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"How can we forget the suffering of our kin during the Age of Chains? How can we set aside those ancient grudges when the risk of slavery is now greater then ever? Fellow warriors, the orcs are upon us, marching once more to the beat of the giants' drum. It falls to us to stop them - to hold fast no matter their numbers. If we falter, we give into fear. It's not just ourselves and our way of life that will suffer, all people of the Elsir Vale will perish as well. War is upon us. Now is the time for men and women of courage to stand up and defend those who cannot defend themselves."
An Overview of Siege
Siege of Bordrin's Watch (just Siege from now on) is the second part in the Scales of War campaign. It's available from DDI, and you don't need to be a subscriber. Written by Robert J. Schwalb, it clocks in at 51 pages. It's for five 3rd level characters. Oh yes, it's also just about the best adventure I've yet seen for 4e D&D.The background to the adventure is simple enough, orc hordes want to invade civilisation, Bordrin's Watch is a wall that guards the mountain pass and prevents that happening. A new orc chieftain has risen from the ranks and through dark dealings has found a way through secret tunnels to launch his new campaign of destruction. I really haven't done it justice with that description, as the back story is actually very rich and deep. There's overtones of Lord of the Rings and the Warhammer World too, but it's very much D&D, very much new D&D. What's startling is how sweeping and epic the story feels, yet the PCs are only 3rd level. The secret to this is that the author has kept the encounters on a personal level, yet the consequences are felt on a much bigger scale. It's deftly done, and in lesser hands might have felt clumsy and contrived. The scenario is pretty linear too, but it really won't feel like that to your party.
I'm conscious I've given you the summary before the review, but I wanted you to know straight up the high regard I hold this adventure in.
If you've played the last adventure in the path, Rescue at Rivenroar, you'll want to know about the links to this adventure and what the overall story is shaping up to be. Well there's not a lot to go on. The emissary that tried to get in with Sinruth last time out gets a mention here too, and this time he's helping out an orc chieftain called Tusk. Now Tusk isn't just any old orc, he's half ogre. He also has a mistress (eeewww), Myrissa, a shadar-kai witch, who hooked him up with the dark one emissary in the first place. The location has moved off the last map too. We've gone westwards to the Stonehome Mountains, the very edge of the Elsir Vale. This is fairly generic and could very easily slot into most home settings.
Contents of the Adventure
The adventure synopsis gives the details of the party's quest, to seal a Nexus under the mountains in order to stop the orc horde invading. Quite what a Nexus actually is, and why someone has been foolish enough to leave it unsealed are not revealed at this point. The synopsis is less than a page, and does a great job of selling potential DMs on the adventure. You want to read more to find out how the party can really get involved and stop an orc invasion.There follows a section called 'Preparing for adventure' which explains the formatting used and also, incredibly, contains the following advice:
"If you and your players haven't read through the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition rules yet, this is your first best step so that you can make certain you understand the rules."
Well, thanks for that. I can't imagine any D&D newbie coming across this adventure by accident, so it's a strange line to see included. There's also a list to fill out for customised treasure parcels, a continuation from Rescue.
Starting in Overlook
As a DM you get two ways to kick off the scenario. There's a quick start option that has some read aloud text that puts the PCs right into the heart of the adventure with no messing. Watch out for the typo in this part, where Bordrin's Watch gets printed twice. Then there's the slower option that gives you the chance to add in some roleplaying scenes and increase the tension. It's a mix of travel, combat and negotiations that are mainly dealt with by using short skill challenges. It also lets the party explore the city of Overlook at their leisure, an opportunity I'd say you should be encouraging.The city of Overlook and its surroundings is described in the next 18 pages. I own many, many city sourcebooks for various games and I can honestly say I've rarely seen so much potential in so little space. It's also completely crunch free, so I'll recommend it to all fantasy RPG fans. Where many products would spend pages on each district, here there's a couple of paragraphs broken down into buildings, streets, people, sights, smells and sounds. It's just enough to fire the imagination, nothing is wasted at all. There's even a decent map, and a few adventure hooks tossed in, that could easily expand into complete adventures on their own. The only tiny fly in the ointment for me is that this superb adventuring location could simply be missed out entirely and it won't affect the scenario in any real way. The quick start option bypasses all this great work, and even the slow option tends to gloss over Outlook and it's teeming plot hooks. What a shame.
The environs is described too, although in sketchy terms. Even so there's enough here to base a campaign setting on. It's generic, but still full of flavour and inspiration.
Following this we get a run down on a rival adventuring group who are taking on part of the mission to defend the Vale, the Freeriders. They are all statted up the 4e way with statblocks that only contain what's needed. It's a standard party, but with one peculiar omission, the rogue Madrick doesn't have a race listed, is it a gnome? This is only one example of the few PHB II races mentioned in the adventure, a full 6 months before that particular book was released. Good to see that the adventure isn't out of touch with the current core.
