the mind that Russell Davies was bad for Doctor Who just because he himself wrote shit half the time. I can't even decide between Rose and Amy as the best companion of the new series, so that's another tie between him and Moffat. (For that matter, I can't decide between Mickey and Rory as the beta-male who drives me more crazy.)

I think it's fair to say that the Davies era had a lot of soul when it was on top of its game, but was brought low by kitchen-sink soap opera, silliness, and cop-out climaxes when it wasn't. The Moffat era has rectified these deficiencies, but at the expense of some of the soul -- papered over, lamely, with the recurring "triumph of love" theme. What happened to the Moffat who served up rich characters like Madame de Pompadour and Sally Shipton? What happened to the brilliant emotional power delivered in stories like Forest of the Dead and The Big Bang? This has been lost in his season-six stories, and we had to rely on others -- Neil Gaiman, Tom MacRae, Toby Whithouse -- to be really moved, just as we, ironically, had to rely on Moffat, Cornell, Shearman, Jones, Moran, etc. to deliver the goods under Davies.

Enjoy the list.

1. Blink. 5+ jelly babies. Yes, it's everyone's favorite, and for good reason. It's completely beyond criticism. I can't even nitpick Murray Gold's scoring, as he gets even that right for a change, hitting every beat perfectly. The weeping angels are brilliant creations, the best aliens of the new era, and definitely the most frightening. Most remarkable is the status this story has achieved despite, or perhaps because of, being Doctor-lite. It's a sign of something special when the Doctor can be sidelined for the better, and of course Sally Sparrow is a fantastic character, possibly the best guest performance of the six seasons. Moffat is at his best playing with time paradoxes in Blink, the highlight of course being the DVD Easter Egg scene, as the Doctor uses a copy of the transcript Lawrence is writing to have a conversation across time, which in fact generates the script. And it takes pure genius to cap it all off with a final scene that has absolutely nothing to do with the story, yet everything, designed to make kids afraid of statues.

2. The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit. 5 jelly babies. In a way I think of this as my favorite story, since Blink doesn't really count being everyone's favorite. I'll never forget when I first watched the second season DVD set, and this no-holds-barred epic came in the middle, trailing a fantastic werewolf story, a wonderful return of Sarah Jane Smith, a dark fairy-tale, and an amazing reboot of the Cybermen in a parallel Earth. The devil outdid them all in the deepest space where truly no one can hear you scream, stealing shamelessly from Alien, The Abyss, and The Robots of Death, yet never feeling like a cheat. The dread and tension and claustrophobia never let up, with Rose and crew battling Ood on the sanctuary base above, and the Doctor blindly freefalling into Satan's Pit below. We haven't seen the Doctor show down a godlike adversary since he went against Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars and the ancient evil in The Curse of Fenric, and this masterpiece ranks right alongside them. When I finally caught my breath at the end, I remember thinking, "Okay, it's official: we're in a new Golden Age of Doctor Who."

3. Dalek. 5 jelly babies. The story that convinced me of the potentials of the new series is a pure classic. When I'm crying over a Dalek, something unprecedented is going on, and what's mind-numbingly brilliant is the way this episode inverts the legendary Genesis of the Daleks with just as much economy in the span of 45 minutes. The brutally tortured Dalek draws not an ounce of sympathy from the Doctor, who has to be stopped by Rose from blasting it to atoms -- the exact opposite of Sarah who once urged genocide against his pacifism -- all climaxing in a weird "E.T." moment as the creature forms a strange bond with her. If anyone had described the plot to me in advance, I would have dismissed it as a sentimental betrayal of what Doctor Who is about, but Dalek is absolutely transcendent, and the second best Dalek story (after Genesis) in the entire history of the show.

4. Human Nature/Family of Blood. 5 jelly babies. Some consider this the best story, even over Blink, and no surprise. Drama can't go any deeper than making a Time Lord human, taking away his TARDIS, and erasing all memories of his true identity. And it's really a story that only Paul Cornell could pull off so that it plays like something adapted out of high-brow literature. The Doctor makes the sacrifice of becoming human out of kindness (preferring evasion over a grim sentence he's forced to carry out on the aliens in the end), but ends up bringing horror and death to an innocent village. David Tennant gets to show off new acting skills, as he's a completely new character, emotionally vulnerable, and devoid of the flippant sarcasm that defines his role as the Doctor. When the jig is finally up and he refuses to change back into a Time Lord, having fallen in love with a fellow schoolteacher, he delivers a performance so painful, so angry and tearful, that we almost don't want the Doctor back anymore than he does.

5. The Girl in the Fireplace. 5 jelly babies. A creep-show, fairy-tale, and tragedy all in one. It captures the innocence of The Chronicles of Narnia and horror of Pan's Labyrinth to produce something rather unique in Doctor Who, something I wish we'd see more often. Moffat must have had me in mind when writing the spaceship powered by human body parts -- especially the beating heart in the interior smelling like cooking meat -- and the demented robots who believe that a certain woman's are needed just because the ship is named after her. Madame de Pompadour herself is brilliantly scripted, and her love for the Doctor completely compelling despite knowing him for only brief moments throughout her life, since he arrives out of nowhere like a mythical protector. When he comes the final time to find her dead and gone, and her letter waiting, it's truly heartbreaking. This is pure magic, pure storytelling.

6. The Doctor's Wife. 5 jelly babies. Getting Neil Gaiman to write for Doctor Who was a coup, and true to expectations he managed to deliver the most powerful story of the Moffat era. He takes the living essence of the TARDIS, pours it into a human being, gives it voice, and explores its (her) relationship with the Doctor. Idris is a spellbinding character, constantly speaking out of tense as she lives moments of the Doctor's life in non-linear fashion, and insisting on an equal playing field by insisting that it was she in fact who stole him and not the other way around. In a perfectly geeky way, the TARDIS gives the Doctor what no other "woman" can (not even River Song), constant adventure, which he gives her back in turn. When Idris finally has to die and they both start breaking down, I was doing the same. And those aren't even the best parts, which go to Amy and Rory trapped inside the darkened TARDIS robbed of its soul, and tormented by a voice out of hell.

7. Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead. 5 jelly babies. As a librarian I have to love this one; hell, I dream of planet-sized libraries. The menace is bloody chilling: shadows that kill on contact and strip flesh to the bone, hard to distinguish from the garden variety, and as hard to evade as the weeping angels from Blink. And of course this is where the Doctor first meets River Song, though for her it's their last meeting, and she dies with appropriate tragedy. True, she awakens in the matrix to continue in some sort of metaphysical existence, but at least her demise is permanent on the physical side of things, which is more than can be said for the deaths in The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. Even if the epilogue waxes schmaltzy, this is Moffat at his best -- the best two-part story he ever wrote, with the first half being a nail-biting horror piece, the second taking us inside the disturbing matrix where Donna is married and has kids and no memory of anything else.

8. Amy's Choice. 5 jelly babies. By far the weirdest story of the new series, an actual nightmare that evokes David Lynch. It finds the Doctor, Amy, and Rory flicking back and forth between two scenarios, one of which they are told is a dream they are sharing, the other reality. To die in the dream will cause them to wake up in reality for good, and to die in reality will cause them to really die; so they must choose wisely. The choice, however, Amy's choice, ultimately boils down to a choice between the Doctor and Rory, and I love the twist that the frozen TARDIS circling a cold star is as much a dream as the idyllic countryside where feeble grandmas are getting whacked by crowbars and thrown off the roofs of houses. The perversity is grand, but at heart the story is ingeniously introspective, a welcome rarity in Doctor Who, and a true work of art.

9. Father's Day. 5 jelly babies. Paul Cornell's tragedy proved at once that tear-jerkers can work outside the cloying sentimentality of Russell Davies' stories. The plot is simple, the resolution predictable, but only in way the tragedy often is; the drama is brilliant, the acting Oscar-worthy. Rose persuades the Doctor to take her back in time to when her father was killed by a motorist, and despite being forbidden to alter the past, she intervenes and saves him anyway, ushering in nothing less than Armageddon. Everywhere on earth people are suddenly assaulted by Reapers (winged creatures resembling Tolkien's Nazgul-steeds), parasites that act like antibodies, destroying everything in wounded time until the paradox is gone. The Doctor nearly disowns and abandons Rose, and it's one of Eccleston's harshest and finest moments. But in the end the Doctor and Rose are closer than before despite (no: because of) their falling out, after the painful lesson that triumph costs.

10. The Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel. 5 jelly babies. Of the twelve stories I consider crown jewels, this one tends to surprise people, but frankly I think it's about as strong as Father's Day to which it serves as a sort of sequel. Not only is this the best Cybermen story of all time (though let's face it, they were never used very well in the classic period), it's before even that a parallel-Earth story, like the Pertwee classic Inferno, in which all bets are off as we get to see familiar faces die (Jackie), others beat hasty retreats when confronted with "relatives" they never knew (Pete), and then a major character from our world choose exile when he finally realizes his girlfriend will always choose the Doctor over him (Mickey). Much as I loathed Mickey up to this point, I had to admit this story justified his existence, and his farewell to Rose was really moving. As for the Cybermen, the Davros-type genius who creates them is a ranting megalomaniac and alone worth the price of admission.

11. Fires of Pompeii. 5 jelly babies. The most ambitious historical of the new series achieves greatness with everything -- drama, comedy, horror, tragedy, time paradoxes, and not a minute of screen time wasted. It tackles the dilemma of whether or not history should be altered to save lives, and the Doctor's struggle to pull the lever recalls Tom Baker's agony over whether or not to change history by committing genocide on the Daleks. The Sibylline Sisterhood is another throw-back to the Hinchcliffe era (The Brain of Morbius), and half of the fourth-season's special effects budget seems to have gone into creating the Pyrovile (stone-magma creatures resembling Balrogs) which the priestesses are hideously transforming into. That the Doctor is the one to blow up Vesuvius and murder thousands is genius, and if you aren't weeping with Donna at the end you're made of stone yourself.

12. The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone. 5 jelly babies. This two-parter is to Blink as Aliens is to Alien: bigger, longer, more; not quite as perfect but still excellent. The weeping angels are back in droves, faced off by an army of priestly soldiers who aren't nearly as equipped as they think. Like Ripley, the Doctor understands the menace better than anyone, though not always quite enough, and the angels have some alarming new tricks, like breaking peoples' heads open in order to reanimate their consciousness. In terms of suspense, I hadn't been kept on the edge of my seat so much since the Ood closed in on the space crew back in The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit; and as in that story the body count is high. Amy is in deep trouble, and when on death's door she cries out in a pitifully broken voice, "I'm scared, Doctor," I love our hero's callous retort: "Of course you're scared, you're dying, shut up." Amusingly, when all is said and done, she wants to jump in the sack and fuck his brains out in one of the best epilogues of the new series.

13. Midnight. 4 ½ jelly babies. The best thing Russell Davies ever wrote is by his own admission a low-budget afterthought, asking what would happen if Voyage of the Damned were turned on its head. If the garishly bombastic Christmas special was about feel-good togetherness and people bringing out the best in each other when united against an outside threat, Midnight is about the beast inside everyone bringing out the worst. With the claustrophobic intensity of United 93 and rapid dialogue-fire of Twelve Angry Men, the story succeeds by undercutting the Doctor's hero qualities as he's left at the mercy of an hysterical mob. Opposite Voyage, where his is melodramatic speech about a being a Time Lord makes the ship's passengers obey him without question, now it's precisely his arrogant superiority that shoots him in the ass. The tension and yelling reach a horrifying crescendo as the passengers try to kill him and he's unable to save the day. That's something unique in the Tennant years, and this is a uniquely strong story for Russell Davies.

14. A Christmas Carol. 4 ½ jelly babies. I never wanted to see Christmas specials again after the stream of Davies-fiascos, convinced that The Christmas Invasion was a one-off exception. Not only did Moffat prove me wrong, he did even better with a brilliant spin on Dickens. The sets and lighting with purplish-black hues set a perfect tone, haunting yet mystical, and Michael Gambon as the tormented Scrooge character is as evil as greed gets. And I love how the Doctor is so unethically manipulative in trying to save his ugly soul. It reminds of the Seventh Doctor who tried to save as many lives as possible in carrying out his vendetta against Fenric: there's no reason why he couldn't simply have taken the flask he trapped Fenric in and dumped it in a black hole like he once did with the Fendahl-skull. Ditto here: there's no reason he couldn't have gone back in time to prevent the Starliner from taking off in the first place instead of jumping through hoops to rewrite a man's life on the slim hope that he'll change his mind. Part of me that thinks the Doctor is getting off on using people as pawns, rewriting their lives -- as the Scrooge character rightly charges -- "to suit himself". Brilliant.

15. The Unquiet Dead. 4 ½ jelly babies. A superb gothic story harking back to the Hinchcliffe era, and the first episode that showed promise with the new series. Doctor Who is almost always in top form with period pieces like this one, and Charles Dickens is used splendidly, as a skeptic who becomes more open-minded about ghostly matters on account of his dealings with the Doctor. Of course, the undead corpses stalking Cardiff aren't really undead, but animated by gaseous aliens from another dimension, as they want to reclaim every corpse on earth for bodily existence. The best part is that the Doctor actually aids them in their morbid goal out of pity (after all, human corpses are just corpses), not realizing the aliens' real goal goal to dominate planet earth once they acquire physical existence. The Doctor is amusingly incompetent in this story, and it's up to Dickens to save the day.

16. Tooth and Claw. 4 ½ jelly babies. The second best thing Russell Davies ever wrote is something I still have a hard time believing, as it shows none of his bad traits at all. It's as if he donned the professional writer's cap to prove he could match the previous season's Unquiet Dead, and that's exactly what happened. I'd always wanted to see a werewolf story in Doctor Who, and you can't do better for setting than the Scottish highlands. Queen Victoria is one of the best guest performances of the new series, and the ninja monks are a big bonus too. The monks' agenda is to get the Queen bitten so they can rule the British empire through her, though it's never quite clear whether they're worshipping the werewolf or using it for their own ends. The ending is priceless, when the Queen rewards the Doctor with a knighthood, and then promptly banishes him, "not amused" by his heathen nature.

17. Vincent and the Doctor. 4 ½ jelly babies. This one is as good as the previous two and by far the most emotional. By portraying Vincent Van Gogh as a tormented genius who sees things others are blind to, the story is able to explore artistic insight on both literal and metaphysical levels. It represents the final year of Van Gogh's life quite well, recreating various sites painted by the artist, the paintings themselves in arresting color, and his disturbing fits of manic depression. The theme of vision permeates almost every frame, and on the literal level this plays out in the attack of the Krafayis, an invisible giant bird-reptile that Vincent fends off entertainingly with long wooden poles and armchairs, while the Doctor gets slammed against walls by its tail. On the deeper level, Van Gogh sees things in nature's midst and people's souls. And of course, the ending hits hard: the Doctor brings Vincent to a museum in the present, where the artist breaks down in front of his paintings that are now famous.

18. The Girl Who Waited. 4 jelly babies. This story may wield sentimentality like old-Amy does her sword, but the emotions on display ring true, and it's impossible not to be moved during the scenes between her and Rory. It's completely defined by its title: Amy's tragedy from The Eleventh Hour is repeated, but with infinitely worse results, the simple press of a wrong button costing her half her life. The beauty to this episode is that it does so much with so little; there are no guest characters, just the three regulars; the Two Streams Facility is minimalist as sets get in Doctor Who, but eye-candy just the same with its blinding whiteness and lush topiaries. At heart, the story exposes the Doctor's destructive nature as Amy faithfully waits on him and evolves into a bitter isolated warrior, whom Rory must find the will to kill, and segues neatly into her swan song, The God Complex. Which, incidentally, is just as good...

19. The God Complex. 4 jelly babies. A perfect exit for Amy, not only for trailing her most harrowing experience in The Girl Who Waited, but for crushing her childlike faith in the Doctor. It does this in a tense story about a beast who feeds off corrupted belief in a haunted hotel, where each room contains the worst fears of one individual. Amy faces hers and is liberated, and her farewell at the end is beautiful, the best since Sarah's in The Hand of Fear. Fans might object to me ranking this above Rose's departure, and part of me agrees; Doomsday is an unrivaled tear-jerker. But I ultimately put Rose in a class by herself on account of the exceptional (if unrealized) romance between her and the Doctor. Amy's farewell, like Sarah's in the '70s, delivers so much in simple gestures and looks that speak volumes. There's a real feel in the closing scene that the Doctor and Amy have have become best friends and find it enormously painful to part company.

20. School Reunion. 4 jelly babies. Speaking of Sarah's departure, let's talk of her return. Three decades later, she's spirited and feisty as ever -- and royally pissed that the Doctor never came back for her, prompting an amusingly jealous bitch-fight with Rose. K-9 is back too and in rusty form. Around the fun nostalgia revolves a plot involving batlike aliens who have taken over a school and are turning children into geniuses to help them solve an equation that unlocks complete control of time and space. A powerful concept like this really deserved more attention than serving as a backdrop to the return of old friends, but this is still a very good story, a special one I hold dear like many fans. The Doctor gets in a particularly compelling moment when he considers using the paradigm to save Gallifrey, and Sarah reminds him that pain and loss are essential in the course of evolution. Their final farewell choked me up as much as back in the '70s when Tom Baker sent her away.

21. Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways. 4 jelly babies. For all the garbage Davies cranked out, he went out strong in seasons one and two. This finale is a massive adrenaline rush, a sequel to Dalek (in theme) and The Long Game (in setting), and involves the riotous plot of people trapped in reality television where everything is a game and losers get vaporized. When the Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack play for their lives they discover the outfit is a front for an impending Dalek invasion of earth. This is what I was waiting for when I finally started watching the new series: the sight of zillions of Daleks (who can levitate and fly now, thanks to CGI) balling "EXTERMINATE!" and other horrible mantras, more fearsome than ever for having found religion. The Dalek God is awesome, as demented and entertaining as Davros, and calls forth obsequious devotion from his subjects who go ape-shit when the Doctor interrupts him ("DO NOT INTERRUPT!"). The climax is both fantastic and awful, the latter for involving the intrusion of Jackie and Mickey with, of all things, a trailer truck.

22. Army of Ghosts/Doomsday. 4 jelly babies. This finale is a sequel to The Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel, with Daleks thrown in for good measure, and Rose's swan song to boot. It's a Who-fan's wet dream -- the two most popular villains invading earth, and then fighting each other to see who's best -- and remains an example of fanwank that's actually good, completely unlike The Stolen Earth/Journey's End. The appearance of the Daleks caught me way off-guard, and the cliffhanger is one of the best of all time. And I love the Cult of Skaro: four elite Daleks with actual names, designed to think as the enemy thinks. A great moment is when the Cyberleader proposes an alliance with the Cult, is refused, and demands: "You would destroy five million Cybermen with four Daleks?" To which the response, of course, is that they would destroy five million Cybermen with but a single Dalek, for "this is not a war, this is pest control". As apocalyptic as the previous finale, and just as good, with Rose going out incredibly emotionally, knowing she'll never be able to see the Doctor again.

23. Utopia. 4 jelly babies. For purposes of this list, I consider the season-three finale to be three separate stories, not only because a new plot launches at the beginning of each (within the overarching thread of the Master), but they end up rating differently as a result. Utopia is unquestionably the best, though as always, Davies' futuristic vision isn't terribly strong. The Futurekind somehow come across as both savage and lame, and the centipede-humanoid assistant is a bit awkward. Penalties also for the return of Captain Jack. But aside from these irritants, this is a dark and compelling look at a dying humanity trillions of years in the future, and its desperate quest to seek out a mythic utopian planet. The plot then suddenly turns into a race against time as the Professor spearheading this mission turns out to be the Master, who shockingly -- even for the Master -- murders his assistant and hijacks the Doctor's TARDIS. It's a great start to a finale, but that greatness unfortunately isn't maintained in the subsequent episodes.

24. 42. 4 jelly babies. This may be a rip-off of the previous season's Impossible Planet/Satan Pit, but I'm a sucker for spaceship-in-distress stories where sweating crew members fight hopeless odds, race against time, and get picked off one by one. Here the Doctor and his companion appear on a ship which is going to crash into a sun in 42 minutes. Like last time, they get cut off from the TARDIS almost as soon as they step out of it (thus preventing a convenient rescue and escape), and just as before, we get possessed crew members (this time by an angry sun), suffocating claustrophobia, and the Doctor going EVA in the middle of it all. Because the drama unfolds in real time (Doctor Who episodes are 45 minutes long), and punctuated by a nerve-racking countdown, it keeps your blood racing. An awesome episode.

25. The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang. 4 jelly babies. The season-five finale shows Moffat giving his predecessor the finger whilst feigning homage. The subtext essentially is, if you're going to raise the stakes to extreme heights, Mr. Davies, this is how you do a story like Journey's End. And indeed, the crack in Amy's bedroom wall proves to be the most successful seasonal story arc in the new series, and while there are certainly resets to be found here, they're not cheap. They come at a fair price, and there's solid emotional payoff. The Doctor's farewell to Amy as he prepares to sacrifice himself -- "You don't need your imaginary friend anymore" -- got me choked up. Also, the reset carries the unexpected surprise of giving back people we never knew existed, notably Amy's parents, which beautifully accounts for the emptiness of Amy's many-roomed house and why she never talked about a family. Another bonus over Davies: we didn't have to suffer through yet another season of a TARDIS companion weighed down by a dysfunctional family, a formula which by seasons three and four had taken its toll.

26. The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon. 4 jelly babies. Moffat followed the big bang finale with something just as good, and which smashes the season opener formula to smithereens. For one, it's scary: the Silence are as terrifying as the Autons and Adipose are laughable. Two, it's lengthy, the first two-parter to launch a season. Three, it doesn't find the Doctor fending off an alien invasion, but rather leading a revolution, for the aliens are already well ensconced and in control. Four, no time is wasted bringing out the big guns: the Doctor is killed seven minutes into the story, and while it was a guarantee this would be undone by the end of the season, the message was loud and clear: no messing around. It's only too bad the continuations of this Silence/River Song thread in the mid-season double bill and finale didn't live up to what's established so nail-bitingly here.

27. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. 4 jelly babies. Some consider this Moffat's masterpiece, but I think it's overrated. There's no denying it's very good, but there are things which irk: the "everyone lives" trope, and the dreaded Captain Jack. Yes, the happy ending was copied in the library story, but at least it was only in the matrix, so some semblance of protagonist death was felt. In this story it feels more like a cheat and trivializes the horror, though this isn't a major complaint on my part. Worse is Captain Jack, who is really a Russell Davies character through and through, even if Moffat wrote him, and whose interactions with the Doctor and Rose clash with the story's dark tone. That being said, this has become a classic for obvious reason, with the setting of the London Blitz inspired, where microscopic robots are turning people into zombies made over in the image of gas-masked victims of the war. Everything is gloomy and surreal, from war-torn London, dark alleyways, a smoky nightclub, a creepy hospital, to an old house where starving kids gather for repast. It's incredible cinema.

28. The Shakespeare Code. 4 jelly babies. The mystery of Shakespeare's lost play is finally solved in this historical, where William is being harassed by a trio of witches who use the power of words to unlock space-time boundaries. They need a wordsmith to open a gate for their kind to invade earth, and Love's Labour's Won becomes the medium for that goal. As always, there's science behind the superstition: voodoo dolls are DNA replicators; spells are incanted the same way mathematical computations are intoned in the Tom Baker classic Logopolis. There's also plenty of humor here, with the Doctor citing quotes that Shakespeare hasn't come up with yet, and the climax is hilarious as Shakespeare defeats the witches by using their own weapon against them: pure verse, which burns them like holy water and closes the gate forever. Some of the levity keeps this story from reaching the heights of other gothic historicals, but it's a gem nonetheless.

29. Planet of the Ood. 4 jelly babies. It's not often the Doctor gets political and crushes oppression, but it happens from time to time, especially on alien planets in the future, and Planet of the Ood is in fact the best "revolution" story after Tom Baker's Sun Makers (taxation), E-Space trilogy (servitude and slavery), and Sylvester McCoy's Happiness Patrol (fascism). It's great seeing the Doctor bring management to its knees when provoked, and in this case he clearly feels guilty for having let so many Ood die in his battle against Satan in season two. But what really sets this story above average is the musical climax, which is simply transcendent, and defines the story in a way never seen on the show. I get chills during the last five minutes of this episode, and not from the ice planet.

30. The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood. 4 jelly babies. Channeling classic Who with a vengeance, this one taps into how everyone remembers the Pertwee era to be, but also the Colin Baker period, with protracted torture scenes and luminescent underground sets; I must confess that Vengeance on Varos was more on my mind than Pertwee's encounter with the Silurians, who this time around look more human than reptilian when their masks come off. That's a compliment, mind you, since I like more about Colin Baker than most, and less about Pertwee than many. The minimalist setting is a welcome reprieve to the urban noise from four seasons of Davies, and as in the Pertwee classic, the story takes a tired cliché and turns it on its head: the alien invaders aren't really aliens but "Earthlians" who have as much claim to the planet as humanity, which is why the Doctor bends over backwards to put them on the same playing field with homo sapiens. A splendid installment that takes us completely down the season-five rabbit hole.

