While investigating rumors of a dangerous blue dragon wreaking havoc in the deep desert, the heroes tumble under the sands into the magically sealed dome of an ancient palace. The temporarily weakened dome reseals above them, and they are left to explore the golden palace of Zahadran, once seat of power for the legendary Caliph Ardishir the Magnificent. But the dome is weak because it has been assaulted by the mythical storm demon Azi Dahaka and his trapped minions, evil creatures that were sealed under the magical dome to keep them from ravaging an unsuspecting world.
Deep within the heart of the slums, in the rat-ridden city of Punjar, the Beggar-King weaves his plots. Unearthing rites best left forgotten and offering up sacrifices to the loathsome Lords of Shade, the Beggar-King’s ambitions threaten to unleash a horde of shadow-horrors upon Punjar’s huddled masses. You and your fellow companions must bring the reign of the Beggar-King to an end. Your quest will take you from the rooftops of Punjar to its filthiest alleys, and beneath the streets of Punjar to the fetid heart of the city, where even the bravest of sellswords will tremble before the fell secrets of the Beggar-King of Punjar. An introductory adventure designed specifically for first level characters, Sellswords of Punjar is an urban Dungeon Crawl Classic unlike any other. It includes a full-color double-sided battle map to allow your characters to fully experience the perils of Punjar! This stand-alone adventure can also be used to launch a campaign in the epic fantasy world of Áereth.
For a thousand years Mezar-Kul has known only war, and now the Overlord reigns supreme. From his gargantuan metal fortress he rules the blasted remains of the planet’s last city. Hope seems lost – until visitors arrive from a distant world, bringing uncanny, magical powers. Your adventurers must pick a path through twisted ruins, ancient missile silos, strange monorail systems, and a conflict with four deadly factions to save a world – or destroy it! Note: This adventure does require that the party have some access to spell casting, whether through an item or class that requires a spell casting roll.
Many centuries ago, a band of paladins fell from grace. These blackguards were defeated after a great battle and their grim fortress, the Iron Tower, was razed. A small abbey was established near the ruins, where generations of monks mixed ancient eldritch wards, mighty clockwork traps, and multiple fail safes to build the Iron Crypt of the Heretics. Three mighty vaults ensured that its evils would be sealed for all eternity. But unbeknownst to the brotherhood, their impregnable crypt had a single weakness: the very monks that had built it, for they knew its secrets. When a devourer stole into their abbey, the profane beast forced the monks to help it inside the Iron Crypt. It successfully broke into the first of three vaults, releasing an army of wights. The story of the devourer and his wight army is told in Dungeon Crawl Classics #12: The Blackguard’s Revenge. Now, in the Iron Crypt of the Heretics, the heroes must venture into a crypt designed by the world’s greatest thieves, magicians, and seers, solve its puzzles and deadly traps, and seal it once more from the outside world.
A whispered voice calls from a coffin bound in chains, urging the heroes into the depths of the Shudder Mountains, a place rife with superstition and forlorn secrets. In the shadowy, pine-grown valleys of the Deep Hollows lurk mysteries of a bygone age and a new evil emerging from the ruins of the past. The adventurers must plumb the mountains’ secluded reaches to root out this rising terror before its power comes to fruition. Standing in their path are cackling witches, subtle devils, lingering spirits, and a foul thing that moves in the night. Can the heroes appease that which lies within the Chained Coffin and thwart the dawn of a new and terrible age?
