Unlimited Adventures: The Restoration of Gundahab

    

A custom title screen seems like a good sign.

      

After "Skull Crag," I played "The Restoration of Gundahab" (the game is sometimes listed with the master title "Paladin 1," but it doesn't appear on the main screen) from 1993. It took me about 8 hours. You might have noticed from my dates that I've been ahead in my blogging lately, so I had time to slow down and enjoy this one over several days.

    

"Gundahab," by Rhys Hess, is a superb module that evokes Pool of Radiance in its basic setup: A city overrun by monsters must be reclaimed by decent folk. It is a bit linear, but otherwise a fantastic use of the engine for Level 1 characters. Its combats are tough but fair, and it's the first game since Pool of Radiance to provide that delicious Level 1 challenge where every "Sleep" and "Bless" spell matter, your run victory laps when you replace your long sword with a long sword +1, and you feel like Hercules when you acquire the "Sweep" ability. I enjoyed it equally as much as "The Heirs to Skull Crag," possibly more.

    

To avoid any issues with level caps, I created an all-human party, and I just went with the predictable but balanced choice of choosing one paladin, one fighter, one ranger, one cleric, one thief, and one magic user. If you try to play without a paladin, the game warns you that while you can continue, it was designed with the assumption that a paladin is part of the party, as there are some unique encounters for that character. 

     

Thanks for the warning!

    

The setup is that your party is a motley group of friends who decided to cast off their humdrum lives and seek adventure together. After a few gigs as caravan guards and other odd jobs, they've begun to "wish for something with more purpose." Enter Namor, a cleric of the god Dalthus (invented for this module, I think). Namor had served in a temple int he city of Gundahab, a member of the prosperous Merchant League. Fifteen years ago, the other cities of the League banded together and, with no public explanation, sacked Gundahab. Since then, monsters have come to inhabit its former buildings and shops. Namor wants to reclaim the city.

  

This actually looks plausibly like the city.

   

(None of the geographic references and none of the characters are canonical to the Forgotten Realms, as far as I can tell. In addition to Dalthus and Gundahab, the author made up the River Lynde, the Cloudfang Mountains, and Bluerock Mountain. I know there's a Merchant's League around Baldur's Gate, but I don't think it's supposed to be the same thing.)

     

I've spent a lot of time in the Forgotten Realms, and I've never heard of you.

     

The Level 1 party is naturally concerned about their ability to do this on their own, but Namor assures they will have help. The game begins with the party in the forest approaching the city.

   

The city is divided into four quadrants. The party starts in the southeast quadrant, inhabited largely by kobolds, then proceeds the southwest (hobgoblins), northwest (orcs), and northeast (more orcs). A mysterious woodsman meets the party as they enter the city and gives them the basic layout. After they've explored a bit, and right about where I started to get antsy about how I'd level up and identify my equipment, the woodsman returns and invites the party to a hidden village in the woods nearby. It is inhabited by some of Gundahab's former residents and their descendants, and they provide the types of services (training, shops, a pub, a safe place to rest) as the "town level" of many RPGs. Namor ends up taking residence there and providing training services to clerics.

    

The party meets a key ally.

      

As I mentioned, the game excels in both random and fixed combats that test a low-level party with appropriate monsters. There are several battles equivalent to the one at Sokal Keep in Pool of Radiance, where your small group has to establish a choke point and take down a swarm of enemy fighters (with maybe the occasional shaman) by pulling every trick in the book: missile weapons, "Sleep," "Hold Person," "Stinking Cloud," and so forth. My idea of a good Gold Box fight is one in which my cleric has to keep busy casting "Cure Light Wounds" during the battle and not just afterwards. "Gundahab" brings that in spades, all the way through the end.

   

An early battle against six hobgoblins is legitimately hard.

     

Equally important, the game excels at atmospheric messages and contextual encounters, some of them delivered by consulting paragraphs in an accompanying text file (evoking the adventurers' journals of the SSI titles). We know that the Gold Box games don't offer much graphically, especially in a kit where every graphic is just an asset reused from somewhere else. "Gundahab" compensates by offering detailed textual descriptions of the areas and by preceding all but purely random encounters with some contextual information. It also excels at little side-areas, like stairs that go down to a small underground lair, or passages into caves, that make the maps more interesting than just 16 x 16 squares. Some examples:

   

• The party stumbles into a lair of two mountain lions, who attack. The party has no choice but to kill them. Afterwards, they find and adopt two young cubs. An animal trainer in the woodsmen's village later adopts the cubs.

