Lord of the Iron Fortress

Lord of the Iron Fortress

I have to come straight out and admit that I have pretty much steered clear of Wizards of the Coast modules to date. Most of them seemed a bit too formulaic to me, and the one that didn't seemed pretty poorly executed.

When I heard about Lord of the Iron Fortress, though, I knew I had to get it. Not only am I an unabashed Planescape fan, but the plane that the adventure is set on is one of my favorite spots to run an adventure on the great wheel.

Lord of the Iron Fortress is an adventure for 4 15th-level characters.

A First Look

Lord of the Iron Fortress is a 48-page, staple-bound soft cover booklet. The book is priced at $9.95 US. This is actually fairly good for products of a similar size or price by other d20 publishers.

The cover has the blue-rimmed styling similar to many GM-oriented 3e D&D books. The front cover by Todd Lockwood depicts adventurers under attack by some metallic monstrosities in front of a harsh looking fortress.

The interior is black-and-white. Most of the illustrations are by David Day (whose work you may have been exposed to in Masters of the Wild), though there is some recycled work by Wayne Reynolds. Day is a decent artist, but I don't find his work quite as interesting as that of Wayne Reynolds. The cartography is by Todd Gamble, and all of the maps are clear and attractive.

As with most WotC products, the typeface is fairly small. The margins are actually a little large by my eyes, but there is not much wasted whitespace or overly gratuitously sized artwork. Given the text density and price, this adventure delivers a fairly good value.

A Deeper Look
(Warning: This section contains spoilers.)

There are a number of ways that the characters can get involved in this adventure. Essentially, the hooks and lead-in boil down to one simple observance: many great smiths are being murdered, and for some reason, some of them cannot be raised from the dead.

The essential premise is that there is a powerful and ambitious half-dragon dwarf by the name of Imperagon who wishes to reforge a sword known as the blade of fiery might, a blade once wielded by a powerful lord of the efreet. This dwarf dwells in a fortress on one of many huge iron cubes that fill the void on the plane of Acheron, and he has a devil friend who is helping him abduct the souls of great smiths to labor away on restoring the blade of fiery might.

The supposed track that the characters are supposed to take is to plane shift or use some other means of transit to travel to Rigus, a gate-town on the neutral plane known as the Concordant Domain of the Outlands that leads to Acheron. I found this lead-in a little weak. Only one clue points the PCs to Rigus, plus there is the assumption that somehow the players are going to find it desirable to go to Rigus before they go to Acheron.

Assuming the party ever makes it to Rigus, it might get in a scrap with some mercykillers (overly judicious law-enforcers from the Planescape setting) or track down some of Imperagon's servants. The PCs might, if they decide to be friendly, be able to get a scroll and some information from an efreet merchant.

Once it is done in Rigus and finds the gate, the party can make its way to Acheron. The first encounter once the party reaches the plane is to bump into a drow riding a giant spider. Assuming the PCs don't immediately engage the drow, she has some useful information she might be able to offer the players about their final destination. Of course, if the players confront the drow, it is not too certain how they will find the cube for which they are searching.

Assuming they can locate the right cube, PCs must fly or teleport there. Once on the cube containing the fortress, a number of encounters are laid out for the party to deal with. If the PCs flew there, however, I am at a loss to why they wouldn't just scout out the cube by air and fly to the fortress.

Once at the fortress, the party must deal with it inhabitants, discover what is going on with the smiths, an confront the owner of the keep. The keep is populated by creatures such as the blade golem (a variation on the iron golem), as well as a number of new creatures such as the weapon eating steel predator. There are also a good number of classed monsters that should provide a challenge to the party, such as a kyton rogue and a mephit assassin.

In addition to the adventure itself, there are a number of new creatures and magic items, including the already mentioned steel predator, the axiomatic template (reproduced from Manual of the Planes), and the bladeling, a classic Planescape creature.

Conclusion

As is often the case with WotC products, the characters and statistics are impeccably done, and some of the custom creatures I found quite interesting, much as with the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Overall, the power level seemed appropriate and challenging.

