Sorcerous Scrutinies: Grave Robbers of Thracia

 Grave Robbers of Thracia

DCC #111: A 0 Level  Adventure by Bob Brinkman

Goodman Games

The warm, pleasant waters of the Starry Archipelago seem a distant memory to these horrid chambers.  Village life did not prepare you for this quest, and your path thus far is now littered with the fallen bodies of your neighbors.  You clutch your pitchfork and brave the darkness ahead.  What could be worse than being cleaved in two by an enormous swinging blade like the Wizard’s Apprentice before you, or being chewed apart by crypt ghouls like the poor Costermonger?

A chitter in the darkness ahead seems to answer your thought.  You step onto a spongy substance that sticks to your boot, and before you can call out to your remaining allies, a many-legged horror pounces upon you, murder in its multitudinous eyes…

What It Is

Grave Robbers of Thracia is a funnel adventure intended for 16-24 0 level characters.  Being part of the Thracia set, it is the natural place for a Thracia campaign to begin (though it would function in any setting by simply swapping ‘jungle' with ‘forest’).

Grave Robbers is a classic dungeon delve that offers more combat than hazard, and hints at some of the lore and interplay between factions in the Caverns of Thracia.  Among funnels, it is relatively short and linear, lending itself to a quick launching pad for further adventures.  

Grave Robbers is more than serviceable, but it is curiously vague as a connective module to either of the DCC Thracia adventures (Sacrificial Pyre for 1st level or Beneath the Isle of Serpents for 2nd level), or the main Caverns of Thracia content.  I’m glad I ran it for my Thracia group, though it doesn’t rise to the level of my favorite numbered DCC funnels in the canon (Portal, Sailors, Frozen in Time, Veiled Vaults).

At The Table

Grave Robbers wastes no time in getting to the action; the module is a dungeon, and the players begin at its doorstep.  The map details two areas with 14 different encounters, but in practice it plays more like 11.  My players skipped one area (2-8), demonstrating the slightly non-linear layout of the dungeon.  

The combat encounters (2-2, 2-5, 2-8, 2-10, 2-12) are largely diverse, and the chaff enemies (Vrykolakes) have fun effects that keep them from feeling like generic mooks.  The giant tarantula is fantastic, a bit of a show-stealer in my run!  I was disappointed that my players missed the Giant archaea swarm, that would have been a different type of combat encounter for them to enjoy.  The final encounter is excellent, Gallus is an absolute menace against 0 level PCs with that double attack, 16 AC and 18 hp.  

The dungeon’s hazards are modest in number: my players deduced the torch solution to the opening trap, and were extremely cautious with 2-6’s blade trap, finding the deactivation button without difficulty.  I was tempted to add some danger to the treasures in 2-11, or to the false door at 2-11a.

I would estimate that Judges could whisk players through in three hours if characters were premade, perhaps less if encounters are skipped.  

Play Highlights

While some encounters are written to be quick and deadly hazards (1-1, 2-6), and some combats are relatively simple in concept (2-2), others are nicely written to provide unique challenges to PCs.  

My players found a small, suspicious (halfling-sized) tunnel on the surface of the ruins, but neglected to send their little glovemaker inside.  That search check planted a seed of curiosity that paid off a few encounters later when a bold player stumbled into 2-5, the Spider’s Lair.  All sense of gongfarmer tactics flew out the window as the menace pounced past my players’ chaff characters and began terrorizing their more precious ones.  All said, I think he killed four before they took him down, and the well-equipped corpse beyond seemed a nice reward in the aftermath.  In hindsight, I do wish the webbing had played a bigger, more mechanical role.

Area 2-7 has a nice callback to the hazard solution in 1-1, and my players were delighted with the simple reward.  I love funnels that modify our players’ character sheets with strange items, curses, or boons.  

Area 2-11 contains a wonderful little treasure, ‘Thanatar’s Persuader’, that gives a fantastic combat option to more melee focused characters that are looking for a reliable source of guaranteed 1d3 damage at range (without breaking balance).  This is the type of item that will be used religiously by players for the duration of the campaign!

Area 2-12, the final encounter, is a formidable challenge for players with massive rewards that players will enjoy.  Gallus is hard to hit, has a nice pool of hp, and commands several minions to muck up the PCs plans.  My party overwhelmed him with numbers, but only after losing some brave gongfarmers to the wrath of his mithril longsword.  The treasure horde is a great beginning to the players’ new life of adventure (ie: where can we sell these?).

