Running The Gauntlet

This is a HeroQuest adventure for which you will require the HeroQuest board game.  You will need a GamesMaster and just one player.  Rules are the same as for any HeroQuest game, but the adventure has one difference:  it is only for a Wizard.

Just one Wizard at a time may try his luck at this quest.  If other players wish to tackle it, they must wait their turn to tackle the adventure solitaire.

The description of the adventure begins over the page.  DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING PAGES UNLESS YOU INTEND TO GAMESMASTER THIS ADVENTURE.


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THE ADVENTURE
(GamesMaster Only)

Read this to the player:

You have been shipwrecked while crossing the Sea of Claws.  Battered and half-drowned, you found yourself seized and brought to a gilded palace of great marble domes and towers.  There you were nursed back to health, but despite the luxury of your surroundings you began to feel uneasy.  Rather than being an honoured guest, it was as though you were being fattened for the kill.

Today your hosts came to you.  They are tall men in long silk robes.  From their lead-coloured skin and yellow eyes you suspect them to be Cabiri, a sorcerously powerful race descended from a union between men and sea-nymphs in ancient times.

The Cabiri lords escort you to a stairway winding down into the labyrinth beneath their city.  By telepathy they speak to you:  "Below lies a great treasure, the Wand of Galimatias, a mighty wizard of ages past.  Find it and return here.  Then you will have proved your power as a wizard and you will be free to leave our shores.'

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Wandering Monster for this adventure:  Skeleton

A.  The room has three doors, each bearing an inscription.  The door in the west wall reads:  VXU.  The one in the south reads:  VJSII.  The one in the east reads:  UPI.  Some code perhaps?


B.  Two Goblins sit at dinner, stirring a bowl in which float steaming human hearts.  The item they are using to stir this gruesome feast is a finely wrought artifact covered with runes.  If the adventurer thinks to examine this, he discovers it to be a Wand of Recall.


C.  Fog swirls around the floor of this dank chamber as the Chaos Warrior strides forth.  If he is defeated, the adventurer can examine the treasure chest in the corner:  it contains one hundred gold pieces.


D.  These two Fimir are squatting on the ground playing knuckle-bones, and it will take them one turn to react to the adventurer's appearance (getting up, grabbing their axes, etc), during which time he could either prepare for battle or turn and flee.  If the Fimir are defeated, the adventurer can take the twenty-five gold pieces they were gambling with.


E.  Chiseled into the flagstones of the floor here is the following inscription:

     PORT    PUX
STARBOARD    MEVIS


F.  This room consists of a ledge leading out on to a narrow stone bridge 9one square wide) across a bottomless pit.  (Use cards to mark off the area of the pit.)  The Gargoyle in the middle of the bridge will posture and growl, but will not actually move to attack until the adventurer either (i) attacks it with spells or (ii) steps on to the bridge himself.


G.  Tell the adventurer that the door here is unusually low and narrow - a human being could get through it, but a large monster such as a Gargoyle or a Chaos Warrior could not.


H.  This is a torture-chamber where an Orc is stretching a Barbarian on a rack. (Remember that the Gargoyle, if in pursuit, cannot get in through the door.)  If the adventurer kills the Orc, he has the option of releasing the Barbarian.  The Barbarian will say nothing unless he is released, at which point he will announce that he is Munzuk the Hun, and he now owes the adventurer his life.

Use the Barbarian figure for Munzuk.  He will accompany the adventurer as a comrade and fight for him.  However, after any battle in which he looses at least one Body Point he will demand a payment of fifty gold pieces, otherwise he wanders off.


I.  Here, amid the clutter on the bench, lies the Wand of Galimatias.  Immediately upon taking up this item, the adventurer recovers all the spells he has used so far in his quest through the labyrinth.  The Wand also gives a bonus of two Mind Points.


AFTERMATH

The Wizard can return to the surface (possibly with the Barbarian Munzuk in tow) where the Cabiri lords await him.  If he is tempted to keep the Wand rather than hand it over, advise him that the Cabiri have a fearsome reputation for sorcery.  If he insists on keeping the wand, fight the battle using the central chamber of the HeroQuest board.  The Cabiri lords' characteristics are:

Move:         6 Squares
Attack:       1 Die
Defend:       2 Dice
Body Points:  4
Mind Points:  7

There are four Cabiri lords, each knows all of one spells from one elemental spell group (air, water, fire, earth).
