The adventure is set in the World of Greyhawk campaign setting and describes the ruins of and dungeons beneath Castle Greyhawk. The module is a more serious take on the dungeons of Castle Greyhawk than the 1988 module WG7 - Castle Greyhawk. The module features interior art by Thomas Baxa, Mark Nelson and David Simons. The adventure is designed for five to seven characters of levels 2 to 15.
Expedition To The Ruins Of Greyh
Forty years later, in the Greyhawk realm's Common Year of 597, the player characters take on the role of adventurers who arrive at the Free City to explore the Ruins of Greyhawk looking for riches and glory. Under an oath with Zagig, Mordenkainen vowed never to enter the depths of Castle Greyhawk, but through researching Zagig's tomes, Mordenkainen only recently found a possible clue to Robliar's betrayal hidden deep inside the ruins. Mordenkainen, barred by oath from entering the dungeons, recruits the band of adventurers to go into the chambers for him and find the secret behind Robilar's treachery. Little do they realize they have stumbled upon an epic situation where failure could mean the destruction of the world.
Unlike most published adventure modules, the Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk is technically an incomplete "open ended" adventure. Rather than detailing every single room of the dungeons below the ruins, only key areas that affect the main plot of the adventure are detailed. In fact, entire dungeon levels are left unmapped and the DM is encouraged to improvise their own encounters to fill in areas not covered by the game with their own content. The game provides a list of random encounters for each dungeon level, generic dungeon maps left clear of content, and numerous side quests to help the DM along the way and keep the adventure flowing.
Produced in partnership with the British Museum, this exhibition showcases a series of powerful and poetic watercolours made on an expedition to discover ancient Greek ruins in Ionia (in modern Turkey) and Athens in 1764.
In 1764, the antiquary Richard Chandler, architect Nicholas Revett and artist William Pars set off on an expedition to Turkey. Funded by the Society of Dilettanti, they were to discover and document the ruins of ancient Ionia. Part of the Greek world from the 8th century BC and ruined in antiquity, the beauty and fame of the Ionian cities lived on in the writings of ancient commentators such as Herodotus and Strabo.
Nicholas Revett (1721-1804): Nicholas Revett was 43 when the expedition departed. In the early 1750s he had accompanied James Stuart on an expedition to Athens and, on their return, the pair were invited to join the Society of Dilettanti and published The Antiquities of Athens. This illustrated account of the sites visited was highly influential. On the 1764 expedition, Revett made detailed measured drawings of the ruins encountered which were published in Ionian Antiquities. He remained a prominent member of the Society of Dilettanti and was the architect of a number of buildings in the Greek style.
This view shows the ruins of a temple to Apollo at the port of Aegina, which the travellers visited on their way to Athens. The two lonely columns in an almost deserted landscape embody melancholy reflections on the passing of the great age of antiquity and the reduction of its monuments.
In this image, Pars depicts the ruins of the Doric Temple of Poseidon on Cape Sunium, one of the sites which most inspired Byron. Perched dramatically on a headland overlooking the Aegean Sea, the heap of fragments at its foot underscores the fragility of the temple, evoking the fall of the great civilizations of antiquity.
Few historic places in the Pacific are as intriguing as Nan Madol. The city ruins are on a coral reef in a lagoon on the tiny island of Temwen, adjacent to the eastern shore of the island of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia. Before its abandonment, Nan Madol was a major political and spiritual hub for native Pohnpeians. Throughout its 500 year life, from 1200 and 1700, the city served as a religious center, a royal enclave, a fortress, an urban marketplace, and the high seat of government for the island of Pohnpei. Relatively unknown outside of Micronesia, the city of Nan Madol is a hidden gem of Micronesian history and culture and a grand sight for modern visitors.
