Monday 20 January 2020

C: Orc Lair #2

Welcome to The Caves Of Chaos day 3 - and the mystery of the fireplaces!

Regarding contents I've added the net trap, and clarified that there's a guard outside the  leader's room, and the secret meeting room is duplicated on the map as it's shared with the last lair.

The oddity on the map is the alcove in the common room. I kept all the roughness of the walls on purpose - deciding that it was on purpose, not just an overly rough map. Room #9 has an oddity that could be an alcove which matches up to the "great fireplace on the south wall" in the description. Room #30 refers to "near the fireplace (southeast corner)" which matches an alcove on the map. Room #38 refers to a fireplace (no location specified) and there's an alcove on the north wall, likewise a reference with no location in #50 and an alcove on the map.

Hence I think it's likely that most of the alcoves on the map are supposed to be fireplaces, including #15 (Common Hall) here, and similarly earlier at #6 (Common Chamber) which is slightly less pronounced on my map than the original. Looking for other suspect alcoves we see one in #19 (Common Room), and finally one in #25 (Common Chamber).

That puts fireplaces in the common room of every humanoid lair, except for the Gnolls who have theirs in the Chieftain's Room!

I've not seen fireplaces drawn on other people's version of the map, and I've often seen the alcoves changed/reduced/removed. So when I collate the maps at the end of this series I'll include fireplaces as an amendment. I think they were clear on Gary's original map, and got lost when it got redrawn. Similarly I think it is on purpose that #58 (Temple of Evil Chaos) has very straight walls on the map when everything else is slightly rough.

Tomorrow we jump across to the other side of the ravine!

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