[The Dark Eye] Retrospective: B13 Der Streuner soll sterben

Let’s go through Das Schwarze Auge adventure B13 Der Streuner Soll Sterben (The Vagrant Shall Die)

It has the secondary title Das Blutgericht von Thalusa (The Blood Court of Thalusa) which is one of the few times when both titles are equally evocative.

Ok, let me preface this: I utterly adore this scenario, even though it has it’s problems (dare I say it? some parts are quite racist). But I would say this is where Ulrich Kiesow shows real promise.

Now at this point MOST (but not all) of the DSA scenarios were written by him, or in cooperation with him. This included A1 which I really liked, and A2 which I found at least ok. But it also included the whole rest of the scenarios which contain some bad railroads, even if their premise might be good.
But this one is one where I really see what he is going for. This is intentionally pulpy, in the way that 19th ct. adventure stories were.

Unfortunately this includes some rather unfortunate tropes that come with such stories. For one the setting is quasi-oriental. And of course it involves arranged marriages, beheadings at the drop of a stone, and an evil looking coal black executioner.

On the other there really aren’t any really bad people involved. The executioner just happens to be coal black from a magical accident and is otherwise doing his job, and the one actual antagonist is coded as German, and even he has reasons to behave like he does.

Lots of bad decisions that come with the choice of setting and NPCs. I guess for the 80s it was fair for its day, but even in the 90s I remember this module as being discussed as “the racist one”.

But anyway, the plot concerns Prince Selo of Khunchom who had the really bad idea to have just a small peek at his fiancée Shenny of Thalusa. [that name tho…]

You see it’s tradition in their culture that enfianced people are not to see each other until the marriage rites are concluded. Which is all fine for Selo, except he HAS seen her parents and now fears his future wife might take after either of them.
So he makes the plan of… sneaking into the palace of Thalusa and having a look at her.

And if it’s really bad, can a life as a vagrant on the roads of Aventuria be quite so bad?

Yes, Prince Selo is an idiot.

In any case he even is successful in sneaking in, and quite enamored with Princess Shenny.
And Princess Shenny for her side is quite enamored with that handsome stranger she just encountered.

Unfortunately while they are both very enthusiastically consenting with each other (at least that discussion we don’t have to touch), he is captured by the guards and immediately sentenced to death by his prospective father in law.

Your mission now, if you choose to accept it…

Well, you should accept it, the Prince’s father promises you riches if you manage to make it to Thalusa in time with a document of his hand that can rescue his son.
Unfortunately Thalusa is about 300km away, easily a 10 day trip over land, and the execution is set for in 14 days.

And even if you get there on time with the document (which is not a given), and hand it to the wrong person, then you are back at square one. Well, square whatever Thalusa is in.

The heroes are given the choice of going by sea, which might shorten the journey to three days, but has a problem: it’s a the stormy season right now, and it might make things worse. A single ship is willing to make the passage on the off-chance of arriving in one part at their destination to make a killing selling hard liquor.

(I realized afterwards that I am not quite sure which season it is supposed to be, the text is talking about Frühjahr being a storm season in that part, so the early year. In our world this commonly would be spring. But in Aventuria the early year is autumn. But was this already established at that point? When does this actually take place?)

Despite Kiesow’s known fondness for railroads he does not actually go for them here. With a bit luck of the dice the PCs can indeed reach the halfway point, after which the storms become no problem anymore. It’s not likely, but it’s possible.

Then they are attacked by pirates though. Which also can be circumnavigated with proper care (the scenario contains a specifically designed boardgame here), and even if they board your ship they only will steal the document.

(they are not actually real pirates)

If luck is not with them, or if they decide to go there from the beginning, they end up having to go by land. But at least they might have gained a day or two.

This would be the place where a DnD scenario would pull out the hexmap. And we saw a hexmap in B8 already. Kiesow instead decides to use squares, for a squarecrawl, basically.
There are also no permanently keyed encounters, all the encounters are on random tables.

This includes meadows which have an encounter on a roll of 7 on a d6.

Oh yes, did you see! Did you see?! He made a joke!