That said, I was a little disappointed in this adventure. First, it seems like the motivation to go to Rigus is rather weak. Further, though the premise is interesting, the adventure itself seemed a little dry. This just isn't the type of thought intensive planar adventuring that I am used to, much to my chagrin. I expected some dungeon bashing, but some more meaningful character interaction would have been welcome.

-Alan D. Kohler

This is 48 page adventure from WOTC, reasonably priced at $9.95. It's for high level characters, 15th level or so. It doesn't appear to be part of the "Adventure Part" series, but it does have a very small tie-in with the Ashardalon plot line of them.

It's a planar travel adventure, and unfortunately (for me, at least), it has something of a tie in with the Planescape setting (and cosmology), as opposed to something completely original. But if you like Planescape and/or the regular D&D cosmology, you'll like that aspect of it.

While I'm a big fan of planar travel and different planes (just not Planescape), this module is remarkably simple when it comes to plot. Basically, the PCs must stop an evil bad guy from finishing his slightly diabolocal plans. I say slightly, because they really aren't bad - he's just trying to reforge a fairly powerful sword (powerful, but not earth-shakingly powerful).

Why must they? Well, good question. The module itself is rather vague on it. Part of the trouble of making high level adventures it that it's hard to get powerful characters to take part in them. There are several hooks given, but none are very compelling. (Personally, I took a page from the Elric novels, and just had the PCs appear on the bad guy's fortress, like Elric and others sometimes travel through planes at the whims of Fate. Or the Balance).

Anyway, assuming you follow the module plans, the adventure basically consists of 3 parts. The first part is trying to get to the evil guy's fortress. For reasons I don't really understand (I guess I need Manual of the Planes, or various Planescape books), they just can't go there directly. They have to go to a city on a neighboring plane, then cross over to the plane the fortress is on. The first part is pretty short, just a brief stop over. Guess it's for flavor.

The 2nd part is when they get to the location of the fortress itself, or rather, the 'cube' it sits on (apparently all things on this plane live on large cubes that fly around) it gets interesting. The PCs must first explore the cube to find the fortress. There are several different people on the cube, from evil ant people who aren't actually evil because they don't really enjoy enslaving people, to dragons, undead, and even some Slaad.

The 3rd and last part is the exploration/ransacking of the evil guy's fortress itself. This is a pretty decent dungeon crawl. Has all sorts of nasy types inside, including the obligatory torture chamber. Most of the rest is fairly original, though. At least, the types of critters in the fortress are (the plot, or fortress itself, it not).

For instance, the main bad guy is a half-red dragon, half-duergar, and he's not a wizard, but a fighter/cleric. There's also a lady Pit Fiend (I always thought Pit Fiends were male), and a fallen Archon. Part 3 is actually pretty short, so your PCs might be surprised to encounter the big fight so quickly.

The last part of the module has some new monsters, spells and magic items. A monster template is repeated from the Manual of the Planes, apparently. There's also the "Bladeling" which is pretty cool looking, but a pretty stupid concept (they're a humanoid race with blades sticking out of them - I feel sorry for their mothers) and the "Steel Predator", which is a metal eating cat like thing.

The new spells are "Cubehop", which lets the caster travel from cube to cube on Acheron (and on the plane of Rubix), and "Improved Arcane Lock", which is like Arcane Lock but lets people designated by the cast also move through the locked things. The new items aren't worth mentioning, to be honest, except for the "Blade of Fiery Might", which is an artifact/uber scimitar (huge unholy keen flaming burst +5). It's possible the PCs could end up with this, too, though it causes fire damage to the wielder.

Oh yeah, rounding it off, you get some pregenerated PCs, which of course, are the iconics! Woohoo! Like we haven't seen enough of Lidda & company.

Anyway, it's not a bad adventure. Not great, but not terrible, either. Very little role-playing in it, as opposed to combat. Very little art that is noticeable, except for one very nice (and a bit kinky) picture of the lady Pit Fiend (I think).

