Saturday 25 January 2020

H: Bugbear Lair

Welcome to the lair of the Bugbears:

It's day eight of the Caves of Chaos, and what a friendly greeting awaits us.

I like the layout of this lair - it's on three levels, with slopes and stairs. There are many directions to explore - far better in this respect than the lair of the Gnolls for example. I like the fact that the slave pens are located on the lower level - there's some logic to the layout here. These slave pens are infamous for my players as this is where they rescued Torg.

Torg was first spotted being led in chains by the bugbears into their lair along. They ventured into the cave and rescued him - the burly human imprisoned with the Hobgoblins, Gnolls and rebel Bugbear in #41. They also freed the prisoners from #40 - Ryat and Sharl (two humans), Forgack (a dwarf), Ellan and Elland (two elves). Back at the keep there was joy at the return of the prisoners, but in the morning Ryat and Sharl were found dead and Torg was missing.

The next time the party arrived at the Caves they got ambushed by the Gnolls, led by Torg who had come to the caves in the first place to work for the Gnolls who wanted him to help defeat the adventurers. They defeated the Gnolls, and Torg was taken as a prionser back to the keep and handed over to Castellan Narik. Unfortunately Torg is in league with Narik's lieutenant, who killed the jailor and the pair escape.

Torg later re-appeared as one of the Slavers in A4, where he got his just deserts - he was shot on the boat at the end and fell into the water. Unfortunately he was turned by some aquatic ghouls, who then led night raids upon the port of Specularum, until the players killed him for the second time. They really hated him by this point!

This lair in particular suffers from wide corridors but small rooms. #38 in particular looks very small for a common room - it is smaller than the slave pens. I think I may enlarge #38 slightly while keeping it the same shape - there is space on the map for this.

Next up is the Minotaur, so remember to bring some string.

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