31. Turn Left. 3 ½ jelly babies. Now here's a gem that would positively glow if not weighed down by the baggage of Davies' previous lemons, especially The Runaway Bride and Partners in Crime, and also the gaping plot hole that if the Doctor died at the start of season three, the world would have retroactively ended in 79 AD since he doesn't go back to Pompeii and stop the Pyrovile. But for the most part Davies manages to pull off a compelling time-warp scenario in which Donna replays her life without ever meeting the Doctor, with catastrophic results for the world. There's a lot of good drama here: the Italian family being taken off to a "labor camp" is heartbreaking, as is Donna's life as a refugee. The return of Rose is handled surprisingly well (since she doesn't meet the Doctor, thus remaining true to the season-two finale), and Catherine Tate puts in a hell of a performance as she sacrifices herself to turn left and get the world back on track. Again, if this story weren't saddled with ridiculous spectacles like marshmallow-men invasions (the adipose), it would have gotten a solid ranking of 4.

32. The Eleventh Hour. 3 ½ jelly babies. The next two fall into the category of stories I adore despite myself, where I find myself enjoying the ride even as I'm loathing, conceptually, much of what I'm seeing. There's a term for this, of course, guilty pleasures, and that's what The Eleventh Hour and The Christmas Invasion are. They follow the invasion-of-earth formula that leaves me cold, but they do it so well that they turn out to be splendid introductions to a new Doctor. The Eleventh Hour even copies the plot of Smith and Jones to the point that it has no right to succeed yet does. The real high point is the tempus fugit drama with the seven-year old Amelia Pond, who of course becomes established as the "girl who waited". On whole this one-hour special remains what it is, an invasion-of-earth story in which the Doctor saves the entire planet in the space of twenty minutes, and by (of all things) using a laptop to spread a global virus. But it's an incredibly fun ride, drawing us back for repeated viewings almost against our will.

33. The Christmas Invasion. 3 ½ jelly babies. The first and only good Christmas special written by Russell Davies turns out to be a great introduction to the Tenth Doctor, and as in The Eleventh Hour the invasion-of-earth baggage works for rather than against it, even the offensively ludicrous killer-Christmas trees. The story actually reminds me of Tom Baker's own first entry, Robot, involving a threat in present-day London which calls forth a military response, and his female companion playing a key role "negotiating" with the threat that ultimately needs to be destroyed. The dramatic tension builds well in the first half due to the Doctor being out of commission as he recovers from regenerating, and when he finally emerges from those TARDIS doors, we almost want to clap like little kids. He gets in a good sword fight with the alien-king before banishing his race from earth, and the best scene is his hand getting chopped off then immediately regenerating. And the "Song for Ten" at the end is perfect.

34. The Waters of Mars. 3 jelly babies. The "special year" between seasons four and five is a year I wish I could pretend never existed, for there was nothing special about the stinkers Davies was rolling out before Moffat took charge. Except for Waters of Mars, that is, which is actually quite good. It works on two levels, the first completely successfully, the second not so much, so it ends up feeling like the proverbial less than the sum of its parts. The straightforward level offers plenty of horrific entertainment, as crew members on Mars are being infected by water that turns them into alien zombies. The other level attempts to explore the Doctor's dark side as he violates the laws of time. The problem is that his crime doesn't seem particularly reprehensible, not least because there's no convincing reason why the deaths of this particular crew on Mars are unalterable "fixed points" in time. A textbook example of shooting too high and missing, but a very creepy and enjoyable story nonetheless.

35. The Wedding of River Song. 3 jelly babies. Somewhere in season six Moffat exhausted his genius. The thread launched in a fantastic season-opener, and continued in a mid-season disaster, landed results somewhere in-between, and confirmed not only that he never really had a plan with River Song, but that he was getting buried under the onus of his own cleverness. The Wedding of River Song is a decent story on its own right, but as a finale doesn't go out strong as it should. The major disappointment is River Song herself, who turns out to be the Doctor's assassin at Lake Silencio, yet this turns out a cheat, because she shoots him against her will, at the Doctor's command so that time can resume its course. River, in other words, wants desperately to save the Doctor, not destroy him, at the expense of everyone else in the universe locked in a moment of time. That doesn't make her dark, just astronomically selfish, and frankly unbelievable. There are certainly things to admire in this story, not least the horrifying Silence, and the way all of time and history blends together, but The Big Bang this isn't.

36. The Sound of Drums. 3 jelly babies. The middle chapter of the Master finale is good, but not nearly as good as Utopia, and the biggest problem is that John Simm is a rather embarassing Master. Unlike Derek Jacobi who was flawless in the role, Simm hams it up like a comic book villain. He's admittedly amusing at times, my favorite point being when he mockingly pantomimes zipping his lips for the American president, but his general flair for giving victims two thumbs up, reveling in pop music, and gurning like an oaf are painful to watch. Stronger is the general plot of his takeover of England and the ensuing political clash when America comes to chastise him, and there's a lot of good suspense when the Doctor and Martha are on the run being chased by his cronies.

37. The Lazarus Experiment. 3 jelly babies. An undervalued story that takes the theme of John 11:1-12:11 and fuses it with The Fly: a scientist finds immortality at the price of uncontrollable shapeshifting. Not worth it, if you ask me, but I enjoy the fact that Lazarus can burn the Doctor philosophically; when lectured on what it means to be human (as if the Doctor knows), Lazarus retorts that clinging to life at whatever cost is as human as you can get. The creature that keeps overpowering his human DNA rather puts me in mind of the freaky metamorphosis Noah underwent in the classic Ark in Space. The Lazarus Experiment may not achieve the greatest heights, but it is a fun romp in the purest sense, a quintessential example, actually, that comes to my mind when I think about Doctor Who "romps". It includes all the standard ingredients in a Who story -- creepy monster, high body counts, sci-fi weirdness, and solid philosophical debates with no easy answers.

38. The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People. 3 jelly babies. Another undervalued story, and saturated with homage: the isolated monastery setting, an acid-mining operation using slave labor, base-under-siege suspense, and running down corridors. Add to this Tom Baker's shockingly intrusive voice asking after jelly-babies and you've got a classic-Who stew. Especially noteworthy is the dark manipulative side to the Doctor at work before the story even begins, as he acts with a plan up his sleeve instead of blundering blindly into a situation and doing his best to sort it out. When the TARDIS is "caught" in a solar tsunami, it is being hurled deliberately to a time and place that will allow the Doctor to learn how to destroy Amy, whom he suspects is rather less than she seems. That in the process he shows himself to be concerned with fair play to both humans and their dopplegangers does not effect this conclusion; in the end he callously blasts almost-Amy to smithereens. The audience is invited to ask, though few ask it, whether his moral outrage over the murder of another ganger can be taken seriously.

39. The Beast Below. 3 jelly babies. This story works on two levels, one as a political fable about society kept in ignorance, albeit democratically by their own choice, and two as a metaphorical commentary on the Doctor's nature. The "Last of the Starwhales" allows Amy to understand the Doctor better, and more polysemously, than previous companions, and on top of that she gets to save the day, as the Doctor is caught up in helpless fury as he works to kill the poor whale on humanity's behalf. At this point in the series we hadn't seen Time Lord fallibility like this since the Ninth Doctor, and it's seriously refreshing. Minus points, however, for the Smilers, which are scary in the first five minutes, but never end up killing anyone and are way too easily disposed of by Her Majesty, the cavalierly pistol-slinging Liz Ten. On whole, an impressive attempt at something new, but it could have been much better.

40. Vampires of Venice. 3 jelly babies. For a gothic historical this one is substandard, but it manages to hold its head above water, and that's no mean feat given the subject matter; it takes courage these days to play the vampire card. The aristocratic Dracula model has been way overused, and the bubblegum teen version is offensive beyond words. Vampires, in my opinion, should be brutally savage (e.g. From Dusk Till Dawn, 30 Days of Night), but the problem is that the R-rated breed isn't suitable for a family program. State of Decay actually did astonishingly well by the aristocratic model, and The Curse of Fenric even better with sea vampires that were products of human evolution caused by pollution. Venice goes a more radical route, with vampires that aren't really vampires, but rather alien fish monsters who want to drag Venice under water and call it home. It works pretty well, though a part of me wishes the myth wasn't stripped away to this extent. Still, I applaud the originality.

41. The End of the World. 3 jelly babies. For all my Davies bashing, I'm fond of the following three stories which I affectionately call the New Earth Trilogy. They're silly in the way only Davies can be, but oddly enjoyable, and form a nice arc across the beginnings of the first three seasons. The End of the World sees the destruction of our planet in the year 5 billion, under an apocalyptic solar expansion. Rich aliens gather to watch the event on an observation platform, and the drama becomes an action mystery when someone starts killing the others for greed. Notable are the Face of Boe, and the bitchy Cassandra -- the mutilated flat mass of skin who represents the last surviving human being -- who appear again later in the trilogy.

42. New Earth. 3 jelly babies. There's something soothing about the first few minutes of this story, as we see the Tenth Doctor settle into his role by reliving his first "date" with Rose in the far future, this time 5 billion 23, where New Earth has replaced the old. Suspense is carried on two subplots, the first involving human clones stuffed into cells like lab rats and subjected to hideous experiments, the second seeing the return of the bitchy Cassandra (the flat mass of skin resembling a vertical trampoline) who will stop at nothing to take over a real human body. The humanoid cats are used effectively, as they honestly believe their hideous experiments justify the hospital they run, in which a cure can be offered for every known disease. Comedic, pedestrian, but quite fun -- and Cassandra's death is unexpectedly moving for such a hateful character.

43. Gridlock. 3 jelly babies. The third part of the New Earth Trilogy is loved by many fans -- far more than it deserves. Its premise is the most ludicrous of all the stories on this list: a perpetual traffic jam in an undercity, where it takes six years to travel ten miles, the air pollution suffocates you, and snapping Macras wait to tear apart your car if you're lucky enough to get promoted to the fast-lane. It's up to the Doctor to liberate the underworld, which he does with flair, leaping from car to car like a neo-James Bond, and eventually finding the means to open the surface of the city. It's a fun bit of nonsense that works despite itself, but I certainly can't join the enthusiasts who (astonishingly) consider Gridlock a crown jewel. It's as good as The End of the World and New Earth, frankly, amounting to a fun ride, nothing more.

44. Night Terrors. 3 jelly babies. Think The Girl in the Fireplace meets Fear Her: monsters in the closet, worlds behind portals. And it just so happens you could add the ratings of those stories (5 and 1) and divide by 2 to get the score for this one. It's an effective nightmare of giant dolls, and while some critics complain about poor special effects, that's much the point, meshing with a child's rough, haunted perspective. The major weakness (which prevents a solid rating of 4 from me) is the melodramatic climax which sees the destruction of the doll world through the father's love and final acceptance of George. Part of me likes this, but the other part says this kind of device has been used too often for the show's good. Though to be fair, this story can get away with it much better than The Lodger and Closing Time on grounds of its premise. Bedroom nightmares easily feed into themes of childhood trauma and parental neglect, and what child underneath it all doesn't simply crave love?

45. The Curse of the Black Spot. 3 jelly babies. For reasons that escape me, this story is panned as one of the worst of the new series, but it's enjoyable enough as long as you don't expect anything more out of it than, say, Vampires of Venice. On the plus side, it's a base under siege drama calling to mind a classic like The Horror of Fang Rock and harkens back to the Hinchcliffe era in terms of style, as a period piece with a distinct gothic horror feel. It then shifts in emphasis and tone to become a rather banal morality lesson, with the villain turning from a murderous pirate to a responsible father in the blink of an eye. The hyperspace punchline is reminiscent of Stones of Blood (the best installment in the Key to Time classic), where things get less mythic and more sci-fic: the Siren is really an automated physician that whisks people off at the first sign of injury in order to heal them. The story feels a bit disjointed, but it certainly has features that on whole make it fun.

46. Victory of the Daleks. 3 jelly babies. Here's another one that's often deemed mediocre at best. In my view, it's a fun World War II piece that sees Britain training an army of Daleks to be thrown against the Third Reich, and a great homage to Power of the Daleks, which similarly involved the hate-mongers feigning servility to humankind whilst really working against them. The sight of them gliding around Churchill's Cabinet War Rooms, carrying files on their sink plungers and bleating out subservient inquiries like, "WOULD YOU CARE FOR SOME TEA?", are hilarious, and unlike many, I'm fond of the rainbow-colored reboot, which is fitting for Moffat's fairy-tale epoch. There's also the ridiculous but entertaining Star-Wars-like battle between the Spitfires and Dalek ship. More of a let-down is the way the Doctor and Amy neutralize the bomb-android by putting it in touch with his most affecting memories as a human being, inaugurating the "triumph of love" theme that would come to plague Moffat's tenure.

47. Love and Monsters. 2 ½ jelly babies. Of all the stories in the new series, this is one I still can't get closure on. On first viewing I loathed it, indeed felt punched in the gut after a stellar run of season-two stories culminating in the mind-blowing Impossible Planet/Satan Pit. Subsequent viewings helped, though not as much as I hoped. For to this day I really want to love Love and Monsters. I adore the concept of Doctor-lite episodes, and I admire what this story tries to do. It portrays the Doctor from the perspective of an innocent bystander who only briefly gets involved with him, thus appearing different from the hero we're used to following with our God's-eye view, someone who leaves chaos and pain in his wake. It also takes an affectionate swipe at nerdy Doctor Who fans with the LINDA group, and for all my Davies-bashing I applaud the way he can make us laugh at ourselves. The problem is that the story falls flat with way too much slapstick comedy, and crumbles under a ridiculous creature -- the green fat man in a thong. Thus my rating of 2 ½, straddling the mediocre with (what I want to be) the worthy.

48. The Unicorn and the Wasp. 2 jelly babies. I went into this one thinking I'd love it, as it promises so much with an inspired setting and a fun murder mystery. It's refreshingly unusual for Doctor Who in that there's no threat to humanity, just the mystery -- a bizarrely comedic Clue game involving an alien. But it makes no sense whatsoever and delivers the non-sequitur reveal of a huge alien wasp that assumes human form at will, and which for demented reasons thinks Agatha's mysteries are the way the world really works, and so kills people in caricature of them (i.e. wielding a ridiculous lead pipe instead of just stinging the poor sap to death). This being Doctor Who, there has to be an alien element, but there's no internal logic leading to how the mystery is solved. It's a true shame, since the guest playing Agatha Christie does a good job; if she'd been only been given a half-decent script, this could have been a great story.

49. The Long Game. 2 jelly babies. This one is marred by an incredibly lazy vision, tacky set designs, and supporting characters we couldn't care a whit about. The setting of the orbital broadcasting platform in the year 200,000 doesn't feel very futuristic, human society hasn't evolved much, and the premise of people being dominated by the media network, while having potential, is exploited in a lame plot. On the plus side, the alien lording himself over humanity is enjoyable, and what occurs on Floor 500 yields some admittedly tense moments involving frozen corpses. But ultimately, the revelation that everyone is living in a nasty dictatorship where a blob-alien controls all flow of information just isn't felt in any real way. Davies evidently wanted to satirize media propaganda and the climate of fear, but boredom is what comes through for the most part, and the biggest crime is that Simon Pegg's talents playing the diabolical Editor are rather wasted in a bland script.

50. The Idiot's Lantern. 2 jelly babies. I never liked the concept of possessed TV sets (hated Poltergeist and The Ring), so this one didn't have much of a chance with me. It's about an alien who has escaped execution on the home planet by transforming itself into pure energy, and has come to earth to reconstitute itself. To do this it needs massive amounts of human energy, which it gets from the people of London via their televisions. The setting of 1953 is almost pointless -- though the crowning of Queen Elizabeth provides the excuse for everyone turning on their TV's at once -- there's really no feeling of period at all, and it could have easily taken place in the present. And the point of peoples' faces vanishing is never explained, nor for that matter how they manage to breathe in their state of takeover. A mediocre story in every way leaving much to be desired.

51. The Doctor's Daughter. 2 jelly babies. Susan's mother unveiled at last? Not hardly. "Jenny", spawned from the Doctor's tissue sample in mere seconds, is more Little Miss Rambo than Time Lord, born to kick ass in a war against the alien Hath. On an underground planet in the distant future, people have been fighting these Hath for "generations", which it turns out means for a single week, since twenty generations are born daily from their progenation machines. Under the delusion they need to combat aliens who usurped power from them in decades past, they imprison the Doctor and Donna as pacifist invaders. The story's center of gravity is the relationship between Jenny and the Doctor, but it isn't at all impressive, and the emotional climax of her dying in his arms is robbed by a last minute return to life and zipping off like a comic hero. Really.

52. The Last of the Time Lords. 2 jelly babies. After the excellent Utopia and decent Sound of Drums, Davies veers off into unacceptable melodrama, heavy-handed Christian allegory, and a cheap reset. The Master deserved to go out better than this, though the final moment between him and the Doctor -- who begs him to regenerate and "not leave him alone" -- is admittedly moving, and encapsulates an entire history of these adversaries being addicted to each other even in despite. But the Doctor being angelically restored to life by having the world's population think of him is something not even Davies usually pulls out of his ass, though unfortunately this story is where the real rot sets in, and foreshadows worse gimmicks to come in season four.

53. A Good Man Goes to War/Let's Kill Hitler. 2 jelly babies. Or when Moffat dropped the ball. After a disappointing non-drama at Demon's Run, things don't get any better in Nazi Germany. In fact, half of me thinks this mid-season mess was secretly penned by Russell Davies. The not-war completely fails the first title's promise, with armies allowing the Doctor to grandstand on stage without even shooting him. The non-sequitur of Hitler being squirreled away in a cupboard and completely ignored just adds insult to injury. But worst is the non-payoff of River Song, who was supposed to evolve in an increasingly evil direction, but here just does things for no reason -- hating the Doctor one moment, inexplicably deciding she loves him the next, and in a matter of moments, presto, learning to fly the TARDIS. There is no story here, and we're light years away from the brilliance and tragedy that ended Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead and promised more of the same. The headless monks and the Teselecta are admittedly enjoyable, but they're just window dressing.

54. Aliens of London/World War III. 2 jelly babies. This one wins the award for most appalling opening to any Doctor Who story, which in fact has nothing to do with the story at hand, just a soap-opera throwaway as Rose's mother shrieks lines in a voice that makes me want to kick her face in. When we finally get to the story, it's yet another in a long line of Davies' invasion-of-earth cheese fests, and it doesn't help that things don't get any scarier than humanoid pigs and lame Slitheen. There's one thing, however, that keeps this story out of the rock-bottom category, and that's the dominating theme of flatulence. This is an exceedingly guilty pleasure on my part, but farting aliens entertain me on the basest possible level, especially the fat woman played by Annette Badland, whose gleeful facial expressions as she continually breaks wind have me laughing so hard my stomach hurts.

55. The Sontaran Stratagem/Poison Sky. 2 jelly babies. Sontarans who chant hakas like football jocks aren't any more compelling than farting aliens, and even less entertaining. The story isn't even redeemed by UNIT, as the military outfit isn't the same without the Brigadier we knew and loved. And it certainly isn't helped by Martha, who for crying out loud just left at the end of season three. This is yet another substandard invasion-of-earth plot in which Sontarans are using human agents to release poison gas into the atmosphere. Expectations were high for a Sontaran return in the new series, but this story laughs at our expectations and gives us the finger. I did like the Doctor's passing remark about working for UNIT "back in the 70s...or was it the 80's?", a nod to the unresolved contradictions in the classic chronology. But boobytrapped automobiles don't do it for me.

56. Rose. 2 jelly babies. And now for the trio of stories that barely hold their noses above the stinker category, and that's me being generous. Their sole value lies in introducing a new companion, but like the two above, they follow the tiresome invasion-of-earth formula that Davies adores so much but is unable to do anything decent with. In the case of Rose, we meet not only her but the Ninth Doctor through her eyes, as London (wait for it) is being taken over by an army of mannequins. We haven't seen the Autons since the Pertwee era and for damn good reason: they're lame. It's hard to be intimidated by an army of plastic. But the Nestene Consciousness (the animated vat of living plastic controlling the rest in London) is admittedly on the impressive side these days, bolstered by CGI. We also get a lot of Rose's irritating mother, which unfortunately foreshadows things to come.

57. Smith and Jones. 2 jelly babies. Or when grandma puts on vampiric airs, and makes us cringe in embarrassment rather than fear. The plot involves rhino-headed aliens invading a hospital in order to ferret out a stowaway alien for execution. To do this they teleport the hospital to the moon to prevent interference from earthly powers, and the stowaway turns out to be the aforementioned grandma. Amidst all this rubbish we are introduced to Martha, who turns out to be a decent enough companion though the least compelling to date in the new series. She's basically an educated Rose, developing a crush on the Doctor which is thoroughly unrequited on account of his pining for Rose. As such, Martha never becomes as distinctive on her own right as Rose, Donna, and Amy.

58. Partners in Crime. 2 jelly babies. Last and certainly least is this appalling joke, Doctor Who meets Pokemon, or the invasion of the marshmallows, take your pick. Actually these menaces are pieces of human fat, and the plot admittedly leans toward the amusing: a company in present-day Britain is selling diet pills which make body fat come alive, break off in chunks, and kill the host. Bonus points go to the way Davies milks so much fun out of obesity, but let's face it, this is really dumbing down to an all-time low. On the bright side, Donna turns out to be more than the screeching fishwife we saw in The Runaway Bride and a worthy companion, more subdued and genuinely funny, though of course nowhere near as good as Rose or Amy.

59. Boom Town. 1 jelly baby. Seasons one, two, five, and six share the weird commonality of a penultimate stinker, and the cynic in me sees a strategy at work: to make the finale shine brightly as possible. In the case of Boom Town, it's a chance for Davies to revisit farting aliens, but not even the juvenile flatulence is enough to entertain me this go around. The story is a complete waste of time, involving the Doctor pondering the ethics of doing humanity a favor by deporting the last Slitheen to its home planet where the death penalty awaits it. And we get plenty of soap opera between Rose and Mickey too. It also explores the question of whether people commit crimes as a result of nature or nurture, leaning toward the latter, but neither convincingly nor profoundly regardless of what side you happen to fall on.

60. Fear Her. 1 jelly baby. The great thing about Doctor Who is that it's a children's program without ever feeling like one -- until you watch a story like this. It plays like goddamn Sesame Street, so much that I felt slapped in the face when I watched it. The plot of children vanishing out of thin air on account of a girl controlled by an alien intelligence is promising, but when it boils down to capturing them on paper by (yes) drawing them in her bedroom, we've jumped the shark. Add to this that the intelligence doesn't mean any harm, just wants a lot of company, that kills the menace factor even more. Fear her? The only thing to fear is the appalling script.

61. The Lodger. 1 jelly baby. I annoyed people when I declared two years ago that I would sooner eat my own feces than watch The Lodger again anytime soon, and rest assured it hasn't aged any better since. I've heard it claimed ad nauseum that the story works wonders for the Eleventh Doctor like Human Nature/Family of Blood did for the Tenth, but that's rubbish. Tennant's story was harrowing: the Doctor had literally become human, truncated and trapped by love, unable to save people as they died around him. Smith's story is a mockery: the Doctor plays at being human in a ludicrous parody. Just because comparisons and contrasts can be drawn, it doesn't mean one is as good as the other. In fact, the appropriate contrast is simple: The Lodger is crap as Human Nature/Family of Blood is classic.

62. Closing Time. 1 jelly baby. As if The Lodger weren't bad enough, its sequel is even worse. With Closing Time we can again slide into comparisons, this time with Journey's End, which was not only atrocious, but went out of its way to be atrocious with non-payoffs and outright betrayals. This story isn't quite as vindictive, aiming instead for the preposterous: Craig, on the verge of being made into a Cyber Controller, hears his infant son crying at a distance, and his paternal love swells to such epic proportions that the influx of emotion causes the Cybermen's heads to explode along with their ship. Not only is this the same kind of ridiculous ending as The Lodger's, it's worse for making horses' asses out of the Cybermen.

63. The Runaway Bride. 1 jelly baby. After the near unassailable season two (the best of the new series, in my opinion), and Rose's wonderful closure, we get kicked in the teeth with this dross. It dumps a screeching bride inside the TARDIS and a pantload of nonsense that's supposed to serve as a Christmas special, but the only thing special is the all-time low for Doctor Who, as it's the worst story of the new series up to this point. (The Dalek double-bill in Manhattan would soon rectify this.) Our bride has been infected with a strange energy (that whisked her to the TARDIS) as part of an alien plan to take over earth, and that's only the start of the silliness. But the really bad news (at the time, anyway) is that this foreshadows Donna's return in season four as a regular TARDIS companion. Merry goddamn Christmas.

64. The Voyage of the Damned. 1 jelly baby. Damned in every sense, this Christmas special offends like The Runaway Bride but twice as garishly. The Doctor finds himself on a floating spaceship, caught between corporate greed, sabotage, and robotic angels armed with killer halos. It sounds impressive but it's entirely not: there's comedy in every line, but nothing funny; noise and action in every other sequence, but no excitement. It's a sign of how bad a story is when the body count is so commendably high (as in classic Who) but you just don't care about who dies. Ironically, we have this episode to thank for Midnight, the inverse story in which Davies wrote this one all over again but did everything right for a change. Was he making fun of himself and produced a work of art by accident?

