 Goto [ Index ] |
I decided this year to read all of those modules I saw in the store at a young age but never had the money to buy, luckily cheap PDF’s and my works high speed printer/copier provide a convenient way for this to happen. I decided I should pass on my thoughts as well.
At 70 so pages this is an expert level adventure for the basic Dungeons and Dragons game intended for characters level 7-10. This adventure is wilderness, dungeon, seaborne, and political in nature, fairly sophisticated in scope for an old school module.
Appearance I printed my copy on a high-speed copier, this product is mostly printer friendly with few large ink wasters, the notable exception is the map of the “Redraven” a ship the players use in later parts of the adventure. The interior art by Chris Miller and is fairly sparse, there is a large bottom margin and some empty white space when chapters end. The Maps by Dave S. LaForce are clear and easy to read, classic hex style for overland and grid one square equals 10 feet for interior.
Summary of Events This adventure has ties to X3 The Curse of Xanathon and X11 Saga of Shadow Lord, but having not read either of this adventures I don’t know if theirs much besides similar location and a few NPC in common.
Like any classic adventure this one lists a tavern as a suitable place to start, one of the characters is given a note asking them to meet with the head of the royal council. Once the characters meet with the patriarch of the church and a nearby monastery they learn a little history. The king has been dead for five years, he disappeared while chasing his enemies in the barbarian kingdom of the East, and his only heir the price died shortly afterwards. Since then the kingdom has been ruled by a council and things aren’t going good. In an attempt to restore order the patriarch is revealing a secret. The king had two sons, twins and when they where born to prevent a possible squabble over who would be the heir the younger twin was secretly removed and not even the king himself knew where his son was taken. The characters are charged with not only finding this heir, but recovering the magical crown lost with the king. The patriarch believes the crown will help the characters find the heir and prove the legitimacy of the heir when presented to the populace.
Unknown to the patriarch an evil (or in the case of a Basic D&D rule set a chaotic) duke has a spy in the midst of the monastery. The return of a true heir would destroy the duke’s plans of signing an alliance with the barbarians to the east in an attempt to gain control of the kingdom. When the spy reports this to the duke he puts a plan in motion to beat the characters to heir, enlisting the help of his ally the Seawitch .
From here on out the adventure is for the most part an exercise in railroading, the character go to a shrine set among standing stones that revel a vision of the location of the crown. Then travel into the barbarian lands where the crown resides in a castle inhabited by clerics of chaos, who have animated the lost dead king as a guardian of his own crown. Once they retrieve the crown it gives them a telepathic direction to where the heir is. Eventually the characters raid the castle of the chaotic duke, only to arrive too late and must seek out the heir on the magical moving isle of The Seawitch. Conveniently for the characters a captured sea captain has a ship nearby. The characters find the moving castle and what they think is the heir, but it is actually just the body of the heir controlled via magic jar by the Seawitch. The characters take the heir -Seawitch back to the monastery for his coronation only to be set upon by two ambushes by the chaotic duke. If the characters succeed on getting the crown and the heir to a monastery, the heir is crowned which magic dispels the magic jar and the heir is restored. The duke is condemned to death, the Seawitch escapes, the characters are given titles and it is assumed there is much rejoicing.
Conclusion The plot works for the most part, but theirs not much for the characters to do but follow the next clue. Why doesn’t the duke simply kill the heir, never explained, why the Seawitch can identify the heir with magic in a very short time but the patriarch is forced to rely on a band of adventures like wise never explained, finally the magic jar the Seawitch uses to posses the heir is a nice sub plot, but it is very possible the characters will never discover it until it is dispelled and since this plan has no chance of succeeding adds little to the adventure.
A lot of the combat encounters are similar, for example the raid on the chaotic dukes castle is just a group of fighters of various levels, not that memorable especially in Basic D & D where fighters are not distinguished by different feats or abilities. Also all three major dungeons are castles, all with secret underwater entrances. The random encounters listed for the sea voyage have some interesting encounters though, one with a ghost ship the other with deserted ship haunted by a vampire. There are also several roll playing encouraged encounters.
In the end with a little work a DM could update this to 3.5 and make a short campaign, or break out the old Expert rules and use the Pre generated PC’s for a little nostalgia play. There are some good ideas in this adventure that could be readily adapted, a good value when you consider the low price of downloads. I could see running this basic plot as a skirmish level miniature game, since all the dungeons are basically raids. And once the characters get on their ship they have a small army of sailors. This adventure is low in magic (8th level NPC with no magic items wow! how times have changed) discounting the castle of chaotic clerics. So it would probably be easy to convert to a low magic system like Iron Heroes. Regardless of the system the lack of non human enemies and low magic will make this easy to convert. Still, if you don’t like railroading to move your plots along this might not be the adventure for you.