My main problems with it are philosophical.

For one, the party is apparently expected to befriend some Formians, who IMHO are evil, since they use slaves and actually enslave anyone they meet that is weaker than them. But since for some bizzare reason they aren't considered evil, they are okay for the PCs to make friends with. But they're not expected to make friends with a hobgoblin who is hunting some critters on the cube. Why? Because hobgoblins are evil, I guess. Never mind he doesn't act evil in this module.

For another, while the types of NPCs/enemies in this book are different, their personalities are bland or non-existent. For the most part, no one has much in the way of a personality. The only ones that stand out seem to be the lady Pit Fiend. Most aren't even given personalities.

While personalities are mostly good for role-playing, it can be helpful in both adding flavor to combat, and figuring out what sort of strategy they would use.

Lastly, while high level adventures are tricky to make, and even trickier to make plausible in the face of possible PC powers (like divination, scrying, teleportation, etc), I think this module did something of a poor job of handling it. It's nice that they tried, but I think things are far too contrived.

While these things don't really detract, they don't help either. So, ultimately it's a pretty average adventure.

The Basics: Lord of the Iron Fortress is a high-level adventure set on the plane of Acheron, realm of eternal war and clashing iron cubes. Special rules are provided for adventuring on this plane of cruel and rigid law, although they aren't really all that complex or limiting (a good thing).

Because the nature of the threat is secret when the scenario begins, I can't even reveal the adventure's premise without giving far too much away, so be warned that the spoilers begin here. Deep in the bowels of Acheron, the forge in the Iron Fortress is ringing. Imperagon, one of the dread Duergar's greatest smiths is toiling at his masterpiece. Soon the very gods will shudder in their halls, as the thing on the forge takes shape. For Imperagon has found the fragments of legendary Sword of Fiery Might lost blade of the Efriiti sultan, and with it he shall bring the order of the cosmos to its knees!

That's Imperagon's plan, anyway, and whether or not he can actually topple the gods from their thrones he is going to be a powerful, world-crushing menace with that sword in his twisted little hand. That's one bad dwarf! And as if he weren't bad enough, his wife is with him and she's nearly as tough. To make matters worse, some of the darkest powers in the universe are taking an insterst in his little enterprise and he has made some seriously mean allies. In addition to his clanking mechanical minions, Imperagon is guarded by a lady Pit Fiend and a fallen Archon. And just finding the Iron Fortress is a difficult and dangerous enough task in itself.

The adventure begins in the grim martial city of Rigus, on the neutral Plane of Concordant Opposition. Imperagon is busily severing all possible links to himself by sending out cybernetic assassins to kill people who know too much about his scheme. This draws the characters into the scenario (although to be honest, while there are a lot of adventure hooks listed, there isn't a lot of attention given to what the Player Characters are doing on the Plane of Concordant Opposition in the first place). After a chase or two through the streets of Rigus and a little detective work, the players find a forgotten gate to the Plane of Acheron and they're off to hunt the evil smith down in his lair. While there is an Efreet merchant who can give useful information to the players, the assumption is that characters this powerful will have access to divination spells so potent that they won't really need to do a lot of detective work. There is even a section on how to keep really powerful divination magic from messing up high-level adventures.

Once the PCs arrive in Acheron, things start to get really tough. A drow riding a gigantic spider gives the PCs some crucial information as to how to reach the Iron Fortress, but it's on the far side of the plane, in a different cube entirely. Getting there is going to be hazardous, particularly since Imperagon knows they're here, and will be sending his mechanical minions to harry them along the way.

Fortunately the players are not the only intruders in Imperagon's domain. A group of Formian colonists has arrived from the neighboring plane of Mechanus and are struggling to establish a foothold in this unforgiving realm. The PCs have a chance to rescue one of their young Myrmarchs from Imperagon's minions and make allies out of the Formians. This won't give the PCs an army of ant-men to go invade the Iron Fortress with (this is 3E, not Birthright) but it will give them a safe place to recover and to stage attacks on the fortress from, and that's going to be absolutely crucial to winning the scenario. Acheron is a hostile plane, and the way it wears characters down is almost as dangerous as the opposition they will face once they arrive.