65. The Next Doctor. 1 jelly baby. The Cyberking may be badass, but this story is still a steaming pile of manure. Just as the Daleks were used abominably in the season-four finale (on which see the very bottom of this list), the Cybermen are abused in a horrendous follow-up, as if Davies were determined to ruin every single aspect of Doctor Who before turning the reins over to Moffat. Let alone that it makes no sense that the Cybermen are able to unleash their own King Kong when they've been stuck in the Void. That's a triviality compared to the preposterous handling of the story's deeper theme about loss and what happens to the mind when it tries to cope with it. Applied to a traumatized guy who thinks he's the Doctor (with his own sonic screwdriver and all) just doesn't work, and indeed "The Next Doctor" served purely as a cheap ploy at the time to make viewers think that Tennant's regeneration would happen in this story.

66. Planet of the Dead. 1 jelly baby. Aside from the superficial Easter trappings, there's nothing special about this episode, not even in the awful way that most specials end up falling into the stinker category. It feels about as important as the routine season openers under Davies (Rose, Smith and Jones, Partners In Crime), pedestrian in the extreme, only in this case the mediocrity isn't even redeemed by the introduction of a new companion. The Doctor takes a bus ride and gets mired on an arid planet, and like in Midnight gets stuck with a handful of cranky passengers desperate to get back home. But if Midnight overturned Voyage of the Damned with brutal intensity, Planet of the Dead returned us to go-nowhere territory, and I rank it among the stinkers because it's so thoroughly devoid of any real purpose, indeed the most inconsequential story of the new series.

67. The End of Time. 1 jelly baby. I don't even like talking about this one. David Tennant did such a great job as Doctor Who and deserved better than an excremental swan song that not only brings back a comic-book Master, but also resurrects the Time Lords in a cheap plot, while making sure to plumb the worst aspects of kitchen-sink opera with Donna and her family. Payoffs are abysmal and the trappings are as bad as they get in a Davies script, from a medical fix-it machine, to silly cactus-people, to the Master flying with his bare hands, to a climax which can barely be called that -- just the three leads talking to each other in a ballroom. Things get even worse in the long and saccharine denouement, as the Doctor revisits all his previous companions before he regenerates, and while Davies is obviously trying to honor Tennant, the result is way too self-indulgent. It's a horrible end to his era, but everything I unfortunately expected.

68. Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks. 1 jelly baby. A truly terrible story, not even helped by the inspired setting of New York in the Great Depression. The Cult of Skaro -- four elite Daleks introduced at the end of season two, designed to think like the enemy -- had incredible potential, but the idea of them trying to evolve into humanoid form was doomed from the start. Dalek Sec looks and sounds ridiculous. When Daleks evolve into something less fearsome instead of more, there's a big problem, and I was applauding when the compassionate Sec finally got exterminated by his mutinous colleagues. He was enough to turn me into a trigger-happy Dalek myself. On top of the horrendous use of the Doctor's arch-enemies is the atrocious overacting from the guest stars. They're the worst performances of the new series, and the ending which finds the stage dancer willing to live out her life with her fiancee who has been transformed into a pig-mutant doesn't play authentically at all. This story is painful to watch in every frame.

69. The Stolen Earth/Journey's End. 0 jelly babies. I reserve a rating of 0 to something so bad that it's not only awful but goes out of its way to be awful, as if -- and please excuse this, but there's no polite way of conveying -- the writer is trying to shit down our throats. And make no mistake, it's one defecation after another: a bogus regeneration, Donna's non-death, and to top it all off (I still can't believe Davies did this) a duplicate Doctor to give Rose her dream-lover after all. There's not even a body count; the Daleks don't kill anyone (except for the resurrecting Captain Jack, which doesn't count). Honestly, if Russell Davies is going to trap the Doctor's best companion in a parallel universe and say she'll never see the Doctor again, he should have the balls to follow through with that. If he sets us up with repeated predictions about another companion dying, he should bloody well deliver on that promise. Does he think we're all five-year olds who can't handle good storytelling? Classic Who never copped out in so many ways; never pulled punches with body counts; never betrayed the audience so aggressively in every other frame. But even for the new series, this is a new abyss, and poor Davros for getting saddled with the worst story since the show began in 1963.

The Wedding of River Song

2011-12-16T04:38:00.000-08:00

I have, on the whole, loved the sixth season of Doctor Who, but I've come to the conclusion that Steven Moffat has exhausted his genius. The handwriting was on the wall by the mid-season fiasco, where zany dialogue and unwieldy plot twists were supplanting character development and good storytelling. If Russell Davies (never the best writer to begin with) got worse with melodramatic cheese and go-nowhere plotting, Moffat is getting buried under the onus of his own cleverness. I hoped that for the single-episode finale he would pull out all the stops and write a brutally economical resolution to River Song, but he achieved this artificially at best. The thread launched in a fantastic season-opener, and continued in a mid-season disaster, lands results somewhere in-between, and confirm that Moffat never really had a plan with River Song.

Leaving aside the business of her mother's identity, River simply did not evolve into the darker character foreshadowed repeatedly since her debut in season four. The Doctor thus has not been subjected to the heartbreak of his love turning into someone who despises him, which would have been knock-down drama. In Let's Kill Hitler she went from hating and trying to kill him at the moment they meet, to saving him in the blink of an eye, inexplicably deciding that she loves this man for no reason at all. Of course, we've been promised that she really does kill him, so that couldn't be the real murder attempt, which we in fact get now: the astronaut-assassin at Lake Silencio is none other than she. But even this turns out a cheat, because she shoots him against her will, at the Doctor's command so that time can resume its course. River, in other words, wants desperately to save the Doctor, not destroy him, at the expense of everyone else in the universe locked in a moment of time. That doesn't make her dark, just astronomically selfish, and frankly unbelievable.

At the same time, there are things to admire in The Wedding of River Song. The Doctor's determination to die is compelling, and the way all of time and history occurs at once shouts Moffat at his best. We get to see Charles Dickens interviewed on the BBC, knights on horseback sharing the London streets with automobiles, steam trains barreling out of the Gherkin and into the Pyramids, and then plenty of arial eye-candy -- balloon minis, pterodactyls, all blending together in perpetual anachronism. The Silence also help redeem the story's shortcomings, as they remain truly horrifying creatures, perched in ceilings like vampiric parasites -- the scene where the Doctor and Churchill look up to a nest of them made my heart skip a beat even knowing what was coming.

The return of Amy and Rory was a given, and trivializes Amy's departure at the end of The God Complex, though to be fair, they are different people in the alternate timeline. Rory doesn't even recognize the Doctor, and Amy is a commander in charge of keeping watch over the Silence, until they break free of their aquarium prison and unleash hell. Amy, for her part, gets in some cold-blooded murder, killing Madame Kovarian with her own eye-patch -- a wonderful moment for her character, alternate or not -- and Rory puts in some inspiring moments with his trademark loyalty and willingness to endure torment to get the right thing done.

As for the Doctor, he's in tolerable form for a sixth-season Moffat script. Unlike his opening and mid-season performances, this one isn't so hyper-manic, and his quip comes in moderation as he is weighed down by the gravitas of his imminent demise. Except of course that he doesn't die, because he's been clever in the way that only Moffat can write him: instead of sacrificing himself, he forces River to shoot the Teselecta disguised as him. This may be a nimble twist but is glaringly problematic. Even if the Silence are stupid enough to be fooled by sleight-of-hand, time itself is not, and we're left with the absurdity of the Doctor getting around the fixed point of his death by simply playing magician. This is where Moffat's desperate games have caught up with him. There's no denying the cleverness to the Teselecta, but cleverness, unfortunately, is all The Wedding of River Song leaves us with.

The best part of this finale is actually Dorium Maldovar. The talking head is a perverse bit of fun who entertains me to no end, and a fitting mouthpiece for killjoy prophecies. He tells the Doctor that on the fields of Trenzalore, at the Fall of the Eleventh, a question will be asked, a question that must never be answered, which he finally bellows out in the closing scene: "Doctor WHO?", promising fundamental identity issues next season. All of the Doctor's scenes with Dorium are great, not least their exasperating trades in the TARDIS where Dorium's head is upside down. Best of all is the Doctor's end resolution: "I got too big, Dorium; I got too noisy. Time to step back into the shadows." I literally got the chills listening to Matt Smith deliver this vow. Whilst Moffat has done much to scale back the Doctor's ubiquitous savior-image from the Davies era, River Song's call for universal support was alarmingly Last of the Time Lords, and I am with the legions of fans who are applauding the Doctor's return to his classic role as an unknown traveler.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

Closing Time

2011-12-15T02:31:00.000-08:00

Indeed for Doctor Who, if this story is to be taken as exemplary. Thankfully it's not; like The Lodger it's a single steaming manure-pile in a season of roses, and repeats the prequel's embarrassing sitcom strategy. The Doctor wants to play at being human so looks up his friend Craig. Once again, he ends up helping Craig with his personal problems, this time his insecurity as a father, while Craig in turn helps him see the good behind his taking on human companions. As before, people think they're gay, and I really wish they were, so we could at least get some base entertainment out of this horrible pairing. Gareth Roberts evidently had one great story in him, but after The Shakespeare Code has been determined to kill his reputation with astonishingly bad throwaways.

Closing Time actually reminds of Journey's End, which was not only atrocious, but went out of its way to be atrocious, as if Russell Davies reached a point where his bankruptcy of ideas caused him to throw up his hands and decide to not only not pay us off, but un-pay us off with mockeries and betrayals. Roberts isn't quite as vindictive, aiming instead for the plain preposterous -- the highest plane of it, in fact, seen in the new series. Craig, on the verge of being made into a Cyber Controller, hears his infant son crying at a distance, and his paternal love swells to such epic proportions that the influx of emotion causes the Cybermen's heads to explode along with their ship. Not only is this the same ridiculous ending as The Lodger's, it's worse for making horses' asses out of the Cybermen, and is the umpteenth time that evil has been literally defeated by love. Whether that's lowest-common-denominator marketing or sentimental incompetence I'm not sure, but I certainly expect better out of Moffat, who should have fired Gareth Roberts last season. At least Night Terrors involved a traumatized kid's nightmares owing to parental neglect, in which the triumph of love theme was much the point, and Victory of the Daleks could also get away with it since the android was trying to recall its own feelings when it was human.

River Song's wedding had best move mountains. I'm not surprised the editors tacked on the segue into the finale -- it's the only half-decent thing about this episode.

Rating: 1 star out of 5.

The God Complex

2011-12-14T03:18:00.000-08:00

The God Complex is a perfect swan song for Amy Pond, not only for trailing her most harrowing experience in The Girl Who Waited, but by putting her childlike faith in the Doctor finally to rest. It does this in a simple but effective story about a beast who feeds off corrupted faith in a haunted hotel, and like the story that precedes it is one of the best of the season.

The hotel is a glaring homage to The Shining, with clashing decor, endless hallways, and staircases shot Vertigo-style. There's even a clown in one of the rooms, posturing deliberately out of Kubrick's film. The concept of this building is bloody fantastic, a playhouse of horrors where each room contains the worst fears of one individual, that when confronted causes insanity and a sudden perverse devotion to the minotaur who stalks the corridors like a psycho out of a B-slasher. It's also an active maze, meaning the halls randomly shift, which conveniently foils the Doctor's rescue of the hotel prisoners when his TARDIS becomes lost -- we've seen this sort of device used before in The Impossible Planet/Satan Pit and 42. The hotel is in fact the true antagonist of the story, rather than the minotaur itself, but a 45-minute episode doesn't really allow its full potential to be unleashed.

The minotaur works fairly well, if a bit cheesy, and it's a nice touch that it's related to the Nimon of the Tom Baker years. Since the beast succeeds by perverting faith, his captives must have some belief system to begin with. That lets Rory off the hook, but not Amy, who of course still believes in the Doctor in her innocent Amelia-like way, despite all the hell he's put her through the past two seasons, and also the way her trust in him has already been somewhat crushed in stories like Amy's Choice. When she and the Doctor see what's inside her room, the Doctor proceeds at once to destroy her faith in him, which not only saves her from the beast but severs its food supply and gives it space to die (a resolution that requires we don't look too closely). His demolishing of her faith is the crux of the story, and many critics have drawn the parallel to The Curse of Fenric, where the Doctor's victory also depended on shattering the faith of his companion. The difference is that the Seventh Doctor relied on psychological bullying to tear Ace down, while the Eleventh builds Amy up more positively, significantly by admitting she was right from the beginning: "I'm not a hero, just a madman in a box". While I honestly prefer McCoy's mean-spirited strategy, Smith's acting here is quite good, conveying impressions that he is weighed down by the way he uses human companions to assuage his loneliness and have inferiors around to "worship" him and feed his ego.

As for what's inside the Doctor's room (appropriately #11), it's a cop-out that we don't get to see what so horrifies him, though it's not hard to guess. The ring of the cloister bell is a TARDIS tip-off, perhaps pointing to the Doctor's eternal fear of losing it, without which he would be near powerless, and for that matter there would hardly be any Doctor Who. Amusingly, this could almost stand as a meta-fear of the audience; what else is the greatest terror of any Who-fan? Meanwhile the guest actors do well for their parts and allow us to ride the thrill of more traditional horrors. The weeping angels make an unexpected appearance, and we initially assume they are for Amy given the terror she endured in Time of the Angels/Flesh and Stone. There's a gorilla for the prologue victim that's a bit on the embarrassing side, but the ventriloquist dummies that laugh maniacally are downright chilling.

The epilogue is simply beautiful. Even if this is the new series, where farewells are preordained cop-outs -- it's a sure bet that Amy and Rory will be back at some point, for the finale at least -- I haven't seen a companion departure so moving since Sarah Jane Smith in The Hand of Fear. Sarah's exit set the standard by which all other companion departures are judged. The only one who came close to topping it, fittingly, was Toby Whithouse in School Reunion, with a second farewell to Sarah decades after her return. Fans might object to me ranking these above the departure of Rose Tyler, and part of me agrees; Doomsday is an unrivaled tear-jerker. But I ultimately put Rose in a class by herself on account of the exceptional (if unrealized) romance between her and the Doctor. Amy's farewell, like Sarah's in the '70s, delivers so much in simple gestures and looks that speak volumes. There's a real feel in the closing scene that the Doctor and Amy have have become best friends and find it enormously painful to part company.

In sum, The God Complex is a terrific episode that falls short of the highest greatness only for a slightly cheesy creature and the feeling that a diabolical monstrosity like the hotel fits within a wider context of something larger than a story on its own right.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5.

The Girl Who Waited

2011-12-13T04:53:00.000-08:00

If The Girl Who Waited wields sentimentality like old-Amy does a sword, the emotions on display ring true, and it's impossible not to be moved during the scenes between her and Rory. The ending is fairly predictable, but only in the way that tragedy always is, and in this sense reminds of Pete Tyler's fate in Father's Day. Comparing Tom MacRae to Paul Cornell might seem blasphemous, but I should remind that he was responsible for the undervalued Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel, which was a sequel of sorts to Father's Day, and which frankly I thought just as powerful. All bets were off in the parallel-Earth story, as we got to see familiar characters die (Jackie), others beat hasty retreats when confronted with "relatives" they never knew (Pete), and a long-time favorite choosing exile when he finally realizes that his girlfriend will always choose the Doctor over him (Mickey). The Girl Who Waited does something a bit different as a parallel-character story, but allows MacRae to cover another "What if?" scenario with returns almost as great.

The story is minimalist in every way the Cybermen epic was maximalist. There are no characters aside from the three leads; the Two Streams Facility has been cleaned out by plague. White sterilized rooms are balanced by lush topiaries and gardens, adding up to a weird futuristic look which aligns perfectly with its purpose: to allow infected people to live out their few hours in a quicker time stream, while their loved ones can observe them effectively living a life from the slower one. Whether this is merciful or morbid depends on one's point of view, and Rory's human one stands, I think, for most of ours. I would be sickened to watch a friend or family member grow old fast, and not be able to physically interact. Yet the Doctor counters with (what is to a Time Lord) common sense: "Why? At least you're not watching them die."

Time Lord quip isn't appropriate here, however. The simple press of a wrong button costs Amy half her life: lagging behind the Doctor and Rory, she walks into the same room but in quickened time, and ends up spending 36 years waiting for them to rescue her. This puts her in her fifties by the time Rory manages to locate her only hours later in his timeline, and she's pissed to say the least, bitter and battle-worn, an empty shell of her former self. She's spent all these years in survivalist mode, with nothing more to look forward to than fending off "benign" androids programmed to administer lethal cures, since as an alien she would be poisoned by their antidotes. With the Doctor remaining in the TARDIS and communicating to Rory via a looking glass that accesses alternate timelines, the dilemma becomes one of how to rescue the younger Amy out of the past so that she never has to grow old in this horrifying life of isolation. And of course, when the solution presents itself, she naturally doesn't want to go through with it. To save her past self would mean killing her present self, which no living creature willingly accepts.

This warrior-Amy in her fifties turns out to be a great character and critical to the story's success. We haven't enjoyed the spectacle of a TARDIS companion kicking ass so professionally since the days of Leela, and it gives Karen Gillam a chance to show off new acting skills. The Doctor is also in fine form, unloosing his dark manipulative side, and unlike Rory we're not fooled by his promise that he can save both Amy's by resolving the paradox of them co-existing in the same time stream. There is a slight problem with Rory here, however, that he would want to save old-Amy as much as "his" Amy. Let alone for a moment calling into question the sanity of any man who would want to be saddled with two wives, one of them old enough to be his mother, it just doesn't play authentically. More natural would be Rory aghast by the thought and willing to do what it takes to make the horrible mistake cease to be. And this would have worked wonders for the story, making old-Amy's heartbreak even worse and putting Rory in touch with a darker side he constantly slams the Doctor for. Even so, his desperate attempt to save both Amy's works despite the problems, and the emotional farewell through the doors of the TARDIS is a kind of scene we haven't seen since Rose went wreck in Doomsday.

The Girl Who Waited is completely defined by its title. Amy's tragedy from The Eleventh Hour is repeated, but infinitely worse, hinting at a full circle with her story arc. In fact her swan song is just around the corner. This episode exposes the Doctor's destructive nature as she faithfully, eternally, waits on him; the next one demolishes that childlike faith altogether.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5.

Damages: The Four Seasons

2011-12-08T05:40:00.000-08:00

Damages is a high-stakes litigation thriller, but don't fear the clichés. Hardly any action takes place in the courtroom, and despite the flashforward technique it's impossible to predict the end games. There are no righteous melodramas, no cheap victories. Suspense is wrung out of depositions, bickering strategy sessions, and complex relationships, particularly that between the two female leads. For whatever reason I always imagined Glenn Close as being someone like Patty Hewes in real life: cold and ruthless, champion of the oppressed, mostly for prestige, but also because she (like her protégée Ellen Parsons) despises corporate bullies, even though she's an outrageous bully herself. She demeans her subordinates, fires people on a whim, divorces her husband, disowns her son, and has his girlfriend thrown in jail. And for desert she tries having her favorite employee Ellen killed. I love Patty Hewes.

If her character is too colorful to be true, her lawsuits are based entirely on real-world events. Season 1 is inspired by the Enron and WorldCom scandal of '02, season 2 by toxic dumping and price-fixing on Wall Street, and season 3 by Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme in '09. Season 4 then moves out of white collar crime into the Afghanistan war, the demon now being a private military contracting firm working with the CIA to perform illegal extraction activities and torture, getting soldiers killed on dangerous missions with no payout benefits for their families. It's a very dark season, and in some ways my favorite, though nothing can top the tight and relentless suspense of season 1. In an eerie way, the fraud victims of seasons 1 and 3 resonate loudly in the midst of the Occupy Wall Street movement: the 1% can join the 99% at a moment's notice.

The dramas are character driven, with fair ball played to the good and bad guys, though of course there really are no good guys when dealing with high-profile lawyers, least of all Patty Hewes; co-protagonist Ellen Parsons is the one we're meant to identify with, though my favorite character is actually Tom Shayes. As for the corporate assholes being sued, they are truly assholes, yet sympathetic (with the exception of toxic-dumper Walter Kendrick in season 2, whose character really isn't fleshed out enough). We get to know their families and are pulled in by pathetic attempts to justify themselves and make good out of foul behavior. Ted Danson has become legendary as Arthur Frobischer (season 1), the billionaire who kills his company, dumps his stock, and leaves all his employees destitute. Campbell Scott is just as convincing as Joe Tobin (season 3), who initially despises his father's criminal activities only to get sucked in after his suicide, and "do as he must" for the family. There's a not-so-subtle Godfather theme running through season 3, with Tobin a tragically realized Michael Corleone; I could never have imagined he'd have what it takes to murder Tom Shayes in the final episode by drowning him in a toilet bowl. Finally, John Goodman is flawless as Howard Erickson (season 4), the private military contractor who is willing to have his own men tortured and killed to keep things quiet; inwardly tormented, he desperately tries to convince himself of the lesser-of-evils through religion and scripture. For that matter, the CIA stooge played by Dylan Baker is also as much sympathetic as despicable, having, as we learn in the end, launched an illegal operation for no other purpose than to rescue his own son fathered on an Afgani woman, then murdering his fellow soldiers in the field when they refuse to extract a 12-year old.

Each season escalates the bizarre relationship between Patty and Ellen, who maintain a guarded respect without ever really trusting each other, especially after Patty tries to have Ellen killed in season 1. Some have charged that Ellen's willingness to have anything to do with Patty after this undermines the show's credibility, but the unlikely relationship is the whole point, and is handled believably in its dramatic context. There's a difference, after all, between hyper-realistic and unrealistic. An example of the latter would be Luke and Laura from General Hospital, still rated the #1 soap opera romance of all time, but fundamentally incredible: Laura is raped by Luke and falls in love with him. That's evidently an appealing fantasy to many women (according to a study in '04, 52% of all Harlequin romance novels published that year involved the plot of a heroine falling in love with her rapist and transforming him into a more decent man), but Ellen Parsons is no Laura Spencer equivalent. She does not bond with Patty so soon after being almost murdered. She's driven by revenge to take Patty down throughout the entire second season, and even when she is able to transcend herself by forgiving Patty, it's as much a self-serving forgiveness as a self-empowering one -- and she certainly never goes back to work for her. In seasons 3 and 4 she allies herself with her former boss to exploit the resources of Hewes Associates for her own gain, partly out of respect for Patty's goals which align with her own, but also because she now has a certain power over Patty knowing her worst secret. As the show writers have said, there is something mythic about the power of forgiveness and what it does to people in unforgivable cases, and that's really, as I see it, the key to Damages's success. Without it, it would be a just another legal thriller.

Indeed, this is why seasons 3 and 4 are so compelling: there is a constant subtext to everything Patty and Ellen do in the wake of the failed murder and abandoned revenge. They never speak of the ugliness again, but it hangs between them surreally as they use each other for their own ambitions. They oddly like each other for all their contempt. I knew things were going too smoothly in their season-4 team up against High Star, however, and Patty's betrayal in the final episode was inevitable when Ellen tried throwing the case and cutting a deal to save the life of a soldier. Where season 3 ended on uncertainty ("Tell me, Patty, is everything worth it?"), this season's epilogue points ahead to renewed conflict, as Patty, on rotten ice, extends a hand of partnership to Ellen, only to have it spat back for her treachery.

Season 2, while good, is somewhat an anomaly. As mentioned, the corporate villain is too one-dimensional, partly due to lazy writing, but also because there wasn't room enough to flesh him out. The season is all over the map. The toxic-dumping storyline is supplemented by that of the William Hurt character who murdered his wife; he also happens to be (wait for it) the father of Patty's 17-year old son. Then there are dangling threads from the previous season, with way too many returning characters. Much as I love Ted Danson's performance, bringing back Arthur Frobischer was a mistake, and I didn't buy him hiring Patty who so vindictively destroyed him a year before. Nor did I like the romance between Ellen and Wes -- the dirty cop planted in her grief therapy sessions to get close to her -- not so much because the concept was bad, but because Timothy Olyphant can't act his way out of a bag. No, the most engaging plot of season 2 is the one we didn't get enough of: Ellen's revenge on Patty. Even here there's a problem, however. While obviously understandable, Ellen's fury and decision to work with the feds to bring Patty down is perhaps too believable, and thus less interesting. It's the volatile alliances of the other seasons that sell Damages so well, though there are some admittedly tense moments when Patty suspects Ellen of being a mole. That being said, the wrap-up to season 2 is brilliant, and I really thought Ellen shot Patty. All seasons use the flash-forward technique to paint a puzzle of imminent catastrophes, but season 2's piecing is the most genius.

Where Damages goes in its fifth and final season has only been hinted at, but it promises open war between Patty and Ellen, and Ellen's ultimate decision to let go of her need for Patty. I can't wait.

Season 1 -- 5 stars
Season 2 -- 3 ½ stars
Season 3 -- 4 ½ stars
Season 4 -- 5 stars

A Vivisection of N.T. Wright

2011-12-01T04:25:00.000-08:00

Richard Fellows has a sharp post against Wright on the subject of supposed gay marriages, or committed gay relationships as we know them, in antiquity. Well worth checking out. As is too often the case, Wright's claims aren't based on a careful assessment of evidence, but on neo-orthodox views draped in rhetoric.

Is Professor James Gellar real?

2011-11-21T05:23:00.001-08:00

With eight episodes down and four to go in Dexter's sixth season, it's time to take the question head on: is Professor James Gellar real, or the imaginary projection of Travis held by most viewers?

