The Petrified Forest: Notes

  1. The Petrified Forest
  2. Ashton

I’m not sure I ever actually ran this one. I do remember that when I wrote it I wanted something a little different, maybe some villains that weren’t so villainous and something with a science fictiony mystery to solve.

My notes after writing this put it “west of Suzuil”. That name does not ring any bells either in my mind or on Google.* The village of Ashton does, however; I don’t know if it’s from the Basic or Expert set, or if Ashton exists elsewhere in my proto-world; or if it rings a bell because I used it in this adventure. Given the presence of the potion of time travel, it may be named after Clark Ashton Smith.

I have added paragraph breaks. Holy crap.

New monsters include the Rock Monsters, which I named long before I first heard the B-52s, and the Rock Dryad; the Rock Dryad lives on in Gods & Monsters as the Petraiad. This creature, a Dryad living in a crystal geode, is one of my favorite remnants of my eighties gaming self. In this case, of course, since the trees themselves are rocks, the dryads live in trees “as normal”.

The only one you get here is the Rock Monster. The Rock Dryad was one of my standard monsters, so it was in my custom monster manual, which I gave to my brother when I went to college. No idea where that is now. I’m guessing it helped warm the cold Michigan winter.

Looking over this now, the idea of stone banshees intrigues me.

  1. The Petrified Forest
  2. Ashton