The tower itself is formidable, and there isn't really any good way to stop Imperagon without storming it. While it might be possible to sneak in and kill off its guardians one by one, it is much more likely that the PCs are headed to a major confrontation with Imperagon, his wife and his chums the Pit Fiend an the Fallen Archon in his Audience Chamber. This climatic fight is especially harrowing, not just because of the strength of the opponents (although they are very strong) but because of the tactical skill with which they fight. The DM is given very precise instructions as to how to get the most out of the opposition's tactics and if used correctly, they will positively stop the stuffing out of most parties unless they use uncommonly good strategy themselves.


What I Liked: Production values are high, the product is slickly produced and attractively packaged. This is of course what we would expect from the guys who actually have the money.

As you can tell from the synopsis, this is genuinely a challenge for even very experienced characters. Players of less than 15th level will have a difficult time here, particularly in the scenario's devastating climactic encounter. It's surprisingly difficult to construct an adventure which does that. It's not just that high level characters have a lot of hit points and can do a lot of damage-they tend to have access to items and spells which can badly derail even the most carefully constructed plot. It's hard to have a mystery when the PCs can read peoples' minds, or to send them on a long perilous journey when they can reach their destination in the blink of an eye. This scenario rigorously addresses all the things that high level PCs can do to derail a plotline and for this alone it's worth buying.

It is great to have a section on how to keep high level divination spells from turning every plot you throw at the PCs into a shambles, although to be honest I wish Wizards of the Coast had put this section into the Dungeon masters Guide instead (perhaps several editions ago!)

This is also, it should be mentioned, an extra-planar adventure that does not require you to buy a copy of the Manual of the Planes. As eager as Wizards of the Coast sometimes seems to sell you core books, this is a feature worth appreciating. We learns everything we need to know about Acheron and the

I also loved the scenario's climax. The climactic encounter is devastating not because the PCs are met with overwhelming force, but because their opponents use such potent tactics.
It takes real skill to set something like that up and I'm properly impressed.

I should mention that Rigus is run by a harsh order of cosmic defenders called the Toll of Doom Brotherhood, and that this is both a cool name and a cool concept. The Brotherhood is just scary and just threatening enough to be impressive, without getting them into some sort of serious conflict with the PCs (which would of course sidetrack the adventure).

What I didn't Like: Imperagon is a hokey name. He's also half-dragon for no real reason apart from the fact that it makes him tough. A half-dragon half-dwarf is a silly concept, which immediately raises all sorts of awful questions in the reader's mind, distracting from the story (think for a second about a dog who is half Great Dane and half Chihuahua and you'll see what I mean). In fact the whole idea of a dwarf as an arch-villain is kind of problematic, as the producers of the Austin Powers movies seem to understand.

The writing style is surprisingly flat and uninspiring, particularly for a story of such epic scope. The writing is workmanlike and professional, but colorless and dry. The descriptive passage that you are supposed to read to the players are particularly brief and perfunctory, without a hint of wonder or magic. This is not the right approach for an epic quest to the far ends of reality, with a diabolical foe to defeat, a universe to save, unfathomable perils to face, etc. It's almost as though the writer couldn't really get into the material.

It does seem odd that despite being the legendary lair of brooding evil, the Iron Fortress is only two stories tall (three I you count the basement). Sauron had a better architectural firm, I suppose.

The Blade of Fiery Might "is a goofy, goofy name. It sounds like something badly translated from Japanese for a Final Fantasy game. This wouldn't be such a problem if so much of the scenario didn't revolve around this relic. You will, I fear, have to say "the Sword of Fiery Might" with a straight face many times to run this adventure.

In Conclusion: It's hard to find good, solid high-level adventures. High level characters have so many tricks up their sleeves, so many techniques in their arsenal, that there's a real art to giving them a challenge. There's more to it than making the monsters bigger and giving them more hit points. This scenario, despite o few rough spots, delivers completely on giving you a high-level adventure which actually works. For that alone it's worth it. After all, it only takes a second to change a few hokey names.

