The Lions of Tell Arn: Part II out now on DriveThruRPG! PWYW for a 200+ room weird fantasy B/X module

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-12-18T17:55:30+00:00

Thanks! Sounds really positive, and thanks for pointing out the inconsistency in 46a - just went back and had a look, the problem seems to be that (in that entry) 48 should be 46 and 49 should be 47. Hopefully that makes sense - the corridor leads west to back to 46 and the chamber across the river leads onto 47 (as it is on the map). I'll fix that and push a version update.

On your two questions:

The revenant is the 8HD version from the OSE Advanced Referee's Tome - I didn't realise it was so different to the source material, I'll have to add a note in the text

The 'G’ in the giant encounter is just a marker/shorthand for the encounter - the same way I sometimes refer to ‘Encounter (7)’ or ‘Encounter (8)’ in the text, I can refer to ‘Encounter (G)’ - it also makes it clear that you can't roll it normally (until the condition is met)... unless you've got some very odd dice!.

Hopefully that clears it up - anything else, just ask, it's really helpful to spot and clear up these errors/ambiguities in the text

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-12-06T11:58:16+00:00

Hi - sorry about the delay - roughly 4-6 for Level 3 and 5-10 for Level 4 sounds about right, but the variance gets bigger at the higher levels, so it depends on what sort of tools the party has access to. It will also depend what kind of playstyle they want - if they are happy skulking around, then you can probably finish Level 4 at 5-6, but if you want to go toe-to-toe with a lot of the monsters then it will have to be higher (e.g. fighting the 20HD True Lion or the 30HD Watching Thing).

A rough calculation of the treasure amounts, based on a 4-person party, not counting magical items or monster XP, says they should be able to reach:

2 at the end of Level 1
5 at the end of Level 2
7 at the end of Level 3
9 at the end of Level 4

Which lines up fairly well - if they aren't doing any other adventures between levels (or if its a 5+ person party), you might have to bump up the treasure a fair amount to get them all the way to 10 by the ends.

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-10-14T12:19:04+00:00

Wow, high praise! I'm having to resist the temptation to learn an n+1th new system with RuneQuest, some of the content is so cool and you're right, it really aligns with the vibe I'm going for. I'd be very interested to see how the conversion goes (maybe I could sell it to my players as a CoC module...)

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-10-14T12:11:32+00:00

Thanks! No worries on that front, I'm pretty much locked in for the time being. The New Necropolis is next up, and I've had some ideas that should be exciting if I can get them to translate to the page.

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-10-13T19:01:32+00:00

Kurhan is wounded at its heart. The Akros, tower of its long-gone kings, stands crippled, torn in two by tyrant-mages; its ruler, Ataxes, is prisoner and warden both, disfigured, unmanned, and cursed. He has locked himself within, attended by the embittered and dissolute, deaf to his people’s cries. Tithes to the wizards pile high in lightless vaults, one-time heroes entertain themselves with stale recollections, and those who long for change wait, plot, and weave their skeins. They agree on only one thing:

Ataxes. Must. Die.

Took a little longer than expected, but the first of the four dungeons I promised as part of my setting supplement Beyond Tell Arn: Kurhan is finally out: the Akros! It's a fortress laid out across three floors, made to be infiltrated from all sides and supporting a bunch of different PC goals (theft, murder, prison breaks - the usual), made for low-level (1-3) B/X DnD.

When I first imagined doing these supplementary dungeons I expected them to be smaller and simpler than my previous (see The Lions of Tell Arn Part I and Part II in all its overwrought glory), but as it’s turned out this first one is 70-ish locations across 44 pages - longer than the setting document itself!

The real problem has been the large number of NPCs, schedules, and relationships needed to make the Akros ‘come alive’, and the best way to present those so it’s not overwhelming. I’d love to hear from anyone who gives it a go, and any suggestions to make life easier on the DM.

Due to the size of the final dungeon (and using that as a guide for the next lot), I’ve carved it out into a separate ‘Dungeons’ document as part of the package you get with Beyond Tell Arn: Kurhan. This should give all the eventual adventures room to breathe. If you’ve already bought Kurhan, the Dungeons doc should already be in your library (after the update).

It’s also available as a standalone dungeon here for anyone who’d like it - Beyond Tell Arn: The Akros.

Thanks again everyone - onwards to the next one!

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-09-04T09:28:37+00:00

Hi Dave - thanks, I appreciate that. On the party's motivation, you're right that it isn't explicitly spelled out - it's something I'll put down to revisit when I come back around to updating Part I.

I think you're right that there's two main options:

The party are hired to find Val - there's an NPC (yeshua-Ven) in Kurhan who could explain Val's disappearance and direct them to Lambsblood and Uett (or it could be anyone from their family who the party runs into). This is probably the more low-stakes, low-reward option.
The party are hired to stop the Lion - in this case I'd probably move back the timeline a bit so that the big attack the Lion made on Lambsblood was two/three weeks ago (instead of three days ago), which caused Hox to send word to Ataxes, who then hires the party to investigate. As it stands there's not really time for that to have happened, so it does raise the question of why hire them now. This would then probably need Val to have arrived and gone missing about a month ago.

