The Quest for Amelia is a short adventure you can download from the Fiery Dragon website (www.fierydragon.com). It is intended to be used right after the completion of NeMoren’s Vault, as it plugs up some plot holes left from that adventure. Actually, this is more of a side-trek than an actual adventure, but it’s free, so who’s complaining? The adventure itself is a 10 page PDF document (about 6 of which are the actual adventure) that covers searching for Amelia NeMoren, the wife of the Baron, who was kidnapped 30 years ago. Based on clues uncovered in the previous adventure, the players can now go rescue the Baroness. But where has she been for the last 30 years? Due to the “sequel” nature of this adventure, it really doesn’t make much sense to use this adventure unless you’ve just played through NeMoren’s Vault. This review has lots of spoilers, so players should go away.
Taking place immediately after the events of NeMoren’s Vault, the first thing that happens here is that a royal steward shows up, and gives the characters some bad news. The Baron’s been dead for 3 years. That means the Baron hadn’t paid any taxes for 3 years. The characters are now the new owners of the estate, and the king wants them to pay up. I laughed out loud when I read this, as all that vast horde of treasure from NeMoren’s Vault will now be used to pay off the tax debt of the dead Baron. Delicious. Really, it makes some good sense, and it allows the characters to “enjoy” what being part of the landed class means. Another thing this steward wants to do is figure out whatever happened to Amelia NeMoren. The characters go off to search for her, and that’s where the real adventure is.
As opposed to NeMoren‘s Vault, this one has a lot of role-playing and dialogue in it. You could easily spend a couple hours in conversation before any of the real action starts, as a council is formed to discuss what to do about the Baron’s estate. Some people may chafe at all this gabbing, but others will eat up the opportunity to discuss these matters with the local important people. But then one of the important people gets killed. Looking into that turns up clues to lead the characters to an old cave in the nearby forest. On the way to the cave the players will encounter a dryad. The dryad can aid the characters, or she can ignore them. If she aids them, they’ll find the cave in 5 minutes. Otherwise, they’ll wander around for hours before finding it. But they still find it. The cave itself is pretty small. There’s a couple moderately challenging encounters, and then there’s the actual cave where Amelia is held; as a gaseous form inside a crystal jar completely engulfed by a gelatinous cube, on the opposite side of a crevice. This was cool. The characters in my game noticed the cube and were able to kill it without much difficulty, but if they hadn’t of, it could have gotten messy fast. Oh, there’s another crystal jar with a gaseous form in it. That one’s a minotaur.
At this point, the adventure assumes they’ll crack open both jars, and they’ll have to fight a minotaur in the cave. That’s not how it played out in my game; it played out much funnier, but that’s ‘cuz the jars didn’t get opened until the characters were back in the manor. But that’s another story. And it allowed me to take away the rest of the character’s money to pay for the damage.
Bottom line, this adventure is an excellent extension to NeMoren’s Vault, though as a stand-alone product it doesn't work. It ties up some loose ends, allows you to take away most of that obscene treasure from the previous adventure, and gets the characters some good contacts in the nobility, which could spawn all sorts of adventure opportunities in the future.