Into the Monastery
The Monastery of the Sundered Chain is the location for the bulk of the scenario, and it's an ancient building designed to house an elite Moradin worshipping fighting force. I imagine the author wasn't allowed to include actual monks at this point. Again, two options are presnted for getting to the isolated monastery, by hand wave or a slower skill challenge. The skill challenge is only level 1, so not particularly arduous. A failure means a random encounter, a success presumably nets some xp for beating the challenge.The monastery is described in the usual WotC format, an overview with maps, followed by tactical encounters on facing pages (assuming you print them out of course). It's split into three sections, each a session in themselves. The first is the monastery itself, which is currently being vandalised by orcs in their own particular manner. There's some gross-out moments here, cooked limbs and dirty protests among them. The orcs show lots of variety, for example, bolt throwers who employ a belly bow to great effect. Actually this adventure introduces 6 new types of orc, as well as some other creatures. You get orogs (a crossed ogre/orc) and a cave troll too. All very tolkienesque (in a Peter Jackson sense) It's not flagged up, but all the details of the new monsters are included at the back of the adventure. Also, pay attention to the first couple of encounters, they are not referenced to the treasure table you will have filled out earlier. I reckon the Hall of Moradin is M2, and the Hall of Heroes is M3.
The Hall of Heroes is the second section of the monastery and if you use a battlemat you'll need to prep well in advance. Actually that's true of the preceding encounter also, there's no way dungeon tiles will do the rooms justice. These are big, complex areas. Great for the combat and the sense of scale, not so great for the artistically challenged. There's plenty of carnage here, dead dwarves lie everywhere. This is what I was talking about earlier when I said that the adventure conveys grand sweeping events while keeping the action on a personal scale. The party will see the consequences of war and get a chance to wreak vengeance too, tying their tale into the bigger story.
The action moves deeper under the mountain and before you can say 'Moria', there's more orc hordes to face down. The terrain is potentially fatal here so look out for forced moves. A 100' fall will probably end an adventurers career, although it will be immensely satisfying to shove orcs off the precipices.
The last section is the Chamber of Works. There's no map that shows the connection between this area and the last, so don't go flipping back and forward through the pdf like I did, it isn't there. What is there though is an ally if the players are lucky (and quick). Kalad is a dwarf paladin who has been holding the line against the invaders. Right now he's getting a beating from an orog and it's up to the DM whether or not he survives by the look of it. The scenario requires that the party get vital information from Kalad, even if he's dead. I'm leery of assuming the party will attempt to get Kalad raised, or use a speak with dead ritual, he's hardly the first dead dwarf they'll have come across. Given that the adventure is likely to grind to a quick halt without Kalad's intervention, I'd recommend he lives to speak, even if it's with his dying breath. Should you wish to let him survive, he then becomes an ally, which brings it's own issues. Does a player 'run' him? or the DM? Be prepared to make the decision and run with the consequences.
The link to the next part of the adventure is a little forced to be honest. Kalad's survival will help, and the author does provide guidance on the transition, but be aware, you are embarking on a railroad. Still, the view is lovely.
Ending the Adventure
The final part of the adventure is essentially a small, five room dungeon. The endgame will be sealing the nexus, which will seal off the secret tunnels thwarting Tusk's scouting force. Getting there means a skill challenge, but it falls into the trap of not providing concrete results for success or failure. In the worst case, it just has to be done again. Admittedly it can result in losing surges, but that's nothing a rest can't cure, in fact it's even recommended in the text. It's nitpicky but one of the 4e tenets is to not mess around insisting on this sort of stuff, so it's a shame to see such a lazy challenge.The purpose of the nexus is woolly. It can be filled with scalding water to seal off the tunnels and drown intruders, but you won't want to think about that too deeply. It's actual function is to provide a suitably dramatic close to the adventure. There's some other chambers to explore, and other orcs (as well as stranger foes) to fight. It's also where your players will encounter that other adventuring company from back in Overlook. However, it's the final chamber that will live on in your memory long after the adventure is done.
Inevitably there's spoilers in such a review. If you don't want to know about the climax, skip the next paragraph.
The nexus is straight out of Dr No. It's quite techy for D&D to be honest, even for a dwarf stronghold. It's a giant steam bath with lots of mesh catwalks and massive machinery with it's very own control panel. The party are on a race against time with rising water and steam as well as multiple waves of orcs entering the fray. Finally there's Tusk and his shadar-kai mistress to deal with. They make great end of adventure adversaries, a nasty mix of melee and magic which will really test the party. To make things even harder, there's a skill challenge to be completed at the same time as the combat rages, and it's likely to be the party rogue that concentrating on that task, so you may be a striker down.
Conclusion
Overall? I love this adventure. It's got everything you could want, iconic foes, a sweeping backstory, classic swords and sorcery, evocative locations, clever challenges and memorable NPCs. In lesser hands this could have been 1d6 1 orcs in a 30' square room. In a sense, that exactly what it is, but it's written so well that you won't notice. The same with the plot, it's a bit linear, it doesn't make massive amounts of sense, but you can't help but be carried along, desperate to know what's round the next plot corner. It works as a superb standalone adventure; I'm intrigued to see if we get to see more of this as the campaign progresses; and I will certainly be excited to see Robert Schwalb's name on future works. Oh, and it's free too. Get it, run it, enjoy it.Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.