I don't think Gellar is imaginary. I think that's what the show writers have gone out of their way to make us believe, perhaps a bit too obviously, in order to set us up for a twist that may not pay off so well.

Unlike The Sixth Sense and Fight Club where the imaginary reveal comes as a surprise, and later more than sooner, Dexter has been sledgehammering us from the get-go with the idea that Gellar is to Travis as Harry is to his son: the shades of dead father-figures who counsel from the great beyond. The problem is that despite the avalanche of clues pointing in this direction, each clue can be rationalized on the assumption that Gellar is real, and there is actually a clue that does indicate that Gellar is real. Let's consider all the evidence.

In favor of Gellar being imaginary:

* In general, no one ever interacts with Gellar except Travis. This is the prime selling point for the idea that Gellar is like Harry: once a mentor, now dead, but still mentoring inside the pupil's head.

* In particular, when Travis and Gellar are at a restaurant (episode 4), the waitress pours a drink for Travis and talks to him but completely fails to acknowledge Gellar in any way. On the other hand, the waitress does know Travis, that's why she's so chummy with him, and Gellar could have already said that he's not ordering anything.

* When Travis and Gellar are out in public (episode 5), no one notices Gellar despite the newspapers broadcasting his photo as the Doomsday Killer. On the other hand, Gellar does acknowledge that he should get out of sight, and who pays attention to tabloids anyway?

* Travis abducts victims by himself (the Horseman of the Apocalypse, the Angel of Retribution, the first potential Whore of Babylon), or with Gellar remaining in the car (the snake victim, the second potential Whore of Babylon), but never with Gellar getting his fingers dirty. On the other hand, this is typical of cult leaders who manipulate their followers to take the biggest risks.

* Gellar is inconsistent on the matter of free will. In episode 4 he assures Travis that people have free will, while in episode 7 he disdains the idea, declaring that people's wills don't matter. This makes sense if Travis is conflicted about predestination and is having internal arguments with himself. On the other hand, Gellar does not exactly say there is no free will in episode 7, only that free will has no power to stop God's overarching plans.

* Gellar evades Dexter by escaping from a second-floor window of the church (episode 8). But there could be another way down which we (and Dexter) haven't seen yet, or Gellar could just be hiding. And we know that Travis is really chained to the floor.

In favor of Gellar being real:

* Gellar spies on Travis through a door crack when Travis is having sex with the angel of death victim (episode 4). Travis is oblivious to this, implying an objective reality on Gellar's part. Certainly Harry never appears without Dexter's awareness -- that's the whole point of being inside someone's head.

I'm nervous about the upcoming reveal that Gellar is real, because we've been yanked too strongly in the opposite direction. The result is that, in retrospect, all the scenes of Gellar not interacting with the world seem forced and rather unfair to the viewer.

But if it turns out that Gellar is indeed imaginary, then that's even worse, for the entire season has been reduced to a banal exercise, when Dexter has always been more reliable about supplying surprising twists. On top of that, the writers haven't played fair ball: the spying Gellar in Travis' sex scene implies an objective reality.

UPDATE: Episode 9 makes plain that Gellar is imaginary, that he's been dead for some time. So we went through all those episodes of the obvious to get to an unsurprising twist, with an unfair scene in episode 4 that implies Gellar is real. I'm nonplussed.

Blogging a "Waste of Time"

2011-11-20T02:56:00.000-08:00

In what must have yesterday been a thought-provoking SBL presentation, Mark Goodacre suggests that blogs are self-indulgent time wasters:

"It really is a waste of time to blog, to podcast, even to tweet if you are doing it for its own sake, to gain recognition or something like that. But if it's something you enjoy, it does have its rewards."

I tend to agree, though this makes me wonder why I'm not blogging nearly as much as I used to. I still enjoy it, after all.

It may have to do with something else Mark touches on, when he mentions the way e-lists peaked in the late '90s. Blogging has likewise dropped significantly in the last few years, abandoned especially among the younger generation in favor of micro-blogging media like Twitter and Facebook. Recently I've lost some of the passion for blogging as I once lost it for e-lists like Crosstalk. Either I've been doing it too long, or it's lost its luster, or -- and I think this really has a lot to do with it -- there's a certain contagion effect. Many of the bibliobloggers who inspired me to start this blog aren't blogging a third as much as they used to, and some not at all. That could just be part of the aforementioned trend, though Mark mentions the irony of an increase in biblioblogs which makes them harder to keep up and interact with.

As for enduring value, Mark is surely leaning on hyperbole when he says: "Blogs are ephemeral. Blog posts do not endure. Even if you keep a full archive of everything you have ever posted, the vast majority of your posts, the great bulk of activity, 99% of your output evaporates from consciousness. Here today, gone tomorrow." I certainly retain a lot more than 1% of what bibliobloggers have put forth over the past seven years!

The Cursed Chateau

2011-11-05T03:53:00.000-07:00

The Cursed Chateau (2009) is a module I could have used back in the '80s when I didn't have the mojo to create something like this myself. In a D&D context, haunted houses can be dreadfully boring, when they should just be dreadful, and the key seems to lie in fleshing out colorful, demented backgrounds to the haunting entities. It is they who should be yawning, and James Maliszewski gets this right: "Though dead, Lord Jourdain is bored. He seeks diversion and (he hopes) release from his earthly bondage by toying with any living beings that enter the ruins of his former home." (p 8) Supernatural bullying owes to contempt and world weariness, when you get down to it, and in Jourdain's case he's been homebound on the prime material plane ever since his suicide. The torment he inflicts on intruders is weird, and in the hands of a good DM can be genuinely frightening.

The module clearly harks back to old-school D&D, which is a treat to those like myself who continue to play by 1st edition rules and lament the loss of gritty, pulp-fantasy adventures that flourished in the late '70s and early '80s. The Cursed Chateau, in fact, reminds strongly of Castle Amber and Ravenloft, not only in the way characters are confined to a morbid setting until a curse is lifted from the place, but more profoundly in the looming personality of Lord Jourdain whose own liberation depends entirely on the actions of the characters. Both of these classics are favorites of mine, so Maliszewski's homage has a lot going for it in advance. Again like these classics, it's geared for mid-level characters (4th-6th), but requiring player as much as character experience, as the house's curse is rather hard to come to grips with.

The chateau is given a ground level, an upstairs level, and a dungeon level, with plenty of tricks that reward and punish in unexpected ways. There are the obligatory undead and demonic forces, and a good deal of creative traps: fountains yielding benison and bane, portraits one hardly dares look at, other nasties. I particularly like one of the "accomplice" spirits (now a spectre), Jourdain's vengeful wife who was jilted and tried teaching him a lesson, but ended up locked and dying in a guest bedroom. Characters will probably be making saving throws as often as swinging swords as they try to figure their way out of the chateau, which isn't obvious, in fact counter-intuitive: the better the party fares, the less likely they'll ever leave; the more punishment they take, the more they gratify the spirit who terrorizes the house in a game of liberation.

Which brings me to Jourdain's Fun. The random events occurring out of nowhere as characters make their way through the house sell this module as much as the rooms' contents, if not more. I've never been a fan of wandering monsters (though The Cursed Chateau has those too), but "wandering events" are far more interesting and less tedious. Jourdain's spirit entertains himself by scaring people -- inflicting them with formication, speaking out of a random painting, making the walls bleed, causing doors to bang open, animating brooms and shovels which attack, etc. They're the sort of little things that make horror novels and films what they are, though in the context of gaming can be trivial if not handled well. As an aside, I can't help but note the similarity of "Jourdain's Fun" to what I called the playhouse of horrors in my own module, Blinding Claw of Torremor: "Pazuzu's Amusement". Like Maliszewski, I suppose I have a penchant for the macabre rooted in boredom as much as active hate.

The Cursed Chateau is a small 48-page booklet that bears no outside resemblance to old-school D&D modules, which is a shame, because what's on the inside scores on every page. It's a near perfect ready-to-run module that doesn't try to reach above itself, doesn't require an over-arching plot or narrative, doesn't contain any filler, and can be injected into almost any campaign requiring a haunted house.

Rating: 4 ½ stars out of 5

The Blinding Claw of Torremor

2011-11-04T04:03:00.000-07:00

The Blinding Claw of Torremor is a harrowing D&D adventure designed for resourceful players who are interested in campaigns against demonic evil. Six to eight characters of levels 14-18 are required, and there are seven pre-generated ones provided at the end. For reasons that will become apparent, three characters should be lawful good clerics (or two clerics and a paladin) who follow Osiris; this trio would be well supported by a mage (or two), a warrior (or two), and a thief. Holy skills and spells will be constantly on demand as the characters are pitted against a mighty demon lord who delights in crushing the souls of harmless innocents.

The adventure is divided into three parts. First is The Crippled Village, in which the characters attempt to exorcise a possessed girl and investigate a local chapel dedicated to Osiris. The investigation uncovers The Buried Temple which was used in decades past by a sacrificial cult of Pazuzu, and which in turn leads to Torremor, the 503rd layer of the Abyss. Here the characters ascend The Lord's Rook and attempt to destroy Pazuzu's throne. Characters can be expected to die, and only the most shrewd and experienced players stand a chance of completing the goal.

I follow the rules for old-fashioned, 1st edition, Advanced D&D from the '70s and '80s, though bastardized with later influences. Spells have become more sophisticated since those days (clerics and druids get up to 9th level spells, just like mages) and readers will notice other 3rd edition features. In particular, I made heavy use of The Book of Vile Darkness published in '02, which is an invaluable (and disgustingly creative) source for campaigns involving demons. But I abhor the mega hit point system and deplore armor classes that ascend positively; for me, negative armor classes will always be the best. So if the module seems a bit schizophrenic in terms of the rules, that's why.

The plot steals shamelessly from The Exorcist and its prequel Dominion, and the dungeons are reminiscent of TSR classics like The Tomb of Horrors, The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, and even The Ghost Tower of Inverness. It's situated, moreover, in The Village of Hommlet, but DM's who have run Hommlet for other adventures may want to use a different setting. I never got a chance to use it in my gaming years, and found that it worked perfect in a context of demonic menace. As for Pazuzu and The Blinding Claw, they are detailed heavily in Dragon Magazine #329 (March '05) (see the image above from Jeff Carlisle), though Pazuzu got brief treatment in the Monster Manual II from the '80s. Finally, fans of Doctor Who will recognize the nasty surprise lurking in one particular room. But around all of this comes material straight out of my own demented head, so blame me if the adventure is too hard and vile. I should note too that biblical scholars familiar with the debate over πίστις Χριστοῦ ("faith in Christ"? or "faithfulness of Christ"?) may be wryly amused at the way I've incorporated the controversy in the context of exorcisms, though of course pagan (πίστις Ὀσίρεως), as monotheistic religions are rather incompatible with D&D.

In essence this is a campaign that offers a bit of everything: a horrifying ritual in a village setting, a dungeon layered with traps and suffocating evil, and finally a showdown on the Abyss where the stakes are as high as they get. I have tried to make it as exciting, disturbing, and thought provoking as possible, by putting in the sorts of things I like to be challenged by as a player. Whether or not I succeeded is something for others to judge.

I. THE CRIPPLED VILLAGE

The Village of Hommlet is used for two reasons. (Click on the map to the left. The source is Deviant Art.) One is that I was never able to get any use out of this classic, either as a DM or player, and thus don't have pre-conceived ideas about it. And I didn't like the sequel-module, The Temple of Elemental Evil, so it's only fitting to use this opportunity to inflict Hommlet with a different threat. In this case the cult is a demonic one that gained a foothold in the village decades ago, until the Church of Osiris from a distant city sent priests and warriors to crush the sect. The Osirans then established a chapel in the village, which should be substituted for the Church of St. Cuthbert in Gygax's module. Osiris turns out to be perfect for Hommlet: a farmer's deity above all, but also the god of the dead, and second only to Ra in the Egyptian pantheon, a logical foe of the demon Pazuzu. The druid grove still exists too: Hommlet's religion was exclusively druidic before the coming of the Osirans, and the majority of the villagers (about 60%) retain dedication to the Celtic god Silvanus, even if the Grove was powerless against the Pazuzu cultists.

As for the second reason, I found Hommlet's general atmosphere of impending doom ideal for my scenario. James Maliszewski has eloquently noted how the village evokes Tolkien's theme of the "long defeat", with each generation of its simple folk required to stare evil in the face and stand up to it, in a valiant but hopeless effort, knowing that any triumph is at best a holding action until the evil comes back. The menace plaguing Hommlet is a terrifying demon lord, Pazuzu, who destroys crops through pestilence, and souls through possession.

[Note: Hommlet was designed for the world of Greyhawk, and if this is your setting, then Verbobonc will be the city where the characters are recruited, in place of Daj. If you run adventures in Mystara, Hommlet would be ideally situated somewhere in the Empire of Thyatis, where Egyptian influence from the ancient Nithian empire can be found alongside many other faith systems. My world is an alternate Hyboria, where Daj is the capital of a secondary Egypt-equivalent to the northwest of Stygia. As for Middle-Earth, which is usually my preferred sandbox, this adventure just won't compute in Tolkien's world.]

Hommlet has a history with Pazuzu, stemming from the days when his cultists gained a strong enough foothold to build a temple on the northwest hill, a base for human sacrifice. As mentioned, the villagers were finally rescued by a group of Osirans from the distant city of Daj, who slew the cultists, buried their obscene temple, and built a chapel over it to seal away the evil below. Intent on destroying any gates to the Abyss, they were frustrated at not being able to find any (they couldn't locate the lower depths) and so took other measures, consecrating four huge statues in the chapel to repel any demonic approaches. As for Pazuzu, he abandoned the depths and layered it with traps against possible intruders. This was 53 years ago, and Hommlet's people have enjoyed a peaceful existence since. Until now.

Pazuzu is now in possession of an artifact that grants him immeasurably terrifying power. He's had it for some time, having completed it 17 years ago: The Blinding Claw, a throne made of a giant roc's talon and studded with rubies and emeralds. The throne grants Pazuzu many abilties, the worst of which is to plane shift himself or his soul at will -- and to effectively allow the throne to function as the magic jar back on Torremor in the case of the latter. As he doesn't have to bother going through any gates in the buried temple, he is no longer barred from Hommlet by the inability to pass through (or teleport past) the church; he, or his incorporeal form, can simply materialize in Hommlet as long as it's at least 500 feet distant from the church.

This he has done, starting close to a year ago (sixteen years after his completion of The Blinding Claw; he had many other things on his plate before finally getting around to taking his revenge on this village that did him so much harm). He resumed his old tactic of sending locust plagues against Hommlet, and possessed a 10-year old boy from one of the southwest homes that lay outside the 500-foot radius of the chapel's repulsion power: the woodcutter's cottage at (3) on the map. The priest of Osiris (Hafsah), and his assistant attempted to exorcise the boy and died for it. Two higher level priests were sent from Daj and likewise perished, after which Pazuzu mindraped the boy and left him insane. These rituals were unspeakable (on par with Regan McNeil's in The Exorcist), and the deaths of the priests were devastating. Hommlet was demoralized, and to this day the woodcutter's boy remains a gibbering lunatic.

About eight months later (the present time), as the villagers were finally beginning to put the past behind them, the demon struck again. Pazuzu had bided his time for precisely this reason, to lull Hommlet into thinking he was gone for good. This time he invaded a 12-year old girl at the wealthy farm cottage at (1) on the map. The player characters are summoned by the High Priest in Daj (Roth-Omar) to save the girl. They are given the keys to the Chapel of the Seal (still unsupervised since the death of Hafsah and his assistant) and encouraged to look wherever they want and use all holy symbols and water at their disposal. Roth-Omar knows the church was built over a demonic temple and infused with powerful wardings to keep Pazuzu and his demons at bay, but that apparently Pazuzu has found a way to plane shift from the Abyss without going through the special gates in the old temple; that the demon seems to be out for revenge in Hommlet for the defeat of him and his cultists 53 years ago. Roth-Omar can supply nothing beyond this vague information. The priest Hafsah who had presided over the chapel for 52 years probably knew more details, as he devoted his life to research on the demon. The players are charged with exorcising the girl and finding out whatever they can about how Pazuzu is deriving his incredible powers and even, if possible, destroying the source of that power.

If the players ask Roth-Omar why the boy was left uncured, the high priest will tell them they offered, but the woodcutter has banned all clerics from setting foot on his property again. The family blames the Osirans for doing more harm than good, and are probably frightened that any attempts to cure their son might bring back the demon. Adding to the problem is that the woodcutter family is of druidical faith. They turned to the Osirans only in desperation, and barely with their druid's blessing, just as the little girl's family is doing now.

Roth-Omar is a lead proponent of new-wave Osiranism (see the appendix), and will not pass up an opportunity to shove his doctrine down the characters' throats. In particular, he will urge clerics and/or paladins to use the rewritten ritual of exorcism, which appeals to the faithfulness of Osiris in place of a cleric's faith in Osiris. He will give them a copy, and encourage them to look into the chapel library in Hommlet, where the deceased priest Hafsah kept a tome describing other revamped rituals. He will relate astounding success rates using the "improved" exorcism ritual, and will appeal to scholarly exegesis of sacred Osiran texts which "proves" that the runes πίστις Ὀσίρεως are better translated with the subjective genitive, "faithfulness of Osiris" or "fidelity of Osiris", than the objective genitive, "faith in Osiris" -- despite the fact that the latter has been the sacred interpretation for centuries. He will rhapsodize over the remarkable efficacy of abjuration spells which rely on the deity as the subject of faith rather than its object, explaining that the anthropomorphic view ("faith in Osiris"), for all its appeal to divine aid like any clerical spell, ultimately rests on mortal confidence. The deific view ("faithfulness of Osiris") taps into pure divinity, channeled through a believer, to be sure, but unfiltered through the limitations of his mortal faith.

If the characters are suspicious of this new-wave Osiranism (as they should be), and dispute with Roth-Omar, he will collegially argue (and never back down: the subjective-genitive translation of πίστις Ὀσίρεως is his life's mission), but ultimately leave the decision theirs. For all his crusading evangelism, he doesn't force controversial doctrine on anyone. And it should be said that the new-wave Osirans are progressive scholars with integrity. They are neither sensationalists nor cranks, and the basis of their doctrine derives from a legitimate translation of the ambiguous phrase πίστις Ὀσίρεως. They do have a faddish streak, however, and have not yet appreciated the devastating consequences of particular spells and rituals which have been rewritten in favor of this "fidelity fad", particularly that of exorcism.

The Exorcism of Syndi

The possessed girl, Syndi, is currently being tormented hideously and used to terrorize Hommlet, and the characters will need to take action against the demon soon after reaching the village. They will arrive from the eastern road and be hailed as saviors by any villagers devoted to Osiris. Villagers subscribing to druidical faith will be more wary, some even hostile, but no one will attempt to challenge the party or make them leave.

Roth-Omar will have advised them to stop at the house of the village elder at (27), who will greet them cordially though none too warmly. He is of druidical religion and tolerant of other faiths, but the disastrous exorcism of Jarome eight months ago has called Osiran credibility into question. He will declare that the chapel was supposed to keep away demonic forces and demand to know why it isn't doing so. He and others are particularly distressed that the last two pairs of exorcists seemed to make the demon angry more than anything else, though they boasted an improved ritual.

If the party comes knocking at the woodcutter's cottage (3), they will be denied entry and rudely dismissed. There is a 60% chance the characters will see the mad boy Jarome in the yard gibbering madly, but his parents won't permit any cleric to heal him.

At the rich villa (1), the characters will be greeted by Syndi's mother, who looks wasted from loss of sleep and eating, but who will go out of her way to be hospitable. The house hasn't been cleaned in some time, and one of Syndi's two older brothers, or her mother, is always sitting outside her closed room. Syndi has been possessed for about a month now, and the family's farm has been ruined by the demon's locust swarms. The barn adjacent to the house has been destroyed by lightning. Some days are worse than others for the family.

When the characters enter the house, Pazuzu will instantly sense the presence of high-level clerics and/or paladins, and become frightened. There is a 60% chance that he will retreat into lurker mode (see Rules for Possession in the appendix) and mask his evil presence, allowing Syndi control over herself. Of course, this is the oldest trick in the book to any exorcist worth his salt. The characters will surely proceed with an exorcism anyway, at which point Pazuzu will revert to controller mode, become obscenely aggressive, and ready for "battle". If he doesn't retreat into lurker mode (40% chance), he will use detect thoughts as soon as characters are within 60 feet of Syndi's bedroom, and invoke their names, calling down fierce curses on them, readying, again, for "battle".

Syndi is AC 10, hp 1, and it should go without saying that killing her in order to expel Pazuzu, then resurrecting her, would be viewed as completely immoral by good-aligned characters. (Not to mention running the risk of resurrection failure.) Besides, Pazuzu would just possess her again.

Whether from natural spell-like abilities or from The Blinding Claw (see the appendix), Pazuzu can do the following:

At will -- blasphemy, blindness, call lightning storm, clairvoyance, clairaudience, control weather, deeper darkness, desecrate, detect good, detect law, detect thoughts, discern lies, dispel magic, flesh to stone, fly, locust swarm, prying eyes, reverse gravity, statue (unusable during the rite of exorcism), stinking cloud, telekinesis, teleport (unusable in Hommlet, or within a mile of the Chapel of the Holy Seal), tongues, true seeing, unhallow, unholy aura, unnerving gaze

Once/day -- abyssal ant swarm, acid fog, heartclutch, incendiary cloud, mindrape, shapechange, symbol of death, symbol of discord, symbol of fear, wish

During the exorcism, the exorcist and his two assistants can do nothing but enact the ritual. DM's should familiarize themselves with the full description of the exorcise spell in the appendix, but some of that is repeated in what follows. There is a percentile roll at the end of every turn (every 10 rounds) to determine if the exorcism is successful. The other characters are free to take action each round, but they can't do anything offensive without interrupting the ritual and spoiling it (and they can't do anything that would physically harm the girl Syndi anyway). At best they can perhaps defend against Pazuzu's spell-like attacks, depending on what magic items and spells they have at their disposal.

Meanwhile, for at least one turn, and for every subsequent turn the exorcism ritual fails, Pazuzu gets 10 rounds of attacks or actions, which he won't hesitate to use. (If the exorcist has drunk a vial of abyssal repulsion from the chapel (see room 4), then Pazuzu gets only 5 rounds of attacks or actions.) He will start by attacking the exorcist, then the assistants, with powers like blindness (failure to save means that an assistant cleric or paladin contributes a -5% to the group's base chance each turn instead of +5%; if the actual exorcist is blinded, he or she contributes a -15% modifier), flesh to stone and also intersperse these with attacks effecting the entire party, like blasphemy, unholy aura, stinking cloud, telekinesis, and reverse gravity. He will hold heartclutch in reserve for the exorcist or an assistant when things really start to look bad, and judiciously use his other once/day abilities which effect many people, like acid fog, abyssal ant swarm, incendiary cloud, any of the three symbols, and wish. But in between these attacks he will inject vicious heapings of verbal abuse, often in various tongues, and will work in unnerving gazes to mess with people's minds. The DM should make this more than a dice-rolling ritual; it should terrify. While Pazuzu will be on the lethal offensive against high level characters, he will also taunt them with mind games, and degrade them with full rounds of filthy insults. He will read their thoughts. And around all of this, he will summon lightning storms and locust swarms to terrorize the entire farm as much as the party. This cycle could go on for 2-8 more turns depending on when (and if) the exorcism finally works. If the exorcism is still going on by the fifth turn, there is a 5% chance that Pazuzu will simply mindrape Syndi and then abandon her. (The chance increases by 5% per turn, to 25% by the ninth turn.) If he does this, that means he's decided he's done with this particular victim for good.

Remember that abjuration spells like dispel evil, dispel chaos, dismissal, and banishment constitute an interference with the exorcise spell as much as any other direct attack on the demon/girl. And the clerics in the party are experienced enough to know that such spells are pitiful holding measures in cases of relentless possession (the demon may simply attempt possession again). They are especially useless in the case at hand, since Pazuzu can not only try possession again, but he can do so immediately with his limitless plane shift ability.

The characters will have probably visited the Chapel of the Holy Seal before starting the exorcism, at Roth-Omar's urging to avail themselves whatever they need to help in the exorcism rite. They will have decided by this point whether to follow the traditional ritual which leans on the cleric's faith in Osiris, or the new-wave ritual which leans on Osiris' faithfulness. (Hereafter designated the faith ritual and the fidelity fad.) What people like Roth-Omar and Hafsah haven't grasped is that while the fidelity fad invokes hard-hitting power, it does so for a dramatically short duration, and leaves the cleric nakedly exposed while the power is funneled against the foe at the expense of shielding the cleric. In most exorcisms this won't matter much, since demons can't normally attack through possessed victims. But with a demon lord like Pazuzu enhanced by an artifact like The Blinding Claw, the consequences of the fidelity fad are devastating: clerics get no saving throws against any of Pazuzu's spell-like abilities, unable to rely on the shielding bulwark of their own faith. And while the base chance of a successful exorcism admittedly increases for the first four turns, all that really does is cancel the stiff penalties of these turns owing to a powerful demon lord; in the last four turns, the base chance actually decreases under the fidelity ritual (deities have better things to do with their time besides devoting the full force of themselves to the material plane over long durations). In short, the fidelity fad invokes a strong but brief power, causing immense fury and pain to the demon; if not immediately successful, it does little more than anger the demon twice as much as the faith ritual would, and leaves the "faithless" exorcists, so to speak, entirely at the mercy of lethal spells. That's why Hafsah and the other clerics died so swiftly.