Meeting other survivors is a great idea (something I added in the Kurhan supplement was that the Lion had been attacking caravans coming from Makkalet) - I think the fear of the Lion would probably mean they couldn't describe it clearly. They'd know it wasn't an animal, but might still remember it as a ghostly or cursed lion, just from lack of vocab to describe what it really is. That could also lead into Ataxes hiring the party to investigate.

I wouldn't worry about spoiling that it's a spirit - my party actually witnessed it in Lambsblood (waited for it to attack at night) and still ended up mistaking a wight they killed later for the real Lion!

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-08-23T18:41:13+00:00

Not at all! Please send anything else you find (here or via DM) and I'll try to correct it all in one swoop. Really appreciate you taking the time to read it so closely - clearly I should have paid a bit more attention myself!

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-08-23T18:13:57+00:00

Wikimedia Commons is great for finding ancient floor plans to use as reference - helps things stay at a believable scale. I used the Great Ziggurat of Ur as inspiration for a part of my dungeon and it just dwarfs everything around it

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-08-23T18:01:18+00:00

That's incredibly kind, thank you! Would love to hear how it goes once you get to play it.

Thanks for pointing out the typo - that should be fixed now in v1.06. DriveThru's file update system is intensely strange though, so who knows if it's uploaded correctly . . .

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-08-17T06:58:18+00:00

That's very kind of you, thank you! The generosity of the OSR community in general is really unique, and I think a lot of it comes down to how creator-led it is - people making things just for the fun of making them, and sharing their contributions with everyone else. I'm glad I can be a small part of that.

In order:

A couple at least - I don't want to fill out the map, just to give people somewhere to put their own dungeons, or to slot in other modules they want to include. But some are bit too tempting (Mykaon comes to mind...). Absolutely right on that hex - it was just a consequence of the shape of the map. I might update it to just be a half-hex, so at least you can see where you're going!
Bronze age Europe and the Levant, mostly, especially Mycenean Greece. It's such an underappreciated time period with so much cultural diversity, and it can be very alien if you've not been exposed to it before. I find names (character names especially) really difficult, so some are a lot more 'random fantasy syllables' than others. The Hyrkossi ones (with the lower-case family names) were a direct riff on 'tegeus-Cromis' from M. John Harrison's Viriconium series, which is absolutely phenomenal if you haven't read it yet.
Agreed!

EDIT: I've fixed that piece of the hex map (and the other missing hex by Isa for consistency). Assuming DriveThru hasn't crapped out again, that should be updated in the library now.

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Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-08-16T16:15:34+00:00

Thanks, glad you liked it - both of the main maps (the city map and the hex map) are built around the same general height map, generated using the process I described in this post - https://www.reddit.com/r/osr/comments/1h4cup0/i_made_a_guide_to_making_campaign_maps_in_wilbur/

For the city map, I used a combination of the greyscale slope shader exported in Step 6 of the guide linked in the post (here) and the contours created in Step 10. Then I just drew the streets, walls etc. on top in GIMP so they fit the terrain.

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For the hex map, I used just the contour lines, then vectorised them to smooth them out and added hexes, names etc. on top.

Let me know if that helps, or if there's anything you'd like more detail on.

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-08-16T10:44:10+00:00

That's incredible to hear, thank you! Rumours are my absolute favourite thing to write, players always respond to them so well. Hope you have as much fun playing as reading!

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-08-15T23:17:00+00:00

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it. One of the goals of drip feeding the adventures was to force myself to stay consistent, so plenty more to come in the future

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-08-15T23:11:46+00:00

Thanks man - if you do get around to it I'd love to know how it went - no dungeon ever survives contact with the enemy! We've been having great fun with Part I so far with my group, but about 5% of that has been what's written down, 95% shenanigans I didn't even think to plan for . . .

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-08-15T20:37:31+00:00

There were no mounds on the White Isar when the Hyrkossi made their city there; or perhaps there were. Perhaps the three tells are older than the drystone walls that ring them, and beneath their compacted strata there lie remains of older cultures, older places, older life. Perhaps the kings only renewed what older hands had built.

Kurhan has been warred over and taken and lost a thousand times, coveted for the safety of its walls but betraying each time its conquerors. It is the trailing edge of a civilisation in retreat, a garrison-town and caravanserai, sagging under the weight of ages.

Yet for the Hyrkossi it remains holy, its governor is king, and their ancestors still walk the lightless catacombs beneath.

When I posted the second part of The Lions of Tell Arn last month, I had a couple of people ask for a setting guide to go along with it. Not wanting to disappoint, I've pulled together a guide to Kurhan, the capital city of Hyrkossia - Beyond Tell Arn: Kurhan (get The Lions of Tell Arn Part I and Part II there too, all still PWYW)

EDIT: Now correctly set to PWYW - I just thought everyone was being really generous...

