Aur's Retreat

by Rand Elmquist

The locale of Aur's Retreat is the forest, somewhere in the north-east or north-west part of the human racial lands. It is set far from Dalriada, but even farther from Sanguine. Humans have visited through the years, but Orks have legends from which they have learned to avoid the place. In fact, entering the Gardens of Aur's Retreat is almost certain death to an Ork.

It is perpetually like a mid-summer day in the gardens. This was the work of Aur's wizards. When Aur's army was destroyed and the City of Dalriada was founded, the wizards gathered their powers and sealed off the summer retreat leaving only a gateway in the deep shadows of a forest path. However great, their powers were tainted by contact with the temporal minds of their conquerors. The timeless gardens, which existed in relative peace for ages before, would become filled with greed and hate.

Having sealed the gardens without cleansing themselves, the twisted fate of the wizards became evident in the form of certain evil forest sprites. Each of the four wizards was tormented in his favorite garden by these creatures, ones the wizards themselves could not subdue. The wizards went mad and locked themselves up and withered away in a tower on the northern edge of Aur's retreat.

The gardens went to ruin, overrun by the plants and their gardeners which were enslaved and nourished by the evil sprites. What follows is the record from a certain ranger who remains unnamed, but who has explored these gardens repeatedly and knows well the tricks used by all four kinds of sprite. He learned something of the wizards as well, but their dark secrets were of less interest to this ranger. Supposedly each of the sprites has, in some form, a key to rooms of the tower of the wizards and the richness stored there, but those mysteries are (in this record) unexplored.

The southeast walled garden is in the lowest part of the Retreat. Water from a subterranean spring filled the pool where once lazy fish swam and fragrant water lilies bloomed. A beautiful water Nymph named Gladys lives now in this garden. The lilies have grown huge and the pool itself has overflowed and laps against the four mossy walls, with a few trees clinging to the rocky shore. The lily pads are magnificent but somewhat outsized, and among them are lily flowers nearly a meter across. Drowning is the greatest danger here, as well as numbness from the cold water, and the claws of lesser Nymphs that are born suddenly from the great flower buds. Our hero says that a human or elf can walk upon the lily pads and reach Gladys herself near the center of the pool. This would be the deepest part of the pond and the most dangerous, for drowning or hypothermia is a distinct possibility.

Gladys can be driven back into the deep waters if enough of her water maidens are killed and if she fears for her own life. Magic spells have an uncertain effect, and often make her stronger, however. When she does retreat, the water recedes into its ancient pool (the nymphs turn into frogs one supposes). The ranger is quite definite on the disappearance of the high water, in any case.

A key is often found in the pool. When this is done, explorers should make your way back to the entrance portico. You will be facing undead enemies at the two entrances to the next garden.

The southwest garden is a maze filled with blooming bushes, which our ranger says are peonies. Among the paths which seem to lead nowhere are men in colorful robes, tending the bushes, and wielding katanas. Magic is much to your benefit here although these men are very quick at dodging fire bolts and such. The ranger says there are several false walls in the peony beds and these should be sought out. The sprite is actually not one of the gardener-soldiers, but discovery is half the fun.

One reaches the north end of the peony garden and a gateway on the north part of the retreat. Now, listen up, only ten players can enter this gate, or eleven if one is a thief. Entering the middle courtyard you see at its ends several buildings. The east and west pavilions were where the barbarians feasted on summer days ages ago. In the yard itself they held the rites of tournament, probably involving some sacrifice and ritual killing before they set to putting holes in one another. There are undead barbarians here. At this point, after killing these barbarians, one might discover that the gate back to the peony garden is locked, and moving onwards to the remaining gardens is required. In any case time is of the essence, because there is only an hour to complete the quest after winning the central courtyard. (The water garden resets to its wild state when this timer starts, and the peony gate is locked from both sides until the hour is past).

One can chose either of the two gardens. There is also the wizard's place between them, but it has a main gate that is locked.

The rose garden is a tangle of thorny semi-intelligent and nasty rose vines, some of which hang over the walls of their enclosure and into the courtyard. It is better to climb up these vines and onto the wall, rather than entering by the gate to this garden. It turns out that the vines are pestered by sucking beetles and one should concentrate on killing them, rather than the rose vines. The beetles have a habit of attaching themselves to players, which they easily confuse with the vines. To make matters worse, vines tend to flail at and puncture the players who are unfortunate enough to be attacked by a beetle.