Lord of the Iron Fortress
Written by Andy Collins

The criteria I use to evaluate a d20 adventure includes the following:

1. Interesting and varied encounters: I look for unique encounters, allowing for a variety of role and roll playing.
2. Motivations for NPCs and Monsters: or some detail of how they interact with their environment or neighbors.
3. Logical: the adventure should obey a sense of logic that clever players can use to their advantage.
4. Writing Quality: this includes foreshadowing, mystery, and descriptions that bring locations and NPCs to life.
5. Ease of DMing: Clear maps, friendly stat blocks, skill check numbers, player handouts and illustrations.

I don't give much weight to text density and cost per page... I'd rather pay a lot for a small clever mystery than pay a little for a huge repetitive monster bash.
I don't give much weight to new monsters, prestige classes, and magic items... they can add a little variety to an adventure, but I consider them to be only decoration.

THE BASICS: (not exactly spoilers)
The adventure is 48 pages long, cover price of $9.95 American.
Both inside covers used for maps
1 pages of credits/legal/advertising
6 pages of background, introduction, hooks, conclusion
28 pages of adventure, (3 pgs city, 10 wilderness, 15 dungeon)
8 pages of NPC and monster stats
1 page of pregenerated characters
4 pages of new monsters and magic

The adventure is designed for 4 characters of level 15, with the expectation that they will be 17th at the end.
The adventure involves planer travel. The background plot is a fairly interesting mystery, but the mystery is largely not meant to be solved by any means other than combat... Some interesting ramifactions of the mystery are undeveloped... it is as if someone thought of a really great idea, then turned it over to someone else who simply wrote a straightforward dungeon crawl.

Approximately 20 combat encounters
Approximately 6 non-combat encounters that could also be combat.
Approximately 2 simple trap encounters
Approximately 3 of the above encounters are in interesting environments
Approximately 7 exploring encounters (variations on the empty or mostly empty room)

The EL for all encounters are very close to party level. The adventure is fairly setting neutral and could be dropped into any world, The planer element must be considered, and the Outlands city described might be a something new in the DMs campaign world.

The adventure is designed for 3.0. It could update to 3.5 fairly easily, although many tactics used by opponents will have to be changed: Enlarge and Haste are not as powerful as they once were. Also, there are problems of creature size (big creatures, small rooms), which are magnified in the transition to 3.5. For example: One room has 3 large creatures. In 3.0, these creatures would be 1 large (tall), and 2 large (long). The creatures are all crammed in a 10' by 15' room. In 3.0, this is just barely possible. In 3.5, this is also possible, but a little ridiculous and the creatures are all going to have penalties for squeezing in too small of an area. There are also creatures 18 ft. tall walking around where ceilings are 15' high... and some huge creatures that even the author acknowledges have a hard time fitting through doorways.

THE SPECIFICS: (Some Spoilers Follow)

1. Interesting and varied encounters: (3/5) The adventure contains opportunity for both role play and combat, but there is no clue for the players to determine when they should negotiate and when they shouldn't. I don't know if the adventure writers assume that players will always have some variation on true seeing available... but the "opportunities" for role playing are somewhat thin, it seems as if the more gruff and uncooperative NPCs are, the more likely that they would have useful information for the party if the party tries to negotiate... in any case, all of the NPCs seem like cannon fodder, and the party can kill everything. There isn't much of a game-driven need to negotiate, nor is there much of an in-game penalty for killing stuff you shouldn't. There are even experience rewards suggested for saving a few monsters, but absolutely no reason to save the monsters in the first place, nor any expectation that the monsters are worth saving.
A lot of the monsters seem to suffer from template-itis. Take a regular monster, make it half of something else, or add a "fiendish" or "Axiomatic" template to it. I don't personally mind it, but I feel that templates and half-monsters should be used sparingly and for effect. When you have fiendish giants with Fiendish hydras in one area, and Axiomatic rocs in another area... it seems a little bit trite. I am sure that some DMs will have no problem with this, and it might just be my grumbling. Come to think of it, an outer plane might be the one and only place where a lot of creatures would have the same templates applied over and over.
Most of the rooms in the dungeon are typical barracks/bedroom/guestroom/torture chamber/kitchen… pretty much all by the numbers, with the exception of a huge blast furnace encounter.

