What do you think?
Rate this book
Aerie of the Slave Lords #A3
Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords
An Adventure for Characters Levels 4-7:
Into the Drachengrab Mountains! Hot on the trail of the marauding slaver, you & your fellow adventurers plunge deep into hostile Hills.
Spurred on by your past success, you now seek the heart of the slaver conspiracy.
But hurry! You must move quickly before the slavers recover from your previous forays & attack!
This module was originally used for the official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Tournament at the GenCon XIII convention & is the third in a series of four related tournament modules from TSR.
Into the Drachengrab Mountains! Hot on the trail of the marauding slaver, you & your fellow adventurers plunge deep into hostile Hills.
Spurred on by your past success, you now seek the heart of the slaver conspiracy.
But hurry! You must move quickly before the slavers recover from your previous forays & attack!
This module was originally used for the official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Tournament at the GenCon XIII convention & is the third in a series of four related tournament modules from TSR.
28 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
31 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 8, 2017
This one is a bit tough to rate without actually running it. It consists of 3 sections; two linear tournament funhouses, and a city exploration. As it is you aren't supposed to do much with the city part; it mainly seems to involve chasing down a few clues to find the second dungeon entrance. But it would be tempting to add a little more drama; break a few slaves or prisoners out of bondage, rescue an unfairly treated lady of the night (of which the city has many), or interrupt an assassination. The tournament dungeons are more or less standard for the series, which overall has quite a high standard of excellence. Nearly every fight involves some sort of twist or trap to make it unusual. That said, after having played through the dungeons of A1 and A2, more of the same is not exactly what the doctor ordered, which is why it would be great to have more emphasis on role-playing in the city. Anyway, the ending is quite unusual. Do NOT use the tournament version. Go ahead and enjoy the great battle with the Slave Lords at the end - who by the way do need some henchmen and lackeys to slow the party down. Don't worry about not being able to run A4 if the party wins; they shouldn't, but if they do, as the module says tip your hat to them!
August 30, 2023
Third in the classic Slavers series for AD&D, this was released in 1981. As with the prior two modules (and many at the time) it was developed from an adventure played in a tournament (Gencon XIII) and, especially in this case, it shows.
The module essentially has three parts. Part A involves a fairly linear trip through hidden caves that allow access to the island of the slave lords. The rationale (oddly provided at the start of section B) is that they keep this as an escape route from the island: which kind of makes sense. There's a mixture of traps and encounters which, while fun, dont make a huge amount of sense in the context of an escape route (magical salt mountain that you'd need to climb up in the reverse direction?? A curtain of blue fire? Swinging on a rope? Exiting under a monster's arse???). But as with many things in the old days, and with my teen DM brain of that era engaged, you sort of go with it.
Two encounters in part A stand out: the storoper, and the illusionist, Wimpell Frump. The former is a difficult monster with some curious powers that don't permit saves: would be a hard sell in the current era!! The latter is well designed, and one I'd love to run. It also creates the great Otus illustration on the module's rear cover.
The middle section (which was the tournament's first semi-final and has the pre-gen characters with upgraded kit) takes place in the city of Suderham on the slavers' island. Apart from the bizarre scale of the map (50ft squares creating 400ft long pubs) this is a great part of the series; each location is named, although most is closed on the premise they infiltrate at night. It would be simple to expand, and there's a wealth of potential here. The investigation to find a second hidden route, this time via sewers, into the Council chamber of the Slave Lords, is via following cryptic clues to a hidden trapdoor. Again it's rather silly, but for once we have more focus on RP and problem solving, and a great location to explore, so it's the highlight of the module for me.
Finally section C (second semi final round) is a linear crawl through 'sewers' to finally face the bad guys. Unless you play the tournament rules, in which case you get gassed and captured in the most infamous railroad in DnD history. TBF if you don't play the tournament it's written in that should you not prevail (and that last fight is really tough) and wish to play A4 you're captured/ raised from dead for questioning. If you succeed and wanted to play A4 you'd need to be more subtly creative to avoid PC table flip (although in the day players seemed more acceptant of such plot devices).
Anyhow, section C has fun but even sillier encounters than section A. Armoured flesh golems, killer mimics, random hell hounds living in 10x10 room just hanging out to ambush, a bizarrely placed lake in a cave in the 'sewer' in which mushrooms used as boats, and my personal favourite--a gelatinous cube sandwich trap. Totally bizarre and illogical, but great fun that you sort of have to go with
The finale can play out a few ways, depending on your module intent (tournament vs. No) but has a tough fight with five slave lords (pictured on cover) in a council chamber. They are well designed and have brief bios as well as tactics against the PCs, who are likely to arrive fairly battered after the route through the sewers. Feetla the boss would be tough enough at AC-1 and HP90, without the invisible 11th level assassin acing PCs from behind. Modrammo the cleric is designed to throw some spells (like flame strike,) then bugger off to warn the other 4 slave lords in A4. A 9th level MU curiously just lobs magic missiles and spells from his ring, as he's evidently had a busy day not memorising any spells. Perhaps he'd spent his day watching the players in his crystal ball and deciding to leave the hundred soldiers upstairs while they battle gelatanious cube sandwiches?
