Dezzavold: Fortress of the Drow

[Psion]

Dezzavold: Fortress of the Drow

Dezzavold: Fortress of the Drow is a setting and companion supplement for Green Ronin's fantastically devious Plot & Poison book regarding dark elves. The book is written by Christina Styles and Steven Trustrum, who also wrote Green Ronin's Corwyl: Village of the Wood Elves, and has ties to that book.

A First Look
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Dezzavold: Fortress of the Drow is a 96-page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $19.95.

The cover of the book, illustrated by James Ryman, depicts a number of dark elves leading some surface elves before some dark elf matron with a ghostly figure standing behind her.

The interior is black-and-white, and richly illustrated. Interior artists include Beth Trott, Caleb Cleveland, Liz Danforth, Mike Vilardi, and Jonathan Kirtz. Interior cartography is by Hal Mangold and Shawn Brown.

There were few editorial gaffes, but a few I noticed were consistent. I noticed right off was the lack of any spacing after the title of the book wherever it appeared in the text (apparently a search and replace gaff.) Also, for some reason, the actual number of HD the new creatures possess is missing from their entries (and are also missing from the advancement line).

A Deeper Look

Dezzavold is a setting and rules resource detailing a dark elf holding. This holding can be used either as a confrontation site for standard PCs, or possibly as a city setting for PCs with less heroic aspirations.

The history of Dezzavold, as described here, is linked to that of the village of Corwyl, described in Green Ronin's Corwyl: Village of the Wood Elves. The city of Dezzavold was originally inhabited by drow who had rebelled against the spider queen and chose to worship another, non-evil, deity, the so-called Lady of Mysteries. The peace between the drow of Dezzavold and their former home only held due to an edict by the spider queen herself, which only lasted while the matron of Dezzavold lived. After that time, the drow sought to slay their renegades.

As first described in Corwyl, the not-wholly evil drow of the time approached the village of Corwyl in an attempt to come to a truce, a possibility envisaged by their deity. The elves of Corwyl took this for a trap, and took to war against the drow of Dezzavold, a war that only subsided when the drow of Dezzavold had to ward off attacks from their former home.

This war caused Dezzavold to hire the drey, a new dark elf subrace introduced in Plot & Poison, as mercenaries. This was both the salvation and the undoing of the drow of Dezzavold. The drey slew the drow to the former home of the Dezzavold's drow, but they soon turned on them and took over the city.

The drey now plot against the surface elves and have a stranglehold on the city of Dezzavold. This is the backdrop against which the rest of the book is set. There are other complications that could arise that could make a campaign striving for or against Dezzavold interesting. PC might be those that protect Corwyl against the drow, or throw the shackles of the drey off the city and restore the former royal family, or they may simply try to get by amidst this interplay.

This backdrop is supported in two forms: rules and setting description.

Some of the new rules used here are from Plot & Poison. Many are just referenced or have appropriate excerpts (sufficient, for example, to run an NPC with a class from the book). Some of the more extensively referred to rules are repeated here. For example, the drey race is repeated in an appendix.

Among the new rules material are new creatures (other than the repeated material, all spiders associated with Dezzavold) and new core and prestige classes.

The new core classes are the black heart and the netherstrider. The black heart is a very specific class primarily representing followers of Nyarleth amongst the drey. The class itself is something of a hybrid between a barbarian and an unholy warrior type. The netherstrider are sort of a barbaric monk unarmed fighter type. The classes seem mechanically solid, but the concepts are a bit specific for what I normally consider justified for a 20-level class.

There are four prestige classes in the book:
-Demonican: A specialized summoner class with slowed spellcasting progression to make up for its class abilities. The demonican's special ability lets them imprison an outsider, and then sacrifice spell slots to use the outsider's abilities. A neat class, there is one apparent editorial error: class improvements over levels allow the character to extend the duration of the effects in the text, but the class table speaks in terms of uses per day.
-Discordant: The discordant are drow masters of disguise and infiltration.
-Huzzlatar: A specialized foe of the drow, the huzzlatar gain abilities such as darkvision, stealth against the same, and favored enemy style bonuses that allow them to better operate against the drow. The huzzlatarr also has its own spell list and spellcasting progression, similar to a blackguard.
-Warren Sentinel: The warren sentinel is something of a dark elf guardian and underdark scout. In addition to scouting ability and ability with spiders, the warren sentinel has its own spell list and spellcasting progression.

Overall, the prestige classes seemed like well balanced and compelling concepts for specialized characters.

A great part of the book is dedicated to describing Dezzavold itself. The maps show vault like city clefted into parts by a chasm. The city and fortress descriptions include keyed locale descriptions with numerous NPCs running businesses and other concerns. A separate section goes into further detail about the fortress of Dezzavold and likewise details encounters within.

A sizable appendix called Denizens of Dezzavold presents a variety of statistics blocks, along with repeating statistics for drey and drow deities from Plot & Poison. The statistics blocks include general NPCs such as scouts, slaves, warriors, and priestesses, along with the drey queen of Dezzavold and her eight “daggers” (as her henchmen are called).

NPC statistics blocks are consistent with 3.5 rules and use selected items from Plot & Poison. There are some nice flexibilities, such as some “add on” statistics to adapt priests to specific deities defined in the Plot & Poison book.