• As the party explores the city, there are numerous remnants and reminders of what the city used to be. 

    

What the Gold Box is incapable of showing, the author at least tells.

     

• A kobold approaches the party and offers to sell out his chief by showing them the entrance to his lair, in exchange for a share of the loot. (I said no.)

• An underground passage to the kobold chief requires the party to fight a basically impossible battle against eight huge snakes. But an astute player notes an alternate path through a small crevice that can be widened with some nearby tools.

    

Avoiding an impossible battle.

    

• The party comes upon a conference between various monster leaders (hobgoblins, gnolls, orcs) and can listen to their negotiations from the other side of a door, then burst in on them at just the right time. 

• The party meets a woman who runs a vault in the city. It becomes clear that she's a ghost. The party buries her bones and finds the keys to the vault. Later, as they roam the wilderness, she possesses one of the party members and marches the party to the house of her father, still alive, who apparently fled the city and left her there to be killed by the invaders. Father and daughter are able to reconcile, for which the father later thanks me.

     

This is legitimately sad.

     

The paladin's role shines in several places that would be "boss fights," only the paladin has the option to negotiate a settlement. Because of this system, both the kobold and hobgoblin leaders packed up and left without a fight. Realistically, they saw what we had done to their guards and decided that they didn't stand a chance. How often have you seen that in an RPG? 

     

This guy speaks like he's making a LOLHOBGOBLIN meme.

    

As for the plot, it's linear but at least unpredictable. The southeast quadrant is indeed predominantly kobolds, though there are also battles with snakes, rates, mobats, and one otyugh living in the kobolds' trash heap. Various holes in the floor go down into small caverns with kobold encounters. One leads to a larger area with multiple large battles and a final encounter with the kobold chief, who in my game handed over his treasure for his life and left the city.

     

This is going to be satisfying.

     

Namor and a mage named Holkus arrived in the woodsmen's village just as we wrapped up this area, which was good because there's no other place to train clerics and mages. Namor mentioned the possibility of getting some help from the dwarves of Bluerock Mountain, who didn't help the city when it was sacked but still must wish they could ship their goods down the river like they used to. Holkus had some interest in the dwarf leader, Valn. Holkus also serves as perhaps the most useful money sink in any Gold Box game, with plenty of Potions of Speed, Potions of Giants Strength, Potions of Extra Healing, Wands of Magic Missile, and Wands of Paralyzation in inventory. I never really made enough money for that last item, which has to be a Gold Box first.

   

The southwest quadrant contains a lot of gnolls, hobgoblins, and bugbears. There's an old vault in this section of the city, locked by three keys, and guarded by what is suggested to be the ghost of one of the former guardians. We slowly looted the keys from the monster factions and buried the bones of the guardian and her child, and she rewarded us with a collection of powerful magic items that had been abandoned in the vault.

      

The southwest quadrant of the city.

     

The area also has a former Temple of Sune, which has been taken over by the apprentice of someone called the Necromancer. He sensed the paladin in our group and fled into the basement after raising a bunch of undead to fight us. We defeated his minions and followed him there. During our confrontation, someone (presumably the god Dalthus) spoke through the paladin's lips: "Did you think this defilement would go unpunished? You are called to judgement, as will your master when this champion is forged." A bolt of lightning incinerated the apprentice. Upstairs, we were able to overturn the altar to the god of death and restore the altar to Sune.

     

The guy's not wrong. It was late in the game before I remembered how to use "Lay on Hands."

     

The hobgoblin leader had a human thief for an advisor, and while he tried to persuade the king to kill us, my paladin passed his charisma check and the leader unconditionally surrendered.

   

As we wrapped up this area, the game had a little detour for us: a child from the woodsmen's village had been kidnapped by trolls. We followed a scout named Kinth Sureshot deep into the forest to a cave, where we defeated three trolls and saved the child. 

       

We're not Level 1 like those losers in Phlan.