The characters don't know this, of course, though they are capable of some deductions. They will have to weigh the enthusiasm of Roth-Omar against the observations of the village elder, and also hopefully read the debate section found in The Fidelity of Osiris tome in the chapel library, in order to decide which ritual they will follow.

If the exorcism is successful, or if Pazuzu decides to mindrape Syndi and leave her body, the characters will see a vision in the air of the demon sitting on The Blinding Claw. There is a base 50% chance, at this point, that Pazuzu will attempt to possess an exorcist in retaliation, -5%/turn spent in the exorcism ritual. (See Rules of Demonic Possession in the appendix for attempted possession.)

If Syndi is exorcised, and/or healed from a mindrape, then her family will be eternally grateful to the characters, and there is even a 30% chance that the parents will convert to Osiranism. When word gets out, the woodcutter's family will also have a change of heart, and beg the party to heal their mad son. They will be grateful, but they won't convert.

The village elder will thank the party sincerely and ask them to relate everything that happened. When he hears the description of the vision of the taloned throne, he will affirm what Hafsah has documented in the Demon of the Lower Arials tome (see the Chapel, room 5). The elder recalls rumors five decades back from cult survivors that a throne like the one described was used in the temple before it was sealed underground by the Osirans.

As a final note, DM's should flesh out the village drama as they see fit. The Village of Hommlet is a classic for good reason, and in the hands of a good DM can set an excellent preliminary tone for the rest of the adventure which gets progressively vile. If the villagers are run well, then players will feel the stakes as they should. These are simple people being terrorized and broken, with no means of defense.

Investigating the Chapel

(Click on the map to enlarge.) The Chapel of the Holy Seal was founded 53 years ago and supervised by the priest Hafsah until his death eight months ago exorcising Jarome. He was 21 years old and 5th level when he arrived, and 73 years old and and 11th level when he died. He devoted his life's work to research on Pazuzu, and was a convert to new-wave Osiranism about 15 years ago. Characters have been charged with investigating the church and turning up any evidence about the source of Pazuzu's recent power. They will probably come here prior to the exorcism for holy water, elixirs, and some of Hafsah's research, but a full investigation and search for the buried temple should obviously wait until the girl has been saved.

1. Entrance. The entrance door is kept locked, though Roth-Omar will have given the characters a key to it back in Daj. Characters walk a 20-foot foyer before entering the chapel.

2. Chapel of the Seal. This 50-foot diameter chapel is a curiosity, as it doesn't look like a place of worship. There is an altar to Osiris, but no seats or pews, and four giant statues forming a circle and facing inwards, with their weapons pointing down. Statue A holds a scimitar clutched to its breast, as if about to backswipe an opponent downwards. Statue B has a sword drawn sideways at its hip, slightly angled downwards. Statue C has a pole-axe pointing down, its tip against the floor. And statue D clutches a spear aiming straight down.

The statues function as a powerful forbidding against demonkind. Any demon entering the church suffers the effects of a holy word at quadruple effect. Any demon coming within a 500-foot radius of the church must save every hour or be repelled. (Save at -4 within 100 feet; at -8 within 20 feet.) Even if the save is made, the demon will automatically experience extreme discomfort (-4 on attacks, -4 to morale) and will be unable to use any teleport ability. Any demon (except lords and princes) coming within a mile of the church will also automatically experience that same discomfort and stifled teleport ability. For each statue dispelled, these effects are reduced by a quarter. What this means is that any demon trying to enter Hommlet from either of the two gates below the temple (see temple depths, rooms 6 and 10) must pass through this chapel (they can't teleport past it), assuming they can even get close to it (if they save vs. the repulsion effect), which, per holy word at quadruple effect, would instantly banish them back to the Abyss if they fail a save at -4, and if not that, kill them on this plane (no save) if their hit dice is 16 or less, paralyze/blind/deafen them (no save) if their hit dice is 32 or less. Put simply, this isn't a place any demon is going to dare come near.

3. Sarcophagus. The key to the lid is in Hafsah's desk drawer (5), but it can be opened by knock or a thief who successfully picks locks. It will then take a combined strength of at least 52 (4-5 characters, on average) to lift the cover off. A steep staircase leads down to the temple of Pazuzu. Although some of the villagers retain vague hand-down knowledge of an evil buried beneath the church, none of them know that this sarcophagus guards the entrance. Hafsah and his assistant alone knew this.

4. Holy Font. Any water added to the font is instantly blessed and becomes holy water. Hafsah always kept it full, but in the past year it's gone dry. There are eight vials of holy water kept on a counter near the wall, and of course, priests can use the font to bless their own water. They'll need lots of it trying to exorcise Pazuzu. There are also three vials of abyssal repulsion elixir, which makes the drinker secrete a foul stench from his or her body, noticeable only by beings from the Abyss, who will be at -5 to hit the imbiber for 1 turn; if the being is being exorcised by the imbiber, it can act only every other round (i.e. it gets 5 actions per turn instead of 10). And there are two vials of undead protection elixir.

5. Priest's Quarters & Library. This was Hafsah's residence for 52 years. Now it's vacant. Characters will have been given leave to explore the library and investigate whatever has been left in Hafsah's room. A few items will be of immediate interest:

* A set of five keys to the chapel: the front entrance (1), the sarcophagus lid (3), the cabinet containing holy water and vials of abyssal repulsion (4), the safe in the wall above Hafsah's desk (5), and the chest beneath his bed (5).

* A book called Demon of the Lower Arials. It reflects Hafsah's painstaking research on Pazuzu, and contains a special section of testimonies collected from assistant clerics who traveled abroad and interviewed witnesses to Pazuzu's activity. On one page there is a sketch of The Blinding Claw (show players the image at the beginning of this module). The testimonies indicate that Pazuzu has been alarmingly active in the world for the past 17 years, often materializing out of nowhere on a taloned throne studded with rubies and emeralds. One Pazuzu cultist from a distant country was heard referring to this throne as "The Blinding Claw", claiming that it exalted his lord with mighty powers unavailable to other demon lords (even Demogorgon). In particular, Pazuzu seems able to enter the Prime Material Plane with extreme ease, and able to work his deadly spell-like abilities through possessed victims. According to a cult survivor from Hommlet, a throne fitting this description was seen in the temple of Pazuzu before the Osirans came and wiped out the cultists. A search was made for the throne before sealing away the temple but could not be found.

* A tome entitled The Fidelity of Osiris, which Roth-Omar will have encouraged the characters to look for. It contains new-wave versions of the following spells for Osiran clerics: three abjurations, (1) exorcism (the characters already have a copy of this one, given by Roth-Omar), (2) dispel evil and (3) dispel chaos; two evocations, (1) holy word, and (2) holy smite (see New-Wave Osiranism in the appendix for full details). Hopefully the characters will not succumb to the lure of the fidelity fad where exorcism is concerned. Divination and commune spells are useless in determining the merits and demerits of the faith vs. fidelity rituals. (After all, how is a god supposed to objectively mediate in judgment between fervent belief in him and an appeal to his supreme deific loyalty?) The rewritten prayers for the three abjurations have been in practice for some time (about 15 years). The two evocations are less clear, since the fidelity versions do nothing to alter their effect on the Prime Material Plane, but according to a testimonial from a priest Aetus, who traveled to the Abyss, these evocations -- holy smite and holy word, which normally don't work at all on the outer planes -- do deathly damage to outer-plane natives (demons, devils, etc.) when the "faithfulness of Osiris" is invoked in place of one's "faith in Osiris", though at great cost to the cleric. This "cost" is left unspecified.

There is a section in this tome summarizing the opposing theologies of faith and fidelity. According to the former, exorcism is not a formula which confers grace by the action itself. Its efficacy has always depended on the unwavering faith of the exorcist. A cleric who casts an exorcism without a strong faith in Osiris risks disaster for both himself and the possessed victim. In this light alone, one can imagine the hazards of shifting the emphasis on faith away from the believer and onto the deity. The new-wave Osiran would respond that a deity's fidelity is more reliable and mighty than the faith of mere mortals. The traditionalist would retort that it is "mere mortals" who do the dirty work on material planes; deities are heavily occupied on their own planes, and to impose on their unbridled power is risky and presumptuous. The new-wave practitioner counters that relying on oneself is in fact the ultimate presumption, indeed an insufferable hubris. And so on. The characters will have to make up their own minds.

* Note: The Rod of Demonic Woe (see temple depths, room 9) will NOT be found here (or anywhere in the present, for that matter). This artifact will only be obtainable if the characters are banished to the past by the weeping demon in room 9. Who knows where the rod went after Hafsah's death. It could have been taken by Osirans from Daj; but it also could have been taken by the very characters investigating this room 39 years in the past.

II. THE BURIED TEMPLE

The Temple

(Click on the map to enlarge.) The temple cavern under the church is about 60 feet wide and 80 feet long, and it falls well within the 500-foot repulsion-forbidding of the chapel's statues. Demons will not enter from the depths below; this top layer of the temple has been vacant for 53 years. DM's should take particular note of the statue of Pazuzu (2), which holds a strong evil essence that has been masked to make it virtually undetectable. This statue will go out of its way to effect a character, whose actions must be closely monitored. If a character is effected and the others are unable to break the enchantment, he or she will break out unexpectedly in peculiar, disgusting, and violent behavior. This character could also end up undergoing a vile transformation process in the depths below the temple.

In particular, when such an effected character is finally under enough stress to call on Pazuzu's name three times (see below), an unholy link will be established between the character and the demon, and Pazuzu will be aware of the party's intrusion. He will be moderately alarmed yet excited. When forced to abandon the Hommlet area 53 years ago, he put safety nets and traps in place, and on his home plane designed an alternate dimension to The Lord's Rook, precisely as a challenge to high-level mortals who might one day come after him. Against exorcists in particular who have wounded him, he is always craving revenge. And he knows that he's near invincible on his home turf in Torremor.

Mages who cast a wish spell, or anyone using magic items with wishes, will be in for some rude surprises. Pazuzu hates wishes unless they are gifted by him (he loathes clerical miracles too, but isn't as effective in stopping those). One of his strategies in corrupting innocents on the Prime Material Plane is to grant them wishes before sucking them in more directly and turning them into cult followers. Those who have the perfidy to wish outside his approval often pay a nasty price. While not all wishes will produce bad side effects here, many will, and the module key tries to anticipate the most obvious cases. DM's should use discretion when it comes to other wishes, and not be afraid to be creatively nasty in line with Pazuzu's vicious sense of humor.

1. Stairway Down. These lead down to wide temple cavern.

2. Statue of Pazuzu. The statue in this alcove is powerfully enchanted but has been masked so that spells like detect magic, detect chaos, and detect evil reveal nothing. If it is touched (assume so if it is investigated without a player specifically saying he or she is avoiding any physical contact), the character doing so will hear buzzing flies and vicious growling for a few seconds, and he or she must save versus spells at -6 or become effected by the statue. The DM should make this saving throw for the character so as not to give anything away, because aside from the brief noises, the effect won't be remotely noticeable. That is, until any of the following occur. The effected character will automatically:

* become enraged in the presence of any lawful good priest who attempts to pray, use a holy symbol, cast a spell, turn undead/demons/etc., and will either verbally (1-4) or physically (5-6) assault the cleric

* become withdrawn when nothing stressful is occurring, while murderous and erotic desires begin to flood his or her mind

* feel compelled to call out the name of Pazuzu three times when under especial stress or difficulty

The effect of the statue can be removed with prayer plus either remove curse or break enchantment cast within one round of each other. Alternatively, a miracle will do the trick. So will a wish, but a contingency trap will simply transfer the effect to another random character with no save.

The statue is intelligent, and will choose to effect only one character. If no one touches the statue, it will exercise a powerfully telepathic suggestion to a random character to touch it. This save should be made by the character rather than the DM (at no penalty vs. spells), for the compulsive feeling will be obvious. The statue may exercise three suggestions per day (on anyone in the temple cavern), which it will do until one character is effected. Dispel evil (or chaos) and other abjuration type spells will have no effect on the statue, for its essence has taken foothold on the Prime Material Plane, in a complicated ritual performed back in the days of the Pazuzu cultists.

3. Sacrificial Altar. Human sacrifice was regularly conducted here in the days of the cultists. There is a huge red-orange gem welded into the front of the altar which radiates powerful evil and magic. Anyone touching the gem will hear faint agonizing cries as if coming from over one's shoulder. If the stone is destroyed (AC 0, hp 21), the souls of four villagers who were sacrificed on this altar are finally liberated and are transferred to their appropriate outer planes to finally rest in peace.

There is a secret compartment on the side of the altar, and a box inside containing four rings: a ring of contrariness (also bestowing a 21 strength on the wearer), a ring of vampiric regeneration, a ring of free action, and a ring of three wishes. The first is a cursed ring, of course, and the second is anathema to good aligned characters. The third is useful, but the fourth is a double-edged sword if used in the temple areas or on Torremor (see beginning of this section on wishes). Each ring is studded with a ruby worth 1000 gp.

4. Throne of the High Priest. The cult leader presided from this throne, commanding subordinates as they did the dirty work below on the sacrificial altar. The throne radiates chaos and evil, and anyone sitting on it for an extended period of time will become increasingly physically attractive and charismatic (+1 charisma point per turn, up to a maximum of 25). For lawful and/or good aligned characters who sit on it, there is a 10% chance cumulative per charisma point each turn of angering one's deity, and in the case of clerics and paladins that means losing one's spells and holy capabilities until atonement is cast. The atonement spell will remove the heightened comeliness and charisma as well.

5. Chamber of Self-Loathing. Anyone entering this room must save versus paralysis at -3 or fall asleep and get strange nightmares in which the sleeper relives horrible events from his or her past and with feelings of accentuated guilt. Waking up (after 5-8 hours), the dreamer will not want to leave the room, and will want to inflict physical punishment on himself. Doing 1-3 points of self-damage will temporarily alleviate negative feelings (for 1-12 hours) and make the character feel euphoric. The effect can be removed with break enchantment. But thereafter, if the cured character leaves the temple area, he or she will be horrendously assaulted by a plague of nightmares whenever going to sleep, requiring yet another break enchantment.

If anyone sleeping in this room is woken up forcibly before a break enchantment can be cast, the poor character will be soul-shocked, scream as if in eternal torment, and lose 3-6 points of intelligence, wisdom, and charisma each.

6. Secret Passage. The secret door can only be opened by a knock cast by at least a 12th level mage. From this point onwards, and down into the depths, no spells functioning like fly, levitate, telekinesis, or teleport, word of recall (even by use of miracle or wish) will work. Neither will anything like polymorph or shapechange. This anticipates the plane of Torremor, where Pazuzu jealously guards demonic rights to the air and insists on everyone's true form. (Of course, demonic teleport is stifled as well on account of the chapel's warding's, though demons can fly, shapechange, and use their telekinetic abilities perfectly fine in this area and the depths below.)

The chasm is 40 feet long 100 feet deep, plummeting down to a pit full of spikes. The far side of the chasm looks like a dead-end wall of rock but in fact is an illusion. The way to bridge the chasm is to call on the name of Pazuzu three times (which is exactly what anyone effected by the statue at (2) will do), which will also dispel the illusion and reveal the continuing hallway. Otherwise it will be necessary to climb down into the pit (a thief could scale, a mage could spider climb, etc) and then around up the other side. A dispel magic cast against 28th level magic will break the illusion of the wall -- but characters can just walk through the illusion without dispelling it.

The staircase descends for about an eighth of a mile before switching back in the opposite direction for the same distance. At the switchback point, gravity suddenly turns at a 45 degree angle. Characters who fail dexterity checks will fall about 660 feet. Within the first 50 feet of tumbling, players have a 4 in 6 chance to stop their fall, in the next 50 feet a 2 in 6 chance and thereafter none at all. (Strength scores of 15+ allow to subtract 1 on the d6 roll.) Those who break their fall take 2d6 hit points of damage (per 50 feet of staircase); those who can't break their fall are of course killed at the bottom of a 660 foot drop.

Bypassing the secret door takes one down a passageway that used to lead to a secret exit of the temple. The Osirans took care of that. Now it's a complete dead end.

The Temple Depths

(Click on the map to enlarge.) Since these caverns are well over 500 feet beneath the church, demons can operate in the depths without being repelled by church's statues. These depths, however, are still within a mile's distance (the switchback of the staircase puts them almost directly below the church about a quarter of a mile, or 1320 feet), and so feelings of general unease and discomfort do apply (except to lords like Lamashtu and Pazuzu), and will stifle any demon's ability to teleport (including lords like Lamashtu and Pazuzu).

1. Demon's Run. The enchantments on the four idols add up to a permanent antipathy effect on lawful good people who enter this cavern. Failure to save causes the effected to flee out of the temple depths and up the stairs; successful saves leave the remaining lawful good characters extremely uncomfortable (-3 to both strength and dexterity) while in the depths.

A. Babau Idol. In a tight scabbard around the hip of this idol is a dagger which may be pried loose. In the hands of a chaotic evil person, it allows the wielder to assassinate whenever he attacks, at his own level. In the hands of a lawful good person, it will cause the wielder to slit his own throat unless a save at -4 is made. In the hands of anyone else, it will cause the wielder to attack the nearest lawful good entity, with a chance to assassinate made at half his level, unless a save at -2 is made.

B. Chasme Idol. On the floor between the lower legs (and underneath the rectum) of this idol is an offal bag (see Book of Vile Darkness, p 117), perpetually filled with feces, and which will call forth a swarm of chasmes (d6+4) from the pool in (6). The chasmes (AC -1, HD 7, hp 39 each, # of attacks/round 3, damage/attack 1-8/1-8/1-4; at will: darkness 5-foot radius, detect invisibility, telekinesis 1500 gp weight) will attack unless there is a chaotic evil cleric or mage of high power who can command them. The stench has the same effect as a stinking cloud. The chasmes, of course, suffer the penalties for discomfort from the church above (-4 on attacks and morale, unable to teleport), and will flee back through the gate to Pazunia as soon as things go badly for them.

C. Anzu Idol. Inside the mouth of this idol is an emerald (worth 5000 gp) that when placed in the northern wall (at the X point) causes the 15-foot thick wall to slide away (it sounds like an earthquake is approaching) and reveal the hallway beyond. Unfortunately, anyone of lawful good alignment who grabs the gem must save at -4 or lose half of his/her charisma points permanently, with the skin all over his/her face breaking out in hideous warts and sores, and acquiring a raspy, hoarse voice that sounds like the lead singer of the modern gothic rock band Skinny Puppy. Anyone else of non-chaotic evil alignment must save at -2 or lose a quarter of his/her charisma with a milder version of the facial outbreak and undead-sounding voice. Remember that spells like levitate or telekinesis do not work in the depths, so the gem cannot be moved this way. There is a pair of safety tongs in the torture chamber (4) that can be used to pick up the gem without being cursed. The wall will not close as long as the gem is in the slot, and it will stay open for a turn if the gem is removed.

D. Vrock Idol. In the left claw of this idol is a scroll written in magic, that if read (per read magic spell) will make the wall covering room (3) vanish for one hour, after which point it seals up again. The writing from the scroll does not disappear when read, and can be read from either side of the wall, from any distance as long as the portion of the wall is in sight.

2. Audience Hall. The throne looks like the sketch of the taloned throne from Hafsah's book, except there are no gems welded into it. This is actually the first "Blinding Claw", a model of the perfected one created much later, and has no special powers. It doesn't even radiate evil. Characters who attempt to destroy the throne will have an easy enough time of it, which in itself should raise suspicions: it is armor class 6, requires no magic weapons to it, and will be destroyed when it takes 30 hit points of damage. A commune or contact other plane will reveal it is not the real Blinding Claw, if a spell is really needed to convince the party.

3. Lamashtu's Cage. This room is completely sealed off, though reading the scroll from the vrock idol allows passage (see above). (Passwall and other such spells will also work.) Inside, a six-foot diameter clear cylindrical vessel imprisons Lamashtu, Pazuzu's former consort and now arch-enemy. Legends have it that Pazuzu either banished her to an unknown plane of the Abyss or kept her on Torremor at Onstrakker's Nest, and both of these of legends are partly true. But the fact is that his hatred for her is so deep that he doesn't consider her worthy of any Abyssal honor, even in torment. (He also doesn't want Lamashtu within easy reach of Abyssal natives to whom she could reveal his most vulnerable secret, on which see further.) When his temple at Hommlet was sealed underground 53 years ago, he decided, as an amusement, to move her there, thereby heaping insult upon torment, by consignment to the Prime Material Plane in a sealed off place where no one could help her... and where he could visit anytime he wanted to relish her suffering.

Various D&D manuals allude to the nasty history between the two demons. When they were lovers, Lamashtu had gained Pazuzu's trust to the extent that he told her his true name, which she promptly used against him. Pazuzu eventually (and only barely) got the upper hand, tore out and ate her eyes, cursing her with eternal blindness, and imprisoning her in various places. This particular cage has powerful dweomers that keep her alive and unable to invoke any of her magical abilities. She can be freed by a successful dispel magic (base 50% chance, -2%/level of difference between the caster's and Pazuzu's 28 HD) or greater dispel magic (base 90% chance, -2%/level of difference) cast on the cage, or by a miracle. A good aligned cleric casting miracle should obviously have damn good cause to invoke divine intervention to free such a despicable demon -- which will definitely be the case. A wish will not free Lamashtu; in fact, it will trigger a contingency trap to explode a fireball on everyone in the room (28d6 or half damage).

As for why anyone in their right mind would want to free Lamashtu, what she can offer in return is priceless. When the characters enter the room, she will have taken on her sensous form (taloned hair, a scarred face, and black clothing; see stats at the end), as she knows her true form is completely repulsive to prime material mortals. (Her eyes are just for show, for she remains blind.) She will beg and plead with anyone to free her by dispelling the magic of the cage, and she will ask if they are enemies of Pazuzu. If she senses that they are, or if they candidly admit they are out to get him, or destroy his throne, she will laugh hysterically and tell them that to have even a prayer of hope they will need immense power over him. She can provide exactly that, his true name, which she promises to tell them in return for freedom and healing her blindness. (Note: if the characters believe the "Blinding Claw" in the audience hall is the real one -- or was real, if they destroyed it -- then Lamashtu won't hesitate to point out their error.) She can be freed as described above, and her eyes & sight can be given back by (a) regenerate and remove blindness, (b) regenerate and heal, or (c) miracle. A wish will give her back a bloated pair of cursed cross-eyes that reduce her charisma by 12 and inflict her with cross-eyed vision (better than being blind, perhaps, but not much).

Lamashtu, however, has no intention of telling anyone Pazuzu's true name unless she really has to. If successfully freed and given back her eyes & sight, she will vanish at once into the astral plane. If the characters demand Pazuzu's true name before freeing her -- which is of course the only sane course of action -- she will supply a bogus name, which can be flagged by a discern lies spell. If that happens, she will finally reveal his true name to save her skin. At this point, the characters would perhaps be wise to keep her caged and blinded and not live up to their end of the bargain, though that probably won't sit well with holy lawful types, even in dealing with a demon. If freed and cured after being forced to give up Pazuzu's true name, she will vanish to the astral plane, though not before attempting to demonically impregnate a female character with a parting touch, or, in the absence of a female, gutwrench a male character (see her stats at the end). She won't inflict either of these on the one who dispelled the magic of the cage or the cleric who cured her sight; she's at least that magnanimous.

A demonically impregnated character probably won't know she's pregnant until it's too late. The character will have felt Lamashtu's touch but nothing more. If divination spells are used to ascertain the pregancy, a dispel evil or dispel chaos will kill the fetus. It takes nine hours for the demon to be born, and its "birth" is a hideous stomach-bursting process out of Ridley Scott's Alien. (The effects of which should be treated as the equivalent of the 8th level spell gutwrench from the Book of Vile Darkness: instant death, or 6-60 hp of damage). The baby demon will be easy enough to kill by high-level characters. The DM should monitor the time factor. Nine hours later in game time will probably occur when the characters have either been banished back in time (see room 9) or sleeping to recover spells and hit points before venturing through the gate (room 10) to Torremor.

Pazuzu's truename is Grashnak Ariol Yurkulough. (See Invoking a Demon's True Name in the appendix.)

Freeing and curing Lamashtu will earn the characters the absolute eternal enmity of Pazuzu when he learns of this (as if they haven't earned that already, but this makes things far worse). And he's no fool. He will wonder what could possibly motivate lawful good exorcists to free a demon lord, and will be terrified that his true name was the barter chip. If he has been made aware of the party's intrusion by a statue-effected character calling out his name three times, then there is a 1 in 8 chance per turn that he will plane shift his soul to the temple depths to "check in" on how things are going. If Lamashtu is gone, he will be in a towering fury and the party will hear a bone-chilling "Die! I'll swallow you all!", before his soul returns to Torremor.

It's of course possible that the characters will have no interest in discussing anything with Lamashtu and leave her caged. But she will probably assume they are Pazuzu's foes and dangle the carrot of his true name, which any cleric or mage worth his salt will have trouble dismissing.

