Sorting & Adapting Through The Free D20 Adventure Tower of the Elephant For Your Old School Sword & Sorcery Campaigns

"In the temple district of Arenjun, Zamora's notorious City of Thieves, stands a glittering tower said to house a fabulous jewel called the Heart of the Elephant. The city's thieves avoid the tower and the jewel, fearing its master, the sorcerer Yara, who is said to be 300 years old. The PCs, being brave or foolish (or both), have no such hesitations. They set out to steal the jewel from the wizard. Inside the tower, the PCs learn why the jewel is called the Heart of the Elephant and how it turns out to be their key to destroying Yara. The PCs should have little trouble getting directions to the Tower. At the same time, they hear rumors of Yara's dark powers, his incredible age, and how his power is drawn from the magical jewel. No unwanted visitor has ever returned from the tower."

 Venture in the footsteps of young Conan as he braves the terrors of the Tower of the Elephant in Arenjun, Zamora's City of Thieves!  Written by  Robert E.Hoaward is a classic Tower Of The Elephant, first appearing in in Weird Tales, March 1933. This is one of the most iconic of the original Howard Conan tales. It has a little bit of everything a dangerous adventure location, vile traps for would be thieves, barbarian wisdom, & much more. Castalia house has an excellent breakdown of the Robert Howard classic here.  Jason Vey threw down the gauntlet today saying that he'd be using his Free Grey Elf Original Dungeons & Dragon  Conan  rules to run the Free D20 HS4 The Lost Caverns of Acheron adventure. The truth of the matter is that I've already got a Sword & Sorcery  Castles & Crusades/Siege engine game already going.

This brings me to what I'd do with the Free Tower of the Elephant 20 adventure from the incredibly useful https://hyboria.xoth.net site, Tower of the Elephant:  adapted and edited by Wesley Connally. Written by Thulsa.  Now Tower of the Elephant is great for a mid level party of adventurers & has everything I would possibly need to run it straight outta the gate. Except I wouldn't be using it on Conan's Hyboria. Instead I'd set Tower of the Elephant on Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique. There are several reasons for this: 

1. The PC's have already visited Zothique & have had dealings with its inhabitants. There's a D20 Zothique pdf available for free.
2. Campaign ties between Zothique & my version of X2 Castle Amber By Tom Moldvay
3.  There's been expeditions to Zothique from my Amazing adventures game campaign over the last year. 
4. A renegade NPC magistar escaped to Zothique from my Dark Albion/Lion & Dragon adventures last year.
5. There's a lot more going on here then meets the eye for the player's PC's & its already at play. 

Yag-Kosha is a transcosmic being & they exist on a multiplicity of planes at the same time. That means that there's already a version of the Tower of the Elephant even whist there's one during the  the Thurian Age;" Long before the dawn of man, and before even the Thurian Age began on Earth, a conflict raged on the far-distant world of Yag. The noble and peaceful people retreated into exile across the stars, coming at last to Earth. Here they hid in the deep jungles, living simple lives, not interfering with the evolution and history of mankind. However, as time went by, more and more of the people died, and at last only Yag-Kosha remained. "
Adapted by Marvel in  Conan the Barbarian I#4 (April, 1971)  this is one of Howard's seminal tales & a very deadly adventure location. Caution should be used when using this adventure & this is one that could easily be used with Dungeon Crawl Classics easily. For Amazing Adventures several of the artifacts, details about Yag-Kosha race, & more can easily be adapted to your campaigns as background material. 


On Zothique the tower is shunned by most right thinking peoples & exists within an urban capital city. There are numerous rumors about Yara. the wizard but its a place of horror & time haunted weirdness. Within it a facet of Yag-Kosha still acts upon his eternal vengence on the wizard. PC's can enter the tower, help with the vengence, & take treasures but Heaven help them should they try to deal with Yag-Kosha himself. The write up on YAG-KOSHA on the Appendix To the Marvel Universe Handbook site has additional details. Yes there is a Tower of the  Elephant box set for the D20 Conan game but I don't have access to it at this time. So instead I've opted to take the PC's into a slightly different direction. This adventure could easily be adapted into Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. 

OSR Campaign Set Up With the Free D20 Sword & Sorcery Module HD2 The Shrine of the Black Ones Adapting It For Your Old School Campaigns

"Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and in the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its darkhaired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery...”


Oh boy did I open a can of worms with my blog  rebuttal/commentary on Wm. John Wheeler's HS4 The Lost Caverns of Acheron from the wonderful blog piece that Timothy Brannan did about  this blog today.  Yes HS4 The Lost Caverns of Acheron is actually the end of a long D20 campaign. Tonight's commentary is on the first module in the trilogy homage to Gary Gygax's "D2 Shrine of the Kuo-Toa". The designer's notes in the module HD2 The Shrine of the Black Ones goes into why & why was changed; "This is a homage to the original classic adventure module, “D2 Shrine of the Kuo-Toa”, by Gary Gygax, reimagined for sword and sorcery gaming in Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age using Mongoose’s Conan RPG ruleset. Many of the original’s high fantasy elements have been removed or toned down, but the module should be instantly familiar to those familiar with the classic scenario, as much of the text is verbatim from Gygax’s original manuscript. I have turned the subterranean Shrine into a ruined temple on a nameless island, changed the Kuo-Toa into Black Ones, and the Sea-Mother into a tentacled horror from the Mythos. The amount of treasure has been significantly reduced from the original."
Here's the important fact the treasure has been significantly reduced which is gonna reflect in where I'm going with this for campaign purposes.