Soon after the ruins were discovered, adventurers began arriving to Liscor to challenge the dungeon. About a hundred mostly human adventurers and an according supply train camped around the ruins a few weeks later, but they were mostly still digging the ruins out. In this early stage of exploration, the diggers had already to fend off giant Rats, but also spiders and undead. Since a few valuables had been brought out, some adventurers already dared to venture further, but they either never came out or they were turned into undead.[1]
Several days afterwards, Pisces receives a message from Ceria, who survived in the ruins along with Olesm.[8] Erin, together with Ryoka, Pisces, Rags, Toren, and Ksmvr, entered the ruins[9] and successfully retrieved Ceria and Olesm, who were hiding inside empty coffins.[10]
Months later Olesm went back into the ruins with Pisces, to search for Calruz' remains. Instead of finding them, they find, thanks to Olesm's Ring of Sight, a secret room at the opposite of the treasure room where Skinner emerged. In it they found a trapped hexagonal floor that leads down to a burial chamber and heavy evidence that indicate that Calruz had passed trough said chamber. They also found that the burial chamber led to a passageway for Liscor's Dungeon.[11]
Weeks later again, the newly re-formed Horns of Hammerad and the Silver Swords, went to the ruins to pass trough the secret passageway that led for Liscor's Dungeon. While they found their way into the dungeon and subsequently emerged from the Antinium entrance into the dungeon, they couldn't yet locate Calruz on that expedition.[12]
The ruins sat half-uncovered against a large hill, with an entrance of black stone gaping open. A wall of black rock. A carved stone doorway and in places, open windows that allowed some ventilation into the massive structure.
Many unexperienced adventurers disappeared while exploring, and weird squiggly white tentacle things kept crawling out of the ruins. The City Watch believed at the time that some kind of brood monster was hiding in the ruins.[13]
Americans in the year 1841 welcomed the publication of Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, by John Lloyd Stephens, with illustrations by Frederick Catherwood.[1] The two explorers had visited the region in 1839 and 1840. This work not only recounted their travels but also described for the first time many of the pre-Columbian ruins found there. Catherwood was a skilled artist and produced accurate and detailed sketches of many of the ruins and monuments which they described in their work. The 1841 volumes were an instant success and were widely praised in the national press. The two travelers returned to Yucatan for a second expedition in 1841 and stayed until 1842. In 1843, they published a second set of volumes, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, describing their discovery of forty-four previously unknown sites in the region.[2] In 1844, Catherwood published another volume, Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, which consisted of twenty-five of his own hand-colored lithographs interspersed with his commentary.[3] Like the 1841 volumes, these subsequent books received wide acclaim.
The works of Stephens and Catherwood were significant in providing previously unknown information on Central American ruins. Most of these ruins were entirely unknown to American scholars. Even for the few that were known, accurate and detailed information was hard to come by. Among those that were known was the site of Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico. David Pendergast describes the state of knowledge about the site at the time Stephens and Catherwood made their first expedition to Central America.
Other writers, with less caution, went even further, claiming that the ruins discussed by Stephens were identical with those mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Upon learning of the new discoveries, Parley P. Pratt wrote:
In 994.M41, Iyanden sent an expedition to the ruins of Malan'tai to recover anything that may be of use to undo the damage caused by hive fleet Kraken. Alas, the Craftworld's ruins had been overrun by Orks who had destroyed or stolen anything of value. After dispatching the Orks, Iyanden's strike force set Malan'tai on a new course towards the nearest sun, where it was presumably destroyed.[3b]
MONTEZUMA CASTLE NATIONAL MONUMENT: The Sinagua built this cliff dwelling, which, strangely, has (almost) nothing to do with the Aztec Montezuma. These ruins are impressive and easy to get to by walking a quarter-mile, paved loop. $5 per person.
I somehow happened across your blog a while ago and I'm glad I checked in. I have to put my 2 cents in for the Gila Wilderness in NM (bit far for a road trip from LA but WORTH IT). The place is gloriously empty, and the ruins & hot springs beautiful. I had a fantastic time exploring the area on a bike trip, years ago. Silver City is a fun town, too. Put it on your list!
The ruins of Galways, once a sugar plantation, are located on the well-watered slopes of the Soufriere mountains on Montserrat Island in the eastern Caribbean (Figs. 4, 5). This plantation was home to hundreds of slaves during the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries. Here they worked long hours in the cane fields and performed the countless tasks that were necessary to produce for Europeans the newly popular luxuries of sugar and rum.
Pars experimented with and developed a variety of watercolour techniques, including loose washes for the skies and far-off mountains, and pen and ink to outline the details of the architecture, building up layers of colour for the foliage and brighter body colours for the figures. In the 18th century, British artists led the world in painting landscapes in watercolour. With their atmospheric skies and distant mountains, and carefully recorded ruins enlivened by evocative groups of figures, these watercolours by Pars made significant contributions to that development by influencing the work of his contemporaries, like his friend Francis Towne and Paul Sandby who made aquatint prints after the watercolours. 2ff7e9595c
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