Old Mother Grubb's House of Fortune

This disreputable establishment is located in the Thieves' Quarter (location T12). It is known as a gambling house and a haunt of ladies of dubious virtue. It is also a much more dangerous place than it appears. The fact that doxies will pick your pockets here is well known, but there's much more to it than this.

Old Mother Grubb is, in fact, a vampire polymorphed (through the use of a wand she possesses) to appear as an old crone. She uses the fact that numerous persons of social significance in Greyhawk visit her establishment to extort monies through blackmail, but this is only a sideline, since few Greyhawkers would much care who had visited this place. For ordinary Greyhawkers, there is no special risk from her attentions. (She cannot use any of her physical vampiric abilities. in cluding her gaze, while in the form of an old woman.) Adventurers, however, are in a potentially much more dangerous position if they visit here-and especially if they try to cause trouble.

In the basement below Old Mother Grubb's are two chambers chock full (or only partially full, depending on the DM's sense of leniency) of other individuals who have been turned into vampires by Old Mother Grubb's energy drain attack. The main responsibility of these minions is to guard the treasure chamber, but Mother Grubb can and will bring them forth to deal with any major threat in her establishment or the nearby vicinity (such as the kind of threat that would be posed by treasure-seeking or experience-seeking adventurers).

Old Mother Grubb has friends about town-thieves and low-lifers in her employ (who do not know her true nature). They keep an eye out in the bars and taverns of the Old City, looking for half drunk adventurers (or ordinary citizens) and then befriending them (by buying drinks, losing to them at cards and dice, etc.). These people then suggest a gamble, some fine drink, and a good time down at Old Mother Grubb's. The hapless individual who agrees is then fed drink and allowed to win at the fixed gambling tables, and fawned over by the ladies in the employ of Old Mother Grubb, all tactics designed to put the victim at ease and cause him to eventually pass out from overindulgence. Sleep inducing drugs in his drinks may also be used, especially after the victim has been taken off to one of the private rooms by one of Old Mother Grubb's girls. Then, one of the vampires (usually a minion, sometimes the old lady herself) enters and slays the helpless. sleeping male.

The vampires that Old Mother Grubb keeps in her basement are not as powerful as she is (which makes it easier for her to keep them under her control. Most of them do not have any special class related abilities (spellcasting, etc.) brought over from their mortal existences (although the DM may choose to make certain of these minions special in this regard, particularly if some notable characters end up joining the ranks). These vampires will not attack of their own volition unless their underground lair is violated, or unless they are summoned forth by Old Mother Grubb to do her dirty work.

During her mortal life, Old Mother Grubb successfully researched a method for using the permanency speU in con junction with charm person. She has used this knowledge to enslave a staff of bar maids (ranging from 12 to 16 in number at any given time) who assist her in waylay ing patrons so that they can be disposed of inconspicuously. The vampire prefers to "hire" women with thieving abilities; there is a 70% chance that any barmaid m her employ has the skills of a thief of level 1-3 (although each of the women will have only ld6 hit points in any case).

Old Mother Grubb's "croupier" at the gaming tables is a willing conspirator, for she is a priest of Erythnul who helps with a useful sideline of the operation.

Adventures at Old Mother Grubb's

A map of the ground floor and the basement level of Old Mother Crubb's is provided with this text. In brief, the major features of the rooms are as follows:

1. The entrance hall. where customers are greeted by one or more of the bar maids and directed through the northern doorway, which leads into the main gambling hall and into a corridor that circles the perimeter of this enormous room.

2. A lounge and bar, where patrons can drink to forget about the money they've just lost-but anyone who imbibes too much is liable to wake up as an entirely different sort of person.

3. A game room filled with billiard tables, dart boards, and other such amusements.

4. The hall where most of the action is: a huge, smoke-filled room reeking of liquor and sweat, with gamblmg games (cards, dice, roulette, you name it) going on at every one of the closely packed tables. Barmaids circulate through the room, cajoling customers and delivering drinks. Kaarain, the head croupier, can run any game that is played here , and is liable to be found anywhere in the room.

5-6. Storerooms stocked with liquor and other mundane supplies and equipment.

7a-b. Men's and women's bathrooms.

8-10. Bedrooms. empty unless they are being visited by a patron in the company of one or more barmaids.

11. Back entrance hall. used only for deliveries of supplies and furtive entries and exits.

12. A secret door, magically locked and trapped (but openable by Old Mother Grubb at a moment's notice), that opens onto a stairway leading to the basement.

13. A small storeroom , used mainly for the safekeeping of expensive liquor.

14-15. The rooms that are occupied by Old Mother Grubb's vampire minions when they aren't out and about. There will be at least two in each room (and available for service) at any time, up to a maximum (DM's discretion) of whatever the room can comfortably hold.

16. The room in which zombies are kept until they are sold to the Sewermen's and Streetcleaners' Union. It is rare for more than 1 or 2 to be here, since the zombies are sold soon after they are "manufactured."

17. Old Mother Grubb 's treasure hoard. The contents (adjustable by the DM as desired) are as follows:

The most prominent object in the room is a large, locked wooden chest (Old Mother Grubb has the key) which has a glyph of warding placed upon it for 14 points of cold damage and paralysis (which lasts 11 rounds unless dispelled). Inside the chest 1s a suit of dwarf-sized chain mail + 1, a wand of frost, a set of bracers of defense AC 5, a dagger + 2. and a very ornately decorated broadsword + 1, flametongue which is too singular in appearance with many gem settings in hilt and pommel (add 3,000 gp to sale value) to risk being sold.

In a plain silver tube (value 25 gp) there is a scroll of wizard spells: confusion, dimension door, duo-dimension and polymorph other.

The chest also contains a small leather pouch with 11 rhodocrosites (value 10 gp each). five moonstones (value 50 gp each), two chrysoberyls of exceptional quality (value 250 gp each) and a gold ring set with four moonstones and a fire opal (total value 1,800 gp).

On the floor, beside the chest, is a small sack with mixed coinage; 240 ep, 315 gp, and 219 pp.

Smart players will have their PCs avoid Old Mother Grubb 's like the plague, so it may require a lure to drag characters in. In that vein, it should be noted that the large majority of the ordinary working girls here are of neutral or good alignment ; in most cases, it's not their fault they were charmed. Thus, good-aligned characters should be looking to help them, not slay them (and killing them may be considered a deviation toward evil alignment unless truly exceptional circumstances are involved).