Dread & Corruption - I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City by David 'Zeb' Cook With Additional OSR & Old School Resources - Session Report Eleven

"Somewhere in the heart of the steaming jungle lies the answer to the whispered tales - rumors of a magnificent city and foul, horrid rituals! Here a brave party might find riches and wonders - or death! Is your party brave enough to face the terrors of the unknown and find - the Forbidden City! Information is presented here to reconstruct this exciting tournament and even more has been given to expand play. Here characters may adventure several times in a unique and interesting mini-campaign. Included in this module are background and tournament notes, referee's keys, new monsters, pre- generated characters, and eight different maps."
So begins the infamous I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City: An Adventure for Character Levels 4-7 (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) by David Cook published in 1981.



Now two modules that I've always used together are I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City & E2 Isle of Dread by Dave Cook & Tom Moldvay. Now surely these two modules couldn't be used with my Cha'alt game could they? Well that's where your wrong! Sometimes talking with a player can stir up memories of the beginning of the campaign. In this case its my Cha'alt/Godbound rpg campaign set in a late Sevenities & Eighties modern day California. The Cha'alt dimensional/planar warp is opening up & gathering all kinds of weirdness to it merging worlds & time.  In this case E2's Isle of Dread & I1 The Dwellers of the Forbidden City have become part of the new frontier for adventurers. 

Right off the Channel Islands on the California coast things have gotten very strange & there are rumors of preshistoric monsters but what are the Channel Islands ; "The Channel Islands (Spanish: islas del Canal, Archipiélago del Norte) form an eight-island archipelago along the Santa Barbara Channel in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Southern California. Five of the islands are part of Channel Islands National Park, and the waters surrounding these islands make up Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. The islands were first colonized as early as 13,000 years ago. Human remains from that period have been discovered."  in the Pacific ocean the Isle of Dread & I1 have positioned themselves. Scavengers & scum from Cha'alt have already infiltrated the islands. There's been clashes with the US military but there's been rumors of strange serpent men & even worse on the islands. Right now they are off limits to civilans but many Californians feel compelled to visit the islands. 

 In the adventure, the characters are hired to find an object taken to a lost oriental-style city, which has been taken over by a cult of snake-worshipers, the yuan-ti, and their servants, the mongrelmen and tasloi. So there's no real reason to change this leg of the module. But strange seemingly unknown South Eastern Asian people have been seen cycling through the population of Californians in the area. Because  Mr.Cook pulls a great deal of his monsters from the Fiend Folio this makes using I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City for this campaign an ideal choice for this campaign.

Another idea that I'm thinking of using is to put  the Hidden Shrine of Taomochan onto the island to give the gods of Cha'alt a run for their money. Now this is nothing new at all. I've written about using some of the resources of the old Dragon's foot forums before;
"I put the Hidden Shrine of Taomochan into the city" this makes perfect sense and there's some really great resources in the Expanding I1 The Dwellers In The Forbidden City Thread on Dragon's foot's forums. 
Another great set of suggestions is by Ulan Dhor:
"Imade some changes to the module detailed here:

viewtopic.php?f=42&t=71580&p=1673164&hilit=forbidden#p1673164


My campaign journal for our run through the module is detailed here:

viewtopic.php?f=26&t=67564&start=90#p1642464

Have fun with it, I found it to be one of my favorite runs through a published module, lots of open ended potential.

Cheers,

Ulan Dhor' 


This is gonna really put the 'cat among the pigeons' with our party's portal mage. . There are many weird Lovecraftian touches in I1 that could lead to even more adventure hooks and possibilities amid the ruins. One of my favorite monsters from the Fiend Folio is the Yellow Musk Creeper & Zombie. The Clark Ashton Smith story The Seed from the Sepulchre has some awesome suggestions about using such a Lovecraftian or is it Smithian monster. The sandbox nature of ' Dwellers of the Forbidden City' is in  a similar vein to  CAS 's The Demon of the Flower which can be used as an inspiration to unleash all kinds of Hell upon a party and might be grown by the Yu erm serpent men.

I might also locate a Cha'alt drug factory producing Zoth on Santa Rosa island. They've been blending into the local background while strong arming their way with the locals. But what they don't know about is the unholy presence that's taken up residence under the  Santa Cruz national park.

Dyson Logos  generously pointed out that he's done a number of maps for various locations throughout I1 Dwellers In The Forbidden City. "I've done some maps to detail some parts of the city when we last played through it."

