| grodog |
Per Rob's original description of El Raja Key:
El Raja Key, 1972. Unpublished. This castle was intentionally designed to provide Gary with a source of adventuring enjoyment but quickly expanded in scope when EGG chose me to help co-DM the original Greyhawk campaign. Some of its levels were incorporated into the second (large and current) version of Greyhawk Castle, and many of its tricks, traps, monsters and magic appear in sundry published releases (Greyhawk: Supplement 1 to D&D; DMG; UA; WG5; et al). Ostensibly the castle was located at a geographical area equating to the current Maure Castle location on the WoG map; WG5 (see below) was a nearby area related to Maure Castle/El Raja Key in some way which was only slightly hinted at (though the idea of entering Maure Castle equated with entering El Raja Key, which was less a name then than a signature denoting my castle, since my real initials occur within it).
It is important to note that as EGG's co-DM I was given reign to DM PCs in either castle and/or geographical area. In so doing, I also expanded planar areas before untouched in the campaign, allowing not only El Raja Key and its environs to be explored, but many other creative offshoots from that to be expanded upon as Gary concentrated on the rules, the WoG Setting, and his many other projects slated for publication. The majority of PCs who initially played in the Greyhawk campaign found themselves easily transferring back-and-forth between the two areas, and thus the idea of a multi-DMed campaign was born, which was later to include Ernie Gygax's sub-milieu, and somewhat later than that, James Ward's Dragonkind, as well as others. In 1986 I updated some of El Raja Key's levels and the main castle map with the idea of releasing it on the heels of "City of Brass" through Creations Unlimited, though this never happened. Since then its 40 levels have remained undeveloped.
Thus, you see that the castle is at least 18 levels deep, with 40+ total levels.
I haven't updated his bibliography there for about two years, so some publishing plans need to be updated, but the gist remains accurate.
You can see the full bibliography at http://www.canonfire.com/htmlnew/modules.php?name=News&file=article& ;sid=125
I do plan to update it again soon, using some of the scans and descriptions from Rob's recent Greyhawk auctions to help add additional info and images to each entry.