Beyond All Reason
Beyond All Reason is the latest in a line of adventures by Fiery Dragon Productions. The cover declares it to be an "epic fantasy adventure" for 13th-level characters.
A First Look
Beyond All Reason is packaged as a 72-page, staple-bound soft cover book, priced at $10.95 U.S. The adventure lacks the inserts such as color cardstock counters or color handouts that have been Fiery Dragon's hallmark. One cannot complain about this too much, however: the price per page ratio is exceptionally low for a product in this range.
The front cover art, by Brian LeBlanc, depicts a party of adventurers clashing with two dusky skinned giants wielding swords. The picture appears to be a painting and has few details beyond the adventurers. The back cover art, by Claudio Pozas, depicts a pair of scantily-clad pointy-eared females being assailed by red haired giants. As with FDP's Of Sound Mind, I was given to wonder why Claudio's picture, which looked much better to my eye, was not used on the front cover.
The interior is black-and-white. The interior artwork is by Claudio Pozas, Todd Secord, and Tori Brine. The interior artwork is decent to good, with the exception of one picture of some characters conversing with a yuan-ti that struck me as awkward. The cartography was generally very well done, including a nice perspective view of the wilderness that leads up to the final dungeon.
The book has an average sized typeface and modest margins. Combined with the page count, this delivers a very high value based on quantity of content alone.
A Deeper Look
(Warning: The Following Description Contains Spoilers Regarding the Adventure.)
Beyond All Reason is set against the backdrop of Karathis, the in-house campaign world used by most of FDP's adventures. Fortunately, only a page or so is devoted to background – just enough to get you going with this somewhat unusual adventure – and there are fairly good notes and ideas for adapting the adventure to your game and involving the characters.
There are a few possibilities for how the PCs might get involved, but the basic idea is that the party will be asked to investigate (or stumble upon) the activities of some fire giants in a secluded valley. This fire giant clan, known as the Jirockk, was previously relatively peaceful, but recently has been up to activities that raise the curiosity and ire of the locals, such as attacking a human keep.
As the players investigate, they will notice a number of strange factors. The first thing that may arouse their suspicions is the fact that after the keep was attacked and the attack repulsed, there were a high number of deserters from the keep's troops. As the party travels through the valley, it will find a number of other curiosities that may make it apparent that the giants aren't on a simple campaign of aggression; many inhabitants of the valley are being abducted, and some are purposely allying themselves with the fire giants.
The truth of the matter (major spoiler) is that an ancient mind flayer with a knowledge of what is called Strange Mechanics has been freed from his ancient imprisonment, and his knowledge allows him to create a strange breed of bees. These bees have a sting that can make a victim psionically subservient to the queen bee, who is in turn under control of the mind flayer. This mind flayer has taken over the Jirockk tribe and is slowly taking over other races as well. The giants are helping him create a mead from the bees' honey that has a similar effect to their sting. He is slowly organizing an army under the control of his drones in preparation for major incursion.
As the players explore the valley, they can meet some druids whose mistress was carted off by the giants and find other signs of the giants' plan as well. Eventually, the PCs may find a potential ally in the yuan-ti who live in the valley. The yuan-ti are evil just like most yuan-ti are, but they share the concerns of the PCs about the mysterious behavior of the giants. If the PCs blow this potential alliance, they may regret it later on, as the yuan-ti's neutralize poison ability can help counter the effects of the drone honey mead.
The encounters in the valley are sorted into three types: random, event based, and fixed. The random encounters are things that the GM can throw in at his discretion. The event based encounters are supposedly essential, but not required to be in a fixed location. The fixed location events are also supposedly essential, but are marked in specific locations of the valley. Though this division is convenient, it seems as if the party could easily miss some of supposedly essential fixed encounters, though some of them don't seem that essential to me.
Though generally good, there were two small things that bothered me about the valley encounters. First, in some places the keys are a little hard to match to the map. For example, Event 1 (an encounter with a rather odd couple) is keyed to areas labeled 1a-1c, but the map has labels 2a-2c.
Second, it seems like the encounter with the yuan-ti could have afforded a little more development. This is bound to be a sticky point with players familiar with the yuan-ti. A little more build-up of the mood of explanation of the yuan-ti's reaction and behavior could have made this a little stronger, moodier encounter with a little less chance of a bloodbath.
After investigating a few sites in the valley, the PCs must take on the mind flayer and his armies in his fortress. The fortress is a fire giant lair in some lava tubes that are part of a large volcano. The mind flayer has instituted some changes since he took charge, including an ever so convenient elevator that cuts through several levels of the complex.
The fortress appears very difficult, but shrewd players may discover that they can fool the mind-thralls into believing they have also fallen under the influence of the drones. Eventually, the PCs will probably come to blows with the inhabitants of the fortress during their investigation.
The players can find the last few pieces of the puzzle by freeing some prisoners or thralls of the drones. Eventually, they should discover that the mind flayer behind all of this, and his pet swarm of bees, are the targets to take out, as they represent a very real threat.
Statistic blocks for all creatures in the complex are included in the back. The author makes good use of the rules, including a number of featured monster characters the players can fight or ally with.
As with most FDP adventures, there are a number of new magic items introduced with the adventure. Most of them are odd devices used by the mind flayer villain.
Conclusion
Overall, I felt this was a fairly strong adventure. I saw few rules errors throughout, and it seems as if there are few places the adventure could go irrecoverably off the tracks if the players don't perform as anticipated.
This seems to be a classic quest-type dungeon crawl with a good deal of internal logic and a solid and compelling premise. The nature of the adventure reminded me of the classic Against the Giants series (a struggle against giants under external influence), though the three dimensional map of a fortress in a volcano reminded me of the old White Plume Mountain (but it has much more logic and internal consistency than that module).
-Alan D. Kohler
