A12 - A14 (Gaedren's Playground)

The original adventure describes a scene that takes place every so often at the fishery. When it comes time to feed Gobblegut, he dangles a misbehaving orphan from the manacles there and slowly lowers it towards the alligator while tormenting the child with impossible questions. Giggles assists him with this. There is no better scene for the PCs to walk in on than this exact ritual taking place. It gives Giggles a reason to be present (beefing up the encounter a bit), reinforces that Gaedren is a horrible person who engages in mental torture and feeds children to alligators, and provides something unquestionably heroic for the PCs to do during the fight: save the kid from Gobblegut.

This room should also be enlarged, providing a couple of squares' width to walk around the opening in the floor.

Gaedren is only a standard monster. While he is the primary villain of this part of the adventure, he isn't much by himself. He relies on his thugs and urchins to do much of his dirty work for him, and age hasn't been terribly kind to the cretin. I suggest the following encounter for a party of five adventurers:

• Gobblegut, Visejaw Crocodile
• Giggles, Half-Orc Archer (see Eberron Campaign Setting)
• Gaedren Lamm

Total: 475 xp (Level 1 Encounter)

On Giggles' first action, he lets go of the rope as a free action, sending the child plummeting towards Gobblegut's snapping maw. At the end of Giggles' next turn, the child will hit the water. The PCs have that window of time to attempt a rescue, probably by using the terrain power provided below. If the PCs fail to rescue the child, it's up to you as a DM to decide the urchin's fate. If you'd like the kid to survive, have it ready an action to climb up one of the posts sticking up from below as soon as it touches the water, just barely out of reach of the alligator. If he is rescued, he does his best to scramble up atop the floor and into the room, where he tends to downed PCs with unmodified (+0) Heal checks.

Gaedren's footlocker contains the following adjusted treasure: a cigar case worth 15 gold pieces, a gold ingot worth 40 gold pieces, a crown worth 100 gold pieces, a kraken carving worth 75 gold pieces, a silver ring worth 50 gold pieces, an ivory figurine worth 120 gold pieces (altogether, treasure parcels 6, 8, 9 and 10 from level 1) as well as treasure parcels 2 and 4 from level 1.

Stat blocks: