Thursday, May 11, 2017

Three Rooms in Amber

I've been running X2: Castle Amber for my 5e Land of Azurth game. As my session reports suggest, I've tweaked so things and changed other quite a bit. At times, I've got better ideas after I actually run it. I may post all my alterations at some point, but here are the the pertinent encounters in the "color rooms" in Castle Amber:

Overview: I envisioned these rooms as looking like more fanciful (maybe) version of the sort of rooms in Versailles or Schönbrunn Palace. I didn't have good reference in place to get that across to the players when I ran it, though, and it probably doesn't matter much anyway. I won't repeat everything Moldavy wrote that I kept, but only what I interpreted or replaced.

WHITE ROOM: The white carpet is crunchy underfoot with frosty. The walls are dusted with frost. Hard rime coats the furniture. In the center of the room, In the center of the room a giant salamander (over 10 feet long), white and striped with vein blue, lolls on a chaise longue. It's finned tail extends well beyond chair and lazy stirs up snowflakes from the carpet. 

I think actual salamanders are more interesting that lizards for magical creatures. 

GREEN ROOM: The room looks like it might be in an abandon home. The green wallpaper is peeling, vines are growing down the walls. The giant in the center of the room is entirely encased in armor with a vaguely floral motif, and that armor is complete covered in verdigris. He is easily mistaken for a statue until he moves.


I had in mind this image by Eoghan Kerrigan for the appearance of the giant, if it were patined. I want to put a little bit of distance from the Green Knight so it wouldn't be immediately picked up on, but the schtick was still the same.

RED ROOM: A large man (barrell-chested and bandy-legged) in crimson monk's robes over glittering, golden scale armor, sits cross-legged on the floor in a pose of meditation. His skin is charcoal black. His eyes appear to be windows into an internal furnace. His reddish blonde hair glows and smolders like coals.  The man has fallen from the sun; he's one of the countless throngs of dwarfs that make up the sun. They labor at the work of the cosmos and dance and sing radiant hymns to the glory of the gods. The man was into the void in a gout of ecstatic solar toil and fell to earth. 

I utilized the background of my reskins of the Azer here, since I had never put it in a game. I already had another celestial castaway in the adventure.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love the frost salamander, it seems like it should be doing something indolent like eating chocolates or frozen slivers of fruit.

Trey said...

That's great!