SPOILER WARNING: This review discusses events portrayed in The Longest Night. Most of the events in Exile will be discussed following the spoiler warning below.
Shadow of the Exile is book two of the Witchfire Trilogy. At the end of the first book, The Longest Night (reviewed here), the city of Corvis was in turmoil after the young sorceress Alexia Ciannor had attacked the city with an army of undead and seized the Witchblade magic sword in a bid to resurrect her discredited mother. Exile picks up a few days later when the PCs and their allies, Father Dumas of the Church of Morrow and Captain Helstrom of the Corvis Watch, learn that Alexia has gone up river to the Temple of Cyriss, a clockwork goddess. Exile then takes the PCs in pursuit of Alexia and their return to Corvis.
Exile begins with an introduction to the Iron Kingdoms, Privateer Press’ setting for the Witchfire Trilogy. Corvis is part of the Kingdom of Cygnar and lies at the divergence of the Black River and the Dragon’s Tongue River.(1) The Iron Kingdoms also include the coastal kingdom of Ord, lying north of the Dragon’s Tongue River; the Kingdom of Llael some two hundred miles north of Corvis along the Black River; the religious Protectorate of Menoth lying east of the Black River along the Gulf of Cygnar; and the northwestern Kingdom of Khador. In addition to the Iron Kingdoms, there are the northern mountains of the Dwarven Kingdom of Rhul, the home of the reclusive elves in the forest of Ios east of Llael, the Island Kingdom of Cryx that is ruled by an ancient dragon and home to pirates and a variety of troll-kin, and the dry lands of the Bloodstone Marches east of the Black River. Much of this information is available online at the Iron Kingdoms website. There are, apparently, no halflings, gnomes, or half-orcs in the Iron Kingdoms.
Also available online are preview stats for steamjacks. Steamjacks are the powerful constructs that are used in the Iron Kingdoms for much of the heavy lifting. Stats are provided for both basic and advanced steamjacks, and the stats show that these constructs are both impressive and formidable.(2)
The art in Exile is in the same style as that of Night, effectively evoking the buckled leather, steam fantasy setting. Still, I do not believe that a thong is appropriate adventuring attire, even for an elf.
Corvis and the Iron Kingdoms are an interesting and unique enough settings that I am thinking about running the Witchfire modules as a D&D campaign more-or-less straight from the modules, which is something that I haven’t done in quite some time.
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As I mentioned above, Exile begins in Corvis a few days after the events in Night. The players learn that Alexia has gone up river to a temple of the clockwork goddess Cyriss, and they have some opportunities to do some investigating and research in Corvis before hiring a boat and setting off up river after her. Suggestions are given on how to get the PCs involved in the plot if they have not played through Night. However, I definitely recommend that a party play through Night in order to get a thorough introduction to the Iron Kingdoms and its clockwork magic.
Six boats are presented that the PCs may hire for the trip up river. However, there are good reasons for the PCs not to hire five of them. If the PCs don’t go with the sixth boat, a GM will need to be ready to generate a crew and background for a seventh. The deck plans for the boat featured in Exile are available online along with a map of Corvis several other interesting downloads.
The PCs are encouraged to hurry after Alexia because the Temple of Cyriss is only open one day every thirteen years. Now mind you, neither Alexia nor anyone else traveling to the Temple is burdened by this nonsensical restriction (least of all the priests that live in the Temple).(3)
Seven encounters are presented for the trip up river and a wandering monster table is provided for more encounters. The encounters along the trip up river almost seem design to echo the journey up river in Apocalypse Now. Other reviews have mentioned that the players did not like the trip up river. I can see why. The seven encounters presented can distract the PCs from the chase of Alexia, soak time, and drain the party’s resources, which can be a major hindrance if the GM is using the time limit described in the module. The encounters involve a stop at a swamp village, an attack by undead, an attack by gobbers, a gatehouse, a wrecked ship, an ambush by gatormen, and a visit to the gatormen village. The gatehouse encounter creates a major continuity problem because no explanation is given for how the ship later found wrecked made it past the gatehouse.(4)
When the PCs reach the Temple, they discover that it is huge monolith 300 feet across, 200 feet deep, and 150 feet high and that it hums with sound of machinery. Inside, the PCs quickly discover that Alexia has been cutting a swath through the Temple’s clerics. The PCs also learn that another party left Corvis ahead of them. A group of Inquisitors sent by the evil wizard Vahn Oberon to stop Alexia and recover the Witchblade. The floors of the Temple are connected by automatic elevators in the four corners of the building that move in a set pattern first rotating from one of two positions on each floor before rising to the floor above. Exile does not explain how the Temple’s clerics have the patience to use these things. It must be part of their religious observances.(5)
The PCs must work their way through the Temple, searching out the combination of elevators and passage ways that will lead them to the resurrection chamber on the third floor in the Temple’s core. There are a number of interesting rooms along the way, but there is only one way to get to the third floor core. Several rooms feature traps and scenes that have been around since the earliest days of dungeon crawling, but the setting in a clockwork temple both provides an explanation and offers a fresh spin on these old clichés. The scene in the smelting room is something that you would more expect to find in a Feng Shui adventure than a dungeon. A map really would have helped to explain the room’s layout. A GM will need to think about this encounter before the PCs reach the room. Regardless of what the PCs do or how long they spend exploring the Temple, when they reach the third floor core, there is a big showdown with Alexia in which the PCs wind up with the Witchblade. They should quickly find out that it is more than they can handle.