“Into the west, unknown of man, Ships have sailed since the world began. Read, if you dare, what Skelos wrote, With dead hands fumbling his silken coat; And follow the ships through the windblown wrack Follow the ships that come not back.” – The Pool of the Black One By Robert E.Howard

Please,please, before running this adventure make sure to read Robert E. Howard's The Pool of the Black Ones.  Now  HD2 The Shrine of the Black Ones  is not your average module & instead is set & padded out for PC's of levels ten through twelve. That means that if your gonna run this with  Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea or  Castles & Crusades  the encounters are gonna have to be scaled. The treasure has been reduced & encounters are gonna be brutal & very dangerous.



HD2 The Shrine of the Black Ones  takes the lone island location from the original story & turns the setting, ideas, etc. on their collective heads. When start to look at the stats for  'Black Ones' then we get an idea of the typical D20 Conan gaming stats we're facing down;
"Black One Large Outsider (native) Hit Dice: 6d8+30 (57 hp) Initiative: +7 (+2 Dex, +5 Ref) Speed: 25 ft. (5 squares) Dodge Defense: 19 (-1 size, +2 Dex, +8 natural) DR: 7 Base Attack/Grapple: +6/+16 Attack: Claw +11 melee (1d8+6) Full Attack: 2 claws +11 melee (1d8+6) and bite +6 melee (1d4+3) Space/Reach: 5 ft./10 ft. Special Attacks: — Special Qualities: — Saves: Fort +10, Ref +7, Will +5 Abilities: Str 22, Dex 15, Con 20, Int 14, Wis 10, Cha 16 Skills: Balance +11, Climb +15, Bluff +12, Jump +15, Knowledge (arcana) +11, Hide +11, Intimidate +12, Move Silently +11, Perform (ritual) +12, Search +11 Feats: Improved Sunder, Power Attack, Steely Gaze Environment: Isle of the Black Ones Organization: Solitary or group (6-10) Advancement: — " Again this would be easily translated into classic Castles & Crusades.  We're given a damn good overview of the island  in HD2 The Shrine of the Black Ones  


We're given some really weird details about the island that reads like a prime set up for a Sword & Sorcery campaign or something straight outta Weird Tales; 
"The island is some eight to ten miles long in the north-south direction, and perhaps eight miles broad at the widest point. At the north end of the island, there are five smaller islands, all uninhabited. On the western coast is a shallow bay, which has a white beach bordering an expanse of gently grassy slopes, masked by green trees. The trees grow in irregular clusters, and between these groves stretch rolling expanses of meadow-like slopes. Between the slopes lie gentle declivities, likewise swarded. The scenery seems to melt into itself, or each scene into the other; the view is singular, at once broad and restricted. Over all a dreamy silence lies like an enchantment."

The fact that this isolated island could be in a sea any sea in fact. The mystical forces of the Black Ones could in fact connect this island to a great many times & places across the planes. The island is a prime candidate for getting the Clark Ashton Smith Zothique treatment. Again be sure to grab a copy of Zothique D20.  Zothique is millions of years in the future of our time & its a perfect world where the intersect of the churning seas meet with the island terror of HD2 The Shrine of the Black Ones . This is also the perfect opportunity for plugging in Jason Vey's Amazing Adventures into the mix. The pulp elements mix very well with the horrors of the module but again there's that pesky scaling of the PC's monsters, treasures, etc into the mix.


 Here are some further notes on using HD2 The Shrine of the Black Ones .

1. HD2 The Shrine of the Black Ones  is free & easily adapted to your favorite OSR or D20 system. But there's going to be some very messy deaths of PC's have backups prepared. 
2. The customization of the adventure is essential for running this with your favorite system. There's enough here in the module but getting into that perfect zone is essential for play at the table top level. 
3. This is a beginning high level Sword & Sorcery  adventure with lots of Weird Tales elements here. 
4. The module could be turned into a survival horror story adventure with lots of scares & unknowns in the mix. 
5. Understand your audience because this isn't a light weight roam of an adventure so have a few additional encounters perhaps with some pirates or other sea born horrors to continue the adventure after the module concludes. 
6. The Black Ones are evil, dangerous, & very Lovecraftian to have their own minor cults within the campaign world so there's plenty of opportunities to continue these foes and use them for long term campaign foes. I'm thinking of Robert Howard's Solomon Kane stories as inspiration for some of the campaign goodness. 
7. Danger, intrigue, & horror abound within this module so its a great one to introduce some ship wrecked NPC's into the mix. 
8. The author knows his subject & the module balances encounters but there's room for an additional adventure location if necessary. 
9. Connecting AS&SH with HD2 The Shrine of the Black Ones is as easy as an oceanic planar gate or two. 
10. Other Robert E. Howard NPC's might appear on the shores of this module there's plenty of solid ideas in his stories to bring into HD2 The Shrine of the Black Ones 