2. Motivations for monsters and NPCs: (2/5) I addressed some of these complaints above... that there seemed to be little rhyme or reason for saving certain creatures, for negotiating with others, and killing others. Many of the monsters seemed to lack personality, though a few arch-villains hinted at some character. For most negotiation encounters, it seemed that the more gruff the NPCs were, the greater the odds that the players are supposed to find a peaceful solution, where the creatures that seem friendly at first, are the ones the party should kill. I'm not sure why this is the case.

3. Logical: (2/5) The ecology of the particular plane is a bit strange. It could be my lack of experience with planer adventures... In a world consisting of vast steel cubes, what exactly are Rocs and Formians doing? I would have expected them to need some sort of food source... perhaps they just eat each other? There are steel predator creatures, which eat metal... that seems to make some sort of sense on an all-metal world. I might have expected more creatures of this nature, or perhaps more constructs or creatures that don't need to exist in a food-chain. I am not a stickler for realism... Clearly you have to suspend your disbelief to play these games... but for almost every encounter, I found myself thinking "What the heck is that doing here?". The advantage to the mix of creatures is that it provides variety in the encounters... It seems like there might be a formula somewhere that says "with 20 encounters, you should have 2 animals, 2 undead, 2 vermin, 1 ooze, 4 outsiders, etc... This assures that you'll have plenty for all of the classes to do, but it is at the expense of logic.
The showpiece of the adventure, the dungeon, is nearly as illogical as I could imagine any fortress to be. There is basically only one path that can be followed through the 3 level fortress, it involves going from floor 1, to a lower floor, back to floor 1, and then to floor 2. There are parts of the first floor that cannot be reached from other parts of the first floor without going down and up a staircase to get there. Players are forced to hit all of the encounters in order. This makes things very easy on the DM (and I suspect the writers), but it screams "who the heck builds this mess... why didn't they put a door here?" The people that live on the 2nd floor have a long walk to get outside... they must first walk down into the basement before they can come back out on the first floor.

4. Writing Quality: (3/5) Each individual encounter is usually fairly well written. There seems to be a very neutral tone in the writing. There isn't much flair or "voice". I didn't see any errors, there were no skimpy sections, everything received adequate treatment. If you want very professional text, this adventure is perfect. Personally, I like to see a little more of the author's unique vision, this text was a bit clinical.
One encounter is titled "Raiders of the lost cube," it may have been intended to be humorous, but the allusion evokes high adventure, puzzles, traps... The encounter that falls under the heading "Raiders of the lost cube" is a fairly straightforward combat on an open battlefield. For me to have said that this was good writing quality, the context of the scene should have something to do with the allusion... A rolling boulder, poisoned figs, or spectres emerging from a lost artifact: (sure, the combatants were "raiders", but this is a cop-out). If you are going to use a clever title, it should mean something in the context of the adventure.

5. Ease of DMing: (4/5) I think everything is laid out simply for the DM. If you are a new DM but have been afraid to run a high level adventure, this is a great place to start. Everything is small, controlled, and contained. There is boxed (read-aloud) text. There are no player handouts or illustrations. Some of the ease of DMing comes due to railroading at the expense of logic (see #3 above), so take this 4/5 rating with a grain of salt.

FINAL WORD:

Although I've liked a few previous entries in the Adventure Path series, especially Forge of Fury and to a slightly lesser degree, Sunless Citadel. I had somewhat high expectations for a planer adventure, and this fell very short. It had the feel of an "adventure-by-committee" rather than by a single author with a vision. Perhaps this was over-edited, It just seems incredibly bland. The idea behind the adventure was great, there is just so much more that could have been done with it rather than reduce it to a simple dungeon crawl. Other than the background, there was absolutely nothing in the adventure that impressed or surprised me.