Legend tells of a long-dead empire of sphinxes, ruled over for millennia by a great queen named Ankharet. She fell into darkness and her empire was shattered, as her subjects rebelled and cast her down. Unable to kill her, it is said that they bound her with great magic and buried her in a tomb, to wait for the foretold heroes who would be able to slay her and end her evil forever. Their empire in ashes, the sphinxes scattered to roam the world in bitter freedom, save a single great androsphinx. On the edge of the mysterious Barren Hills, between the mountains and the Great Desert, there is a gigantic statue of a crowned gynosphinx, ancient beyond reckoning. At its feet, a great androsphinx known as Khubsheth the Prophet has dispensed counsel and prophecy to all who come to him for longer than mortal records can tell. The heroes have come to visit Khubsheth, whether for counsel, prophecy or out of curiosity, but as soon as he lays eyes on them, he attacks! Upon his defeat, he tells them that they are the heroes foretold by the legend of Ankharet. Ankharet ruled over a long-dead empire of sphinxes, but she fell into darkness. Her subjects rebelled and cast her down, but were unable to kill her. It is said that they bound her with great magic and buried her in a tomb, to wait for the foretold heroes who would be able to slay her and end her evil forever. Kubsheth the Prophet tells the heroes that they must enter the tomb of the long-dead sphinx queen, kill her, and destroy her cursed crown, an artifact of tremendously evil power. As his blood seeps into the sands, a doorway opens at the base of the statue, leading down into darkness…
Murder! Ripples of shock pour through the wee hours of the sleepy fishing shanty of Port Scuttle. An innocent young fishmonger, beloved by the locals, has been brutally murdered in her own shop. Stunned by the grisly act, the typically hardened townsfolk turn to powerful heroes to investigate the gruesome deed. Could the fishmonger’s recent discovery of a massive black pearl be a possible motive? The heroes’ goal is to not only bring the perpetrator to justice, but determine the twisted purpose behind the ghastly act. Concerned townsfolk decry that the evildoer must hang for his or her despicable crime. Yet when the heroes finally track down the murderer, he is already dead by the noose, and the investigation has truly only begun. Clues hint at even darker designs, as an ancient evil stirs to reclaim a once lost malevolent relic. Tackle the challenge of solving the despicable murder of an innocent, and thwarting the diabolical schemes of a powerful brine vampire. Th e adventure is set in and around a small fishing port located on the windswept craggy cliffs of an ocean. The author draws on two inspirations for this adventure: The Pearl, by John Steinbeck, and an unnamed adventure plot by the author’s astonishing wife, Lisa.
Unlike other Dungeon Crawl Classics, this volume does not present a completed adventure. Instead, it presents a set of DM tools that will make your job easier. This book of dungeon geomorphs gives you everything you need to map out exciting underground adventures. The geomorphs are modular map segments designed to be combined in a variety of ways. There are 124 map segments, encompassing mazes, dungeons, underdeep caverns, monstrous lairs, castles, ruins, halls, and many other intriguing places to explore. Together they combine to make thousands of possible maps!
Since time immemorial, you and your people have toiled in the shadow of the cyclopean ruins. Of mysterious origins and the source of many a superstition, they have always been considered a secret best left unknown by folk of your hamlet. But now something stirs beneath the crumbling blocks. Beastmen howl in the night and your fellow villagers are snatched from their beds. With no heroes to defend you, who will rise to stand against the encircling darkness? The secret of Chaos are yours to unearth but at what cost to sanity or soul? An introductory adventure for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, Sailors on the Starless Sea pits a mob of 0-level adventurers against legacy of the Chaos Lords and their corrupted hordes. Delving beneath the crumbling ruins, the characters discover ancient crypts, a starless sea, and an ancient ziggurat, where death and treasure await in equal measure!
During a brief stop-over at a wilderness stronghold, a simple trip to a local provisioner reveals foul play! The shop has been broken in, and the shopkeeper is missing. But the place has not been burglarized. The heroes are thrust into an investigation. Clues discovered by the heroes’ hint at larger corruption that festers among the border lands surounding the stronghold. What sinister forces lurk beneath the keep?
In ages long past and best forgotten, the world was ruled by worms. Deep within dreaming jungles, and high atop monolithic temples, fell priests sacrificed the blood of man and his kith to the mammoth war-worms. One wizard would return the world to the rule of the worm. From deep within the blood-soaked earth, calling upon the spirits of the slain and blood of the dying, rising from the moldering bones of fallen warriors, the war-worms have returned. Their foul Mother – last of her kin – births more crawling horrors with every passing hour. The age of the worm is once more upon us. The call is sounded: Who will rise to purge the darkness?