4. Torture Chamber. The foulest devices are to be found here, including almost every torture instrument listed on pp 38-39 of Book of Vile Darkness, plus a master ring & slave ring (p 113), a hook of dissolution (p 115), a pain extractor (p 115), and a rack of irresistible torture (p 116). Choke pears are in particular abundance, as the Pazuzu cultists took special pleasure in injecting them in any and all orifices of their victims' bodies. Needless to say, good aligned characters will want nothing to do with these devices. They might very well end up on the receiving end of one of them, however, since a multiply taloned whip will jump up and dance (as per a dancing sword) and attack a random character who comes within 5 feet of it. It attacks as a 10 hit dice creature. On a successful hit, roll 1d10 to determine how many talons hit (if 10, roll again); each hook does only 1 hp of damage, but each requires a save vs. paralysis, or the victim becomes masochistic, acquiring a +1 bonus on all saving throws for every 10 hit points of damage taken (up to +6). The victim craves at least 20 hit points of damage, and will not want to be healed above this threshold. He will wound himself to keep at least 20 hit points of damage inflicted on his person. (Beings with 20 hit points or under will simply kill themselves.) There is also a pair of safety tongs hanging on the wall that allows one to pick up cursed and/or trapped magic items without triggering the adverse effects.

5. Transformation Chamber. There is a mirror on the northern wall. A character who has been effected by the statue of Pazuzu in the temple above will be automatically drawn to this mirror, which functions as a mirror of sending (Book of Vile Darkness, p 99) for an anzu demon, and also a hideous transforming device. If the anzu idol in Demon's Run has been touched/investigated, then the anzu demon will be alert and replace the reflection of a character looking into the mirror after one round. At that point the character will suddenly go rigid, scream horribly, and begin transforming into the anzu demon. This process is a frighteningly accelerated version of transformer possession (see Rules of Possession, #6, in the appendix), and is automatic for a character under the statue's influence. If not, then the character gets two saving throws: the first vs. petrification against possession, the second vs. petrification against losing his/her body and mind to the anzu demon, adjusted by whatever constitution bonus/penalty applies. The transformation process will take 4 rounds. The anzu retains all memories of the character and will attack his or her previous colleagues. If reduced to less than 20 hit points, the demon will flee through the mirror, which functions as a gate to Torremor (for the transformed only), at which point the mirror shatters.

If the anzu idol hasn't been touched/investigated, then the anzu demon will appear in the mirror only after a character stares into it for 10 rounds. A character who has been effected by the statue will do exactly this, seemingly hypnotized, and if any of the other characters try to "snap him out of it" in any way, he will become enraged and attack his colleagues.

When it gets back to Torremor, the anzu will share everything the character knew with Pazuzu, which will make the demon lord even more prepared, and he will then station the anzu in tier 5 of The Lord's Rook to await the party.

6. Gate to Pazunia. What appears to be a huge pool of black liquid fills most of the cavern. It is a two-way gate to Pazunia (1st layer of the Abyss), which of course is where Pazuzu spends most of his time. The gate doesn't lead to Pazuzu himself, however, and it's not where the party wants to go in any case. They need to get to Torremor (503rd layer of the Abyss), Pazuzu's special home, where The Blinding Claw resides.

7. Demonic Drawings. The walls of this great hall contain some of the most disturbing drawings ever seen on the Prime Material Plane: graphic images of torture, arial beasts, insects, all punctuated with variations of the Pazuzu statue in the above temple. The walls on both sides radiate heavy evil. The door at the end leads to the false gate to Torremor. The secret door leads to a narrow twisting passageway that has damning darkness cast throughout. Anyone who is effected by the statue of Pazuzu will take no damage, however, and be able to see perfectly in the darkness.

8. Door of Bones (False Gate). The door made of children's bones is a false gate to Torremor, with the name of the plane (a bit too obviously) spelled in magic above the door. Anyone approaching the door will be greeted with a snarling rasp, a demonic sounding voice resembling the one Pazuzu used through the mouth of Syndi: "So you want to come see me? Come die, you fuckers!" This is a magic mouth spell; Pazuzu is not actually here. Nor is he at the other end of the gate as promised -- though the characters' deaths could well be. See room (9).

Note that divination type spells which aim to discern the dangers/benefits of passing through this gate will be almost worthless. ("Unclear" will a returned answer to most commune questions.) This is because of the nature of the creature lurking on the other side, involving time-travel. Even the gods have trouble penetrating fate when history can be rewritten, and there is the further irony that the time trap could actually play to the characters' advantage if they obtain an artifact out of the past.

9. The Weeping Demon. This hollowed out room has no exit, but that's not to say it's hard to leave. A weeping demon (see appendix) is stationed here, and DM's who have seen Blink from the new Doctor Who series will appreciate the horror of this creature. As soon as anyone enters (from the teleport gate at 8) at point X, the demon will freeze at a random point in the room, powerless, as long as at least one person has the statue in eyesight (whether by direct or peripheral vision). There are three other statues in this room that resemble weeping demons, but they are actually real statues, decoys to throw intruders off the scent.

After three rounds of being in the room, a programmed illusion will be triggered: the ceiling shaking, rock falling, as if the entire damned room is about to cave in. As this will almost certainly get everyone's attention and cause them to look upwards, the weeping demon will become mobile and be able to touch 1-3 characters before it's frozen in observance again, sending them back in time 39 years, displaced on top of the hill above the river at the northeastern end of the Hommlet. The illusion will cancel after another three rounds, at which point the poor banished character(s) will certainly be missed. Each remaining character has a chance of noticing the change in position and appearance of the one statue (the demon), by rolling their intelligence score -4 or less on d20. As the hunt for the missing character(s) begins, characters will likely turn their backs on all statues, as they begin to search for non-existent secret doors along the walls and pit traps on the floor, and the demon will be able to touch another 1-3 characters before again getting caught in someone's sight.

After this, any remaining characters will definitely notice the one statue's change in position and appearance, and will no doubt be eyeballing it warily. But they will still blink their eyes, which produces the famous effect of the statue closing in on them in between blinks. If only one character remains in the room, this will be near guaranteed, since a person blinks on average every 4 seconds. Eyeblinks last about a 10th of a second, and so the demon will be able to advance 1 foot (in its mobile form when unobserved, weeping demons move an incredibly fast 10 feet/second). If two characters remain in the room (and are both staring warily at the statue), then there is a 25% every four seconds they will blink at the same time. For three characters, say a 5% chance every 4 seconds, and for more than three characters say a 5% chance every round.

Note: The demon has 63 hit points, a constitution score of 13, and a time-potential of 39 years (see appendix for details). Pazuzu has pre-fixed the distance displacement factor so that instead of a random 1000-4000 feet, characters touched by the demon will automatically be displaced to the hill over the river in the village above. The demon has been consigned to this room for 53 years by Pazuzu and is "starving", in exceedingly foul temper, and so will certainly try banishing every single character to feed off their potential energy.

The DM should be prepared to have endless fun (and headaches) with time travel paradoxes, depending on what displaced characters decide to do in the past. As for the buried temple: given that it has been sealed for 14 years at this point, and no one has entered it since, what they will find there, and in the depths below, is pretty much an exact repeat of what they have just found in the present. And what they do could well change the "future" (their present). For instance, encountering or freeing (!) Lamashtu, using the emerald-key but not returning it to the anzu idol's mouth, are just a few obvious examples that could make the present drastically different upon return. And if, for whatever desperate, misguided, or insane reason, they were to go back to the room of the weeping demon, they could well get propelled back in time another 39 years. (Not good.)

But the world above the temple is a different matter. People are different, the boy Jarome and the girl Syndi haven't been born yet, and the characters are unknowns. And the priest Hafsah lives in the chapel. Once they get over the shock of what's happened to them, they should realize that this brutal time trap could be turned into an opportunity to meet Hafsah. He is 35 years old and 7th level (he was 73 years old and 11th level when he died eight months ago in the characters' present time, exorcising the boy), and his clerical assistant (different from the one who died in the present), Korus, is 22 years old and 3rd level. Neither of the priests is aware of the temple depths beyond the chasm at the secret door, and of course Hafsah won't be able to explain anything about The Blinding Claw since it doesn't exist yet (and won't for another 22 years). He is definitely aware of the evil nature of the Pazuzu statue, and will be able to explain the odd behavior of any effected character if the players haven't figured it out already.

He will also recognize the source of the time trap if the statues in room 9 are described to him. In the days of Pazuzu cultists (and before the intervention and arrival of any Osirans like himself) the village of Hommlet had problems with a weeping demon (the same one imprisoned by Pazuzu in room 9), and Hafsah is aware of this. He is in fact a sage on the obscure subject of weeping demons, and can advise on the usefulness of greater restoration (which will send back one victim to the appropriate time), and wish or miracle (either of which will send back 1-3 victims). The victims are sent back to the exact time points they left, but with no distance displacement this time. For instance, if they use one of these spells to return to the present while standing in the chapel of the statues, that is the room they will return to 39 years in the future.

If the characters are open with Hafsah, treat him respectfully, and inform him that they intend to beard Pazuzu in his den on Torremor -- and if he is convinced of their holy intentions -- he will give them his prize artifact: The Rod of Demonic Woe. Note that the rod is not available in the characters' present. They will not have found it searching the chapel, and who knows why, but one reason could well be to fulfill the time paradox of Hafsah giving it to them now in the past, if that's what he chooses to do. Without this artifact, the characters stand almost no chance of destroying The Blinding Claw, unless they have obtained Pazuzu's true name from Lamashtu. Hafsah, however, will not simply hand over the rod. The characters need to prove themselves and earn it through some decent role-playing. The DM should allow charisma checks at whatever modifiers deemed appropriate. If the characters tell Hafsah about the mindraped boy he died for (in the future), and that they healed him (if they managed to do this), he will be particularly moved. Of course, they may wish to avoid spelling out the cleric's fate (so as to protect time events), and that's fine too. But they will need to be forthcoming about some things, if for no other reason to get back to their present. Hafsah will at the very least allow time displaced characters to set their hands on the rod for the greater restoration effect, which will restore their appropriate potential energy. Whether or not he lets them take the artifact with them is another issue.

Note that new-wave Osiranism doesn't exist yet. The seeds for it will germinate 11 years later, and it will take about another decade after that for the fervor to catch on. So Hafsah's tome, The Fidelity of Osiris hasn't been written; his "conversion" is more than two decades in the future. Any inquiries or suggestions about translating πίστις Ὀσίρεως as the faithfulness of Osiris, or fidelity of Osiris, instead of one's faith in Osiris, will be greeted with puzzlement, though also curiosity.

This brutal time trap is also an opportunity for characters to recuperate and regain any spells, especially clerics who won't be able to regain any on the Abyss.

As for any remaining characters in room 9, who succeeded in evading the demon's touch and either killed or dispelled it, options for escape are limited. Passwall is the best option, though a mage will need many of them to get through 40 feet of wall, and must apply them immediately south back to room 8. And of course, no spells (not even wishes and miracles) can be used to teleport on account of the Torremor-like atmosphere infusing the depths, though a miracle will create a passwall effect if worded that way, and indeed at twice the effect of the normal spell. A wish will also create a passwall at double effect -- and then promptly cave in on the fools when they're halfway down the passage. If spellcasters who can produce these effects were the ones banished to the past, then the remaining characters in the room can only hope to be rescued by them if and when they return. If they return with the Rod of Demonic Woe, they can invoke its pass hostile element function (see appendix) which will solve everything.

10. Door of Flesh (True Gate). The room stinks of feces and is swarming with flies and carrion. Characters are effected by a curse of the putrid husk, but before even this, the door they enter has a symbol of discord effecting all who pass through it. DM's should exploit everything here in tandem to produce a drama of fear of, and hatred for, one's fellow characters. The door at the far side of the room is made of human flesh, and is the true gate to Torremor. From the other side, it's a simple archway of mist to step through. From this side it's a harrowing punishing device: a 10-year old girl is welded into the door in an eternity of torture, screaming horribly, fully aware of her surroundings and situation, but aside from her face immobile. She's been trapped like this for over five decades and at the sight of anyone entering the room will beg for death.

* If she is killed (AC 10, hp 1), then the gate to Torremor opens for 24 hours. This is the only way the gate will open from this side, besides using a miracle (but not wish). Anyone who touched the statue of Pazuzu will not attempt to kill the girl.

* If no one kills the girl, then anyone who touched the statue of Pazuzu will call on his name three times, which invites a possession attack; Pazuzu's spirit will suddenly appear inside the girl, her face will contort horribly, and the demon will bellow forth acid fog while heaping vulgar curses on the party, inciting them, "Kill me! Kill me, you fuckers!" If an exorcism is attempted, Pazuzu's spirit will vanish -- after he casts flesh to stone on the door, which seals the gate from this side. (Stone to flesh will reverse the effects and revivify the girl in her cursed state.)

* A dispel magic (against 28th level) in conjunction with either a remove curse or break enchantment, or a miracle alone will free the girl. But then the gate cannot be opened (save by using another miracle, but not wish). Using a wish to free the girl will also work, but it will juxtapose the wisher for the girl, and that character will now become trapped in the eternity of torture (on which see below).

* If no one is trapped in the door's design, the gate is useless from this side, and the party will not be able to travel to Torremor. But anyone who touches the door must save at -2 vs. breath weapon or become trapped by the eternity of torture just as the girl was. Note that a character who touched the statue of Pazuzu will not touch the flesh door, but will attempt to persuade others to touch it, under a "hunch" that physical contact triggers the gate in some way. Which, of course, is a half-truth: once a character has become part of the door, the gate may be opened indeed, once that character is killed. Again: aside from a miracle (but not a wish), the only way the gate will open to Torremor is by the death of someone trapped in the door's curse. If a wish is used to try opening the gate, the gate will explode like a bomb, everyone in the room will take 8d8 points of damage, and the gate is ruined. Thus is Pazuzu's Amusement.

* As mentioned, if either the girl or a character is killed inside the door's curse, the door transforms into an archway of mist (for 24 hours) which allows passage to Torremor. The corpse of the girl or the character disappear as well, and will have to be found in The Lord's Rook to have any hope of being raised or resurrected.

It is recommended that characters rest and pray/study their spells before entering Torremor, especially for the benefit of clerics who will be cut off from their deities and won't be able to get any spells back after casting them.

III. THE LORD'S ROOK

Torremor, the 503rd layer of the Abyss, is

"...a tangled nest of beams and perches, rooks and pinnacles, bridges and arches, connected by writhing ropes and jangling chains. Those knocked from its perches fall to their eventual deaths below broken and shattered on bridges and pinnacles lower still. Offal and waterfalls frothing from larger solid sections of the realm tumble forever, crumbling to dust or drifting away in vapor long before they finish their plunge. Torremor has no true base, yet it seems to have countless apexes... The most important location in Torremor is the Lord's Rook, built to accommodate those who can fly and mock those who cannot. It is whispered that something at the core of the Lord's Rook grants Pazuzu his unique ability to plane shift at will." (Dragon Magazine, March 05, p 66-67)

The players can count themselves fortunate that they won't be exposed to the general environment of Torremor, though that turns out to be small comfort. The gate in the temple depths translates them straight to the Lord's Rook, where a devastating challenge awaits them.

Pazuzu's cylindrical tower is an imposing 936 feet tall and 260 feet in diameter. The wall is 60 feet thick, the inner tiers 200 feet in diameter, with 104 vertical feet between each of the nine tiers. The Lord's Rook is built around an extra-planar cylinder that shifts whenever someone enters Torremor through the gate under Hommlet. What greets the invaders is a drastically altered version of The Lord's Rook, which when taken together with the temple depths themselves constitute the overarching game of Pazuzu's Amusement. In place of the dining halls, audience chambers, torture pits, and treasure heaps that normally fill Pazuzu's Rook is a brutal playhouse of traps and nasties aligning with the demon's sense of humor. Aside from tiers 1 and 9, there are no floors in the Amusement, few areas to walk about safely, a mockery to those who lack the natural ability to fly. Layers of mist four feet thick separate the tiers and serve as "floors" and "ceilings".

Pazuzu actually wants experienced, high-level mortals to dare him in his lair, especially heroes from Hommlet who have injured him through the rite of exorcism. He's been waiting decades for it. He is practically invincible on his home turf, and like all cowards at heart, is greatly empowered by a deck stacked overwhelmingly in his favor. He knows nothing about The Rod of Demonic Woe, and would take a considerably less cavalier attitude toward any group that he knew possessed such an artifact. If the characters did not obtain this rod from Hafsah in the past, their goal will be near impossible unless they obtained Pazuzu's true name from Lamashtu.

If the characters know Pazuzu's true name, and if they freed Lamashtu from her cage, then Pazuzu will be aware by now of her liberation. He will be livid beyond description, but also frightened of the possibility that she was let loose at the price of revealing his name. His hunger for revenge will be tempered in this case by genuine terror, though all the more reason he wants the characters in his Amusement, to put them to death before they can spread his true name -- and in the Abyss where there will be no chance of anyone else raising them back from the dead in the mortal world.

The upshot is that Pazuzu's Amusement is as much a test as it is a death zone protecting the demon lord, and its architect will be schizophrenically gleeful and chary about finally getting to see it in action.

If the characters have neither the Rod of Demonic Woe nor Pazuzu's true name to fall back on, then they will in all probability be wiped out when they reach the Cathedral of the Blinding Claw (assuming they get that far and don't die in the Rook). This is not to say that DM's should fudge, tone things down, or do something to make things more easy for the players in such a case. And it is certainly not to imply that DM's should run the temple depths by railroading characters into Lamashtu or the weeping demon. On the contrary: let the chips fall where they may. The Rook will still be a lot of fun before the players go down. And sequel missions for a different set of characters are always possible. Destroying the Blinding Claw should be hard, and while I didn't make the task insanely difficult like Return to the Tomb of Horrors, I subscribe to the view that death and failure should be eternally realistic threats in D&D, regardless of character level, and that nothing should be pre-determined. Lamashtu's Cage and the Room of the Weeping Demon offered the players a chance along different avenues, but there's no guarantee either of these avenues will have been taken.

Finally, DM's should be intimately familiar with the Spells on Torremor section in the appendix, as many spells either don't work or produce seriously altered results. Clerics and druids will not be able to get their spells back by praying for them (since they are cut off from their deities), though mages can by the usual studying. If the players decide they need to rest in between tiers, they won't be harassed for doing so.

Tier 1: Demon's Waste. The skulls and bones of various creatures and humanoids from the outer and inner planes are piled here, two feet deep across the entire floor. There are also thousands of gems, jewels, coin, weapons, and magic items, many of which are cursed and radiate evil, some of which, however, are fine. There is also a murder of 12 vrocks here (AC 0, HD 8, hp 44 each, # of attacks 5/round, damage/attack 1-4/1-4/1-8/1-8/1-6; at will: darkness 5-foot radius, detect invisibility, telekinesis 2000 gp weight), who will immediately attack the party.

The corpse of anyone slain in the flesh door in the temple depths (room 10) will be here, and may be raised or resurrected, though there is the chance he or she will come back as a demon (see Spells on Torremor in the appendix). The stairwell at the south pole of the room leads up to tier 2.

Tier 2: Missing Gems. A stone bridge spans the diameter of this tier, arching to its midpoint where a nervous looking hobbit awaits. The hobbit will tell the party that in order to continue across the bridge and ascend to the next tier they must pay 30 gems, each a minimum value of 1000 gp. (Gems from tier 1 may be retrieved if the characters come up short, though characters should take care not to take anything cursed.) If they pay, he puts the gems in a bag of holding, tells them to wait, then walks to other end of the bridge under an overhang. (Anyone who attempts to follow him will be stopped by a wall of force.) He reappears moments later, returns to the middle of the bridge, and gives back 3 gems to three random characters, looking increasingly nervous, saying that "the mistress requires only 27 gems for payment", apologizing profusely for his error. Two rounds later, a bolt of lighting blasts him to death out of nowhere, and a marilith demon (AC -7, HD 14, hp 91, # of attacks 7/round, damage/attack 1-8(x7); at will: darkness 5-foot radius, detect invisibility, polymorph self, charm person), descends swiftly on everyone. She informs the characters: "The hobbit cheated you. I told him to give you back 5 gems, because the true fee for going up to the next tier is 25 gems, not 27 as he claimed. He short-changed you by pocketing 2 of the gems for himself. But if he pocketed 2 gems, and you have paid 27 gems, where is the missing gem that adds up to the original 30? That is the question you must answer to get to the next tier."

Of course, this is a classic improper equation. The correct answer to the Marilith's question is to point out that her question is badly phrased. The 2 gems that the hobbit pocketed are part of the 27 they have paid; added to the 3 gems they got back, it adds up to 30. If presented with this correct answer, the Marilith will chuckle and ask the characters if they think they're cute and clever. But she will not acknowledge the solution, as it does not answer her question, namely, "Where is the missing gem?" In her demented mind, the correct answer is, "Up the hobbit's ass." Which is, in fact, exactly where she has shoved one of the two gems that he pocketed at her command. Should the characters wish to examine his corpse (which is perhaps doubtful), they will indeed find one of the gems there -- and destroying this gem is needed to ascend to the next tier. The Marilith will first have to be killed, however, as she attacks the party in a rage for failing to acknowledge the "correct" answer. She wields seven swords and scimitars, one of which is a sword of sharpness.

Removing the gem from the poor dead hobbit's rectum, and crushing it to powder (easily accomplished by a blunt weapon of +1 or higher) will reveal a slightly inclined wall in the middle of the bridge leading up to the center of tier 3. (A thief may climb walls and then haul others up with rope, or a mage may spider climb and do the same.) The overhang at the other end of the bridge was the hobbit's lair (cot, table, a few other things), but there's no way to ascend to the next tier from this end of the bridge, as he was instructed to say. The hobbit was of lawful good alignment, enslaved from the prime material plane to serve in Pazuzu's Amusement, and his outrageous death should of course upset the characters more than any neurotic cheating on the Marilith's part. On top of this, the three gems returned by the hobbit are cursed, and these curses kick in once the ninth tier (The Tier of Gems) is reached. (See the ninth tier for details.)

Tier 3: Choosing One's Path. From the center there are eight paths bridging the wall. The surface of each path is inscribed with certain images for the entire 100-foot walk, and each is geared toward a particular character class, which one character of that class may walk down safely. The path of shields (Sh) can be walked by a paladin. The paths of altars (Al) and prayer beads (Pb) can be walked by clerics or druids, but each by only one character. The paths of staves (St) and wands (Wa) can be walked by mages, but again, each by only one character. The path of swords (Sw) can be walked by a warrior. The path of keys (Ke) can be walked by a thief or assassin. And the path of arrows (Ar) can be walked by a barbarian or ranger. Walking along a path that belongs to another class, or a path that has already been used by a member of the appropriate class, ages the character 10-40 years when he or she reaches the end. Returning to the center will reverse the aging process but cost the character 1 level of experience for every 10 years to be gained back.

Only when everyone has walked at least one path (for better or worse), and only when there is no more than a single person standing at the end of each path, will the party be teleported up to tier 4. (If there are more than eight characters in the party, the extras will be left behind.)

Tier 4: Inversions. The characters appear on one of the eight ledges depending on where they ascended from tier 3. Each character is confronted by, and must kill, a chaotic evil version of him or herself. The shade has 1/4 of the character's hit points, and opposite spells and magic items where applicable (i.e. blasphemy instead of holy word), and will vaporize into nothingness after 20 rounds, but other than that is exactly the same.

Tier 5: Forest of Repulsion. The characters appear on a six-foot wide ledge running 360 degrees around the wall of the tier. They are in the positions they were on the tier before, but because of the ledge they can get to each other easy enough. Out in the center of the tier lies a floating island with a rotting, hideously smelling forest. An anzu demon (AC -5, HD 16, hp 106, # of attacks/round 7, damage/attack 1-8+ poison breath/1-6/1-6/1-6/1-6/1-8/1-8; at will: telepathy 100-feet, darkness 15-foot radius, detect invisibility, telekinesis 6000 gp weight) lurks in the trees spying on the party the instant they appear. If one of the player characters was transformed into an anzu in room (5) of the temple depths, and if it fled through through the mirror gate, this anzu will be that player character, its face bearing a distorted resemblance.

Amidst the rotting vegetation on the island is a species of plant with a reddish purple hue. 40 of these plants are sporadically placed across the forest; one will be encountered about every 3 square feet. Each plant sprays a stream of acid equivalent to acid arrow from a 12th level mage spell and has 12 hp. At some point the anzu demon will drop out of the trees and attack (surprise attack on a roll of 1-4 on d6).

At F, there is a clearcut with seven floating crystalline spheres, with writing in the common tongue on each: (1) Ar (2) Beg (3) Sisi (4) Siriso (5) Rekes (6) Suroh (7) Pepa. These are names of Egyptian gods or goddesses spelled backwards: Ra, Geb, Isis, Osiris, Seker, Horus, Apep. All of them must be smashed (in any order) except for the "Pepa" sphere. Apep is part of the Egyptian pantheon but not an actual god, rather an evil serpent and deadly enemy of the gods, one whom Pazuzu rather admires for his intense hatred of Osiris (see Deities & Demigods, p 50). Three rounds after the "Pepa" sphere is the only one left intact, a stairwell ascending to the next tier materializes at the south-pole at S, and the characters are instantly teleported onto the ledge next to it.