Underwhelming

I just picked up "Lord of the Iron Fortress" in February of 2005 (my group is still playing 3.0). I wanted to see this 15th-level entry in WOTC's core Adventure Path series to see the "official" take on high-level D&D play, as my group is starting to experiment with that for the first time.

I'm basically disappointed. For a high-level adventure in the outer planes, it has a surprisingly pedestrian feel to me. It's written by Andy Collins, author of the D&D 3.5 revision, and this hasn't increased my estimation of his body of work. Here's some specific observations below.

- The current school of thought seems to have disappointingly removed the *wierdness* of the Outer Planes. Admittedly, I first encountered the Outer Planes in Gygax's 1st Ed. work (such as module Q1), and this module is in fact "dedicated to the fans of the Planescape campaign setting", which I found distasteful. Nontheless, in this new tradition, the Outer Planes are a minimally different setting with people living in villages and towns, holding down jobs, sleeping on cots, and cooking in the kitchen just like anyplace else. I don't understand what advantage there is to setting this on the Outer Planes; it seems like making the trip and then confronting banality is a real letdown.

- Similarly, creatures on the Outer Planes generally don't seem to be the spirit-folk that I would expect. Occasionally the status of "petitioner" is mentioned, but there's really no look-and-feel difference in that. The fact that one Outer Planes battlefield of supposedly extraplanar humanoids is now haunted by some spectres of those killed in the fighting is particularly difficult to make sense of. Per Planescape, apparently creatures in the Outer Planes are in general simply somewhat exotic normal creatures.

- In this adventure, the PCs travel to a certain Outer Plane and never encounter the kind of thing the plane is most well-known for, completely skipping that flavor. (Namely, Acheron and its eternal warring armies.) Likewise, the current milieu for the Outer Planes allows any creatures from any other planes to be travelling through, taking residence, and occupying parts of the plane, which again makes for a mishmash without a particular unearthly flavor.

- The setting is a Lawful and military Outer Plane, but the illustrations of the environment feature randomly slashed up terrain, and the description of the ultimate fortress is one of "a ramshackle collection of metal plates". It seems like the author missed a chance to carry through on imagining what a truly Lawful extradimensional realm would be like.

- The key villain is planning on taking over whole worlds in an extradimensional invasion, and yet he is described as being unwilling to confront 100 or so mundane resisters within a number of miles of his stronghold.

- The fortress itself is surprisingly small, only 100 feet square. For an extradimensional home of a would-be planetary conqueror, that's pretty puny -- most mundane D&D castles, and those in the real world, are significantly larger than that. Rooms described as "large" or "vast" are often fairly small compared to other D&D adventures. In fact, there are many locations where inhabitants practically fill the whole room shoulder-to-shoulder based on their standard 3.0 facing sizes.

- Finally, I'm a bit let down by the way 3.0 adventures by Collins (or Cook) tend to be fairly predictable in having a fighting monster encounter in every room, pretty reliably set at exactly the Encounter Level of the adventuring party. You can often leaf through page after page of EL15, EL15, EL15 monster encounters in this text. I would expect more surprises, traps, tricks, and general wonderment in an extradimensional realm than this. Slapping on a bunch of "fiendish" templates doesn't quite cut it.

Two things I will say in favor of this book are:

- The levels in the fortress are cleverly laid out, considering that one location on a level may not be accessible from another location on the same level. This requires going up, down, back up, and up again (or something) in order to explore the entire fortress, and that's rather refreshing.

- The section in the front of several pages addressing high-level divination effects, how much information they provide, and possible defenses against them is fairly helpful. Not anything too surprising or revolutionary, but I do like the fact that the defenses in this adventure are all basically tied in to core-rules spell effects, and not merely shut down by unknown magical forces.

So I'll give this adventure a 2-Stars, "Bad" rating. Surprisingly disappointing, but not without a few redeeming qualities.