Adventure Calls - Against the Cult of the Reptile God

For January (a month which, you might note, has already passed us by), the Adventure Calls reading club read Against the Cult of the Reptile God. I read it too! You can read other readers' thoughts here. Spoilers for the adventure follow! Content warnings for the module include mind control and sexual assault.

The hook of Reptile God managed to lodge into my brain pretty well - the village of Orlane is being eaten from within by an insidious cult! A wicked naga is magically coercing the townsfolk into worshipping her and donating all their money! It seems like a really fun dilemma to throw players into, and I broadly like the way it's written up. Several people have noted that this is their favorite part of the module. Beyond the hook and the town, however, it doesn't seem like people are as positive - the dungeon shows up several times as a pain point (and my read of it did not really inspire me to dig into it).

But the town has a few dungeon-like locations as well, and I actually think they're pretty fun! There are two - the Golden Grain Inn, the cult headquarters for turned civilians, where travelers are often abducted by cultists; and the temple of Merikka, the local goddess, where the cult has taken over the clergy.

The Golden Grain Inn

The Golden Grain Inn does a couple of things that I really like - there's foreshadowed danger (several townsfolk now mistrust the inn) with a surprise but logical twist (people who stay at the inn are kidnapped and turned into cultists), there's treasure to be won, but mostly there's information to be gleaned. 

Those last two particularly go together in this module, where treasure is hard to come by - the cultists have been compelled to donate everything they have! So there's a somewhat disappointing amount in the upper "treasure" location (the innkeep's bedroom), and a very disappointing totally empty three chests in the lower secret treasure zone. I think it's a great punchline, and helps drive home that something fishy is up. If the players persist all the way to the very bottom of the dungeon, they'll be rewarded with a valuable statue (I do really enjoy the conundrum of how to transport heavy and/or fragile art objects as treasure). 

Alternatively, for exploration & diplomatic aims, players could find the secret meeting room and stake it out to learn more about the cultists. On the social side of the game, it's home to one of my favorite NPCs from the adventure (frogmagog's too), just a nasty thief who passed his charm save but joined up with the cult anyway. 

It's not a perfect dungeon - I don't really get what the ghouls are doing in the vault, for example - but I think this is one of the strongest parts of the town for me.

The Temple of Merikka

The Temple of Merikka is also pretty good! It doesn't have quite as strong of a player-facing scenario; it's mostly just a stronghold of cult power. But there's a pretty good melodrama at the heart of it with the temple's head priest, a cleric named Abramo. Abramo has been experiencing side effects from being charmed (the text attributes it to the dramatic alignment shift he's undergone).

The "secret treasure" here is the young woman Abramo has been holding captive after she resisted the magical charm. Her name is Cirilli. The text conveys mostly your standard sexual peril damsel in distress beat, but leaves open a reading in which some glimmer of Abramo's old personality saw a person in trouble and did what he could to save her from death. It does feel more like an edit than an interpretation to me, but it's an easy one to make. Cirilli can also serve as a guide to the temple, if you wanted to cut out the DMPC wizard the second half of the module relies on (although you might need to also edit the dungeon encounters to not rely on some spells). 

There are a few other little bits of flavor that I like - there are valuable statues here, too, but of Merikka. They haven't been added to the cult's treasure piles because removing them incurs a curse! The cult turned some goblins, and is storing them in the temple, away from prying eyes! There's a secret room in the maze where the cultists buried a priest who tried to resist! Small stuff, but on the whole I think it adds up to a place with texture that still feels pretty cohesive.

Leaving the Dungeon

I don't have the interest in the greater dungeon to go through all of it, or render a judgment beyond "it doesn't really seem like my thing." Beyond the standard eye-catching stuff (eg, the mini t-rex and giant weasel), I wanted to finish by calling out a few pieces of the big dungeon that I did really enjoy. 1: there's a trickling stream all throughout the dungeon. The text writes it off as a red herring, but I actually really love the payoff, which is a room full of zombies, eternally pumping water out to keep the dungeon from sinking. 2: in that vein, the text addresses the possibility that players simply flood the dungeon. The DMPC will discourage this course of action (since there might be prisoners), but I think it remains an interesting option! 3: There's a "mud trap" room that, if triggered, buries everyone in mud. Cool trap.

That's all! Next month is 50 Fathoms!