Tier 6: A Waspy Dilemma. As on the tier below, there is a six-foot wide ledge running 360 degrees around the wall of this tier. The characters ascend the stairwell at S. Two giant wasps lurk on floating islands: a gross bloated yellow jacket at X and a sickening white-faced hornet at Y. Each is about 20 feet long, slow and sluggish looking, buzzing angrily. Against the wall at A are two hideous statues, grotesque mockeries of the god Osiris. A voice explains out of nowhere: "Take this, Osirans: One wasp will carry you safely to the next tier; the other will carry you to death. There are two demons against the wall, and they each know which wasp will transport you safely. One demon tells the truth; the other lies. You may ask one demon one question. When you are ready to pick your wasp, call out either 'yellow' or 'white' and it will come to you." The yellow jacket is the safe ticket upwards; the white-faced hornet, if mounted, will begin carrying the party upwards, then near the top ledge will suddenly upend itself and drop everyone down about 700 feet down to the first tier. How to determine the right wasp with a single question?

The solution is to ask either demon what his fellow demon would say. Something like: "If I were to ask your fellow demon which wasp would carry us to the next tier, what would he say?" If the truthteller is being asked, he will truthfully tell the party that the other demon (the liar) would indicate something false. If the liar is being asked, he will falsely tell the party that the other demon (the truthteller) would indicate something false. So the false answer (the white-faced hornet) is guaranteed, regardless which demon is the truthteller and which is the liar.

Now, if the players are feeling their oats because they know the solution, they're in a for a rude surprise. The problem is that the statues against the wall aren't really demons. They are animated statues that perhaps look demonic -- hideously made over in mockery of Osiris, but not demons, and both are liars. So asking either statue the question "If I were to ask your fellow demon which wasp would carry us to the next tier, what would he say?", will actually yield a truthful answer: either liar will falsely tell the party that the other "demon" (also a liar) would indicate something true. So the true answer (the yellow jacket) is what will be guaranteed by dealing with the statues, opposite the characters' expectations of a false answer.

There are two demons against the wall, as the voice said, 15 feet over at point B, but they are invisible. Detect invisibility or dispel magic will show them. (True seeing will do so as well, but will strike the caster insane; see Spells on Torrermor in the appendix.) They are glabrezus, and as the voice promised, one is a truthteller, the other a liar. Of course, it's completely natural to assume the hideous looking statues are the demons the voice is referring to... An unfair shaft, but perfectly "reasonable" in the context of Pazuzu's Amusement.

Remember that clerical divination type spells don't work on Torremor (unless the cleric worships a deity who resides on the Abyss, obviously not the case). A mage's contact other plane will work fine, and can be used to determine which wasp is which, but there is the 50% chance that the caster will be struck insane (see Spells on Torremor in the appendix).

Note: Either wasp will return to its island after transporting the characters to the next level or dumping them down to tier 1. If for whatever reason any characters remained behind on the ledge to see what would happen to their colleagues, either wasp can be summoned again, for as many times as the insects remain alive. Note that if any thief attempts to scale the walls of this tier, or if any mage attempts spider climbing, or if anyone gets cute ideas with ropes/grappling hooks/iron spikes -- then both wasps will immediately attack the offenders. Each wasp: AC 4, HD 8, hp 38, 41, # Attacks 2/round, Damage/Attack 1-12 (bite), 1-4 (sting + poison). Failure to save against the poison of the sting results in paralysis, with death coming in 1-4 hours; delay poison will triple the period of waiting, and remove poison will cure as always. If the wasps are killed, then the characters had better have some good ideas involving scaling, roping, or spider climbing after all.

Tier 7: Prismatic Beams. As on tiers 5 and 6, there is a six-foot wide ledge running 360 degrees around the wall of this tier. Spanning the tier are eight solid prismatic beams. The characters are deposited by the yellow jacket at point X, which then leaves. The DM must roll 1d8 for every character, who will turn a color based on that roll: 1=red, 2=orange, 3=yellow, 4=green, 5=blue, 6=indigo, 7=violet, 8=black. The beams are solid enough to walk on, but they will trigger their prismatic effects (per prismatic sphere) on any different-colored character at the midpoints. I.e. The red beam will inflict 10 hp of damage, the orange beam 20 hp of damage, the yellow beam 40 hp of damage, the green beam require a save vs. poison or die, the blue beam a save vs. petrification or turn to stone, the indigo beam a save vs. spells to avoid insanity, and the violet beam a save vs. spells to avoid being banished to a random plane of the Abyss. The black beam requires a save vs. death magic or the character will become chaotic evil in alignment. Anyone may walk along his or her color safely to reach the center.

It may not be obvious, however, which beams each character should walk on, because upon entering, each character will be colorblinded unless a save vs. spells at -4 is made. Those colorblinded will see people and beams as follows: red and green and black will look black, yellow and blue will look grey, orange and indigo and violet will look white.Remove blindness will cure one individual. True seeing will remove the effect too, but also strike the person with insanity (see the Spells on Torremor in the appendix).

Each person who reaches the center (for better or worse) will be teleported up to tier 8 individually.

Tier 8: Weird. The characters appear individually on a floating island with heavy mist immediately surrounding. A weird spell is programmed to step out of the mist: each character is confronted by a phantasmal killer representing his/her most terrifying nightmare, and must save or die. Successful saves result in 3d6 damage. When all phantasmal killers have had their say, the mist clears, and the characters will notice an actual stone ceiling 100 feet up instead of the usual fog. A massive pillar also appears in the middle of the island with stairs ascending 70 feet to a 10-foot diameter platform. When at least one person is standing on this platform and utters the words "Blinding Claw", gravity is suddenly reversed (per the spell), and all characters on the platform fall 30 feet to the ceiling (3d6 damage). Should any characters remain below on the island, they fall a whopping 100 feet to the ceiling, which amounts technically to 10d6 damage, but I don't care what anyone's hit point score is: no one survives a 100-foot fall to a stone surface. There is secret door on the ceiling which leads to the the ninth tier.

Tier 9: Tier of Gems. A tier with an actual floor (not seen since tier 1), this is the final level in the Amusement. The walls glitter with gems of every size and color welded into it, and it's virtually impossible to remove any of them. Upon arrival, the curses from the hobbit's three gems on tier 2 kick in. One character will see everything upside down and suffer -4 penalties on to hit and dexterity rolls; another character will be able to speak only gibberish; and a third character will hear silence but not sound and so will suffer the effects of a confusion spell on top of being effectively deafened. The easiest way to remove each curse is by crushing each of the three gems (easily accomplished with a +1 or better weapon), though it probably won't be apparent that these gems are the source of the curses, unless players deduce that the three characters effected are the three given the gems from the hobbit.

Each curse can also be removed by remove curse, restoration (lesser or greater). A miracle will remove all three curses at once. All three characters putting their hands on the Rod of Demonic Woe for the mass greater restoration effect will be cured as well. A wish will remove all three curses at once, but it will also slam the wisher with internal fire, the 9th level wu-jen spell from Oriental Adventures: "This spell creates a deadly raging heat within the bowels of the victim, causing him/her to be consumed by flame from inside. Death occurs instantly, There is no saving throw." If by this point the players haven't smartened up to the perils of using wishes in Pazuzu's domains, then the character pretty much deserves to die.

Cathedral: The Blinding Claw

This vast cavern is Pazuzu's throne hall, completely set in air and tailored to natural fliers. There are no floating islands, no beams, no platforms. The Blinding Claw hangs suspended over 900+ feet of pure air, and Pazuzu will be sitting on it, either alone or surrounded by his elite horde depending on which of the following two scenarios apply:

Scenario A: The characters did not free Lamashtu

Pazuzu will be attended by his elite horde: the primal anzu, three balors, eight babaus, twelve chasmes, and twenty vrocks. That's not a pretty picture, and without The Rod of Demonic Woe, or Pazuzu's true name, the characters can count on going down fast, and take pride in the fact that they made it this far.

If they obtained the Rod of Demonic Woe from Hafsah, then they stand a chance. In the hands of a cleric or paladin, the rod can be used to invoke absolute banishment to all demons in a 100-foot radius, for 6 turns (no save). So Pazuzu's entire horde will be banished like him, leaving the throne by itself and characters one hour to destroy it, if they can figure out a way to reach it. The rod, of course, will allow them to reach it by a bridge (its pass hostile element function). Without the rod, at the very least, spells can be cast from the ledge of the ninth tier, and missile weapons (magical) can also be fired against it.

If the party obtained Pazuzu's true name, but broke their promise and left Lamashtu caged, then they have another weapon over the demon lord, but which will produce calamitous results if invoked in the presence of his horde. Upon hearing his true name, the primal anzu and balors will also invoke it, and a chaotic mutiny will ensue. Pazuzu will of course vanish, leaving four major demons (the anzu and three balors) who will eventually duke it out for power, but not before teaming up against the party. In which case the characters better have the rod, or they're probably finished.

Scenario B: The characters freed Lamashtu.

Pazuzu will be alone and extremely wary. He will also be furious, suspecting the truth: that Lamashtu was freed at the cost of his true name. The absolute last thing he wants is for any other demon to hear his name and gain power over him (the dream of any anzu or balor) and become the new lord of Torremor. But the characters had best invoke his name right away. As soon as they come to the edge of the floor on tier 9, he will fly (on his throne) to a 60-foot distance from the party so he can use his detect thoughts ability. On the third round, the spell will pick up his name from the surface thoughts of the characters (if they haven't invoked it already), and he will instantly vanish. If, on the other hand, the party has somehow taken steps to protect their thoughts with anti-scrying, non-detection, or mindblank spells, then he will assume by the third round that they simply don't know his name and he was being paranoid for nothing. But that's not good, because in this case he will summon his demon horde, which will arrive by his side in the next round. If they invoke his name after the arrival of the horde, then the chaotic mutiny described in the first scenario will ensue. At this point, only the Rod of Demonic Woe will likely save them, if they have it.

If the characters invoke Pazuzu's true name immediately as they should, he isn't messing around. After the characters get in one round of actions/attacks, he's gone. In that first round before he can flee, a cleric or paladin will hopefully use the power of command to order him to bring the Blinding Claw onto the solid floor of the ninth tier (so they can try to destroy it in easy reach) but especially to forbid him to take the throne with him if he flees.

If the characters obtained the Rod of Demonic Woe on top of the scenario of liberating Lamashtu by getting Pazuzu's name, then so much the better. They have an added blanket of security.

Scenario C: The characters invoke a holy word by Osiris' faithfulness

There is a third line of defense to fall back on, in the absence of the rod or Pazuzu's true name, but the consequences are a bit drastic. If the characters have read The Fidelity of Osiris from the chapel library, and if they have it with them, a cleric can use the revised prayers to modify a holy word (assuming, of course, that he has the spell to begin with and hasn't used it up yet). A holy word cast on an outer plane usually doesn't work at all (see Spells on Torrermor in the appendix). But if the holy word is invoked by the new-wave rituals -- that is, by Osiris' faithfulness instead of by the cleric's faith -- it delivers a devastating miracle: Pazuzu and his horde (all in a 200-foot radius) must save vs. spells at -6 or irrevocably die, permanently (51-150 hp of damage if save). That's pretty sweet, but unfortunately, the backlash of power ages the cleric 20 years and costs 6 experience levels (no save), neither of which can be restored lest one arouse Osiris' anger and require an atonement spell. This is the sacrifice of a "faithlessly unshielded" cleric who channels Osiris' amazing grace on an outer plane. On top of this, a vortex is ripped through time and space, and all characters, including the cleric (and also any demons remaining alive) must save (no penalty) or get sucked into the vortex and spat out in a completely random outer plane, with a 33% chance of instant death for materializing in a hostile or lethal environment. (No one goes to the same place.) To any who remain alive at this point, good luck from there.

Destroying the Blinding Claw

The Blinding Claw is treated as having an armor class of -4 and 160 hit points. Only magic weapons and spells do it damage. It regenerates 2 hp/round. If it is reduced to 0 hp or less, and a dispel magic or dispel evil or dispel chaos is cast on it before it can regenerate to above 0 hit points, it is destroyed for good. Being touched by The Rod of Demonic Woe when it has 0 hit points or less is effectively the same as having any of the dispels cast on it.

Conclusion

If a cleric had the balls to cast a holy word in its subjective-genitive slant, there's a good chance that Pazuzu himself is dead -- that the party has actually succeeded in killing a demon lord on his home plane. This means he's dead for good, an incredible accomplishment which should earn the characters a complete level advancement in itself, aside from the half-levels gained from any accomplishments listed below. There's also a good chance they have destroyed themselves under this scenario, and the cleric will hardly be compensated for the experience levels torpedoed by casting the spell. But the destruction of Pazuzu is a glorious deed regardless of the characters' fates.

DM's should award experience points as they deem appropriate, but each of the following accomplishments should earn the characters a half level advancement:

* successfully exorcising and/or healing Syndi
* learning Pazuzu's true name
* obtaining the Rod of Demonic Woe
* getting through the gate to Torremor without killing the girl trapped in the door
* making it to the 9th tier in the Lord's Rook
* destroying the Blinding Claw

APPENDIX

Rules of Demonic Possession

Most of what follows is adapted from Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss, pp 21-24.

(A) The Physical and Incorporeal Forms

A demon with at least 4 hit dice may shuck its physical form to take on an incorporeal form. In this case, the physical body lies senseless, as if in suspended animation -- not requiring food or air, though of course direct damage can kill it. The incorporeal form dies if the physical form dies, and a demon will be instantly aware if something bad is happening to his physical body, and can return to it in one round. A successful dispel magic cast on an empty body will return the soul to it immediately. A demon can only move about in its incorporeal state on the plane where its body lies in stasis plus the astral or ethereal planes. (So, for instance, a demon using this ability while its body is on the Abyss cannot possess a creature on the Prime Material Plane.) A demon in incorporeal form is visible, has normal hit point, armor class, and saving throw bonuses, but has no access to supernatural/spell-like abilities, and can only attack by means of normal melee touch attacks (with no strength bonuses). If the incorporeal form is destroyed, the physical body remains in a coma-like state for a week while its incorporeal essence reforms.

(B) Possession

* A demon in incorporeal form may attempt to possess another creature. It requires a touch and exertion of will, and if the target fails to save versus petrification, he/she/it is possessed. A protection from evil (or similar) spell automatically protects against possession. A successful save means the demon may not attempt to possess that creature again for 24 hours.

* Once in possession of another creature, the demon essentially becomes part of the victim, experiencing everything its host is through sight, hearing, taste, smell, feeling, etc. It has immediate access to all of the victim's current thoughts, as though using a detect thoughts spell, and can probe memories as well (though the victim gets a save against memory probing). Physical harm to the victim does not harm the demon in any way. Killing the victim forces the demon back to its physical body.

* A demon in possession of another creature can take on any of the following six roles:

(1) Lurker. The demon attempts to hide its presence within the possessed creature so that it can pass through a magic circle against evil, enter a forbiddence-warded church, or escape detection by detect evil or detect chaos spells or effects. To hide its presence and become a lurker, the demon must make a successful intelligence check, with a -1 penalty for every level of difference between it and the victim if the victim's is higher.

(2) Mutterer. The demon plants barely perceived whispers or emotions in the victim's mind in an attempt to influence his or her actions. The victim is allowed a save, and if unsuccessful, he or she must either do as the demon suggests (30%) or spend a round befuddled, as if under a confusion spell (70%). Victims plagued by mutterers are often exhausted from sleep-deprivation, develop tics, and can even be driven insane over extended periods of time.

(3) Ally. The victim is aware of the demon and is a willing host, doing everything the demon wants it to do. He or she is granted a +4 profane bonus to hit and damage and saving throws, and also to one of his or her six ability scores. The demon and victim communicate telepathically with each other. Should the victim at any point become unwilling, the demon can immediately remove the profane bonus and take on the role of an enemy or (even worse) controller.

(4) Enemy. Opposite of ally, the demon takes on this role usually after failing to become a controller or upon becoming angry at a victim who failed to follow directives when acting as an ally. The victim is cursed with a -4 profane penalty instead of bonus (no save), and the demon can remove the penalty after working out any telepathic reconciliations and wishes to revert to an ally.

(5) Controller. The most feared form of possession: the demon completely dominates the victim against his or her will. A successful save means that the victim has resisted control, but the demon may try again the next round, and keep trying on subsequent rounds. The saving throw is vs. petrification, and it is made at +/-1 for every level of difference between the demon and victim, but also at +1 for every round of successful saving. If and when the control is successful, the demon can retreat into lurker mode (or any of the previous four roles) and back to controller at will, with the victim getting no more saves.

(6) Transformer. The demon uses the victim to gain a foothold on the Prime Material Plane, transforming the creature it possesses into its own demonic shape. Transformation takes at least four days, one day for each quarter of the victim's body. The victim gets a save for each time a quarter-transformation is attempted (at +1 for a Con score of 13-15, +2 for a Con score of 16-17, +3 for a Con score of 18-19, +4 for a Con score of 20+; -1 for a Con score of 6-8, -2 for a Con score of 4-5, -3 for a Con score of 2-3, -4 for a Con score of 1). Once the transformation is complete, the demon has essentially taken the victim's place and has access to all its normal powers and abilities. The victim is trapped within the demon and becomes effectively a lurker, and can neither communicate nor exercise any power.

Of course, a demon does not have to take on any of these six roles, but that's unusual. In Pazuzu's case, he almost always takes the role of a viciously tormenting controller, though occasionally uses the lurker and mutterer roles when it suits his purposes.

Rules of Exorcism

Some of what follows comes from Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss, p 26, except for the exorcise spell itself, which instead of following the lame 1st level spell described on p 92 of the same book, follows the vastly superior 4th level spell from the classic 1st edition Player's Handbook on p 48. Why this original version of the spell was discontinued I've no idea, but it's the one I will always use, and certainly the one to be followed in this module. I replicate it below with some modifications.

Exorcise

Level: 4
Casting Time: Up to nine turns (90 rounds)
Duration: Permanent
Saving Throw: None
Area of Effect: One creature or object

The spell of exorcism will negate possession of a creature or an object by any outside or supernatural force. This includes magic jar possession, demonic possession, special curses and even charms. The exorcise spell, once begun, cannot be interrupted, or else it is spoiled and useless, and the ritual must be started afresh with a new spell. The base chance for success is a completely random 1-100% for each turn (i.e. every 10 rounds). The ritual starts, and at the end of each turn the DM rolls percentiles, and if that base chance number, or less, is then rolled by the cleric, the spell is successful.

If the possessor is exceptionally powerful (20th level or above, a demon lord like Pazuzu, etc.), then the base chance of success is modified by -40% for the first turn, -20% for the second and third turns, no modifiers for the fourth, fifth, and sixth turns, +20% for the seventh and eighth turns, and +40% for the ninth turn. Otherwise, in "standard" cases, the base chance is modified by -20% for the first turn, -10% for the second turn, no modifiers for the third, fourth and fifth turns, +10% for the sixth, +20% for the seventh, +30% for the eighth, and +40% for the ninth.

If the cleric uses any assistant clerics (who must naturally follow the same deity, and assist with additional holy symbols, water, praying, chanting, etc.), the base chance is modified by +5% per assistant. A religious artifact or relic can modify the chance of success by whatever figure the DM deems appropriate.

The modified chance shall in any case never be less than 10% and never greater than 90%. Once the modified chance is determined, a further adjustment of +2% or - 2% for each level of difference between the cleric and the possessor must be applied for the result chance. The result chance can never be less than 5% and never greater than 95%.

If by the end of the ninth turn the exorcism has still failed, the ritual must be closed and another exorcise spell attempted after a "rest" period of at least another nine turns. Material components for this spell are the holy object of the cleric and holy water (or unholy, in the case of evil clerics, with respect to object and water). Only one exorcise spell can be cast on one victim at a time, so regardless how many assistants know the spell, only one priest can be the actual exorcist at a given time.

While exorcise is much more arduous and time consuming than dispel evil, dispel chaos, dismissal, or banishment, it's the duration of this spell that shows its might, for it is final and absolute. Once someone (or something) has been exorcised, he, she, or it can never be possessed again by the same agent. The other four spells take only a round to cast, and a single saving throw determines the outcome immediately, but there's no guarantee the possessor won't simply try again when the duration of the spell is over (which is usually something like 1 round/level of the caster). And while protection from evil automatically protects one from possession/repossession attempts, that spell effect also lasts for only 1 round/level of the caster. These measures (dispels, dismissals, and banishments) are really no protection against demons who won't go away, short-term solutions at best when dealing with possession, especially relentless possession. Their applicability is geared more towards banishing creatures to "get them out of the way" temporarily so that a certain task can be completed.

New Wave Osiranism

Like another deity (Yeshua Ha'Mashiach) on an alternate Prime Material Plane, Osiris suffered death and mutilation at the hands of evil powers, and after a great struggle with these powers rose again, becoming king of the underworld and judge of the dead. After he died, through the power of birth (Isis), and under the authority and skill of a higher genius (Thoth), he rose again on the Prime Material Plane as the avenger Horus, his son, while remaining the god of the dead and the underworld on many outer planes (the Seven Heavens, for the most part, but linked to others as well, including lower planes where he suffered in death). Like Yeshua in the other universe, Osiris became the god that people strive to "become one with" in order to be saved. More than any other god in the Egyptian pantheon, he is salvifically dynamic. None of this is controversial among followers of Osiris. It's standard dogma.

More controversial are the implications of becoming one with Osiris and the relationship to faith. The traditional anthropomorphic view which emphasizes the importance of a believer's faith in Osiris, for all its reliance on divine aid, ultimately rests on mortal confidence. The deific view gives primacy to the faithfulness of Osiris, tapping into unbridled divinity, channeled through a believer to be sure, but unfiltered through the limitations of mortal faith.

Nowhere is this controversy more sharp than in the field of exorcism. Traditionalists insist that exorcism, unlike sacraments, cannot confer grace by the action itself; its efficacy depends on the exorcist's faith above all. A cleric who exorcises without strong faith risks disaster, for both himself and the possessed victim. In this light, one can imagine the perils of shifting the emphasis on faith away from the believer and onto the deity. The new-wave Osiran responds that a deity's fidelity is more reliable and mighty than the faith of mere mortals. The traditionalist retorts that it is "mere mortals" who do the dirty work on material planes; deities are heavily occupied on their own planes, and to impose on their unbridled power is risky and presumptuous. The new-wave practitioner counters that relying on oneself is in fact the ultimate presumption, indeed an insufferable hubris. And the debate goes on.

Clerical Abjurations: Exorcism

The new-wave version of the exorcism ritual invokes the faith-power of Osiris himself, though for a short duration. The result is that the base chance of success increases during the first four turns (basically canceling the penalties of the spell's early turns), though ultimately detrimental if the ritual needs to be extended into later turns. Even worse, it leaves the cleric naked, unable to make any saving throws at all (in every turn), as the cleric is left "faithlessly unshielded".

The modifiers for the base chance of success for the fidelity ritual are as follows: +40% for the first turn, +20% for the second and third turns, no modifiers for the fourth, fifth, and sixth turns, -20% for the seventh and eighth turns, and -40% for the ninth turn.

So this is how the two rituals compare against a demon lord like Pazuzu, based on the turn sequence alone:

	Faith Ritual:	Fidelity Ritual:
1st Turn:	-40%	no modifier
2nd Turn:	-20%	no modifier
3rd Turn:	-20%	no modifier
4th Turn:	no modifier	no modifier
5th Turn:	no modifier	no modifier
6th Turn:	no modifier	no modifier
7th Turn:	+20%	no modifier
8th Turn:	+20%	no modifier
9th Turn:	+40%	no modifier

Clerical Abjurations: Dispel Evil and Dispel Chaos

The new-wave versions of these spells are fairly straightforward. The creatures touched must save at -4, and the enchantments are dispelled at 4 levels higher than usual. On the other hand, instead of the cleric getting a +4 deflection bonus, he or she gets a -4 deflection bonus for being left "faithlessly unshielded". The duration of the spell is also half the normal (1 round/2 levels of the caster).

Clerical/Paladin Evocations: Holy Word and Holy Smite

The new-wave versions of these spells function exactly the same as the traditional versions when cast on the material plane. But when cast on an outer plane -- where the traditional versions don't work at all, lacking a direct conduit to one's deity -- the new versions sledgehammer with tremendous power, opening a miraculous conduit made possible by the mysteries involving Osiris' special travels throughout many of the outer planes soon after he was slain and resurrected.

* A holy word cast on an outer plane, by invoking the "fidelity of Osiris", requires any demons/devils/undead/etc. in five times the usual area of effect (5 x 40-foot radius = 200-foot radius) to save vs. spells at -5 or irrevocably die, permanently. Unfortunately, the backlash of power requires the cleric to save (though at no penalty) or also irrevocably die (no resurrections will work), and even if the save is made, the cleric will age 20 years and lose 6 experience levels, neither of which can be restored lest one arouse Osiris' anger and require an atonement spell. On top of this, a vortex is ripped through the hole of time and space, and everyone in the 200-foot radius, including the cleric and his friends (and also any outer plane beings remaining alive) must save again (no penalty) or get sucked into the vortex and spat out in a completely random outer plane, with a 33% chance of instant death for materializing in a hostile or lethal environment. This is the sacrifice of a "faithlessly unshielded" cleric who channels Osiris' amazing grace on an outer plane.