What’s interesting about the encounters is how… stock medieval fantasy they all are. One would assume that with a setting where he uses all kinds of orientalist tropes he would do the same for the wilderness section. Instead it seems like he just took the monster descriptions from the rulebook: wolves, trolls, boars, a tatzelwurm. The closest to the Arabian Nights scenario you might be expecting is an Earth Spirit that can give you some healing.

(I guess no budget for illustrations…)

But it’s really the city adventure part where this scenario shines.
For one: there is an actual city adventure part with an actual map of Thalusa.
For the second: you are given free reign how to actually deal with the situation.
Now you were supposed to deliver a document, but you likely lost it either on the sea journey or over land.
If you didn’t you most likely handed it to the wrong person at the palace and he lost it for you instead.

in the meantime the prince is in his prison in the middle of the market square of Thalusa and the players are left free reign in how to deal with the situation.

Springing the prince might not be easy, but can be possible. Sneaking into the palace is possible (it’s worked out), but finding the right person there is difficult. Dealing with the executioner and his tools is also another option (the tools need to be in top order according to tradition).

Here is when the bog standard fantasy scenario all of a sudden turns into a heist. most likely the heroes will have to do something to save the prince, but what and how is their own choice. The scenario gives some valid ideas, but I bet some players would have more.

You could have an infiltration/dungeon crawl through the palace, but you don’t have to.

For what it’s worth if you are breaking into the palace you might encounter a scribe you can blackmail by threatening his favorite calligraphy.

And if you break into the executioners house you might encounter a Ulmenknecht, which seems to be a treant kind of being? I don’t think this being is still canon in DSA. It’s not the proper treant equivalent (that would be a Waldschrat), more like a wood golem?

And then there is Dolguruk, the executioner of Thalusa.

Who is black.
Coal black even.

Which is the result of a rather sinister human sacrifice he and a druid wanted to perform on a magician who managed to hit back with a transformation spell. Which caused him to turn completely black.

For some reason this story is the longest of all the NPC bios, despite being otherwise a rather incidental character.
And one who doesn’t actually do anything bad as such while the PCs are around.

I think Kiesow is very much going very much for the image of Der Schwarze Mann here, a “Kinderschreckfigur” (character to scare kids with? Man, we Germans have weird concepts sometimes) that is quite widespread. I still remember playing both the associated kids game and the card game based on it.

In a wider sense it was a depiction of (black) death and/or the devil.

But here it manages to keep all the bad connotations that made this game… inappropriate in polite society.

Dolguruk is I think still an active NPC in current DSA lore, he usurped Shenny’s father at one point and became ruler of Thalusa, and being an elf he also doesn’t seem to be easy to get rid of. He also had his backstory modified to have gained his look from a pact with a demon.
Not sure if that’s better or worse.

So…what do I think about it?

I don’t think Kiesow intended for this to come across as it does, but he nevertheless managed to write some really unfortunate implications in here.

Which might explain why this adventure never got the re-releases that other adventures from him got, despite being, from a design standpoint alone, one of his best so far.
There is considerable freedom of choice both in the wilderness and the city sections, and room for player creativity, all under time pressure. I really like this and I want to play this with people. I might need to prepare people that it was written 40 years ago.

Other languages

This gets into the times when the DSA adventures were no longer translated into many languages. The only translation I can find is the French one, in both the Schmidt and Gallimard version.

Still not sure why there were two versions. According to one commenter on dice.camp one was the Schmidt version, like in German, the other was the same format as the Gallimard gamebook translations and would have been sold in bookstores instead of toy stores.

In any case they used the secondary title for that, Le Bourreau de Thalussa. Not the worst choice.

Running Tally (by quality, from best to worst):

1. A1 Die Verschwörung von Gareth
2. B13 Der Streuner soll sterben
3. B2 Wald ohne Wiederkehr
4. A2 Die Göttin der Amazonen
5. B6 Unter dem Nordlicht
6. B9 Strom des Verderbens
7. B1 Im Wirtshaus zum Schwarzen Keiler
8. B8 Durch das Tor der Welten
9. B10 In den Fängen des Dämons
10. B12 Der Zug durch das Nebelmoor
11. B3 Das Schiff der Verlorenen Seelen
12. B4 Die Sieben Magischen Kelche