What Evil Lurks
Writing a review of this module without giving away the storyline is difficult at best. Lance’s work is excellent, as any regular Dungeon reader will tell you, and his first full module for Necromancer is well up to par for his standards. This is definitely a story-driven adventure, and hack-n-slashers may well be disappointed. I feel that this is definitely going to be one of Necromancer Games’ best offerings and will become part of the common experience of gaming, much in the same way that Ghost Tower of Inverness or Tomb of Horrors have insinuated their way into our collective subconscious.
As is the case with the current NG products, WEL can easily be dropped into any campaign world, as it doesn’t specify regions or areas. The town the party starts in can easily be dropped into any world, from Greyhawk to Forgotten Realms to Ravenloft (The storyline behind WEL would work very well in RL, as a matter of fact). The adventure is written for a party of 4 characters of 9th level, although you could use it for more characters of a lower level. I wouldn’t try it with a party of less than six 6th level characters.
The adventure starts the party on a mission to find the son of an old friend or NPC contact. As the adventure progresses, the party will be swept into the evil schemes, and should be eager and willing to take the fight to the villains. If a Paladin didn’t immediately jump in to the fight, I would be curious as to whether or not the character deserves to be a Paladin (the villains’ schemes and plans are that evil and disturbing).
The party’s actions can really effect the outcome of the story, and deciphering the puzzles, riddles, and clues will help them tremendously. The major artifact they can find can stop all of the villain’s plans and help them finish their quest IF they can figure out how to work the artifact properly. Otherwise, they can finish the quest or stop the villain, but it’s unlikely that they will do both.
Outside of the adventure itself, the module contains a new metamagic feat (Anchored Spell), A new monster (SoulNibbler), and a new Template (Shade). Anchored Spell is very different, as it allows the caster to cast spells without material components by inscribing the spell on the caster’s body in the form of a rune, sigil, or ideogram. Just reading the feat gave me at least a half-dozen ideas for NPC’s.
All in all, I found WEL to be well balanced and well thought out. Lance has certainly shown us what he is capable of with this offering into the world of extremes in the 3eD&D game. The party should feel quite heroic (and rightly so) if they manage to solve everything, and feel a pyrrhic victory otherwise. Either the quest gets solved and the villain succeeds with his plan, or the villain is foiled, but the quest fails. But knowing players, they’ll always do the unexpected and come up with a solution that the DM hadn’t foreseen.