     

Getting to the northern half of the city was tough. Orcs had fortified the northern half of the city, and the party couldn't even approach the gate without being pelted with arrows. Kinth had a plan, though: North of the city, the orcs had built a group of warehouses to store weapons and food. If we burned those warehouses, we might draw their attention from the south gate long enough to sneak in. The small map had a few challenging orc battles, but we accomplished the mission.

   

Back in the city, we were able to sneak into the northwestern quadrant, but we couldn't explore it at our leisure. Messages emphasized that we need to make it to the gates of the citadel in the northeast quadrant before the orcs regrouped. We fought a massive battle with different types of orcs and ogres (the party was mostly Level 3-4 at this point; still no "Fireball" but many other resources). Alas, we were too late, and the orcs managed to raise the drawbridge to the citadel.

     

I guess "Knock" doesn't work on drawbridges.

     

Back in the village, the chief, Balinus, suggested that we journey to Lord Valn of the dwarves and ask him for help. We took a long, linear road along an aqueduct leading to the city from the Cloudfang Mountains. Balinus had suggested we convince the dwarves to get the aqueduct operating again, so that the (eventually) restored population would have access to water. Along the way, we made the mistake of telling some villagers about the plan; they had been used to having exclusive access to the water and worried that the city would take it all and leave them with nothing for their crops. We negotiated a settlement on the condition that we ask the dwarves to kill a griffon that had been raiding the villagers' livestock. We ended up doing this ourselves.

   

Someone is going to be sorry.

       

The only other major encounter on the way to the dwarves was a lowland dwarf village where some kind of course had clearly befallen the people. As we explored, we kept getting shoved and stabbed by invisible entities, and an old crone told us that everyone had died of the plague. When we explored a marble pedestal at the center of the town, it generated a hydra for us to fight, of all things.

 

We got to the dwarven fortress, but Lord Valn wouldn't even talk to us. His son, Valni, caught us on the way out. He told us that 15 years ago, a lowland dwarf had come to serve as Valn's advisor. This advisor lied to Valn and said that the dwarves had been cheated by Gundahab, which is why the dwarves didn't rise to the city's defense when it was sacked. The advisor then stole Valn's axe, Skullcleaver, a holy symbol to the dwarves, and ran off, leaving the dwarves on the brink of civil war. He asked us to retrieve the axe.

  

"Hold on. Before you say anything, let me get a pen . . ."

      

On the way out of the mountains, we found a cave with a holy pool of water. Gideon, my paladin, was asked explicitly to become a Paladin of Dalthus, which he accepted for about a level's worth of experience. 

     

As your paladin, can I make fun of your name?

    

Back in the village, Holkus told us that the lowland dwarf village was protected by an illusion placed by Jhaezel the Illusionist. If we could destroy the artifact generating the illusion, we could find the axe. He gave us a vial of magic powder to sprinkle on the artifact to reveal it in exchange for giving him a chance to study the axe before we returned it to Valn. The artifact turned out to be on that marble pedestal, and once we destroyed it, the dilapidated wreck of a village revealed itself as a normal village teeming with dwarves. We had to carve our way through dozens of them to kill the leader and reclaim the axe.

  

Holkus caused an explosion and nearly killed himself experimenting with the axe, then grudgingly told us to take it back to Valn, which we did. He changed his tune, and Valni joined the party temporarily. Valn recommended two ways to sneak into the citadel occupied by orcs: ride the aqueduct in or climb a secret path up the cliff. I chose to ride the aqueduct, and there was a fun animation to accompany this (not a cinematic, of course, just several static screens strung together). 

      

Taking a raft ride.

       

We spent a good hour clearing the citadel of orcs and ogres. We freed a representative from the Merchant League who they had imprisoned, destroyed the mechanism holding up the drawbridge, and partly explored a basement full of ghouls and ghasts. There was a huge and exhilarating battle in a grand feast hall where we had to keep several orc shamans from casting "Hold Person" on us, and another one with the orc chieftain and his guards. Multiple characters barely survived these battles. This is my idea of a good time. 

    

Before he died, the orc chieftain said something about throwing the "lead man's ring" down an old well. The meaning of this became clear when we spoke to Balinus, the leader of the woodsmen: "The ring . . . is the symbol of the ruler of the city."