The PCs return to find Corvis a changed city. Vinter Raelthorne the Elder, the exile of the title, has returned with a nonhuman army from the Bloodstone Marches. The city government has been overthrown, and the Inquisition has imprisoned anyone perceived to be a threat, including Father Dumas. Oh, and everyone is looking for the Witchfire.
The PCs quickly face two problems: dealing with the Witchfire and freeing Father Dumas. Captain Helstrom provides the PCs with information on how to free the Father from jail. The jailbreak is a straightforward affair in which the PCs will encounter the first of Raelthorne’s Skorne allies and shouldn’t pose a real problem for the PCs as long as they can manage some subtlety.
These events setup the final book of the Witchfire Trilogy in which the PCs will be caught between Raelthorne and his Skorne army and an army marching from the capital of Cygnar.
Now, you may ask yourself how does this huge clockwork temple support itself in the wilderness. Where does the temple get its coal and other supplies? No explanation is offered by Exile.(6) Although a GM could wave his hands and say that the supplies are transported interdimensionally (But, I don’t know many groups of players that would accept that explanation).
All in all, Exile provides more interesting and distinctive adventures in the Iron Kingdoms. It is more linear than Night, but the story is now underway and the PCs must race to keep up with events.
Notes
(1) In my review of Night I ranted a bit about the geographic improbability of Corvis being located at the divergence of two rivers, but I did not offer a solution for this problem. Something I do not like to do. If you are also bothered by this geographic anomoly, then you can modify the setting to provide that Corvis lies at the junction of a canal linking the north-south running Black River with the headwaters of the Dragon’s Tongue River. Such a canal would be completely consistent with Iron Kingdom’s steam fantasy elements. In such a revised setting, there should also be a town at the juncture of the Dragon’s Tongue and the canal to handle shipping, and the Dragon’s Tongue should turn either north into the forest or south toward the mountains (my choice).
(2) Perhaps too impressive. Steamjacks are presented as 14 hit die constructs with Armor Class 25/26 and melee attack of 18/ 20. This is certainly a more aggressive presentation than the great lumbering machines I interpreted them to be after reading The Longest Night. The AC and attack bonuses, in particular, make any steamjack a very formidable opponent. The attack bonuses are also greater than the 3/4 hit dice attack bonus suggested by the Monster Manual. My impression had been that steamjacks were large and tough and that you wouldn’t want to get hit or stepped on by one, but I did not have the impression that they had a better attack bonus than a 15th level PC. Pretty tough for what is essentially a large lifting robot.
(3) There are times when the cliché of the door that only opens at a set time or under set circumstances is appropriate. This isn’t one of them. I recommend disregarding the timing and encourage a GM to use other methods to keep the party moving, such as encouraging them to thwart Alexia’s attempt to resurrect her mother. One sorceress is bad enough. I don’t know many parties that would want to go after two.
(4) As discussed in more detail in (6) below, I recommend dropping several of these encounters, particularly the gobbers and the gatormen.
(5) Perhaps the priests have a chant or prayer whose cadences match the motions of the elevators. If a GM can generate such a chant, it could provide the PCs with an important clue.
(6) So how does the Temple get its supplies? What is its relationship to the rest of the Iron Kingdoms? Exile doesn’t offer many answers to these questions, but the setting and adventure can be rejiggered to answer the questions (Because, after all, inquiring players will want to know). Fixing this requires some major reworking of the adventure, but they would be fixes that improved the scenario.
First, if the Temple is receiving regular shipments of coal, steel, and other supplies, those supplies are most likely coming up the bayou. They could be brought overland, but the bayou is the most likely route. If supplies are brought up the bayou, then the swampies must know about the shipments. Some of the supply boats may stop there, if the supply boats are not being operated by followers of Cyriss. Also, the gatehouse, the gatormen, and the gobbers do not fit well if the bayou is being used for regular shipments. Drop the gatormen and the gobbers. Modify the gatehouse into an active outpost for the temple. Similarly, the gatorman village can be turned into a small village of Temple loyalists who provide food and materials to the Temple.
Second, if the Temple has outposts, then how did Alexia get through them? Alexia could get through if she had assistance from the inside. The easiest way to address this is to create a civil war among the clerics of Cyriss with Alexia working for the dissidents. This would add yet another faction into what is already a four way struggle. As this is a Neutral Evil temple, the dissidents could tend more toward Neutral or Chaotic. As the PCs journey up the bayou, they could encounter signs of the struggles amongst the clerical factions and combat with the Inquisitors. The gatehouse could be burning and the gate down. The Inquisitors boat could still be sunk at the village, but now it would be due to action by the clerics and their loyalists. Instead of making a pact with the gatormen to protect Squint and his boat, the PCs could parlay with a faction of the loyalists to gain information on the Temple.
Third, if the Cult of Cyriss has the resource network for such a support operation, then it is likely that there would a more organized presence in Corvis, which could cause additional problems for the PCs.
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