Name That Keep

[Scott]

What names has The Keep gone by in your campaigns?
Scott

[dcas]

Castellan's Keep. In fact I think this was the name bestowed on it in 'Return to the Keep' -- although I thought of it independently and many years earlier.

[Falconer]

I think "Castellan's Keep" is what B1-9 called it. But that's kind of lame, as whoever named it that obviously didn't know what a castellan was and thus the title is rather redundant. "Return" called it "Kendall's Keep" or something like that, I think?

In my campaign it's Torwin's Keep. Torwin is a former castellan. I still have to decide what happened to him, but hopefully the PCs will run into him someday. :-) Regards.

[GT]

Heck, my players just came upon it at the edge of the Vesve Forest and called it "The Keep On The Borderlands" Har!!

[GRWelsh]

Pomeran Keep (set at western side of Pomarj).

[maximus]

I've pictured the area as a pseudo-German land (in the Yeomanry) and named it "Gretzland Keep". I just googled "Borderland" in German and it seemed to fit.

My players have made several forays recently and have had some incredible luck. They managed to defeat 3 Gray Oozes last week without a loss, and cleared out most of the Hobgoblin level. On a lucky roll (for him) the Hobgoblin Chief decided to surrender. He gave up some treasure, but kept some info back from the party. The players allowed him to leave with his females, but they didn't know that there were a few warriors left in other parts of the level. They also failed to check out several rooms that would have netted more treasure. I'm sure this will come back to bite them at a later date...

Today's session started with the party finishing the caves opposite the Ooze pool. After a bunch of giant rats were killed, the Owlbear was roused and attacked in force. The party (1 Ranger, 1 Fighter, 1 MU, 1 Cleric, 1 Thief + 2 fighters saved from the Hobgoblins) managed to make short work of the creature. Unfortunately, while resting in the woods after the encounter, 3 Huge spiders attacked. The 2 fighters (Ernie and Bert by name...) were paralyzed and killed in the process.

It took the kids a few minutes to realize the Ernie and Bert thing. I described one as a short chubby guy having a shirt with horizontal stripes and the other as a tall skinny guy with vertical stripes. After a few minutes, my son asked "you mean Ernie and Bert the Sesame Street guys??" Hey, I needed 2 names on the fly.

Back to Gretzland Keep to rest and heal up...

[geneweigel]

This is a real ghoul thread. 11 years! I didn't answer it back then because I might have missed it. Honestly> I'd say its namesake "B2" (Beetuu? Bedo?) is used but otherwise straight out "Keep on the Borderlands". It keeps it in perspective.

My cousin has this "one character" obsession where he kept a character generated in the early 80's in action even though I made a zillion attempts to make him try other classes (I actually made him by the book dual class after ten years). Anyway, he was amongst a 1983 siege of the Keep on the Borderlands and since then everyone involved either quit playing or moved on to other characters and around 1990 he decided to boost his claim for it. So ever since then he would say thats where he resides and a handful of adventures revolved around him residing there. Honestly? I think its just the fact that he had about ten copies of B2 and little mapping and drawing skills that made him obsess over it. So you can imagine when this topic came up with me, him and Gary smoking outside in 2007 that it was beyond surreal.

[maximus]

This looked like the best place to comment even though the thread was old. The Keep seemed like a good place for the kids to start. They've done well so far, but I've had to cut back on the amount of henchman that I send with them. The Castellan just recalled a few of his men, so they'll need to tough it out. I'll have them use this as their base for a few more adventures before striking out. I think Cult of the Reptile God might be a good next step, although they just hit 3rd Level. I've downgraded some of the magic items (does everyone in the Keep have +1 Armor??), in order to make it more challenging. We'll see what happens this weekend. They still have to explore the Bugbear and Gnolls caves, as well as the Evil Temple. That should prove to be fun.

[maximus]

Today's session was fun. The kids took the party to the Bugbear cave. They correctly read the sign, recognizing that humanoids were welcome, they were on guard. Nevertheless, they were caught by surprise by the 3 guards, getting stuck with skewers full of meat, a la Fogo de Chao. They killed one Bugbear and severely wounded a second. The third sounded the gong, presumably alerting bad guys from all around that something was amiss. The party dispatched the remaining 2 and beat a hasty retreat to an area about 2 hours away. After healing and resting up, they returned to the Cave area and entered the Minotaur cavern. They were quickly overwhelmed by the Stirges and chaos ensued. It was a TPK in the making. The Stirges hit almost every roll. The party's Thief went down early, as did my son's newly rolled Fighter. As tears welled up in his eyes, I told him that he still had his Ranger in the game and he needed to pull it together or the rest of the party would go down. One of the Clerics was knocked below 0 hit points, but luckily my daughter showed up for today's session, and her Cleric ("Elizabeth Sparkles"...) was able to stabilize everyone enough to kill the remaining monsters. Unfortunately I played the NPC's badly, forgetting the Wizard had a Web spell which might have changed things early on. Because of this, I decided that my son's fighter had only reached -9 before having hands laid on him. We ended the session with the party stabilized but in no condition to continue without resting up and healing. It will be interesting to see how they choose to proceed. It will be a challenge for them to make their way to a safe haven to rest up, and they certainly can't stay where they are. Their best bet would be to move to the Hobgoblin cavern, which they have already cleared, and has several rooms that they can hide in behind barricaded doors. Little do they know that the Hobgoblin Chief, concubines, and a few guards have sought refuge with the Bugbears, and for a price will be looking for revenge on the party... Good times!