Against the Barrow King

Simon Collins

Explorer
Beware! This review contains major spoilers.

This is the fourth booster adventure by AEG. It is designed for four to six characters of level 3-5. It costs $2.49.

Production and Presentation: This module is (theoretically) 16 pages but each page is only ½ the width of an A4 page. The front (soft)cover features poor colour artwork, the back cover features an introduction for the players to the adventure. There are two poor internal pieces of black & white artwork and the central pages contain a basic map of the tomb of the barrow king, sufficient to run the adventure. The final page and the inside back cover contains OGL bumpf. The inside front cover contains advertising. In addition, one of the pages contains a space for notes (i.e. a wasted page).

The Story: A cult devoted to the god of slaughter are kidnapping local villagers for their vile practices. They are using the site of an ancient burial ground as their base, leading the villagers to believe they work for the barrow king, an undead spirit said to haunt the ruins. The PCs job is to investigate. The burial ground contains a tomb to the barrow king, which is guarded by orc and human cultists, as well as containing various monsters, including a new monster – a construct (made of sewn on body parts and razors) called a chirurgeon, created by the cleric of the cult. Some prisoners are also held here. The final showdown is with the cleric, and the leader of the cult – a fighter with a rather nasty magical axe, who could be mistaken for the barrow king – there is no actual undead spirit of the barrow king in the adventure.

The High Points: The black axe of the cults leader, bestowing a negative level on a wielder of lawful alignment, and constantly dripping blood, is a nicely detailed magical item. One of the prisoners in a cage is actually a ghoul – a rather nasty surprise awaits the good deed-doer.

The Low Points: As the previous three AEG modules, this is again combat-focussed and relatively linear, despite the seeming mystery presented at the beginning of the module. The wasted ‘Notes’ page was annoying, perhaps it could have been replaced with some art. No, wait, perhaps not, considering the general quality of art in this module. I felt that the chirurgeon was the weakest of the monsters presented in the first four modules.

Conclusion: As with the previous modules in this series, you get what you pay for. This seemed to me the weakest of the first four but it still scrapes an average rating from me.
 

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thundershot

Adventurer
Spoilers at your own risk below...





This adventure was the third in the series of AEG modules I used for my ongoing campaign. While it wasn't as expansive as the others, it made for a nice in-and-out adventure for the party.

THE GOOD: A nice mix of creatures in the tunnels, and the players had to figure out what to do with the rescued people as well. It was nice seeing the characters reacting to the monstrosities of the Chirgeons, which led to them being REALLY nasty by the end of it.

THE BAD: No real reason for the creature placement, other than "guarded by 3 orcs" or some such. Also, the Mimic thoroughly kicked my party's asses... No one died, but it came really close! I guess the good part is that people were on edge during the battle. Ha!

OTHER NOTES: Some of the best scenes in adventures are the ones that seem dull while reading them, but the players make it worthwhile as the random elements. When they interrupted the orcs playing dice games, the one character basically came up to them and spoke in Orc: "Is there room for more players?" She said, as she rattled her coins.
 

kingpaul

First Post
I was tempted to give this adventure a 2. I ran a group of 5 3rd level characters through this module, and they utterly destoyed everything in this module in a couple of hours. It was an interesting adventure, with a good mix of WotC and new creatures/items. It also fit nicely into my home-brewed campaign world.
 

The sleepy little town of Glenn Hollow receives a rude awakening when a house on its outskirts is sacked and its occupants vanish. Other attacks by mysterious raiders have revived legends of the dreaded Barrow King, a creature said to despise all life. But should the travel-weary adventurers heed the village elder's plea to save the town, the promised rewards are rich indeed.
For 4-6 characters of levels 3-5
 

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