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“As Conan came forward, his eyes fixed on the motionless idol, the eyes of the thing opened suddenly! The Cimmerian froze in his tracks. It was no image—it was a living thing, and he was trapped in its chamber!”
A great appeal of licensed settings is the chance to not just experience the world of the heroes of the setting, but to walk in their footsteps and perhaps attempt the same adventures undertaken by the heroes. The Classic Conan series of adventures for Conan the Roleplaying Game offers this opportunity by turning the original Conan stories into adventures. Conan and the Tower of the Elephant is the first (and so far only) in the series, being based on the acclaimed short story The Tower of the Elephant.
The key idea in turning the story into an adventure is that the tower (where the action takes place) in the adventure should be exactly as it was encountered by Conan in the story. Therefore, the assumption is made that, for whatever reason, Conan never got around to tackling the tower. So the tower’s inhabitants remain to be encountered and the fate of the tower is in the hands of the PCs. (The unspoken time period for Conan the RPG is at the beginning of Conan’s reign as king of Aquilonia, so several years have passed since the time when the story would have been set. Very little has changed about the tower in that time.)
As in the story, the plot of the adventure involves the PCs breaking into the impregnable Tower of the Elephant, home of the evil priest Yara. (The basic premise is that they are breaking in to steal the fabled gem the Heart of the Elephant, though other plots are suggested, such as rescuing a friend held captive by Yara.) The adventure therefore consists for the most part of a description of the tower and its grounds. However, the adventure also includes a prologue of sorts where the PCs can acquire some green lotus powder (good against the lions in the tower’s gardens) and meet an NPC ally, Vanku of Arenjun, who also intends to tackle the tower. This is a nice addition. Not only does it provide an extra chapter, easing the adventure towards the assault on the tower, but it also ties the adventure closer to the story. Vanku is the son of Taurus of Nemedia, who accompanied Conan in this attempt on the tower in the story, thus Vanku fills the role in the adventure played by Taurus in the original story. The acquisition of the lotus powder also recalls Taurus’ account of how he came to have lotus powder.
When Conan tackled the tower, he saw only about half of it, specifically, the gardens, the roof, Yag-kosha’s chamber and Yara’s lotus den. The adventure fleshes out these areas and details the rest of the tower, including the basement and ground floor, occupied by the tower’s guards, a floor given over a temple to Zath and two floors for Yara’s studies and laboratories. The tower has eight stories, including the basement and the roof. All in all it is well put together as a magician/priest’s tower, with wonders and dangers to be encountered on every level, and does a decent job of filling in the blanks in the story. However, none of the additions are even fractionally as interesting, surprising or original as Yag-kosha.
While the most obvious course for the adventure is for the PCs to follow that taken by Conan, by going through the roof, stumbling upon Yag-kosha, slaying Yara and fleeing as the tower falls, the adventure could unfold in other ways. An interesting aspect is the fact that the tower could as easily be entered from below as through the roof, which could change completely the order in which things are encountered – most significantly, Yara could be encountered before Yag-kosha, giving a very different story. However, the adventure doesn’t satisfactorily explore the alternative courses and possible outcomes. Alternative endings are acknowledged (such as the PCs taking over the tower), but no alternative denouements are offered.
Despite the fact that the course of the adventure is quite flexible, the tower is presented strictly linearly, from the bottom of the tower to the top. As this is the reverse of the default path, the peculiarity arises that events are described out of their most likely order. Specifically, Yara and the effect on him of the Heart of the Elephant is presented before it is described how the PCs might acquire the Heart from Yag-kosha’s chamber on the level above. It might have been useful if the tower was described in general terms, before the room-by-room description, so that they GM can see what directions the adventure might take.
Visually, the adventure is nice enough, with the standard Conan layout and page borders (though oddly the border on odd-numbered pages is printed at a lower resolution than those on even-numbered pages). It is printed in black and white with several small illustrations, none of which particularly help illustrate anything in the adventure, and simple, clear maps. There is only one notable error in the book: the room numbers 3:2 and 3:3 should be transposed on the map (a small mistake, but it had me confused for quite a while).
Overall it is a decent enough adventure. It does a good job of bringing the original story to life, but unfortunately it doesn’t stretch that material. While it is not necessary for the GM to have read the original story, the adventure is all but spoilt for any players who have read it.
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