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This is the third installment in the Scales of War adventure path. It's available through the WotC website, and it's still among the free ones. Good job too, otherwise you'd want your money back. It's written by Scott Fitzgerald Gray, not an author I'm overly familiar with. I think I can see what he was trying to do here, but he failed to pull it off. To be fair I think he's been let down by shoddy editting. The adventure is full of holes, some small but some so gaping you could drive a cart through them. The plot, well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Basics first.
Into the Shadow Rift
There's enough adventure here to take a party through one and a half levels, finishing at 6th. It continues directly from the events of the second installment, Siege of Bordrin's Watch. The links are a little thin but essentially the dark creeper who brokered the arms deal for the orcs in that last adventure is still around, on the run from his boss, and needs dealing with. His name is Modra, and he used to work for Sarshan, a shadar kai interplanar arms dealer. They've fallen out since Modra went behind his back and left him exposed when the titular siege went awry. So, although it's suggested that this is a standalone adventure, I think there's too much assumed backstory to really get away with that.So Modra is on the run. So where would you go if you had an angry and ruthless ex employer on your tail? Obviously, you'd hide out in his headquarters in the city yeah? and you'd be trying your hardest to get a key that lets you return to his shadowfell fortress because he'll never expect to see you there right? I swear I'm not making this up. It gets even more silly later on.
Return to Overlook
The good news is that this adventure return the party to the city of Overlook, introduced last time out. This location was almost criminally underutilised in Siege, and I'm happy to report that there's ample opportunity for the party to explore its delights in this scenario.First the party has to undergo a seemingly random mugging at the hands of some bandits. They've been sent by Modra to regain the brass key he needs to return to the shadowfell. A key? Yep, the very same key the party nabbed off Iranda in Siege. You remember, right? This is a measure of Modra's stupidity. He's a level 7 elite himself, and he sends a pack of level 5 humans to do his dirty work. Poor delegation skills. The bandits show little in the way of initiative, and even carry a note explaining where the next part of the adventure lies. Well, kind of. It's says 'Modra' on it and the adventure makes the mind boggling assumption that the party will do everything in their power to find out who, or what, this Modra is. If they don't, the adventure is pretty much over, so you know, I'd encourage your players somewhat.
The information gathering exercise takes the form of a comprehensively detailed skill challenge. One that initially looks well thought out, there's certainly a lot of structure to the sort of activities that many groups just play through without dice. The idea of a challenge should be that there are actual consequences to victory and failure. With this one, winning seems to make no difference at all. Failure means Sarshan beefs up an encounter in the future, thereby utterly defeating another encounter the party have before that. You'll see what I mean. There are 9 skills available for use in this challenge, so everyone gets to join in. Look out though, the text has its fluff and mechanics paragraphs reversed.
Win or lose the party will encounter an ally in the form of a half elf ranger, Reniss. Honestly, she's an ally, the text says so. Quite why the PCs should believe that I don't know, but let's assume they don't slay her on sight. She wants to know what they've been up to. In exchange for this startling generosity, she'll share the one piece of knowledge she has, which, in fairness, happens to be Modra's location. That's right, the skill challenge doesn't provide that nugget, a GMPC does, who swiftly joins the party. You can see where it's all starting to go wrong now.
Invading a Poorhouse
Onwards to a poorhouse which the forces of darkness are using as a front for their arms and mercenary smuggling operation. The poorhouse is run by a pair of retired paladins. You read that right, paladins. Good job 4e took away their detect evil ability then eh? Worse, the big bad Sarshan is sitting in their common room keeping an eye out for the party! Worse, Modra is right downstairs! Honestly, you know when you want to start shouting at the screen when people are being dumb on the TV? Well I got some strange looks on the train reading this car crash I can tell you.So Sarshan sizes up the opposition (making the earlier skill challenge totally redundant), yet leaves them to track down Modra for him. Did I mention, he's right downstairs! The party have to find the secret door in the cellar. If they don't, again, the adventure comes to a crunching end. This sort of thing is where D&D gets its video game rep from. The party get to go around knocking holes in walls while the crowd ignores their every move. If approached I guess the NPCs trot out the same line they did when you first walked in. Rubbish.