Anyhow, it's all suitably tough and OTT on the players, as first edition could be. It's definitely the weakest of the A series so far, but is saved from relegation to utter daftness by the city section. If I ran it in a non tournament context (unlikely), it'd need some work to make it playable. I'd be curious to read the late 80s update A1-4 Scourge of the Slave Lords to see what they did there.
The art is classic for the era with favourites Erol Otus, Jeff Dee, and Bill Willingham providing such stylish pictures. At the time I adored Dee's comic book style so much we bought V&V based purely on that!
The module essentially has three parts. Part A involves a fairly linear trip through hidden caves that allow access to the island of the slave lords. The rationale (oddly provided at the start of section B) is that they keep this as an escape route from the island: which kind of makes sense. There's a mixture of traps and encounters which, while fun, dont make a huge amount of sense in the context of an escape route (magical salt mountain that you'd need to climb up in the reverse direction?? A curtain of blue fire? Swinging on a rope? Exiting under a monster's arse???). But as with many things in the old days, and with my teen DM brain of that era engaged, you sort of go with it.
Two encounters in part A stand out: the storoper, and the illusionist, Wimpell Frump. The former is a difficult monster with some curious powers that don't permit saves: would be a hard sell in the current era!! The latter is well designed, and one I'd love to run. It also creates the great Otus illustration on the module's rear cover.
The middle section (which was the tournament's first semi-final and has the pre-gen characters with upgraded kit) takes place in the city of Suderham on the slavers' island. Apart from the bizarre scale of the map (50ft squares creating 400ft long pubs) this is a great part of the series; each location is named, although most is closed on the premise they infiltrate at night. It would be simple to expand, and there's a wealth of potential here. The investigation to find a second hidden route, this time via sewers, into the Council chamber of the Slave Lords, is via following cryptic clues to a hidden trapdoor. Again it's rather silly, but for once we have more focus on RP and problem solving, and a great location to explore, so it's the highlight of the module for me.
Finally section C (second semi final round) is a linear crawl through 'sewers' to finally face the bad guys. Unless you play the tournament rules, in which case you get gassed and captured in the most infamous railroad in DnD history. TBF if you don't play the tournament it's written in that should you not prevail (and that last fight is really tough) and wish to play A4 you're captured/ raised from dead for questioning. If you succeed and wanted to play A4 you'd need to be more subtly creative to avoid PC table flip (although in the day players seemed more acceptant of such plot devices).
Anyhow, section C has fun but even sillier encounters than section A. Armoured flesh golems, killer mimics, random hell hounds living in 10x10 room just hanging out to ambush, a bizarrely placed lake in a cave in the 'sewer' in which mushrooms used as boats, and my personal favourite--a gelatinous cube sandwich trap. Totally bizarre and illogical, but great fun that you sort of have to go with
The finale can play out a few ways, depending on your module intent (tournament vs. No) but has a tough fight with five slave lords (pictured on cover) in a council chamber. They are well designed and have brief bios as well as tactics against the PCs, who are likely to arrive fairly battered after the route through the sewers. Feetla the boss would be tough enough at AC-1 and HP90, without the invisible 11th level assassin acing PCs from behind. Modrammo the cleric is designed to throw some spells (like flame strike,) then bugger off to warn the other 4 slave lords in A4. A 9th level MU curiously just lobs magic missiles and spells from his ring, as he's evidently had a busy day not memorising any spells. Perhaps he'd spent his day watching the players in his crystal ball and deciding to leave the hundred soldiers upstairs while they battle gelatanious cube sandwiches?
Anyhow, it's all suitably tough and OTT on the players, as first edition could be. It's definitely the weakest of the A series so far, but is saved from relegation to utter daftness by the city section. If I ran it in a non tournament context (unlikely), it'd need some work to make it playable. I'd be curious to read the late 80s update A1-4 Scourge of the Slave Lords to see what they did there.
The art is classic for the era with favourites Erol Otus, Jeff Dee, and Bill Willingham providing such stylish pictures. At the time I adored Dee's comic book style so much we bought V&V based purely on that!
July 6, 2020
This module probably has limited usability outside of the "tournament" setting. The first and third portions are essentially linear "challenge" dungeons with high difficulty and minimal alternatives. In between is sandwiched a city where the players are hunting for a secret door with just a few clues out of several dozen buildings. Unlike prior modules, the dungeons don't have much additional non-tournament area, so basically this is a set of traps and difficult encounters for your players. Interesting as a historical artifact but not as much for actual gameplay.
November 27, 2023
This series is getting slightly better. Fewer errors in the text and a more logical scenario.
It's interesting to find the new monsters which were later pulled into the Monster Manual 2, but overall still not great.
It's interesting to find the new monsters which were later pulled into the Monster Manual 2, but overall still not great.
July 23, 2017
A fun quadrology of dungeons and adventures.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews