The Guild of Origin runs a program called Assassin’s Mark which is roughly a mob of the week type program designed to get people out and about, learning lots of stock mobs and filling up the donation room at the same time.

The participation rate is pretty decent and I myself frequently go run mobs for gear I’ve had for years but never run for (see my previous post about Belkira’s Hunt).

This time my adventure took me into Kontaur to find Carnifex Castle and hunt down the priest for some adamantium armor. This item is still a tanking standard due to it’s outrageous amount of AC. A new item with this sort of AC would probably have to be restricted to drow paladins or devout nephandi and even then would only be wearable on Tuesdays with a full moon visible at noon.

One nice thing about this adventure is that there is NO map on Rodpedia for Carnifex Castle, though the entrance is noted on the Kontaur map … and yes, I looked.  I looked because I was focused on the end goal of grabbing some plates and not enjoying the exploration of the area, not every day is a smell the roses day for me, I admit it … and sometimes, just sometimes, I find something I wasn’t expecting.  While googling to see if there was a classic map on some forgotten Realms website (and yes, I have found DOZENS of old Realms web sites out there) I tripped over what I believe to be the original author’s inspiration for the area: TSR’s Dungeon’s and Dragons module M3: Twilight Calling.  Rather than take Wikipedia’s word for it, I laid hands on this module and I can say this for sure… if this isn’t the original inspiration for the area, then perhaps a D&D writer stole from Realms!  Nearly all the elements from the Realms area exist in the module, but the module does contain a fair bit more than I’ve discovered in the Castle … so it’s certainly not a complete module rip off, I am by no means implying that.  I enjoy etymology … and this idea of rediscovering inspirations tickles that same fancy.

On my first foray I entered through the front door, warriors, mages and cleric in tow and had a tiny bit of a look around.  I encountered the guards who have some neat new avatar quality items, the chaplain, the mage and finally the priest.  For those who don’t know there is a small bonus to going to find an adamatium plate … a staff that casts room fireshield that can be used by a warrior.  It has a pathetic number of charges, often only 1, but if you are lucky enough to get one that has at least 2 charges on it you can start playing the recharge luck game and try to double up.  This is something we used to do a fair amount of to create jade cameos with hundreds of charges and so on … but that’s a different topic.

Just a short time fighting in the area taught me a great deal.  I found at least 1 dt on my way out (without hitting it … yeah, I know, whodathunk it) and an easy trip back to Darkhaven.  Since there is an abundance of use of the norecall flag in the area I’ll give you a hint, bring pass door and scry 🙂

Happy adventuring!