Sands of Pain is the second adventure-sourcebook from Mystic Eye Game set in the Bluffside setting. The introduction provides the GM with a quick breakdown of the adventure and it’s various parts. The party moves from Bluffisde to the Dry Lands, the Empires of the Dragon Sands. Like the first Interlude book, this isn’t a sourcebook but an introduction to the new region.
It starts off with the party getting involved with Jaisyn, a bard who is involvement with Carryn whose past haunts the party as they try to find her. Seems that the lass has left Bluffside and has returned to her home. There are many things about Carryn that are unknown to the lad though, and the party will find out her involvement with those who have ‘taken’ her is deeper than it first seems.
In the course of the adventure, the party gets to wander Bluffside a little, dining at the Pillar Inn Feast Hall, searching for Carryn bint Vec and eventually moving out to the Dry Lands. To me, this is one of the harder parts to swallow. The party has to move around a lot and the adventure isn’t long enough to provide the GM with enough details of the various areas they move through. If you have Bluffside, part of that problem is taken care of as you’ve got a whole city to play with, but the part is only in Bluffisde for a brief while, so if you’re running this as a continuation of the first Interludes, the party won’t be in the city for long but you’ll get to use Kirkwood again from Brief Expeditions to Bluffside.
Once on the road, the GM has a few preplanned encounters he can run in addition to the standard wandering encounters. One of the nice things about these interludes adventures is that sprinkled through some, but not all of the encounters, is advice on how to scale the adventure. This helps for GMs who’ve been running adventures through Bluffside and have a higher-level party than the recommended. The bad news though is that not all encounters have this. In some ways, the space used for the resources limit the amount of material that could’ve helped the adventure.
After their travel, the party reaches Hotempa, a thriving city not too deep into the Burning Sands. Surrounded by forty-foot high mud walls, the city is a haven for merchants of all sorts, including those who peddle slaves. An interesting contrast to Bluffside and one that players may not be expecting.
After learning more information and wandering through the city a bit, the party must locate the final leg of their journey, the Temple of Eternal Stars. Here, it’s almost a dungeon crawl, as the party has to battle their way through numerous adversaries. One of the problems I had with this section was the repetition of certain stats as the party fights several mummies which almost all have the identical stats. The party’s big showdown comes when they get to battle one of the older members of the cult in the Temple.
For me, the highlights of this part weren’t the encounters, but the various histories and objects that could be found within the tomb. A jar contents table gives you some quick and interesting results ranging from bone fragments to headdress, to clay figurines. A nice contrast to gold and gems.
Maps are crisp and clean. The two-columns are surrounded by a border reminiscent of Egyptian mythology. White space is moderate, text is well spaced. Art is okay but not up to the standards that the cover sets.
Now if this was only a module, it’d warrant a solid three, but it has a bit more. Hotempa is detailed in four pages with twenty locations and a stat block for the city. This doesn’t count the full-page map. The section on new stuff introduces the dune wyrm, a dragon like creature that has different stages of aging, and the night stalkers, demonic beasts that look a little like the hell hounds in Warcraft III, in addition to other creatures. The new weapons and armor give the GM a chance to add a more Desert like style to his games with the Khopesh, Kris and Krisia and Ceramic armor and shields that don’t provide as much protection as standard armor but isn’t as much a hazard in the desert.
The Callana, a group of renegade druids who wish to overthrow civilization, are provided their own PrC that gains augmented spells every other level, an ability similar to favored enemy of rangers, poison use, and some extra abilities like dire shape. If they gained spells every level they might be a little too powerful, but as is, should provide the GM a nice alternative to standard druids, especially those who hate infidels who defile the natural order.
For some reason, the NPCs are stated out in appendix three instead of directly after the module. Some of the stats and abilities seem questionable and GMs should give the whole section a quick check to insure that any changes necessary to make them comply with standard rules is noted.
Now in terms of the adventure, one of the things that make this a solid three is the handouts. I love handouts and the various notes and player’s maps are great aids. In addition, the promise of future adventure expansions, much like the first interludes book, makes this a resource that the GM may come back to several times.
For those looking for a good adventure and some source material, Sands of Pain is worth looking into. Those more interested only in crunchy stuff and source material might be better off waiting for Dry Lands: Empires of the Dragon Sands.
