Friday Fantasy: Emirikol Was Framed!

The narrow streets of the city are cast in chaos as men and women flee screaming. Some are cut down by the crossbow bolts fired by the bat-winged and hooting apes from above. Some writhe in agony, set alight by the bearded and hooded wizard sat astride his black stallion with its flaming eyes. The city watch seems powerless to stop this seemingly random assault. The wizard Emirikol, resident of the Shifting Tower in the north of the city, has struck! As death and destruction rain down, the Player Characters are targeted by the flying beasts, and if they can defeat them, they have the chance to chase down the marauding wizard. Before they have the chance to defeat him, Emirikol disappears. Such is the way of wily wizards. The question is, why did Emirikol randomly attack people in the streets of the city? The Player Characters are given the opportunity to find out a day later, when the captain of the city guard approaches them and asks them if they will do what he cannot. This is to enter the Shifting Tower with its ever-changing appearance, investigate Emirikol’s activities, and confront the wizard in order to discover why he attacked the city.

This is the set-up for Dungeon Crawl Classics #73: Emirikol Was Framed!, the sixth scenario to be published by Goodman Games for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Designed by Michael Curtis for a group of six Fourth Level Player Characters, it is a city-based that primarily consists of an assault on a wizard’s tower. If the name ‘Emirikol’ sounds familiar, then it should be. It first appeared in an illustration by David Trampier called ‘Emirikol the Chaotic’ in the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, depicting a wizard riding down a street attacking members of the city watch with a beam of magical energy as onlookers reacted with horror. The street itself, is based on a real location, the Street of Knights, part of the old Hospitaller fortress on the island of Rhodes in Greece. From this first depiction, Emirikol the Chaotic would go on to appear in subsequent editions of Dungeons & Dragons, most notably in the adventure A Paladin in Hell for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition, as a Twenty-Fourth Level Wizard! (There is an excellent history of ‘Emirikol the Chaotic’ here.) Dungeon Crawl Classics #73: Emirikol Was Framed! is obviously inspired by ‘Emirikol the Chaotic’ in many ways, most obviously the cover. However, as the title of the scenario clearly states, Emirikol was framed and is an innocent man—at the very least, of the most recent crimes people have accused him of. Whether he is innocent of anything else remains to be seen, but the fact that he is known as Emirikol the Chaotic suggests very probably not… In the meantime, if the title of the scenario is giving a big plot point away, what exactly is going on and what is the big plot point which is not being given away?

Once past the guard leopards or after having scaled its weird, ever-changing walls, the inside of the tower is delightfully weird and non-linear—non-Euclidean, even—making it a challenge for the Judge to navigate as it is for her players and their characters. The twelve floors of the tower are not arranged or presented in linear ascending order, so that as the Player Characters move from floor to floor, the Judge is tracing their route back and forth across the map in maze-like fashion. What this means is that the map will need as careful a study as the accompanying text does. As the Player Characters explore, what they find is a classic wizard’s tower full of trophies and projects, some of which are complete, some which are not, laced with traps and the weirdness found in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. These include a workshop packed with incomplete golems, a library of skulls containing secret knowledge that the Player Characters can access, and an upside-down waterfall which is the only means of accessing the next floor up—which means that the Player Characters will need remove any heavy armour they are wearing! The traps include tower floorplans which animate and attempt to smother the overly curious Player Character and the incomplete Golems themselves which can suck the souls of the Player Characters into them and force them to proceed in entirely artificial bodies. There is also an odd alien plant whose tendrils are embedded in the bodies of several prisoners allowing it to feed on the human bodily fluids and produce a nectar that can be sucked out of the plant’s stalk that provides both sustenance and healing! This is only one of the signs in the tower that Emirikol is Chaotic (and evil) and there are penalties for any Lawful Player Character who makes the woeful choice to imbibe any of this nectar. There is some fun treasure to be found, including Ruin, Chaotic magical sword with a hatred of man, a liquid metal hilt, and the ability to increase both the wielder’s Critical Range and die size when rolling fumbles. Ruin rewards ambition and success, not failure, so has a nasty to sting to it.

Eventually, after having traversed most of the Shifting Tower’s floors, likely having been denuded of heavy armour and possibly occupying now complete Golem bodies, the Player Characters will find their way to Emirikol’s Inner Sanctum. This is a hall of mirrors, a cliché in itself—but one that Emirikol the Chaotic takes advantage of not once, but twice. First, with the Player Characters, who is not pleased to see after their having ransacked his dwelling, and then, against Emirikol the Chaotic. This though, is not against himself, but Leotah, a rival and former lover who staged the attacks in the streets below. The end of the scenario devolves into a mass battle between the two Wizards and their cohorts, one of which the Player Characters will need to support if having both sides turn on them is to be avoided. The actual Spell Duel between Emirikol the Chaotic and Leotah is handled randomly rather being fought, although that is still possible, if complex. It is a big grand battle that will need careful handling upon the part of the Judge, but a fitting finale to adventure.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #73: Emirikol Was Framed! also includes four handouts, including images of both Emirikol the Chaotic and Leotah, and all six of the Golems complete with stats. Plus, there is the new spell, Altered Visage (used, of course, by Leotah to make her look like Emirikol the Chaotic), and ‘Four Scenes From A Conflict Eternal’. Written by Daniel J. Bishop, these are four scenes from the centuries spanning feud between the former lovers. They include the Library of the Order of the Blue Monks where they were said to study and first became lovers, an attempt by Leotah to assassinate Emirikol at the end of the world, and alternate world where, as the only humans, they renewed their romance until fate took another tilt at them. There is no advice on how to use these, the Judge being left to create his own links, but perhaps the most obvious one is have developed into mini-encounters and then stored in the library of skulls for the Player Characters to experience. All four will need some development to be turned into something playable.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #73: Emirikol Was Framed! is well done. The scenario is decently written and the artwork is overall good. The cartography is good, but problematic given its lack of linearity.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #73: Emirikol Was Framed! takes a classic situation—the need to assault or break into a wizard’s tower and find what has happened to the wizard himself. In fact, so much a classic situation, it is all but a cliché, right down to the Player Characters have to race out of the tower as it collapses behind them. Yet, Dungeon Crawl Classics #73: Emirikol Was Framed! is an entertaining treatment of a cliché, in turns weird and exciting, the result being a fun scenario that is really easy to insert into a campaign and run.