Who has not heard tale of the Mad Mage of Greyhawk? Across the Selintan, three leagues (not more) north of the Free City still stands the three-spired ruin of the great castle. Unfathomable dungeon depths and bewildering mazes the Mad One dug beneath its foundations to hide away his treasures and conceal his sorceries. Many fools searching for treasure and adventure find therein both in full and generous measure, but not so many survive to spend the coin or tell the tale. Forsooth, I count myself among the fools that have ventured into those hazardous depths. I can testify. Indeed, the tales you have heard hitherto tell not the half of it.

Beneath Castle Greyhawk

The mazes beneath the ruins of that place plunge many levels deep, almost, it would seem, to the heart of Oerth. They defy mapping, for as often as a man return, he finds not the same way through the dungeons twice. How many are the treacherous traps and hazards! How many the denizens that make their lairs in those dark places: goblinfok, horrid things, and a full bestiary of all the gods ever fashioned or imagined.

What is more, the whole of it is beset with Zagyg’s magic. He decorated with riddles and puzzles to test a man’s wits. One might come to a door that leads only to more empty stone chambers but find, on passing through the frame of it—Behold! He has stepped into some other place in the dungeon, or some other world altogether.

Not so long ago, a certain colleague of mine, skilled in arts arcane and not wholly unacquainted with peril, Tenser by name, ventured into those labyrinthine vaults with his fellows in pursuit of knowledge and rarities long thought lost. Great indeed was his astonishment when, amid the gems and magicks they bore out from the depths of Castle Greyhawk was found a small mace, a humble shepherd’s crook (so it seemed), albeit now shod with iron and set with gems in silver filagree. Perceiving the signs and tokens and sensing the potent virtue that abode within the wood, wonder turned to awe. No common relic of wizardry, but a holy instrument whose power sprang not of magecraft nor dweomer.

“No geegaw, that! It is a most charmed implement of clerical power, the Crook of Rao!” Tenser spake thus unto me and unto my colleagues when gathered for council. “Devils and demons of the lower worlds shudder at the mention. Fiends flee in terror at the sight! Grave will be our need of it if Iggwilv comes.”

In what manner the holy staff came to that cursed castle, none have fully learned; for relics, like kingdoms, pass by strange turns of fortune. From hand to grasping hand the holy Crook of Rao passed by concealment, barter, and theft, until, at the last, it came into the keeping of the mad mage of Greyhawk, and then to the hand of Tenser.

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