Judge Takeaways

Fill in the Blanks

Brinkman gives us a nice canvas for play, but leaves a few smoking guns and curious gaps for us to fill.  We find a cursed artifact, Lethe’s Water, that clouds memories and makes the imbiber ‘utterly forget’ the last few weeks.  My PCs were fascinated with this, and happened to have an Alchemist in the group who rolled very well to discover its function.  For the rest of the adventure, they hunted for clever ways to use it, but I struggled to find a satisfying use for it, either at the table or in hindsight.  Perhaps some additional encounter where a great treasure can be stolen, but triggers a terrifying guardian (who can then be quelled by the Water and a persuasive roll?) could be added.

In Area 2-10, Brinkman tells us that the Vrykolakes are confused, and question the PCs, but at the table I wondered; to what end?  My players wanted to pepper them with questions, to which I had few answers from the text.  A more fleshed out concept of their connection to the greater setting, and hints they could drop about the next adventure would have made the encounter more exciting for my players.  Similarly, Gallus has an opportunity to parlay with the PCs before combat, and could help us connect this funnel to the following modules somehow:   “My next conquest is to the South-west, a Hamlet we could take together…this tunnel leads the way-”.

Feed the Dead

The Vrykolakes have this killer ‘Torpid’ ability that returns them from defeated to 1hp by feeding them 1 hit point worth of flesh, but appear in such small numbers (and often surrounded by a mob of gongfarmers) throughout the module that I found it hard to activate.  I took a session break after the first half of the module, and upon returning I added a ‘runner’ ghoul to each remaining combat to just ferry meat to fallen ghouls; a non-combatant henchman to raise the stakes.  This amped up the challenge (without stat bloat), demonstrated the key ability of the ghouls, and suddenly the torches from 1-2 with their 1d5+1 fire damage mattered a great deal.  The image of a ghoul runner dragging one of their beloved character’s corpses to the mouth of a fallen Vrykolake still burns in my player’s minds!

Resurrecting Hope

The Resurrection Stone is a wonderfully strange artifact: it allows two willing PCs to surrender their lives to bring back a recently fallen ally.  It’s a brutal bargain, but one many players might consider—especially when their star Tax Collector with an 18 Strength dies to an unfitting hazard.

My only quibble is its placement. By the end of the funnel, especially after facing Gallus, most players will only have one or two characters left standing, often not enough to make the Faustian exchange the artifact demands. I considered allowing a one-for-one swap, but that felt dishonest to the module’s intent. In the end, my players opted not to use it at all; they’d grown too attached to their surviving gongfarmers to sacrifice them.

Connect the Dots

Keep in mind the content you’re steering your players towards before you begin this module.  If you’re going for Sacrificial Pyre, consider placing the Treasury of the Lost Legionnaires at 0516 and the starting village at 0416 rather than all the way over in 2104.  If your players are going to head to Beneath the Isle at 2nd level, consider placing some breadcrumbs here that can lead them in that direction (eventually).  If the main module is your goal, heavily emphasize that area 2-9 includes, “Detailed instructions of where to find the Caverns of Thracia,” and try to sweeten the pot so the party understands why they want to go there immediately after defeating Gallus.

Conclusion

Grave Robbers is a tight dungeon romp that accomplishes much, filling a niche as both a Thracia springboard and a small-scale funnel like Portal that can be run in under three hours.  Its brevity may leave you longing for more — whether that be sidebar content connecting it to other Thracia adventures, more detailed guidance for its social encounters, or in a conclusion that more heartily spurs PCs onto their next Thracian jaunt.  

Would I run it again?

Probably yes, but with some heavy modifications.  I enjoyed the lore, the Resurrection Stone is a great funnel artifact, Gallus was a fantastic boss encounter, but I find myself disappointed by the lack of connectivity to the other Thracia modules or Caverns of Thracia.  

Were I to run it again, I would add some urgency after the final encounter that might require players to flee forward through the largest of the tunnels in Gallus’ chamber (“More Vrykolakes flood from the tunnel behind you, intent on feasting upon Gallus’ remains, then yours…”).  Then, that tunnel could take them right to where you want the next module to begin, whether that be Sacrificial Pyre, the larger Caverns of Thracia module, or even Beneath the Isle of Serpents.  

With the right tweaks, Grave Robbers does its job: kill half the gongfarmers, terrify the rest, and point the survivors toward the deeper, darker dungeons of Thracia.