Tale of the Ruby Dragon

A completely unauthorized foray into the Forgotten Realms which boldly proclaims on its cover "This module has not been approved by TSR - YET!". Despite the failings of its prophecy, it promises an engaging and action-packed story opportunity for 4-6 characters of levels 1-5. What it delivers is a warped and excessively murderous romp through the wilderness to an equally overblown temple full of more secret doors than any location has any right to have. With a youthful spark of imagination that will throw any lover of the genre back to his or her own first crazed attempts at dungeon design, this module is representative of a whole lost army of modules from the warped minds of adolescents with dice and too much time on their hands.

Some key encounters that will attract the attention of any dungeon master:

A backstory that involves a "squadron" of silver dragons as well as over a dozen additional dragons of varying types including metallic, chromatic, and gemstone having a no-holds-barred slaughter-fest over an abandoned horde.

A 12th level Druid tooling around the forest in the hut of the Baba Yaga.

A god's avatar that has AC -6 (in a 1st level adventure!)

A location called the "Boring Beetle's Lair."

A final battle with a narcissistic, two-headed, polygamous Rakshasa.

And that's just the highlights of this campy and overblown pen and paper death-machine.

On the serious side of things, for obvious reasons, there were very few of these homebrewed nightmares that saw print, and it represents an early foray into the realm of indie press publishing. Pacesetter would later pick up the rights to the dungeon and make a few limited edition reprints, but this is for the original module as released by Alto Unlimited. It is a wonderful addition to a serious collection, and a great read for anyone who wants to feel their jaw drop reading an heinously unbalanced smash-up dungeon that somehow saw print.