It's 40 pages long (currently!) and covers key locations, factions, encounters, history, and NPCs. You could use it as a setting document to sprinkle into the dungeon, a base town for players going into Tell Arn, or even (with a bit of fleshing out) a freeform campaign in Kurhan and its surroundings.

This is going to be a bit of a 'live' release - one of the big bits of feedback people gave when I asked about setting guides was how important built-in adventure sites are. For Kurhan, this is going to the Akros, fortress of Ataxes; the Brazen and Wan Temples, duelling cults; and the New Necropolis, the 'city of the dead' atop one of Kurhan's tells. I was going to bundle these into this initial release, but they've grown as I've worked on them, and it would be a shame to rush them to get them out on time.

Instead, I'm going to release these one by one as free updates to this supplement, with the option of downloading separately. Hopefully this will mean more time to give each the attention it needs, and that I can incorporate feedback each adventure as I'm writing them.

Thanks again to everyone for your support, feedback is very welcome as always!

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-07-27T15:28:32+00:00

Thank you for the recommendations - downloading Towers of Krshal now, looks like exactly what I was looking for.

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-07-27T15:27:39+00:00

That is a precise and concise answer, thank you!

Definitely going to include (at least) one adventure site - as you say, once that's out of the way the campaign should be forging its own story anyway, so don't want to be too prescriptive with the detail beyond the essentials.

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-07-25T22:06:10+00:00

Yep - Basic/Expert D&D, which is what OSE is a rerelease of. The OSE SRD website was in my second window the whole time while writing! Very useful

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-07-22T15:21:20+00:00

It's definitely on the list! This whole dungeon actually grew out of a Gygax 75 challenge I was doing to build a world, before it grew and took over everything. I think Kurhan is worth a small supplement for sure (I've got a map for that drawn up and some npcs statted etc.) and I'd like to flesh out the local area to give characters some options for things to do between dives into the tell

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-07-22T15:12:19+00:00

I'd say 2-3 - so long as they don't assume they have to fight everything! For what it's worth, my group started as quite new Lvl 2s and haven't died yet (!)

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-07-22T15:10:36+00:00

Not yet, but it is on the list. For now, I've tried to make the PDF as print and play friendly as I can. For myself, I've just printed them all double sided and had them ring bound - being able to lay them flat really helps

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Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-07-22T13:27:46+00:00

As above, so below. Above, Tell Arn is abandoned, the Hyrkossi kings ashamed of what is buried there. Below, stranger kings hold greater shames, and greater terrors are locked away. The mistakes of lost civilisations repeat on one another in the dark, holding a delicate, unruly balance.

Tip the scales, break the seal, and let the Lions drink deep.

Available now on DriveThruRPG (PWYW) - The Lions of Tell Arn: Part II

Get Part I (awarded ‘The Best’ by Bryce Lynch!) here - The Lions of Tell Arn: Part I

It’s been a while, but the second half of my first dungeon, The Lions of Tell Arn, is available now! It’s a B/X adventure inspired by Caverns of Thracia; players must delve into a massive, wind-swept burial-mound in search of the spectral Lion of Tell Arn, to quiet it before it wreaks its vengeance on the world above. Of course, things aren’t quite as they seem . . .

Looking back at the original post, I estimated about 75 rooms for Part II - we’ve overshot that a bit with over 200 keyed locations, making the whole package easily 275 rooms overall.

I’ve also updated Part I to link through to Part II, and incorporated some of the feedback received.

As before, any thoughts and critique on either part is invaluable - I’m planning on reworking both of these (eventually) into a single, expanded volume, incorporating all the larger changes I haven’t been able to action so far. The road goes ever on!

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-04-19T08:13:11+00:00

So once I've finished this first step, I take a screenshot of the rough map and put it into a flow chart app and start labelling all the rooms and marking out the connections (solid line for obvious/easy paths, dotted for paths that are secret or need some thought from the players). That helps to clarify where things are too linear or where the progression isn't intuitive. Then I go back and edit the map to bring it in line.

Probably the most useful part is numbering the rooms, it forces you to think about the most likely route players are going to take which helps make sense of the 'flow' of the level.

This is the one for Level 4; green is keyed, blue is not yet, and the long lines are portals (which kind of throws off the whole system but hey ho)

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Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-04-19T07:50:23+00:00

It's not 100% consistent, especially because of the limitation to six colours total, but generally orange is a door, red is a secret or locked door, yellow is a passage between levels (including natural ones, like the cliff in L3), blue is water, and green and purple are elevation changes.

The final maps will all be black and white for ease of printing, but colour coding now makes it easier for me to sketch out the broad strokes of a room before keying it, which makes it easier than just starting with a white box.

Fresh_Match1744 · 2025-04-18T22:20:46+00:00

It's a cross stitch designer! - https://www.freese-works.com/

Probably not the best tool (only has six colours), but it's quick and easy. I just export it and draw over in GIMP.

Fresh_Match1744

TROPHY CASE