In Temple of the Dragon Cult, the characters are called in to pursue a dragon that the king’s army was able to wound but not kill. It seems straightforward enough: the army tracked the dragon to its lair, and all the characters have to do is go in and kill it. But this dragon has a devoted cult of dragonblood followers who worship its every breath. Its lair is their temple — and they’ll fight to the death to defend their dragon-god…
The mad wizard Emirikol is terrifying the city! Striking without reason and sending his winged apes to slaughter the populace, the famous archmage has gone too far. Now a coffer of jewels is offered to those who would dare defeat him. The ever-changing walls of his Shifting Tower are guarded by a host of diabolical traps, fiendish guardians, and unimaginable terror. Will your adventurers come out victorious…or lose their very souls in the attempt?
The Purple Planet: Where tribes of man-beasts wage an endless war beneath a dying sun. Where mighty death orms rule the wastes, befouled winds whistle through ancient crypts, and forests of fungi flourish in the weirdling light. Where ancient technologies offer life ... or a quick death. Bereft of patron, friend or god, your survival depends on quick wits and a strong blade. Will you and your companions stand as conquerers atop this alien land? Or will you fall beneath the blast of an ink-black death rays, just another corpse left to litter the wastes of the Purple Planet?
Eons past the fabled sorcerer-kings of Parhok perished in a rain of eldritch fire. But legends hold that one tribe survived the apocalypse, fleeing with their slaves to a hidden city, where the greatest enchanters of all time could sleep away the centuries, and awaken in a future age as rulers of a ruined land. Now once more the forbidden spells of the Parhok threaten the good folk of the Known Realms. A kingdom lies ensorcelled, a royal family ensnared by the forgotten dweomers of a long-dead race. When the best attempts of seers and diviners have failed, it falls to the heroes to save the kingdom. Have the sorcerer-kings risen to reclaim their bejeweled thrones? Or has a more sinister power bent their ancient magics to its sinister will? Only the most courageous and cunning of heroes will emerge victorious from Dragora’s Dungeon.
Giants stalk the shifting sands as the lost city of Stylos awakens from its deathless slumber. The Fourth Age of Man is at hand! All that stands between the gigantic hordes of Stylos and their conquest of the world is your band of adventurers. Sinister traps, implacable foes, and the crushing tread of the dread Colossus all lurk within these pages, eager to test the courage and cunning of even the most accomplished adventurers.
Centuries past, Lady Ilse ascended to scion of House Liis by trading the archdevil Mammon what he wanted most: her immortal soul – and a diabolical betrothal. The triumph proved hollow, for every year on the eve of her fell covenant, she was beset by visions of Mammon and her foul promise. Seeking to save herself, she was buried alive, swaddled in the holy symbols of a dozen divergent faiths. This desperate ploy held Mammon at bay for centuries…but a devil can afford to wait a very long time. After hundreds of years, the last of the holy wards has fallen. The devil has come to collect his due. Tonight a storm crashes against the ancient manor house and forgotten spirits rise from the muck and mire. The fallen belfry tolls once more, announcing the hellish fete. As the adventurers arrive to explore the Black Manse, Mammon calls for his winsome bride. He will leave with a soul at the end of the night. The only question is: Whose?
Once every decade, the tides of the Empyrean Ocean recede far enough to reveal the highest eaves of a mysterious undersea tower. Long ago this was an eldritch fastness of Sezrekan the Elder, the most wicked wizard ever to plague the Known World, but now the tower is known simply as the final resting place of the fabled Black Pearl – an artifact rumored to bring doom upon all who dare to posses it. Tonight the moon nearly fills the sky, and the tides have already begun to recede. Adventurers have eight short hours to explore the tower before the dark waters return. The fabled Black Pearl will be theirs for the taking…if they can survive the Pearl’s curse.
Heroes and blackguards of every stripe will find peril on the Purple Planet, but none more than 0-level PCs. Cast across the cosmos, surrounded by hordes of baying man-beasts, and marched into mass gladiatorial combat, the PCs' death waits with bated breath. Their sole hope for escape lies – not in pitched combat against endless hordes – but by braving the unknown and pressing into the darkness beneath the Purple Planet.
After arriving at a seemingly abandoned trading post, the heroes discover to their horror that all the inhabitants have been transformed into black trees! Upon further investigation, they find clues that lead them to the hidden lair of Nockmort, a treant gone bad. Nockmort has been transformed by the strange radiation of a meteorite he discovered, and now he is a terrible force of evil. The characters must enter his sunless garden to save the town. And along the way they just might discover fabulous treasure...