S2: White Plume Mountain

White Plume Mountain is an adventure module written for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Written by Lawrence Schick, it was released by TSR in 1979. It is set in the Greyhawk campaign setting. The hook of the story is that three legendary weapons were stolen by a madder-than-usual wizard named Keraptis. We know this because the wizard left a note at each crime scene shitposting about his escapades in poetic verse. The audacity! The wizard boasts that he has taken the artifacts to reside with him in White Plume Mountain, an active goddamn volcano that he spelunked into 1,300 years ago with a cadre of gnomes, and now it is up to you to go in after him and retrieve these artifact weapons for their owners.

White Plume Mountain is generally very favorably remembered by neckbeards, usually ranking somewhere in the Top 10 list of the best D&D dungeons. While it does not have sheer FUCK YOU nature of the Tomb of Horrors, it is chock full of fun and memorable encounters and puzzles.

A sequel, Return to White Plume Mountain, was released in 1999 for D&D's silver anniversary, which takes place twenty years after the original. Having been presumably slain in the original WPM, Keraptis may have returned as his mocking face has appeared in the eponymous plume of smoke which exudes from the volcano which was once his lair. Does this herald the mad wizard's return, or is something even more nefarious afoot?