Having discovered further information on the location of the Slavers, the noble venturers follow them to their mountain hideout. To get there however first they must traverse through some caves, make their way through the "city" of Suderham, and then finally through the sewers to the Slavelord's Council Chamber. DMs are strongly advised to ignore the "1 square = 50 ft" scale reference for the city, unless you think that an average building with a 300ft+ frontage is the norm.
The cave system seems to be designed by a spawn of Azathoth. It neither resembles caves, and it certainly is not designed as a system. Fortunately it consists of nine utterly sequential encounters and can be easily redesigned on-the-fly with something that makes sense. Of the encounters the silliest are best replaced, such as the room of piercers and the "curtain of blue fire" - a fungoid room (slimes, oozes and moulds) for the piercers is a nice alternative. Apart from that the consistent gnolls are a good feature and the final encounter is very good.
The second part of the module involves the walled town of Sunderham, a surprisingly Anglo-Germanic name, but quite well designed, where each of the sixty-eighty buildings is described in brief terms. Most of the buildings are closed when the party enters the town, and the entire experience could be wrapped up in a very short period of time with dutiful consideration of the not-too-cyptic clues provided.
The catacombs, or rather the sewer system, consists of another randomly generated map with several apparently randomly generated monsters that seem to be placed without rhyme or reason; a mimic, hell hounds, a minotaur, gelatinous cubes, a shambling mound and constrictor snakes. Why are they all here? Best not to ponder on such things, or the necessity of crossing an underground lake on conviently located giant mushroom tops, for the final encounter is the Slave Lords themselves!
In theory, the five Slave Lords should make short work of the PCs, although playtesting does indicate that even the sample characters do stand an outside chance of victory, which would break the plot so a fiat is invoked. Assuming that the norm happens however, dead PCs are supposedly raised for the final module, however this would break the game rules if an elf is involved (one of the sample tournament characters is an elf), so apparently this rather basic rule is overlooked in this instance.
Overall, Assault on the Aerie of the Slavelords is a well-produced module that has its own internal narrative which integrates very well with the overall plot of the Slaver's series. However this is seriously hamstrung by some seriously poor design, irrelevant and often ludicrous encounters and use of game and narrative fiat. Another example where a little bit of care and consideration could have gone a long way.
