Caislen Campaign Notes

The Scorpal Complex is the dungeon/lair of a Death Knight known as Lord Voth, and it is in the Hylund region of the campaign setting. It is his home, and is not to be looted by foolish adventurers. The name “Scorpal Complex” comes from the interior design which features several rooms that are “scorpals(see below to learn about scorpals). The chambers of the complex feature:

• 4 Scorpal Rooms, each with an assortment of portcullises that raise and lower based on various mechanisms.
• A room with a generic skeleton army that Lord Voth is forced to regenerate sometimes as it is in the direct route to his personal chambers and supposed to scare off intruders.
• An elongated hallway just before the person chambers that has velvet carpet and fancy old tapestries on the walls, as well as functional oil lamps.
• A large main chamber with a dinner table, a couple of bookshelves with very old books, some stone columns(not to be confused with scorpals), as well as old paintings, fancy carpets, oil lanterns for light, and any number of old feeling fancy decor fit for someone of high class.
  • Death Knights don't eat so the table is more of a workspace than anything at this point.
• A personal chamber holding Lord Voth's most prized possessions with a very high quality locking double metal door.
  • Unfortunately it is fairly easy to bash double doors open.
  • This room when first viewed by player characters contained 2,000 gold pieces, 4 gems, 3 misc magic items, 2 scrolls¹⁾ and more importantly than anything else a very old magic greatsword mounted on the back wall with markings of the Shangri Elves on it. This is Lord Voth's most prized possession.

You're probably wondering what a ”Scorpal“ is if you're reading this page. So here's the backstory on that. As the players of this game were inside of a dungeon they were told that they were in a room they should imagine as being a 30 foot wide square, but with the center of the square being unavailable because it was a 10 foot wide square of stone. This results in not a “room” so much as a 10 foot wide by 30 foot wide corridor on any of 4 sides that wraps around to form a square. Attempts were made to alternatively explain this as a “very large square column” in the center of a square room. Or to think of it as a 30 foot wide square room with the middle being unavailable.

Somehow the players tried to visualize the above by imagining fitting a square into a circle into a square. Which didn't really make sense since we were only dealing with two square shapes. This inaccurate visualization was quickly deemed, by whichever one of us was probably the drunkest at this game session, to be known as a ”Scorpal“. The word “Scorpal” seems like it should by a hybrid of both the words “Circle” and “Square” but somehow it isn't spelled that way. It is illogical.

In retrospect we should have discussed some basic geometry and talked about Concentric Squares or even more accurate Strictly Inscribed Squares. It seems likely no one in this gaming group has a firm grasp on geometry at this point in their lives though, and so the ”SCORPAL“ is now new made up word that may or may not accurately represent any room in a dungeon with an unavailable square space in the middle of a larger open square space.