Friday Fantasy: The Sea Queen Escapes!

In their most recent adventure, the Player Characters triumphed, defeated the villains, and went home the heroes. They were also able to take a fair amount of treasure with them. Amongst them was a small scrimshaw idol depicting a lithe woman who wears a slim crown adorned with coral and pearls atop her head and whose eyes are surrounded with a light dusting of sparkling scales around her eyes and fingers connected by a delicate webbing. No matter who has possession of the idol, all of the Player Characters have the same dream. They all dream of the woman depicted by the scrimshaw, apparently trapped within a sphere of water in a barely lit stone chamber, and pleading, “Trapped. Please, can you hear me? The wizard Shadankin holds me prisoner. I can’t see you, but I sense you. Aid me. Please!” Over the course of several nights, she will tell the Player Characters that she is a princess from the ‘Sea People’ who has been stolen by the horrid mage, Shadankin, and imprisoned in a magical gaol on the tiny, tiny island of Lone Ait, after she rejected his advances. Shadankin hid the key to her cell in a secret vault, so the Player Characters will need to find that. If they manage to free her, she promises that her father will reward them well.

This is the set-up for Dungeon Crawl Classics #75: The Sea Queen Escapes!, the eighth 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 Third Level Player Characters, this is a swords & sorcery-style scenario which will take them back and forth across the sea to locate first Shadankin’s secret sanctum, then his secret vault, and finally the prison where the princess is being held. Except this set-up is all wrong. Yes, the Player Characters do have to find Shadankin’s secret sanctum, then his secret vault, and finally the prison where the princess is being held. After all, there is a princess to be rescued, the plans of an evil wizard to be thwarted, and reward to be won—and what true adventurer would not want to achieve one or more of these, if not all three? However, Shadankin is not the evil wizard the princess says he is. Rather, he was fascinated by life under the sea and had good relations with a great many of the peoples in the subaquatic realms. He is guilty of imprisoning her, but this really was for a good reason—the princes had been suborned by evil! Recently, earthquakes have cracked the wards which have kept her imprisioned for years and she has managed to reach out to the Player Characters via the idol that has fallen into their hands and implore them to free her. Ultimately then, Dungeon Crawl Classics #75: The Sea Queen Escapes! is a classic bait and switch, almost a cliché in making the dame asking for help the villain of the piece. Of course, the Player Characters will have no idea of this, though there may be clues as to her true nature along the way.

Essentially, Dungeon Crawl Classics #75: The Sea Queen Escapes! consists of three big locks, one to find the means to call the vault, one to find the key to the princess’ prison, and one to unlock it. Each of these vaults is represented by a mini-dungeon and this is where the scenario begins to underwhelm. The issue is that each of the three mini-dungeons is linear and feels all the more so, played one after another. Structurally, the adventure offers very little variation. So, what is it that makes it standout? It comes down to the scenario’s environment and its big, set scenes.

In ‘Shadankin’s Sanctum’, the Player Characters have to leap from one suspended turtle shell after another, all under fire by harpoon-flinging lampreymen, whilst the ‘’Vault of the Turtle’ where the key is hidden, is actually carved into the shell of a giant turtle that the Player Characters summon by blowing a special horn! How special is that? (And they get to keep the horn, though it will only work once every three years.) In the vault, the Player Characters will face guardians who were once adventurers themselves, but were killed and in their unlife protect the vault either encrusted in barnacles, coral, or sea crabs. Lastly, in ‘The Earth Prison’ where the princess is being held, the Player Characters must wade through rooms filled with different mixtures of water and tar, meaning that each has a different chance of catching alight and setting everyone in the room on fire. They will also have to face a living tar, but are helped with the addition of a stone sphere hanging by a chain from a statue that a Warrior or Dwarf with his ‘Mighty Deed of Arms’ can swing back and forth across the room to smash into the living tar. Plus, there is a curse, which forces the characters to swap bodies and in the process, Classes, giving a player a whole new Class to get the hang of! These are all fun set pieces that help to bring the scenario to life.

The other aspect that brings the scenario to life is the possibility of the Player Characters drowning. One of the key selling points about a scenario like Dungeon Crawl Classics #75: The Sea Queen Escapes! is its aquatic environment. The Player Characters will encounter rooms slick with lampreymen slime and fish blood, hung with rotting nets, lagoons are the hunting grounds of giant hammerhead sharks, and so on. Woe betide the possibility that they might fall into deep water especially in armour. In general, combat and the possibility of drowning can be complex in roleplaying games, especially fantasy roleplaying games, but not here. The rules for drowning and fighting in water are kept straightforward and easy to use and there are some nice notes on the effects of fire and electrical attacks in water as well as the effectiveness of ray and spray type spells. In addition, the Player Characters can make use of jelly-fish diving suits to safely survive underwater.

There are two issues to the scenario. One is that it is possible that the Player Characters might not succeed. For example, they might not get into the vault the first time and not be able to go back a second time because the turtle who shell it has been carved out of can only be called once every three years, or they might be defeated by the princess who turns out to be evil and imprisoned for a good reason, and who will happily and readily turn on them. What happens then? The scenario does not really explore either possibility.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #75: The Sea Queen Escapes! is also a short adventure and it is not difficult to come away feeling that there should be more to the story, more length to what is an epic situation. In the second edition of the scenario, ‘The Sunken Kingdom of Ru’, where the princess was once from, is detailed as a mini-campaign setting. It has a classic Atlantis style origins story in that in ancient times, the people of the island grew arrogant with power and technology, and displeased with them, the gods cast them and their homeland to the bottom of the sea. If the Player Characters are successful in defeating the princess, a representative of the kingdom will invite them to visit and there are other story hooks to get the Player Characters involved as well. However, this develops the setting, rather than making the scenario feel as big and as epic as perhaps it should be. Ultimately, it feels like a convention scenario when for a home campaign, a Judge and her players might want more.

That said, the size of the scenario makes it easy to insert into a campaign, especially one with an aquatic or piratical theme. As part of a campaign, the three parts of the scenario need not be run one after the other, so that other adventures could occur and journeys could be longer. One such setting could be Freeport: City of Adventure, first seen in Death in Freeport in 2000. This is not as ridiculous as there has already been a scenario in the ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics’ line, Shadows in Freeport, though that was for use with Dungeons & Dragons, 3.5. Ultimately, there is scope for the Judge to do more with the scenario.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #75: The Sea Queen Escapes! is well done. The artwork is excellent and the cartography very serviceable. The handouts are excellent.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #75: The Sea Queen Escapes! takes a cliché and encrusts it in barnacles, wraps it in coral, and deluges it in sea water to give what is a better convention scenario than campaign scenario. This is an engagingly salty affair that ultimately feels as if there should be much more to it than what there is on the page.