* A holy smite cast on an outer plane by invoking the "fidelity of Osiris" deals 1d20 points of damage per two caster levels (half damage if a save at -5 is made), in a 100-foot radius which can be projected at a range of 200 feet. It also causes each creature to be blinded for four rounds (two rounds if the save is made). It also unfortunately stuns the "faithless" caster for ten rounds (five rounds if a save is made).

The Blinding Claw

The Blinding Claw is a throne made of a roc's talon and studded with rubies and emeralds. It can either rest on the ground, or hang fixed in space unsupported in the air. It can support 10 tons of weight before falling to the ground. It gives Pazuzu astounding powers. Contrast his abilities with those of every other demon:

* Demons (including demon lords and princes) can only enter the Prime Material Plane when summoned, conjured, or by passing through a gate that leads to a specific place. Pazuzu can actually planeshift at will, to whatever plane he desires, and wherever on that plane he desires, while sitting on The Blinding Claw.

* Demons (including demon lords and princes) can only move about in their incorporeal state on the plane where their bodies lie in stasis. Pazuzu can move about in his incorporeal state on any plane if his body is seated on The Blinding Claw. In other words, his soul can effectively plane shift at will, while his body remains safely tucked away home on the Abyss.

* Demons (including demon lords and princes) are prisoners of their possessed victims to a significant extent. While they retain their demonic intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores, they adopt the strength, dexterity and constitution scores of their victims; Pazuzu retains all six of his demonic scores in a possessed victim while his body sits on The Blinding Claw.

* Demons (including demon lords and princes) cannot work their supernatural and spell-like abilities through possessed victims, but Pazuzu can through The Blinding Claw. In controller mode, he can summon locust swarms, lightning storms, and cast symbols of death and discord, heart-clench people, use his unnerving gaze and telekinetic abilities, etc. -- all while possessing the puniest child. This is a truly terrible power.

* The Blinding Claw reduces the base chance for a cleric's exorcism attempt by 20%, unless the cleric is lawful good.

* The Blinding Claw prevents any quick-and-dirty exorcism attempts through the use of powerful spells like miracle and wish. Only the rite of exorcism, and the spell itself, cast by a cleric or paladin, can hope to exorcise his incorporeal form while his body rests on The Blinding Claw.

* The Blinding Claw allows Pazuzu to mindrape a possessed victim (one attempt/day). See Book of Vile Darkness, p 99, for this hideous 9th-level spell. Basically Pazuzu can erase or add memories to his victim which will remain permanent even after he leaves his victim; and he can leave his victim insane or seemingly unaffected, without any memory of the alterations. He can even alter the victim's emotions, opinions, and alignment. The victim is allowed a save vs. spells.

* The Blinding Claw allows Pazuzu to cast the following at will, whether in physical form, or at a distance through a possessed victim while his body sits on the throne: blindness, clairvoyance, clairaudience, discern lies, prying eyes, true seeing, reverse gravity.

In other words, The Blinding Claw gives Pazuzu ridiculously easy access to the Prime Material Plane and makes him an unbearable foe to confront, whether in his true form or through a possessed victim. And because he delights in pointless malice -- holding in contempt the Abyssal wars that occupy the attention of his fellow demon lords -- nothing gives him greater pleasure than corrupting innocent victims through obscene possession attacks, breaking their souls, and leaving their families terrorized, angry, and helpless. Ironically, though he has so much lethal power at his disposal through the Blinding Claw, he will kill only some people (typically relatives or friends of the possessed), and will milk as much terror out of everyone else before finally mindraping his victim, sometimes leaving him/her insane, sometimes with an altered alignment, other times sane but with horrible fake memories which the victim believes real. He always leaves alive at least some, possibly many, family and community members so they can carry scars with them for the rest of their lives. And he adores toying with clerics (especially exorcists) at the low to mid-levels. Powerful high-level clerics are another story: these he won't hesitate to destroy with little fanfare.

The Rod of Demonic Woe

This mighty artifact is usable only by a cleric or paladin of lawful good alignment of at least 9th level.

-- protection from demons: constantly protects the wielder from demons in a 10-foot radius (Prime Material Plane only); at will
-- dispel demons: banishes all demons (no save) in a 100-foot radius to their home plane; twice/day
-- absolute banishment: banishes all demons (no save) in a 100-foot radius from their home plane to the astral plane for 20 rounds (twice/day)
-- mass greater restoration: effects all creatures placing their hands on the rod (twice/day)
-- pass hostile element: creates a stone bridge, or parts water, or performs passwall, or shields against fire; the bridge/dry land/tunnel/fire shield is 100 feet long and 10-feet wide (twice/day)

Invoking a Demon's True Name

If a cleric or paladin (of any level, any alignment) invokes a demon's true name, the demon had best flee at first opportunity. The cleric or paladin can constantly command the demon per a suggestion spell, every round, short of demanding suicidal and other blatantly outrageous self-harming behavior. The demon never gets a saving throw for the commands, though it is allowed a save if it wants to simply flee. The save is made at -5 at the end of the first round, and -5 thereafter at the end of every tenth round. Again, this save does not allow it to circumvent any orders already given; it only permits flight to prevent further orders. If the demon is attacked at any time, however, or commanded in a blatantly outrageous way, it can automatically flee. A fleeing demon is as if dispelled (if encountered on the Prime Material Plane) or turned (if encountered on its home plane, the Abyss).

Any spellcaster (whether cleric, druid, mage) who invokes a demon's true name, and prefers to do battle with the demon, will cast spells against it at double effect in all ways (as if double level, double duration, double area of effect, double damage, etc.). Demons being attacked in any way, of course, can automatically flee whenever they want, so if one wants to slay a demon by using its true name, other binding spells will be necessary.

Anyone, of any class, who invokes a demon's true name cannot be harmed by the demon in any way.

In other words, a demon's true name gives one near complete dominance over the demon.

Spells on Torremor

Pazuzu jealously guards to rights to his air-space and to travel in general on Torremor. Natural flying, demonic teleporting and telekinesis all work fine, but spells cast by non-demons to the effect of fly, feather fall, levitate, teleport, telekinesis, etc. will not work, not even via wishes and miracles. Blink and vanish won't work either, for the added reason that they require contact with the ethereal plane.

In a similar vein, non-demonic polymorphing, shapechanging, gaseous form, wind walk, etc. do not work. (Polymorph object works fine.)

As on any level of the Abyss, clerical abjuration spells like protection from chaos/evil, detect chaos/evil, dispel chaos/evil, dismissal, banishment, exorcise, holy aura etc. do not work against natives of the Abyss. (They do work against natives of other planes, like the Nine Hells, Hades, Olympus, though that won't be of any help in the Lord's Rook.)

As on any level of the Abyss, clerical evocations like holy word and holy smite will not work, as there is no direct conduit to one's deity. [Though note: the new-wave Osiran versions of these spells not only work, they work devastating results. See the New Wave Osiranism section of the Appendix.]

Clerics and druids will not be able to regain their spells while on Torremor since they are cut off from their deity. Commune and divination type spells obviously do not work. Contact other plane will work for mages, but because Torremor is so "buried" at the 503rd level, any plane contacted should be treated as "9 or more removed", which means of course there is a 50% chance the mage will go insane.

Raise dead and resurrection spells are hazardous to cast, as there is a 40% chance (for raise dead) and 20% chance (for resurrection) that the character will come back as either a vrock (70%) or chasme (30%). Regenerate is also hazardous, with a 60% chance of a body part growing back improperly. Reincarnation will automatically return the character in the form of some chaotic evil humanoid (bugbear, gnoll, etc). Other heal, cure, and restoration spells will work fine.

Gods help the fool who casts true seeing. The reality of incarnate chaos and evil is impossible for prime material mortals to withstand, and the caster will be struck insane unless a save vs. spells is made.

Spells requiring contact with the astral or ethereal planes obviously do not work.

Those are the essentials to understand for spell alterations on Torremor. DM's can use discretion when it comes to other questionable spells.

Constitution Check for Raise Dead/Resurrection Survival

I take the old-fashioned view of 1st edition AD&D that these survival percentages are absolute. If high level clerics can raise the dead and resurrect people on a daily basis, there has to be a chance that the body will not survive the ordeal, and there has to be a limit as to the number of times the body can bear the ordeal. (Otherwise death is trivial.) A character's constitution score determines both. The following percentages next to constitution scores are the chances a character has of being successfully raised from the dead or resurrected by a cleric. The score of the percentile dice must be equal to or less than the number shown on the table, or the character fails to be revivified and is completely and totally dead forever. On top of this, the character can never be raised from the dead/resurrected a total number of times in excess of his or her constitution score. (The pre-generated characters at the end of this module include in their stats how many times they've been raised/resurrected before starting this adventure.)

1 -- 30%
2 -- 35%
3 -- 40%
4 -- 45%
5 -- 50%
6 -- 55%
7 -- 60%
8 -- 65%
9 -- 70%
10 -- 75%
11 -- 80%
12 -- 82%
13 -- 84%
14 -- 86%
15 -- 88%
16 -- 90%
17 -- 92%
18 -- 94%
19 -- 96%
20 -- 98%

Demons and NPCs

Pazuzu. The following mediates between the 1st edition Pazuzu of Monster Manual II, p 41, and the latter-day Pazuzu of Dragon Magazine, March '05, #329, pp 57-61.

Pazuzu is the one of the oldest demons in existence, king of the winds, who destroys crops through pestilence and souls through possession. Unlike his fellow demon lords (Demogorgon, Orcus, Graz'zt, Dagon, etc.) he has little interest in the wars and political upheavals that rock the Abyss, preferring instead to focus on the Prime Material Plane where he can ruin mortals. "Innocence, purity, and honesty are sweet enough nectars to harvest. Pazuzu seeks out the noble paladin, the laughing child, and the toiling honest peasant. They are his vineyard. He takes from them what makes them strong, and excretes cruelty back into their shells. Corruption of the spirit is Pazuzu's finest addiction." (Dragon Magazine, #329, March '05, p 60).

Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Str 20, Int 21, Wis 18, Dex 22, Con 24, Cha 22
Hit Dice: 28 (364 hit points)
Armor Class: -9 (+2 or better weapon needed to hit)
# Attacks/Round: 4 (with sword +4 of anarchic speed); 2 (with other weapons); 3 (with talons and bite)
Damage/Round: 1d8+8, +1d6 extra damage against lawful beings, (x4) (with sword of anarchic speed); 1d6+4 (x2) + 1d8 (with talons and bite)

Spell-Like Abilities:

At Will -- blasphemy, call lightning storm, control weather, deeper darkness, desecrate, detect good, detect law, detect thoughts, dispel magic, flesh to stone, fly, locust swarm, statue, stinking cloud, telekinesis, teleport, tongues, unhallow, unholy aura, unnerving gaze

1x/day -- abyssal ant swarm, acid fog, heartclench, incendiary cloud, shapechange, symbol of death, symbol of discord, symbol of fear, wish

Like all demons, Pazuzu can move from the Abyss to Tarterus or Pandemonium, or roam the Astral Plane. But (without the Blinding Claw), he cannot enter the Prime Material Plane without such aid like conjuration, name speaking, or a gate (per Monster Manual, 1st edition, p 16). If he does get to the Prime Material Plane via one of these methods, however, he can easily return to the Abyss via the Astral Plane. Of course, with The Blinding Claw, he can plane shift (himself or his incorporeal form) wherever he wants, whenever he wants, but that's not his natural ability.

Lamashtu. Neither TSR nor WotC ever came up with stats for this demon-bitch, despite referring to her so often. This is what I came up with.

Lamashtu is the daughter of the Babylonian sky god Anu, a malevolent demon who menaces women during childbirth and corrupts pregnancies. Breastfeeding infants are her favorite prey, whom she kidnaps to suck their blood and eat their bones. She was Pazuzu's consort until she betrayed him deeply, and he tore out her eyes and imprisoned her.

Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Str 19, Int 24, Wis 15, Dex 20, Con 21, Cha 22
Hit Dice: 19 (228 hit points)
Armor Class: -4 (+1 or better weapon needed to hit)
# Attacks/Round: 2 (with most weapons); 3 (with talons and bite)
Damage/Round: 1d6+4 (x2) + 1d6 (with talons and bite)

Spell-Like Abilities:

At Will -- corrupt pregnancy, deeper darkness, detect good, detect law, detect thoughts, dispel magic, plague of nightmares, shriveling (4d12 or half damage), telekinesis, teleport, tongues, unholy aura, wrack

1x/day -- demonic impregnation, despoil, gutwrench, shapechange, stillbirth, symbol of hopelessness, symbol of insanity, symbol of pain

Like all demons, Lamashtu can move from the Abyss to Tarterus or Pandemonium, or roam the Astral Plane, though cannot enter the Prime Material Plane without such aid like conjuration, name speaking, or a gate (per Monster Manual, 1st edition, p 16). From the Prime Material Plane, however, she can easily return to the Abyss via the Astral Plane.

Lamashtu appears in one of two forms: (1) her true form, a jackal-headed woman, heavily pregnant, with feathered wings, a snake's tail, and taloned feet; (2) a sensuous woman with taloned hair and a scarred face, dressed in black.

Weeping Demon. Based on the weeping angels from Steven Moffat's Doctor Who stories, weeping demons are stone-like statues resembling gargoyle-like winged women when observed. No one knows what they look when not observed, only that they move extremely fast and are among the nastiest creatures spawned in the universe.

Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Hit Dice: 9d8 + Constitution bonus
Armor Class: 0 (statue), special (mobile)
# Attacks/Round: 1
Damage/Round: special

When weeping demons attack in droves, they are as dangerous to themselves as to others, for if they see each other they will be locked in frozen statue-form forever. Hence they cover their eyes with their hands and arms as best they can as to avoid each others' gazes (and look like they're weeping). For this reason, unlike the Doctor Who weeping angels, weeping demons are almost always solitary figures, banding together only under extreme circumstances.

The touch of a weeping demon banishes a victim back in time, and there is no saving throw. Every weeping demon has a fixed time potential based on its constitution score (see below), which is never less than 9. Thus, for instance, a demon with a constitution of 15 may have a time potential of 47 years, 48 years, 49 years, 50 years, or 51 years; but whichever it is, it's always the same time period for that demon. Weeping demons essentially feed on the potential energy of their victims' "stolen moments", as it were, killing them "politely" in the present by sending them back to die in the past by growing old naturally. In addition to the forced time travel, the touch of a demon displaces the victim a random distance of 1000-4000 feet.

Casting stone to flesh on a demon's frozen form is pointless, for the fleshed demon will instantly turn to stone again in anyone's eyesight, spellcaster's or otherwise. Spells like transmute rock to mud and repel stone are completely worthless, since the demon's aspect isn't natural stone. Dispel evil, dispel chaos, dismissal, or banishment will all function normally if cast on the frozen form, but are worthless if the demon is unobserved. Blunt magic weapons of +1 or greater can be used to kill the demon in its frozen form, as can sharp magic weapons of +3 or greater.

Attacking a demon in its mobile form (i.e. the demon is unobserved by any living creature; attackers are fighting in the dark, or blinded, etc.) is pretty futile, but can be attempted. A magic weapon (+1 or greater) is needed to inflict damage, but because of the demon's impossibly fast movement (10 feet/second) on top of effective invisibility, only a natural roll of 20 will strike. A successful hit, however, does triple damage, since the mobile form is extremely weak and vulnerable.

Insofar as how to get back to one's original time, greater restoration will restore the potential energy to one banished victim and bring him/her back. Wish and miracle will do the trick for 1-3 banished victims.

Table: In addition to displacing a victim a random distance of 1000-4000 feet, the victim is sent back to a fixed point in time based on the demon's constitution score between 9-20.

9 – 21-24 yrs
10 – 25-28 yrs
11 – 29-32 yrs
12 – 33-36 yrs
13 – 37-41 yrs
14 – 42-46 yrs
15 – 47-51 yrs
16 – 52-56 yrs
17 – 57-62 yrs
18 – 63-68 yrs
19 – 69-74 yrs
20 – 75-80 yrs

Hafsah. The Osiran cleric presided over the Chapel of the Seal from its foundation 53 years ago to his death almost one year ago during his attempted exorcism of a young boy. If the characters are banished back in time 39 years by the weeping demon, and encounter Hafsah, he will be 35 years old and 7th level (when he died he was 73 and and 11th level). Hafsah is a sage on the obscure subject of weeping demons, and knows a lot about demonic lore in general. He has devoted his life to research on Pazuzu, the demon who torments Prime Material Plane victims for pure enjoyment.

Alignment: Lawful Good
Deity: Osiris
Str 9, Int 17, Wis 17, Dex 12, Con 13, Cha 15
Level: 7
Hit Points: 41
Armor Class: 10
# Attacks/Round:1
Damage/Round: 1-4 (staff)

Spells:

Orisons -- create water, cure minor wounds, detect magic, light, purify food & drink, read magic

1st Level -- detect secret doors (knowledge domain), bless water, comprehend languages, cure light wounds, detect evil, remove fear, sanctuary

2nd Level -- soften earth & stone (earth domain), augury, calm emotions, consecrate, enthrall, zone of truth

3rd Level -- stone shape (earth domain), cure serious wounds, find traps, magic circle against evil, remove disease

4th Level -- divination (knowledge domain), discern lies, exorcise, neutralize poison

Korus. Hafsah's assistant at the point in time (39 years ago) the characters could encounter him. He lives in the village, unlike Hafsah who resides in the church itself.

Alignment: Lawful Good
Deity: Osiris
Str 14, Int 12, Wis 15, Dex 13, Con 15, Cha 11
Level: 3
Hit Points: 19
Armor Class: 9
# Attacks/Round:1
Damage/Round: 1-6 (mace)

Spells:

Orisons -- create water, detect magic, detect poison, light, purify food & drink

1st Level -- longstrider (travel domain), bless water, command, detect evil

2nd Level -- spiritual weapon (war domain), cure moderate wounds, silence

Pre-Generated Characters

The following characters are given basic stats, spells, and magic items, but personalities and backgrounds should be fleshed out by the players, with perhaps some DM guidance, depending on the world this adventure is set in. With that in view, the deities can be changed to whatever desired, and the new-wave applications of spells and rituals applied to whatever faith-system one wishes to use. I use the Egyptian mythos from the 1st edition Deities & Demigods, as it's always been a favorite of mine (second only to the Norse, my very favorite, though chaotic-aligned viking types obviously aren't appropriate for this adventure). Osiris in particular is a perfect antithesis to Pazuzu. He is worshiped by the clerics and paladin, while "Osiris-friendly" deities, Horus, Ra, Isis, and Seker claim the allegiance of the other four characters.

1. Atsu (Lead Exorcist)

Sex: Male
Age: 68
Class: Cleric
Level: 18
Hit Points: 128
Armor Class: 3
# Attacks/Round: 1
Alignment: Lawful Good
Deity: Osiris
Str 9 Int 16 Wis 18 Dex 11 Con 14 Cha 17

Magic Items: flail +2, +4 against demons, healing potions (3 bottles) (each cures 1d20+5 hit points of damage)

Spells:

Orisons -- create water, detect poison, light (x3), mending, purify food & drink, read magic, virtue

1st Level -- protection from evil (good domain), bless, bless water, command, comprehend languages, detect chaos, detect evil, endure elements, remove fear

2nd Level -- calm emotions (law domain), augury, consecrate, delay poison, gentle repose, make whole, shield other, silence, zone of truth

3rd Level -- magic circle against evil (good domain), create food & water, invisibility purge, prayer, remove blindness/deafness, remove curse, remove disease, searing light, speak with dead

4th Level -- order's wrath (law domain), death ward, discern lies, exorcise (x2), restoration (x2), tongues

5th Level -- dispel evil (good domain), atonement, break enchantment, commune, greater command, hallow, raise dead, true seeing

6th Level -- hold monster (law domain), find the path, greater dispel magic, heal, heroes' feast, symbol of persuasion, undeath to death, word of recall

7th Level -- holy word (good domain), control weather, greater restoration, mass cure serious wounds, regenerate, repulsion, resurrection

8th Level -- shield of law (law domain), dimensional lock, discern location, holy aura (x2), mass cure critical wounds, spell immunity

9th Level -- summon (good) monster (IX) (good domain), divine wind, gate, implosion, miracle (x2)

2. Shalam

Sex: Male
Age: 44
Class: Cleric
Level: 14
Hit Points: 113
Armor Class: 4
# Attacks/Round: 1
Alignment: Lawful Good
Deity: Osiris
Str 16 Int 12 Wis 15 Dex 12 Con 17 Cha 14

Magic Items: mace of thundering (+3, on a natural roll of 20 delivers a "thunderclap" of sonic damage (3d6) in addition to the normal damage)

Spells:

Orisons -- cure minor wounds, create water, detect poison, light, purify food & drink, read magic, resistance

1st Level -- sanctuary (protection domain), bless, bless water, command, cure light wounds, protection from evil, remove fear

2nd Level -- aid (luck domain), augury, consecrate, cure moderate wounds, delay poison, find traps, zone of truth

3rd Level -- protection from lightning energy (protection domain), cure serious wounds, magic circle against evil, prayer, remove blindness/deafness, remove disease, remove curse

4th Level -- freedom of movement (luck domain), cure critical wounds, discern lies, divination, exorcise, restoration

5th Level -- spell resistance (protection domain), break enchantment, dispel evil, greater command, raise dead, true seeing

6th Level -- mislead (luck domain), blade barrier, greater dispel magic, heal, undeath to death

7th Level -- repulsion (protection domain), greater restoration, holy word, resurrection

8th Level -- moment of prescience (luck domain), fire storm, holy aura

3. Sheba

Sex: Female
Age: 32
Class: Paladin
Level: 16
Armor Class: -4
# Attacks/Round: 2
Hit Points: 162
Alignment: Lawful Good
Deity: Osiris
Str 14 Int 14 Wis 15 Dex 17 Con 16 Cha 17

Magic Items: holy avenger sword (+5, +10 against chaotic evil opponents, greater dispel magic 5' radius), platemail +2, shield +2

Special Abilities: detect evil (at will), lay on hands (32 hp of damage/day), immune to fear and disease, remove fear (3x/week), remove disease (3x/week)

4. Barak

Sex: Male
Age: 36
Class: Warrior
Level: 15
Hit Points: 151
Armor Class: 1
# Attacks/Round: 2
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Deity: Horus
Str 19 Int 9 Wis 11 Dex 15 Con 17 Cha 10

Magic Items: sword of vengeance (+1 against opponents who have struck the wielder once, +2 against opponents who have struck the wielder a twice... up to +10), rope of climbing (120 feet)

5. Kemse

Sex: Female
Age: 41
Class: Mage
Level: 17
Hit Points: 69
Armor Class: -3
# Attacks/Round: 1
Alignment: Neutral Good
Deity: Isis
Str 9 Int 17 Wis 14 Dex 17 Con 15 Cha 11

Magic Items: ring of armor class 0

Spells:

Cantrips -- detect magic, flare, message, open/close, read magic, touch of fatigue

1st Level -- animate rope, color spray, detect secret doors, hypnotism, identify, magic missile

2nd Level -- arcane lock, knock, levitate, mirror image, spider climb (x2)

3rd Level -- dispel magic, deep slumber, fly, invisibility sphere, nondetection, water breathing

4th Level -- black tentacles, charm monster, detect scrying, polymorph, scrying, stoneskin

5th Level -- dream, false vision, feeblemind, passwall (x2), telekinesis

6th Level -- anti-magic shield, chain lightning, disintegrate, greater dispel magic, legend lore, stone to flesh

7th Level -- finger of death, prismatic spray, project image (x2), spell turning

8th Level -- irresistible dance (x2), polymorph any object, scintillating pattern

9th Level -- wail of the banshee, wish (x2)

6. Yanzir

Sex: Male
Age: 55
Class: Mage
Level: 15
Hit Points: 64
Armor Class: 4
# Attacks/Round: 1
Alignment: Neutral Good
Deity: Ra
Str 13 Int 18 Wis 12 Dex 16 Con 13 Cha 15

Magic Items: pair of dancing daggers +2 (dance and fight whenever the wielder commands), ring of protection +4 (duo-dimension 3x/day), bag of holding

Spells:

Cantrips -- dancing lights, detect magic, flare, light, message, open/close, read magic

1st Level -- burning hands, detect secret doors, identify (x2), jump, magic missile, ventriloquism

2nd Level -- arcane lock, flaming sphere, hideous laughter, knock, mirror image, pyrotechnics, scorching ray

3rd Level -- blink, daylight, dispel magic, fireball (x4)

4th Level -- detect scrying, fire shield (x2), fire trap, remove curse, scrying, wall of fire

5th Level -- baleful polymorph, contact other plane (x2), hold monster, permanency, telekinesis, telepathic bond

6th Level -- disintegrate, greater dispel magic, mislead, repulsion, stone to flesh, true seeing

7th Level -- delayed blast fireball (x2), forecage, greater teleport, spell turning

8th Level 4-- iron body, mind blank, sunburst (x2)

7. Djibor

Sex: Male
Age: 40
Class: Thief
Level: 16
Hit Points: 96
Armor Class: 2
# Attacks/Round: 1
Alignment: Neutral Good
Deity: Seker
Str 13 Int 17 Wis 11 Dex 18 Con 15 Cha 13

Magic Items: sword of sharpness +3, leather armor +3

Thief Abilities -- pick pockets, open locks, find/remove traps, move silently, hide in shadows, climb walls