Friday Fantasy: Well of the Worm

War has come to the plains of Barrowdown again and again. The farmers would sow their crops every spring only for the barons and their armies to clash in the fields and cut down the wheat and the barley by the end of summer, the fields wet with blood rather than rain. Come the autumn and the winter, there have been years when the only way for farmers to survive is to harvest the corpses left in the armies’ wake, stripping them of their arms and armour and selling them to would be adventurers and mercenaries. Yet years and years of battles have sown the ground with rusted weapons and old bones and no field can be ploughed without churning over the dead and the detritus of war and forgotten conflicts. The locals had long learned to adapt to the fights and their consequences that were far above their status, but they were ill-prepared to face a danger that burrowed up out of the blood-drenched earth and the long past—War-Worms! In the very long past, the world was ruled by mammoth war-worms to which man made blood sacrifices, but that time has long since passed and is now forgotten. Only for the wizard, Solom Quor, to discover one of these War-Worms on the battlefields near Barrowdown and answer its call. Now he worships the War-Worm as the Mother of Worms, both twisted mentally and physically by his adoration, and directs freshly bred War-Worms upon the peasantry of the plains! Now, in the dead of night, the War-Worms burrow up out of the earth and feed upon the blood of peasants as they sleep, leaving the victims drained and worse, ready to rise in the morning as undead hosts large worms with the faces of tormented men!

This is the set-up to Dungeon Crawl Classics #76.5: Well of the Worm, a scenario published by Goodman Games for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. It is designed for a party of four to six First Level Player Characters and has both a quick set-up time and a quick playing time. It can easily be played in a single session and prepared in less than hour. That set-up also makes it easy to add to a campaign, the Judge only needing to locate the warring baronies in her setting and have that somewhere where the Player Characters might be passing through. The scenario itself was a special print release for Gen Con 2013, but even then, it was not new. This is because it is based on an earlier scenario that appeared in the pages of Dungeon Crawl Classics #29: The Adventure Begins, the anthology of First Level adventures published in 2006 by Goodman Games for use with Dungeons & Dragons, 3.5. Here it has been updated for Dungeon Crawl Classics, and whilst it is designed for First Level Player Characters, it could also be run as ‘Character Funnel’, the classic feature for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game in which initially, a player is expected to roll up three or four Zero Level characters and have them play through a nasty, deadly adventure, which surviving will prove a challenge. Those that do survive receive enough Experience Points to advance to First Level and gain all of the advantages of their Class.

The scenario provides three hooks to get the Player Characters involved as well, but it starts at the village well from which the local wise woman says that the War-Worms are emerging from underground. From the start, the adventure is claustrophobic and has an unnaturally sticky, mucus encrusted feel to it, confirmed as the Player Characters climb down the well and War-Worms burrow out of the walls and drop onto the climbers below. It leads to a creepy uncertainty about the environment the Player Characters are in and the fear that anything might leap out at them at any moment. It has the feel of, and is obviously inspired by the film Aliens, which is further confirmed when the Player Characters discover corpses of some of the villagers trapped in the walls by congealed mucus and incubated into War-Worm Zombies! (The first of the scenario’s two handouts depict this horrid discovery.)

There are some other entertaining encounters too, such as worm pits with War-Worms on the catwalks above, stirring the great vats of worms, who upon seeing the Player Characters will attempt to knock them into the pit! A stockade holding villagers gone mad during their imprisonment and having turned feral, will take their fury out on the villagers. Then there is the War-Worm Ogre Zombie right at the end, a failed, stitched-together experiment by Solom Quor that has left it blind, legless, and enraged. As a consequence, it is slow, only able to crawl about and lash out wildly in a random direction. A Warrior or a Dwarf with a slashing weapon can target the thing’s stitches with a Mighty Deed to inflight extra damage. It is a pleasingly different end of scenario boss fight style encounter.

Although small, there is a pleasing sense of verticality to Dungeon Crawl Classics #76.5: Well of the Worm and some variety to the eight locations it is comprises, even though all are covered in slime and crusty with dried ooze. It also great atmosphere for such a short dungeon, but its length means that there is little room for more than straightforward exploration and a lot of combat. There is no real opportunity to roleplay in the scenario and no-one to roleplay with, since Solom Quor is not interested in talking.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #76.5: Well of the Worm is decently presented. The writing is good, the artwork is decent, and the handouts are better. The map is great, imparting much of the scenario’s atmosphere.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #76.5: Well of the Worm leans into the pulp horror of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game as well, lending it a creepy, claustrophobic atmosphere that everyone is going to be familiar with. It is a solid filler dungeon, easy to prepare, and heavy on combat, so easy to run in a single session.