"Maiden of Deya" is an adventure for five players written by Nicolas Lowson. It makes use of Columbia Games Harn role-playing setting and was used as a tournament scenario at IviniaCon 2003, a HarnFan convention held in Sweden, during August 2003.

The adventure is available as a 37 page, 1.4MB freeware download from:

(http://www.nlowson.demon.co.uk/Media/Downloads/Maiden_of_Deya_v2.pdf)

HARNWORLD: MAIDEN OF DEYA, PLOT OVERVIEW.

The plot of the adventure is simple and straightforward. The Player Characters are vassals of Sir Neadyn, lord of the Rethemi villages of Deya and Haudy, in mid 719 they were sent east to the Kingdom of Melderyn to purchase millstones for the new windmill Sir Neadyn was having built in Deya.

After a long and difficult sea journey the PCs have returned to Deya to discover that Sir Neadyn and his son, Gauric are dead. The Lords daughter, Allace (The maiden of the title.) has run off with the local ne'er-do-well. Sir Erluscon, bailiff of Haudy now rules from Deya Manor, he has a local fisherman in the manorial dungeon, apparently he killed the Lord and his Heir while helping the daughter elope. Worse the fisherman stole the manors treasury purse and hid it, which means that the PCs will not be paid for their efforts.

Rumors at the local inn will soon have the PCs suspecting that the bailiff has been somewhat loose with the facts. But they must act fast to find the truth, the Spring Moot at Ithiko is not far off and if they have not found proof that the bailiff is lying by then he will be their liege lord and they will be effectively powerless against him.

HARNWORLD: MAIDEN OF DEYA, COMMENTS.

The material provided to support the adventure is comprehensive, the GM is provided with clues for each location, information on possible player courses of action and advice on how to provide hints for the players, if they are in trouble, without spoiling the plot.

The first page of the adventure includes a map, scanned from the Harn regional map, which shows the location of the various adventure sites in relation to one another. Beneath the map is a brief summary of these locations including details of which Harn products featured those locations.

Seven pages are taken up with describing Deya, the PCs home village, this section is laid out in the standard Columbia Games format for describing a settlement. It has two notable differences, firstly there is no map of the manor house, secondly, two entries, numbers 8 and 38B do not have occupant names, and this is because these locations are the homes of player characters.

After the adventure proper there is a timetable that covers not only the game events on a particular day, but also the weather, something which will affect the PCs since they will be traveling between the major adventure sites by boat. The file concludes with NPC stats and the background for the PCs created for the tournament scenario. The PC background material is very good, it provides the players with a clear idea of their characters links with the local community and also provides them with believable motivations for their characters actions during the course of the adventure.

Another good feature of this adventure is that suggestions are provided on how to both modify and expand the adventure from the tournament version.

There are however a number of flaws with the material, firstly, the text, if printed on a standard A4 page is on the small side, especially in the section of the text describing Deya. Secondly there is no index or table of contents provided which could cause problems if the GM is searching for a particular piece of information. A related problem is that the 'Deya' section of the adventure is numbered independently from the rest of the material and thus breaks up the flow of the text. It might have been better to have this material placed after the NPC stats/PC background. Thirdly, the author has followed the lead of "Castles of Harn" and used gag names for some of his characters, thus we find NPCs named after European political leaders, the Hollywood 'Brat Pack' and Wimbledon Tennis stars. There are also a few minor typos but they do not affect the adventure.

One other problem is that some of the background material is currenly out of print, however Columbia Games recent announcement that they will be re-releasing this material under the name of Harn Classic, means that this should soon no longer be a problem.

HARNWORLD: MAIDEN OF DEYA, VERDICT.

"Maiden of Deya" is a professional, well written adventure. While it is not perfect the flaws I have noticed do not render the adventure unplayable. By providing pre-written character backgrounds that tie those characters firmly into the established setting, the author gives the GM a perfect means of introducing the characters both to the Kingdom of Rethem and to the larger Harnworld setting.