I’m not sure I ever actually ran this one. I do remember that when I wrote it I wanted something a little different, maybe some villains that weren’t so villainous and something with a science fictiony mystery to solve.
My notes after writing this put it “west of Suzuil”. That name does not ring any bells either in my mind or on Google.* The village of Ashton does, however; I don’t know if it’s from the Basic or Expert set, or if Ashton exists elsewhere in my proto-world; or if it rings a bell because I used it in this adventure. Given the presence of the potion of time travel, it may be named after Clark Ashton Smith.
I have added paragraph breaks. Holy crap.
New monsters include the Rock Monsters, which I named long before I first heard the B-52s, and the Rock Dryad; the Rock Dryad lives on in Gods & Monsters as the Petraiad. This creature, a Dryad living in a crystal geode, is one of my favorite remnants of my eighties gaming self. In this case, of course, since the trees themselves are rocks, the dryads live in trees “as normal”.
The only one you get here is the Rock Monster. The Rock Dryad was one of my standard monsters, so it was in my custom monster manual, which I gave to my brother when I went to college. No idea where that is now. I’m guessing it helped warm the cold Michigan winter.
Looking over this now, the idea of stone banshees intrigues me.
- Player’s Scenario
- A hitherto unknown valley has been found in the Altan Tepe Mountains. It looks as though it would provide a quicker passage through the mountains. The entire valley, however—trees, animals, grass—is stone!
- Notes: DM’s Info
- The merchants will be willing to pay 6,000 gp per person in the party (surviving persons, of course) up to and no more than a total of 30,000 gp. They are stationed in the small village of Ashton.
- The origin of the Petrified Valley now follows
- About 1,500 years past, some Rock Monsters (see description) opened a dimensional pathway from their previous spot in this universe to this spot—the valley. They travelled through the Elemental Plane of Earth, thus bringing in some of the weaker denizens of that plane. Their odd method of travelling (see description) set up a dimensional shock which turned all in the area to stone—even the stone!
