M4: Five Coins For A Kingdom

M4 "Five Coins For A Kingdom" (1987) by Allen Varney is a D&D adventure for four to six players of levels 28 to 32.

M4 "Five Coins For A Kingdom" (1987) by Allen Varney.  Cover illustration by John and Laura Lakey.

The PCs must gather five enchanted coins as a means of traveling to an outer plane in order to rescue the city of Lighthall from the fiery depths of the Sun.

Creative Team:

M4 "Five Coins For A Kingdom" was designed by Allen Varney* and edited by Robin Jenkins.

*Varney would go on to design the Hollow World "Blood Brethren" trilogy (1990-1)

Cover and interior illustrations are by husband and wife team John and Laura Lakey (see the Lakey Studios website, for more of their work).

Cartography is by William Reuter.

The Setting:

If the players use the pregenerated PCs provided with this adventure, the city is Lighthall, the dominion of Sir Theobold Redbeard.  Lighthall, so named for its well-lit stronghold, is situated on the coast of Norwold, about halfway between the cities of Landfall and Oceansend.

"Five Coins For A Kingdom" pg. 3

The PCs are in Lighthall when the city vanishes without a trace.

One of the five Ruling Wizards of the city of Solius, capital of the kingdom of Trann, appears to implore their assistance, explaining that the fates of their two cities are linked.

Eloysia:

The Outer Plane of Eloysia is in some ways a reverse image of the Prime Plane.  Whereas the PCs' world floats through the vast emptiness of outer space, the realm of [Eloysia] is almost filled with material.  Quintillions of cubic light-years of weird, semi-solid, gray material fills the entire plane: this is called the plenum.

Scattered thinly through the plenum, like bubbles of gas in soda water, are a few spherical habitats.  Life has arisen here (perhaps migrating from other planes).  Each sphere is minute by cosmic comparison, separated from its neighbors by incomprehensibly large distances.  In human terms, each is as large as our own solar system, playing host to whole civilizations.

Physical Description

Eloysia is a colossal, hollow sphere filled with breathable air and lit by a small central sun.  Around the sun, thousands of large, rocky islands proceed in stately orbits - not in belts, like the asteroids of our own solar system, but in concentric shells, like electrons around the nucleus of an atom.

Conceptual model of Eloysian solar system.

Some islands are practically dust-motes hardly a mile across.  Others are as big as states or nations.  Every few millennia, a shard of the plenum, at the boundary of the sphere, is baked solid by the sun’s heat; it breaks free and drifts inward to join the other islands in their orbits.

As for the shape of a typical island, they most closely resemble a cornflake.  These islands are usually flat, with occasional bumps overall and ridges at the edges.  Making the cornflake the size of Montana gives a relative scale for an Eloysian island.  The inner side of the island always faces the sun; the inhabitants of all islands live in perpetual noon.  The underside miles beneath is dark and lifeless.  As for the interior of each island, who knows what creatures live there?

The Shells

There are three concentric shells of islands around Eloysia's sun; these islands share orbits much in the same manner as electrons around an atomic nucleus. 

The inner shell, hardly more than 10,000 miles from the sun, is too hot to support human life.  The scorched rocks here have nothing to offer but pools of molten metal, which the Eloysians sometimes mine.  Fire elementals and bizarre alien creatures are occasionally spotted here.

Several thousand miles further out are the warm, agricultural islands.  These lush, green, farm-worlds grow food to feed Eloysia's inhabitants.  The fields and vineyards are watered by vast, permanent rainstorms that wander through the shell, sustained by complex climatic patterns and magical forces.

The outermost shell, about 2,000 miles beyond the farm belt, contains the many island kingdoms of Eloysia. This is where most of the inhabitants live in a bewildering diversity of nations and cultures. Among these is the kingdom of the Ruling Wizards and its beautiful city of Solius - or rather. the site where Solius once was.

"Five Coins For A Kingdom" pg. 12

The Sun:

The PCs return to the Prime Plane, only to discover that they must travel into the depths of the Sun to rescue the city of Lighthall.

This is a well-thought-out, imaginative scenario, which can alternately be used as part of an epic quest in other high-level adventures.

The Shadow Belt of Orcus:

Durhan the Conqueror

The Shadow Belt of Orcus is a Greater Artifact, as described in the Master DM's book (1986)

Powers include A1: Lightning Bolt (PP 60); A2: Mass Charm (PP 73); A4: Power Drain; B2: Clairvoyance (PP 25); B3: Levitate (PP 15); D3: Immunity (PP 100)

New Monster:

Auratus (600'-800' long creatures resembling Chinese goldfish that float through Eloysia like dirigibles, using the hydrogen gas stored in their abdomens)

Prerolled Characters:

Sir Theobald Redbeard, Lawful 30th level Knight

Theona of the Righteous Glory, Lawful 30th level Cleric

Prosper, Neutral 30th level Thief

Quentin the Aggressive, Neutral 30th level Magic-User

Laralyn Athilar, Neutral 10th level Elf (Attack Rank K)

Hogun of Rockhome, Lawful 12th level Dwarf (Attack Rank L)

...those six pre-gen PCs were directly inspired by the PARANOIA adventures West End was publishing at the time, including Send in the Clones (1985), which I co-wrote with Warren Spector.  Each published PARANOIA adventure would provide six Troubleshooter PCs with ready-made reasons to kill each other.  For Send in the Clones I created a free-floating backstory unrelated to the main plot involving sabotaged Bouncy Bubble Beverage; the scandal implicated each PC, though none of them knew of the others' involvement.  I didn't try to tie together the M4 PCs so closely, but it seemed Master-level characters would at least already know one another.

Allen Varney on the Piazza (April 17, 2009)

Trivia:

M4 had a sequence where the PCs had to reach the destination plane by passing through an interim plane inhabited by a culture of planar spiders; I believe the editor accidentally left a line about these spiders in the final experience awards section.

Allen Varney on the Piazza (April 17, 2009)

Varney re-used the basic premise of M4 in "The Vanishing City" Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Gamebook #15 (November, 1987)