The Door in Murex Canyon After Action Review
Buy it! https://spacepenguin.ink/collections/cairn-2e/products/the-door-in-murex-canyon-for-cairn-2e-rpg-and-b-x-ose Writing, Design, Layout by Stella Condrey Editing by Jarret Crader Art by G. Gilraine Players: Liquid Video as Humming Valibuk as Callegna Flynn as Erik Rabbitdog as Taliyah Vecktrex as Hugo Stares System: Dungeon Crawl Classics Sessions: One four-hour session
Preamble
I ran this in Dungeon Crawl Classics using a mostly finished draft of the module statted for that system. That version isn't going to be published but the minutia in DCC vs OSE vs Cairn doesn't really matter for the quality of the work here.
Prep and Preconceptions
Murex Canyon is pretty easy to run with just a cursory read over of the module. The only thing I really prepped ahead of time was to ask a player to roll a d18 to determine the starting hex on the perimeter of the map.
Due to the nature of the door I was fairly confident the players would not breach the factory. I was prepared to have some of the random encounters that were friendly give clues about Clay's tower to give them some hints on a means of entering. The encounters on the overland are very striking. 3d20 bandits is gonna pose a lot of problems if it rolls high. 3d100 Aerojellies could utterly block off a section of the map if they are too clustered. These encounter tables were perfect to get me to start thinking about how the players might interact with the world.
Something I did note when reading through the module was the lack of treasure and I almost felt the urge to roll up some treasures to stock the room but some nagging instinct told me not to do that which paid off later.
My only pain point with the presentation is that the colors used for the dungeon map are hard for my eyes to distinguish. I had to trace the map by hand to have an easy reference to it, though others may not have this issue.
What Went Down
The dice deemed the party should start at the massive collection of bones that butt up against CLAY's tower. Seeing this odd fixture in the distance they made their way over and activated the old AI. immediately they decided to deceive the AI and convince it they were there to help restore the factory. CLAY none the wiser to their antics.
Setting out for the canyon door they came across a massive group of bandits hauling scrap These roughnecks weren't looking for a fight but shook the party down for forty GP, (failed a roll to notice the party had considerably more) and let them continue on their way.
CLAY popped open the door and they pressed inside. The elf darted down a rusted ladder but slipped and began to plummet. Only a well timed Rope Trick saved them from going splat. Down in the railyard the party took a turn to search. I had them roll on the "I Loot the Body Table" only for them to find mostly useless knick-knacks. During this search 27 lightning spiders and a Solar Sphynx came crashing from the other side. Telepathically the Sphynx called to the party in Angelic to exterminate the secret stealers. A long fight ensues and they kill a lot of spiders and drive off the remainder
Grateful the Sphynx offers the party to swear allegiance in hunting down secrets in exchange for boons. Blah and blah accept the offer. Eternal life is granted to them, alongside a direct line to the Sphynx via telepathy. Blah shares the existence of CLAY to the Sphynx and is Blessed in return.
Pushing their way towards the generators they come to a room that has turned into a massive lake. Both exits lie across the water. Some of the spiders flee across the surface but a massive beast surges from the depths to consume it. The elf summons a friendly spider to scoot out across the water and as the beast jumps again uses the strength of their blessing to kill it in a single shot! Another cast of Rope Trick and they are across to the cobweb choked hallway to the generators. Blah burns away the webs and they encounter a gang of Snappers. These turtlemen had been trapped in the room as the beast attacked them every time they tried to get away. Hugo Stares cooked them up some orange eggs to send them on their way.
They quickly power on the facility and head towards the Portal at CLAY's behest. It needs to be checked for any lingering issues. On the way there they turn on another AI that screams that it must be freed to the internet. The party pulls it out of the wall and beats it to death so they can plug in CLAY.
All of them jump through the portal to the pocket factory! immediately they terrorize the workers with tales of how the outside world has fallen into ruin, the empire they loved turn to mounds of ashen rust. The workers do not take this well and panic. Chasing them down they arrive in the quarters. A large mob appears so blah and blah try to calm them down. They are settled when Hugo Stares jumps into an anti-work tirade, waxing romantic about life on the open road. This nearly starts another riot when the party asks them to go back to work. An armed escort brings them to the overseer who they convince to go see how bad the outside world has gotten.
Miraculously I rolled the 1% chance the portal turns off (I yelled NO WAY and the players all went WHAT WHAT WHY ARE YOU HAPPY.) 2681 years passed while they were inside. I interpreted this as CLAY being too zealous in purging threats and getting destroyed. The elf used their telepathic link to the Sphynx to open up the portal again which is about where we ended.
Thoughts
Remember what I said earlier about there not being a lot of treasure? Well the whole damn factory is probably the sweetest treasure I have seen in a long time. In a longer campaign getting this thing up and running would be a peak of the game. Not to mention how maintaining it would lead to so many interesting issues. This module is incredibly disruptive if you slot it into your game- which is why you should do it! Giving your players a factory that can produce everything they could possibly need can only lead to some of the most violent comeuppances of all time.
These encounter tables are exciting and their results could propel entire sessions when trying to resolve things. The Solar Sphynx can gift eternal life if players keep feeding it secrets. I know if I ran a game in this world that the Sphynx would become a patron for the players to please. If you are going to have random encounter tables in your adventures they should change the atmosphere as much as these do. Random tables can be over relied on instead of good bespoke encounters, but Stella has both here and shows how they reinforce each other when they interact. The big fish is a static encounter in the lake room but rolling the turtlemen in the hallway and the spiders in the rail yard gave it more character than it had otherwise.
The hexcrawl and dungeon both are pretty much spot on perfect. Rooms and hexes are given enough detail to run with and take in the direction you think is most interesting. An issue I have with pointcrawl maps is I struggle with how to describe the connections between rooms. Perhaps a general hallway description could have helped. It is important when running the dungeon to use the encounter table inside of it or else it might feel a bit too empty or easy. I would personally make a 1-in-6 be two encounters like it is outside.
The Door in Murex Canyon is the science-fantasy module that we need more of. It is not the tired repetition of tropes to ooh and ahh over. Stella has a wicked line of humor throughout the entirety of it. The GODHEAD room made my players guffaw as they smashed it to bits. Murex Canyon is an assault on the creative impulses of the hobby at large and I hope to play more things that make me as genuinely happy as it does.