The Horrors Under Halden Hold by Jospeh Mohr is a role playing game supplement published by Old School Role Playing for use with Swords & Wizardry. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
The supplement is available as a 26 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. Two pages are the front and rear covers, three the front matter and three the Open Game License.
The opening paragraphs talk about a ruined keep and how it fell to an army led by a wizard who was looking for an artefact, about which little is known.
For the Game Master explains the adventure is recommended for 5-6 characters of levels 8-12 with a broad mix of skills. The upper ruins are dangerous; the lower level lethal. It also goes into some more details on the Gleaming Stone.
Encounters Around the Hills has a d6 table of random encounters.
Encounters in the Upper Ruins has a d8 table of encounters.
Encounters in the Lower Level has a d6 table.
The Upper Ruins covers these.
The Dungeon Level covers this level.
Concluding the Adventure explains that the ultimate goal should be to destroy the Gleaming Stone.
New Monsters has some new creatures, one of which is the Gleaming Stone; it’s not an artefact.
New Magical Items has these.
The final two pages of content have maps of the ruins.
The Horrors Under Halden Hold in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and is long enough with enough different sections that these would have been useful. Navigation is okay. The text maintains a single column format and some minor errors were noticed. Bar the maps and covers, there are no illustrations. Presentation is okay.
This is indeed a dangerous adventure and the Gleaming Stone can be an unexpected threat. The ruins themselves have an oddly wide assortment of monsters in some places, as well as treasure and traps. Given the location of the ruins, it should be easy enough to drop them into many settings. The Horrors Under Halden Hold is a potentially dangerous adventure, especially at the lower end of the recommended level range, and it can be found by clicking here.
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