Daggers are better than larger weapons for destroying these bug pests. Bludgeoning is also effective, if accurate enough. The beetle queen and the sprite that rises from her dead carcass must be killed, after hacking through her nest of rose vines. Like that of all the sprites, her death is an illusion says the ranger. She often leaves behind the key to the rooms of the most powerful of the wizards. This wizard went quite mad and hid the door to his chambers in the tower, according to some accounts. Very nice shells can be gathered from the rose beetle corpses, used in making stronger armor.

Garlic plants in garden number four have purple globe-shaped blooms on tall stalks. These flowers emit a yellow mist in the breeze and that mist (or pollen) dulls one's mind. All sight and sense are lost if the player remains here too long. Bulbs from these plants can be dug, and are fine for cooking, if somewhat potent.

Search for the door to the kitchen of the Tasteless Cook. Here a thief comes in handy. The Cook (sprite) will have a key to one of the chambers of the wizard's retreat, as well as for the side door into the tower. A good thief can almost always locate these keys, but if the cook is attacked before the thief can work she will hide them. It may take some time to find any hidden keys, and besides the Cook herself and the several helpers who come to her aid are fearsome enemies armed each with two kitchen cleavers. Get the keys, and run to the kitchen garden east side door into the wizard's tower.

If you have the sprites' keys that can be used inside the wizard's tower, find the wizard's chambers which are usually unguarded upstairs. Otherwise, some arcane objects and minor magical weapons are usually found on the undead guards spawning on the first floor. When the hour timer is up, all will be transported together to the forest, out of sight of the dungeon. The objects found from the wizards' chambers are used in a variety of ways, which may change throughout the game.

A few secrets:

Well-made dungeons never give everything away on the first pass. The water garden, the first part of the dungeon, in particular holds an important secret. Explorers of the deeps of the pool will find a drain, leading to an underwater tunnel. Here a player can (with good teamwork) enter the cistern of the wizards' tower from below. However, the sticking point is that there is a grate across the drainway in mid-tunnel. Only when the this grate opens can a quick swimmer enter the tower basement without drowning. The grate opens just after the water sprite is driven out, so only when the behavior of the sprite is mastered will this trick work.

The Peonies are passive plants, but have at least one secret. If the players do not disturb the samurai gardeners for a while, they will see them beheading an occasional flower with a quick sword swipe. Blooms lie on the pathway at their feet. The astute player will notice that these blooms are "blighted" and realize that they should be burned to remove the disease from the garden. There is a 20% chance that a burned bloom will release the sprite of the peony garden. If all the gardeners are killed, the players may not find enough cut flowers and will miss driving out this sprite.

The courtyard of the barbarians could be a favorite spot for controlled, private duels among players. The limit of ten or 11 players and the 1 hour lock-out make for a fine place for team-on-team warfare. There should also be a lock switch hidden inside the compound, so that players can use the area privately with fewer than 10 players.

Players can gather essences of the flowers to take back to crafters of potions and perfumes. Cloth robes could be deconstructed for colored thread, by weavers. In the kitchen, if the Cook is killed, the key might be hidden in the food on the cooking hearth or in the pots of beer on the shelves. Eating or drinking from the pots will allow players to find the key (eventually) but will have an effect. "Lion and lamb stew" for example might be like a spell of strength followed after a while by weakness.

The cistern or basement of the wizard's tower is the location of the chief wizard's chambers, well-hidden as promised. No entry from above is possible unless someone enters through the drain in the water garden to unlock the hidden door. Of course, there is no way to get the key to this chamber unless the main group goes to the rose garden to get it. There should be no exit from the wizard tower (perhaps it is a separate dungeon itself) once a player has entered, so the drain-swimmer is stuck to explore the cistern and fight off rats until his group arrives. Hopefully, it will be his group and not someone else's group, since the first two gardens are open for all.

The timer will help to reduce camping. Making people go through the courtyard to reset the timer should help, and updating the courtyard occasionally to spawn barbarians of high enough level, so that close to 10 are needed to subdue them. Additional people can enter the courtyard if someone dies, since the timer starts when the courtyard is cleared. Mostly campers should realize the DF principle that items found will not be as good as well-crafted items. The beetle shells could be used as parts of banded armor or scale mail. Plenty of armored beetle shells can be carried back to the crafters (enough to make their value moderate) but limited by their weight or volume.