Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Citadel of Eight Illustrated

Tenser, level 7
Over the years I've gathered quite a collection of old Greyhawk material, from various sources including many things one would never expect. Digging through the archives I found one such item that piques me both as a Grey-historian and as an artist. This pdf is the tournament characters for a Greyhawk game ran at some unknown GenCon during the 3rd Edition era. I don't have any information on the adventure itself except what is hinted in the character backgrounds.

The pre-generated characters are of the famous Citadel of Eight during their mid-level careers; Mordenkainen the Mage (Wiz10), Tenser (Wiz7), Robilar (Fgt8), Quij the Orc (Bar4/Rog4), Bigby the Mage (Wiz7), Serten (Cl7), Yrag (Fgt8), and Riggby the Patriarch (Cl7). Whoever wrote the adventure did a great job statting out these legendary NPCs and providing useful roleplaying information and background for each.

What is most eye-popping to me is the profile illustrations that go with each character. Whoever the artist/s was for this adventure has my eternal respect. Many of these are characters that I myself have been illustrating for the Castle Greyhawk Comic. These drawings of all the citadel members are done in a clean style that is quite expressive. Based on these, I'd love to see what other illustrations the adventure itself held. If anyone knows who the author of this Gen Con module is or can place the name of any artist, please give me a comment below. Until then, enjoy!

Update 06/05/2021: Sorry folks. Broken link to this download. If anyone got this, consider yourself lucky.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

it is clear that this stats come from an early draft of the 3rd edition rules! the domains are still called spheres!

Mystic Scholar said...

Nice find, Mort. Thanks for sharing!

Matrox Lusch said...

“Finger of the Wind” tournament, the seven-round 3rd edition D&D Open tourney written by Robert Weise for GenCon 2000.
http://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/gh_tourneys_finger_of_the_wind.html

Mike Bridges said...

Good call Nicola!

Matrox: Awesome! Many, many thanks for knowing that title! GenCon2000. Man, I feel like I really missed out on that party. That was when the Living Greyhawk Campaign and Gazetteer took off.

Unknown said...

would you include the informations found here in the Greywiki? i think there are a lot of useful informations about these characters!

tom said...

While stats for these characters have been published in several TSR & WotC products, Gary Gygax stated in several interviews that he never revealed the "real" versions. So like all the other stats, starting with Rogues Gallery, these are just guesses. Modify them any way you desire for use in your own campaigns.

The artwork OTOH is well done, and an interesting interpretation. It may be the first time I've ever seen Tenser w/o that weird hat.