Appearance Of A Dark Tower - Judge's Guild's Dark Tower By Jennell Jaquays - Cha'alt/Godbound Campaign Commentary

"An Ancient Evil has overtaken a once holy shrine. Thus, a sleepy mountain hamlet becomes a focal point for mysterious disappearances and even stranger legends of what lurks beneath the village.

Would any group of adventurous souls dare to probe the facts that lie behind the myths, or seek to right ancient wrongs, rescue secreted artifacts, or . . . even attempt to exterminate the source of evil itself?

This is no quest for the weak of spirit or strength. Beyond the cellars of Mitra's Fist lie strong allies and strange enemies, undead and undying, each seeking to involve the unwary in a titanic battle of good against evil, which can only end in destruction.

Riches, Power, Glory and Death! All are in Dark Tower"

Taken from Rpg Geeks.com's Dark Tower entry here. 

Going over my uncle's three hundred plus note books/three ring binders is like stepping into someone else's mind. So I'm about to go in a completely different direction then folks might be used to. Today I'm gonna talk about another Judge's Guild product by Jennell Jaquays in this case its the classic Advanced Dungeons & Dragons  Dark Tower.




I'm gonna have to apologize. Because he adapted this classic adventure to a desert campaign in ways that both surprised me & amazed me. His adaption of Judge's Guild's Dark Tower lay heavily on his running of the  Dark Sun campaign setting. The Dark Sun campaign setting for my uncle was a  Barsoom rip off  whole cloth just with defilers & dragon kings. He freely mixed AD&D first & second edition with abandon when he wanted to. His version of Dark Sun was more along the lines of a wasteland Bermuda Triangle & less then the world of the burning sun. He took the official campaign  setting & turned it completely on its ear.



Basically he took JG 0088 Dark Tower & used it in combination with some of the best second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons titles that no one knew about. I'm talking about  HR1-HR7 Historical Reference Series for second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. He basically used these historical books to create a time lost campaign for his AD&D campaign. We ran into Celtic adventurers, Roman centurions, Crusader era knights, Greeks, etc. plus some of your traditional Advanced Dungeons & Dragons monsters, humanoids, etc.  We communicated through common which was a sort of Greco Roman trade language understood across the planes. Not to mention the psionics which helped us out incredibly. There were two very important differences from normal Dark Sun. Barsoomian technologies & full on metal in the setting.



So we ran smack into Jennell Jaquays  Advanced Dungeons & Dragons  Dark Tower adventure after a series of desert encounters.  And we died rather badly in a total party wipe in the third or secondary rooms.  The followers of Set and Mitra  were at war with each other over the tower. & the surrounding lands. Our party of seven at the time went into this affair after a lengthy negotiations. Then we just died. And to make matters worse the cult of Mithra looted our corpses for the 'good of Mithra'.  Sigh.

So what's any of this have to do with Cha'alt or the black pyramid? The tower is still there & for that matter so are the followers of Set & Mithra along with the lands that they were fighting over. Let me explain. Cha'alt is Venger Satanis's love letter to all things Dark Sun & Dune.


Yesterday I mentioned how while the Egg of Coot marches his armies onto Earth, Stephen The Rock quietly sets down a few cybernetically enhanced agents here & there. Well the cagey bastard is searching for something or someplace. 



Stephen The Rock looks like DC Brianic Five in my mind. Because of Harvard Blackmoor.
This artwork is from DC universe encyclopedia site & used without permission.
No copyright or trade mark violations are meant.
This is a blog entry for entertainment purposes only

The Egg of Coot & Stephen The Rock are trying to out pace each other on a multiplicity of planes. But what both of these two are unaware of is the fact that the 'master' from X4: "Master of the Desert Nomads" and X5: "Temple of Death" (1983) by  David "Zeb" Cook, from the fourth adventure in the Expert series for Basic D&D. The 'master' is well aware of both 'The Egg of Coot' & 'Stephen The Rock' through his spy network throughout Nevada, California, & Arizona.
 

What no one knows is that the smugglers of xanthium-183 from the black pyramid are well aware of the war machines of 'the master'. And the fact the fact that he's been paying both adventurers & god bound to go over to the Cha'alt side of the warp for the recovery of artifacts & mecha. There are adventurers constantly searching for other dungeons & that is the perfect lure for Dark Tower  to take center stage coming up. I'm working on a game session with some other friends to take them through this adventure. 


Now I have no idea if Venger Satanis &  Jennell Jaquays are on friendly terms or not. I don't care about the politics that have been weaponized lately within this hobby. They've  used as an excuse to character assassinate many luminaries & writer designers in the table top hobby. It doesn't affect my game on a table top level nor my personal campaigns that I've been running & continue to run.
The fact is that the classic Advanced Dungeons & Dragons  Dark Tower adventure location is still luring parties of adventurers to their fate just as it did in 1979 & will continue to within my own campaign. Classics are classic for a reason.