The Many Facets of The Free D20 Adventure HS4 The Lost Caverns of Acheron By Wm. John Wheeler & Its Use In OSR Games

"Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and in the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its darkhaired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery...” In the Graaskal Mountains south of Hyperborea there is rumored to be an ancient hoard of unsurpassed value, a treasure of such fame that scores of adventurers have perished in search of it. Find the perilous Lost Caverns of Acheron and you may gain the hidden wealth of a long-dead civilization — if you live! "


I've gotten a lovely shout out from Tim Brannan of the Otherside of the blog today about his use of this blog's Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea campaign resources. He's planning on running the  Adventures of the Hyborian Age website's D20 Sword & Sorcery adaptation of S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth back in the days of D20 Conan. The result was Wm. John Wheeler's HS4 The Lost Caverns of Acheron. Now I've run this adventure extensively using the  AS&SH system for DM Steve's group of players. Now this was not without issues and they included the following because of the D20 system:

1. Scaling the PC & monster  experience system for a smooth transition & converting over the monster's stats into a more sane AS&SH OSR set up. 
2. This is an upper level slice & dice D20 module and should be for King Conan level PC characters 
3. Module should be set within Conan's Hyboria setting & its saturated in the material. The author knows his stuff. 
4. This is a campaign module & I strongly recommend running this the  Adventures of the Hyborian Age other adventures. 
5. Have lots of other PC's standing by this is a deadly adventure. 

So after dealing with conversion issues, delays, monster stats, etc. I decided to run Wm. John Wheeler's HS4 The Lost Caverns of Acheron with a sensible D20 OSR system. Enter Castles & Crusades which is a proper OSR system easily able to accommodate the whole of the HS4 adventure in spades. 



For those of you who are doubting me of the easy of this check out the Realm of Dungeons & Dragons blog entry from 2010 for converting D20 over to Castles & Crusades ; "For those of you who doubt it as easy as people claim, or want a formulaic way of converting Monsters and Scenarios to Castles and Crusades - presented here are some guidelines.

These ideas were originally posted on the Goodman Games Forum way back in 2006 by Chris Rutkowsky (who did the conversion of the Mysterious Tower from d20 to Castles and Crusades, and has written an original module using the Castles and Crusades system for Goodman Games).

If the monster you want to convert is not in the Monsters and Treasure Book, the easiest way is to consult your AD&D/D&D Monster Manuals and find the Creatures entry in there (or the NEAREST suitable entry) and use those stats."
So the HS4 The Lost Caverns of Acheron plays easily & smoothly but there are several things that bug the high holy Hell outta of Amazing Adventure! rpg players. How is my modern character going to get to Hyboria? The answer comes in the form of Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique & its Free D20 Zothique download. A sorcerous gateway from Zothique to Hyboria allows the PC's to get into the Sword & Sorcery realm.




'But, but, your betraying your OSR roots ??!' Yeah, I heard that BS for far too long because the OSR has been made on the back of D20. The fact is that AS&SH's adventures work quite nicely with Dungeon Crawl Classics & so will  with a bit of work.


Now with all of this surely you couldn't use HS4 The Lost Caverns of Acheron with the Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea Rpg? Well, don't be too sure. The fact is that with a bit of scaling of levels down to thirteen, the expansive second edition monster listings, the expanded treasures of AS&SH, etc.  Yes with an educated guess I think that it is & that Tim Brannan was on the right course. See I ran HS4 The Lost Caverns of Acheron with first edition AS&SH but the second edition game greatly expands upon the original system.

The Sinister Stone of Sakkara Adventure Scenario & Sandbox For Kickstarter For The Adventurer,Conqueror, King Rpg System As Well As Your Old School Campaigns

Even though I haven't really gotten into Adventurer, Conqueror, King as much as I'd like to. The Kickstarter for The Sinister Stone of Sakkara is looking like a real quality piece of work. The artwork for the book seems to evoke a combination of Aztec and Lovecraftian horror goodness with overtones of some weird sinister cult hi jinks. The current Kickstarter has funded and two goals have been unlocked. I'm waiting to see where this going to continue to go. One of the goals that's been unlocked has been the artistic skills of Jeff Brown.  I think that at some point I might have to get into the swing of the ACK's retroclone action at some point. Now I've been back researching at least five different ACK's Kickstarter projects and 

Autarch seems to do a damn good job with the quality of their books. My gut feeling and advice is to get into the ground floor of this one now before ACK's really starts taking off into the higher realms witht their retroclone system.
One thing about Autarch is that they offer a ton of online support for their system and you can learn more about that right over HERE

You can learn more about the Kickstarter right over HERE