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/tuesday-map-temple-complex-ruins-of-the-forbidden-city/

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/friday-map-the-ruined-hatak-temple/

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2015/12/11/friday-map-temple-of-the-snake/

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/friday-map-redstone-shrine-with-time-lapse-video/

" And for those planning on running it, here's a cleaned up scan of the main map with all DM notations removed - particularly handy if the party enters via the giant tree access point which gives them a good overview of the city"

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2015/06/07/dwellers-in-the-forbidden-city-the-city-map/

All of this can be used to pretty much establish the Y erm serpent men empire right within the heart of California. The gods & immortals of Cha'alt are not gonna sit down for this however. 

Commentary On C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan Adventure & Its Free Old School Resources

The player characters explore a stepped pyramid deep in the heart of a tropical jungle—the Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. The characters must penetrate this Mayan-style temple, which is full of tricks and traps.

C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan has an aura of pulpy danger that seems to call to players like moths to an old school flame. Hidden treasure, danger, & some very weird old school flavor seem to add to trap laden old school play. But what if you want to place it within your favorite old school home game campaign setting? What about a more pulpy sword & sorcery angle?

Alright so let's quickly talk about the second part of this nebulous campaign idea that a friend of mine talked with me about over the Easter holiday. Steve has been poking around the the Vaults of Pandius website & came across another Paleologos article. This time it was the X9/C1 Savage Coast/Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan mash-up by Paleologos. 

So let's talk about what's at the heart of this little bit of Tamoachan magick, "However, given that module C1 is notable for its Mayan and Aztec/Toltec trappings, it would fit almost seamlessly into module X9 "The Savage Coast", which otherwise suffers from a rather lackluster finale." So this might mean that The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan is simultaneously existing as both the the capitol of the Olman empire, which covered much of the continent south of Greyhawk & as a part of the Savage Coast in C1. There is a lot going on here where the "Central and South American flavour is masking far more that's bubbling below the surface of the adventure & the setting from Aztec &  Mayan cultures connects across a myriad of worlds. We already know that the Lovecraft & Clark Ashton Smith elements are in C1. But this connects the weird religion & culture of the the ancient Olman people of Greyhawk, based on the Aztec, Mayan, and Toltec peoples of Earth into a whole new light & turns them into a far greater menace for old school games. Could they have cults spreading like cancers across the planes?  This could help to explain the expansion as well as germination  of the Gibbering Mouther and other Shoggoth like monsters. That were brought with the Olman.



So what does this have to do with Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea? Well a few things, first of all it might interconnect two or more AD&D or D&D B/X campaign worlds with Hyperborea. These connections might even be through the Olman who were originally colonists on one of the myriad versions of the Warden. There is a Easter Egg that I found in the Drivethrurpg entry on C1;"There's also a peculiar connection in C1 to a later Greyhawk adventure. Room 19 of "Shrine" contains a figurine of a spaceship called the "II-Nedraw." Since the ship that crashed in S3: "Expedition to Barrier Peaks" (1980) was based on the Warden from Metamorphosis Alpha (1976), this could suggest a connection between that spaceship and the Tamoachan ruins."  Could the Olman be simply colonists of the Hyperboreas who have come to be degenerate cultists spreading an Old One like religion across the planes & spreading a cancer like growth of dangerous plane sucking magick to various old school campaign settings?
Well they will be in my upcoming campaigns.

There are few things to remember about C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan is a competition module for PC's five to seventh level. It was created for  the Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons tournament at the 1979 Origins International Game Expo (Origins '79). So players brought their best & brightest PC's to pit against the adventure location and the dungeon. Not only are the PC's in compitition mode against other parties but against the dungeon itself. The Olman designed the entire works as a sacrifice engine to the gods and it could be doing exactly that across all of those campaign worlds including Hyperborea. So where is the magical energy from those sacrifices going? Could the Olman be a far greater danger to the planes then anyone releases? I personally think so.


So my buddy Steve clued me to a few resources on the Vaults of Pandius website:
X9/C1 Savage Coast/Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan mash-up by Paleologos. 

 

"Mystaraizing" the Savage Tide: The Sea Wyvern's Wake

by David Keyser

Finally there is Ierendi Jones: Raiders Of The Blackmoorian Ark

by Kevin Power  

 which is a mash up that can be used to boast campaign in a totally weird direction. This mash up might be used with a Raiders! of The Lost Artifacts campaign but that's a whole other blog entry. But it can be used to pimp out Isle of Dread into this hot weird pulpy sweaty jungle sword & sorcery mess.