So, under the poorhouse is a 3 room mini dungeon. It's got a poorly worded hazard to contend with first. Skip that and head to Sharshan's cronies who are loading a pair of shadow hounds into a teleportation circle. The hounds are in a cage that prevents them using their teleport power, how cool is that!? That's one of the most exciting pieces of kit I've seen in a published adventure yet. I presume it's ok to push it through the circle? Is it a reference to the old bag of holding in a portable hole conundrum? or is it just tossed off, 'will this do?', shoddy scenario design? You decide.
The idiots in this chamber haven't realised that Modra is lurking in the room next door. Right, next, door. When your party finds him, he summons some wraiths and jumps through the portal while the undead deal with the party. Apparently the wraiths can't return through the very portal they arrived through. There's another portal in the room, with zero function, in fact it's utterly inert. So why is it there? I don't know, neither do the wraiths, neither does Modra, no one knows. Just have your party follow Modra through the portal would you please? So long as there isn't more than 5 of you, as it has a totally arbritary cap on it (don't forget your GMPC!)
Hey at least when you get through, you get to have an adventure in the shadowfell before level 5. That's quite exciting isn't it? Hello? Are you still awake? Anyone?
Umbraforge, in the Shadowfell
The middle part of the adventure takes place in and around Umbraforge, a Mordor like mercenary encampment on a volcano in the shadowfell. Actually, it’s a pretty cool location, and there’s a couple of very nice pieces of art you can show your players to make it easy on yourself.Sarshan has gotten himself quite a slick operation running here. He has mercenary camps, a slave bazaar, his own dark tower (naturally) and a forge where he conducts industrial scale monster making. The PCs mission is to hunt down Modra, and to do that they’ll have to explore Umbraforge. Much like the earlier Overlook section, this is all handled by skill challenge, interspersed with a couple of combats. I want to like this approach. The challenge is a decent structure, which you can stray away from if your group has a mind to. Or you can play it by the book, either way there’s a nice spine to your session.
With a victory, the party discover a short cut into the next act. With a defeat, they don’t. OK, so that’s fairly bland, but it’s not a killer. Either way there’s another NPC introduced, whose job is to provide some essential info on Modra’s location. Haven’t we just had that with Reniss?! Once might have been a mistake, but twice is just poor. This is railroading in everything but name. Why bother with 4 pages of structured skill challenge if none of it particulary matters? This meeting with an informer is vital to the flow of the adventure, which is fair enough, but what about a back up plan? It’s all just a little bit shallow.
The same can be said for Umbraforge itself. In most other systems the location would be laid out with a keyed map, some NPCs and some potential encounters. This adventure tries to bend the skill challenge system into place to achieve the same end. It only partially succeeds. What Umbraforge really needs is a (small) traditional write up behind the challenge. For example, what about some named mercenary captains? or some market stall holders? Obviously it wouldn’t be right to expect a fully statted up sourcebook, but there’s room for more than is provided here. For a perfect precedent, see how Overlook was described in the previous adventure. I realise I’m being perhaps a little picky. Skill challenges have their detractors, and it’s been thrashed out a million times before. I still believe they can work, and this adventure has a couple of good tries at it. Certainly the author deserves praise for effort.
The Dark Foundry
Having explored Umbraforge, the party will eventually make their way to the dark foundry. You know how there’s always an evil wizard conducting vile experiments in most adventures? Well Sarshan has gone beyond the experimental stage and has stepped up production on an industrial scale. He has a fully functioning factory churning out super monsters that have been bred with magic and shadow. Awesome. It’s also where Modra has decided to return to like a prodigal son, except he has sabotage in mind. You know, I’m still not entirely sure what Modra is trying to achieve here. He’s got a death sentence from Sarshan hanging over him, and he’s justifiably bitter about his employment ending, but to return to his master’s side, just to bring attention to himself? Nah, I don’t get it.Anyway, this foundry has a river of magically charged magma in it, loads of vats of bubbling green goo, stacks of minions (who really should be in orange boiler suits like in Dr No) and a two headed death boar, as well as Modra himself. It’s a proper level 8 encounter alright, with the potential to add in more frankensteinian nightmares at will. Modra makes his final stand here and the omens are right for an exciting battle. Watch his stat block though, it references a killing dark ability that he doesn’t actually have.
