Pyramid Review
The Vemora
Published by Basement Games
Written by Mark Kibbe
$7.95
The Vemora is a nifty little dungeon-crawl adventure for Basement Games' Forge: Out of Chaos roleplaying game. It's the first published supplement for the game, and puts the game smack-dab in the high-fantasy, kill-the-monsters-and-take-their-treasure school of roleplaying. In other words, it's a lot of fun.The Vemora of the title is a magical item with legendary healing powers, hidden somewhere in the ruins of a great keep. Now in many dungeon crawls, it would be enough to simply say that the origins of the dungeon are "shrouded in mystery," or some other such bunk. Fortunately for us, writer Mark Kibbe has gone to great lengths to explain why a place like Thornburg Keep has come to be what it is -- who built it and why, and what happened to them.
In a nutshell, Thornburg Keep was built by a great and wise ruler as his fortress and headquarters. A compassionate man, the King welcomed refugees and downtrodden of all kinds. This proved to be his undoing, as carriers of a nasty plague entered the keep and spread their disease to all the inhabitants. Even the healing powers of the Vemora were not enough to stop this plague, and so the King allowed those who showed no signs of the disease to leave, and the rest died shortly thereafter. Fear of the plague has kept most adventurers out, though 80 years later, the various scavengers, looters, and other monsters that have taken up residence in the keep are . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: April 16, 1999
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