    

Paladin!

    

If we wanted to fully restore the city, he said, we'd have to find it in the catacombs below. We didn't mind. Our mage had just acquired "Fireball."

      

I tried to resist, but I couldn't.

      

The catacombs were authentically hard, at least if we messed around. When we searched sarcophaguses, they disgorged mummies. When we searched an altar, statues in the room turned into margoyles. A basilisk roamed the hallways. An efreeti was hiding in a closet. These were non-trivial challenges for a Level 5 party, but they were also unnecessary. I could just keep walking past them to a network of caves.

   

The caves were occupied by trolls, ettins, and lizard men. We found the place where the well emptied (which makes it not really a "well," but we'll let it go), but before we could search, we were attacked by 20 lizard men and lizard men kings. I lost the first battle but buffed with potions and spells and won on the second attempt. It was followed by an equally-hard battle with about 10 lizard men and 4 ogres. When they were defeated, we negotiated a truce with the rest of the lizard men and were able to search the area and find the ring.

     

No mage forgets her first "Fireball."

   

When we got back the village, Balinus warned us of a massive orc army approaching the city from the mountains. We had to decide whether to fight in the city or the wilderness. Since I hate wilderness battles, I chose the city. We had to fight an enormous battle against well over three dozen orcs, orc archers, or shamans, and hill giants, though we had Balinus, Kinth, and four archers as allies. I managed to do it in one take, unbuffed, only losing one character to unconsciousness.

     

About a third of the enemies in this battle.

       

Afterwards, we were thanked by multiple villagers who would soon be moving back into the city. We gave Balinus the ring of leadership at a ceremony. The game told us that we'd reached the end of the main quest, but that we could still explore, fight, and pick up any side quests we might have missed.

       

I do know you! You're Kallithrea Starbrow!

     

Some miscellaneous notes:

 

• Resting is more realistic in this module than in most Gold Box games. There are a few safe rest points per map. Anywhere else, you're taking your chances. There are several sequences during which you cannot rest at all, mostly because the party is supposed to be pressed for time, and it would be unrealistic if they slept for multiple hours.   

 

A rare message indicating a safe resting space.

      

• The adventure has no mage scrolls. You're stuck with what you choose. In my case, that was "Enlarge," "Magic Missile," "Stinking Cloud," and "Fireball." The mage came with "Sleep" and a few other Level 1 spells. 

• Both this module and "The Heirs to Skull Crag" decided to simply the economies by allowing only platinum pieces. The manual doesn't suggest that anything else is possible. I realize that it makes the most efficient use of space, but "gold pieces" are so imbued in my mind as the standard D&D currency that I'm glad that future games would just use them exclusively. Incidentally, one table in the back of the FRUA manual mentions weight allowances "in steel pieces"; this must have been copied from the Krynn games with no one noticing.

• All my characters ended "Gundahab" at Level 6.

    

My paladin at the end of the game. He took a Potion of Giant Strength about six days ago and is still feeling it. Perhaps I should call a doctor.

    

• The module was not overly generous with equipment. We had mostly +1 stuff (primary weapons, bows, armor, helms, shields) by the end, with only one +2 item, a long sword that I gave to the paladin.

   

The ranger's inventory is typical.

   

• I had always thought that "Gold Box" was a colloquial term used by fans, but the manual for Unlimited Adventures uses it repeatedly. Searching other documentation, it looks like SSI used it in advertisements for some games, but the FRUA manual seems to be the first time that they really embraced it.

               

One of the victory screens.

       

In the final screen, Namor hinted at a sequel to come. This would be "The Merchant League" from 1994. I almost want to play it immediately, as the mystery of why the league sacked Gundahab remains open. These two modules are the only ones catalogued on the Rose Dragon site that were written by Rhys Hess of Pennsylvania. In 1999, Hess wrote an unofficial novelization of Planescape: Torment (1999) that many people seem to like and praise as truer to the game than the official novelization. I look forward to seeing his work again in the sequel.

     

Namor promises at least a second adventure, if not unlimited ones.

     

For now, I'm not quite sick of it yet, so let's try one or two more 1993 adventures while I figure out how to give the kit a rating.