Finally, Sarshan's Tower
From here there’s a secret entrance into Sarshan’s tower. Better hurry then. Sarshan is a proper villain. He’s got a pointy tower and everything. He doesn’t have any stats, so you know he’s a big time player. He’s even got the monologues down pat. I like him.To get to him the party have to bust into his tower, take on the guards and make their way to the upper levels for the final showdown. This is fairly traditional fare, but there’s a few peculiarities in this adventure that stop it from becoming entirely predictable. First, there’s a magic elevator running through the centre of the tower. Like a lot of 4e writeups, you have to read it twice to make sense of it, but it’s fairly straightforward.
The ground floor is full of shadar kai flunkies, but thankfully they are not just waiting for the PCs to open the door before they come to life. They are all in the middle of something, which is a touch I really appreciate. One lot are in negotiations with a mercenary captain and his mad wraith bodyguard when the party arrives. It’s simple stuff, and it helps alleviate the 1d6 3 orcs in a room syndrome that scenarios often fall into. There’s similar flavour in an encounter with a pack of gnolls who have been given guest quarters by Sarsah, they’ve kicked off all the bed covers and made them into nests on the floor. Brilliant!
The upper level is a kind of garden area, with its own predators to deal with. You’ll want to be careful to not skim this encounter though. Part of the room is a teleportation arch which has a vital part to play at the end of the adventure. It doesn’t work for the party at all, like so many others they’ve seen. So it’s likely that your players will shrug and move on, but later they’ll have to get it operational so it’s worth flagging up now.
The adventure has had a good run of decent encounters recently and there’s not many left. Unfortunately things take a downward turn right at the death. Before then the party are confronted by Sarshan’s household guard and they are expected to put up their hands and surrender. That’s a big assumption on the adventure's part. It’s backed up with some advice about not being too heavy handed but it’s still a little jarring.
The Big Finale
All this is designed to allow Sarshan to make his entrance in a suitable villainous fashion. It’s supposed to be a big reveal when the party see he’s the same feller as the veteran in the poorhouse. There’s quite a nice speech organised for you as DM here, have fun. He evens offers the PCs a job within his organisation at the end, which is optimistic.One of the main roles for the DM here is to get across some portents of doom about a great disaster that will befall the mortal world. It’s all a little vague (WotC have taken some flak for not providing an overview of the adventure path) and Sarshan doesn’t know everything, but this is a good opportunity to tie in other plot strands.
Obviously the time for talking will come to an end at some point and combat will ensue. Sarshan’s champion is a good threat and the fight should be interesting, however there’s a couple of big problems with it. First, it doesn’t have a defined location. The preamble could have taken place upstairs in the barracks (Sarshan has his lair at the very top but there’s nothing there and no reason to visit) but the combat is assumed to be in the garden area. This is because Sarshan has to escape and the party have to flee.
To make all this happen there’s a convenient earthquake. You are supposed to have presaged all this with frequent tremors earlier. The whole tower is about to come down and the locked portal is the only means of escape. This is set up as a skill challenge (it’s got the wrong flavour text copied in) and the assumption is that this is undertaken at the same time as the fight. I’ve seen this before in WotC adventures, but I don’t really see it working out that way in play. Every PC is combat capable. It’s not like in the movies where the plucky librarian and the professor have to hit the books in the middle of a firefight. It would be nice if it was like that, but really, why not deal with the threat and then take on the portal at your leisure? The time constraint is artificial anyway so...
Take my advice and call it quits after this point. The adventure does have a little bit more but it’s totally non essential and feels rushed and tacked on. The feeling of sloppiness and bad editting returns, as page 51 is a reprint of an earlier page for no good reason. The last encounter is pointless, and if run, will only dilute the feeling of (temporary) victory over Sarshan.