While it does seem solid, it doesn't follow the Plot & Poison convention that there are no drow aristocrats of the aristocrat class. While one might be able to explain this dichotomy with the circumstances of Dezzavold's history, there are some places where you think that this convention would hold, such as two drow families ruled by relatively weak drow aristocrat who has another family member who is much stronger, possessing PC classes.

Conclusions

Dezzavold is rich with potential as use as a setting for drow campaigns or battlegrounds for an anti-drow campaign. The backstory provides some rich potential for plot development, and several adventure possibilities are suggested for a war against Corwyl.

The statistics are solid, and it was nice to see that Dezzavold made better use of Plot & Poison than it seemed Corwyl made use of Bow & Blade. However, it seems to me Dezzavold brings less new material to the table, and the classes seem less justified and a less compelling addition to the game.

Edit: I upgraded this to a 4. As time goes on and my schedule gets busy, it becomes clear to me how useful ready-made stats for useful NPCs are. I'll stand my ground that the core classes weren't needed, though.

Overall Grade: B-

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Dezzavold: Fortress of the Drow, Green Ronin's companion book to Plot & Poison: A Guidebook to Drow, fully details a dark elf settlement, with professional maps, locations, fully statted NPCs, and a short adventure. You can send your players against Dezzavold or use it as the backdrop for a dark, dangerous campaign. Dezzavold was first introduced in Corwyl: Village of the Wood Elves. While four centuries have passed since the Dark War with Corwyl, the drow have not forgotten their treacherous elven kin. Now, in their city on the edge of the Below, the dark elves ready for war. And their leader, the Black Heart of Nyarleth, will show no mercy!

 

[maransreth]

Any reason why this is sitting in the pdf reviews?

Only comment I have.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Dezzavold, Fortress of the Drow, is another entry in the Races of Renown series by Green Ronin Press. This isn’t a racial sourcebook like Plot & Poison, but rather, like Corwyl, is a site for players to investigate and explore. Written by Christina Stiles and Steven Trustrum, Dezzavold comes in at 96 black and white pages for $19.95.

Like other books by Green Ronin, most of the art is great. We have fan favorites like Liz Danforth and Caleb Cleveland along with others like Beth Trott and Mike Vilardi among others. All the cartography is hanlded by Hal Mangold and Shawn Brown. While their overview of the fortress is useable, it lacks any artistic style to it. Their map of the Queen’s Fortress, while having scale, is fairly useless as it has no grid and personally, I’m too lazy to put a grid on these entries. It reminds me of the rough maps that Palladium Castles used on several products.

Dezzavold is broken into seven chapters and includes an appendix and an index. The seven chapters provide the reader with almost all the tools he’ll need to get started using the product. Dezzavold was founded by exiles and came under threat some time after their founding. Seeking help from the surface elves, they were betrayed and fought a war with the wood elves until other matters came up which caused them to hire mercenaries who eventually betrayed them and took over the city.

It’s a little more complicated than that. For instance, the drow that founded this city weren’t necessarily an ‘evil’ branch and were interested in reconciling with their surface brothers. The mercenaries who took over are more akin to the drow from first edition, the drey, in that the females are much more powerful than the males.

One thing I didn’t like about the book was the focus on new crunch. Plot and Poison was a huge and great sourcebook. Because this book is supposed to tie into that one, I found it odd that we have not one, but two new core classes, the black heart, a barbarian whose soul is given over to their drey patron, and the netherstrider, survivors who sharpen their claws and teeth to become the ultimate hunter. Each is done okay in terms of game mechanics but I question the inclusion of two brand new classes as opposed to tweaking current classes.

With the new monsters, something happened to the game stats. Where they should have hit dice, they have the type and number of hit points and CR is missing for all entries. This happens on all the full monster entries in the front of the book and the back so I don’t know what happened but thankfully, Green Ronin has errata for the crys spider, hound spider and the construct, the mitrhal guardian spider.

There are also a lot of PrCs in the book. These start with the Demonican, an arcane spellcaster with reduced spellcasting but the special ability to “Exploit Ability” of an outsider, taking on the outsider’s physical characteristics. One PrC, the Huzzlatarr, is for any non-drow elf, which is essentially, an elf who hunts down drow, which has been done in several other products, and seems a little out of place in a book about a drow fortress. It’s not that the game mechanics are bad or the ideas aren’t interesting, I’m wondering why this isn’t Plot & Poison II with new crunch for just about everything.
And then I realize, because a good chunk of the book covers the Dezzavold itself. These entries are a little too short for me. Most of them, especially when dealing with the NPC’s, seem like, “He is here for X.” Very little in terms of personality, history, or using the individual outside of its given context. ON the plus side, this allows them to put in full game mechanics for almost every encounter. Want to know what Sonneviss, a female serpent person’s stats are? No problem. Want to know what Dalsen Diddlehoff, a Halfling merchant’s ability scores are? You’re covered. For me, I found it space wasting. Coverage of the major NPC’s that the party might battle against would be great and coverage of common individuals, which is covered latter in the book, could’ve been eliminated altogether and the GM provided with more role playing tools.

The appendix does a nice job of providing a lot of game mechanics for the GM. These range from racial traits for the Drey and Drow, to game stats for the mercenaries who took over the city, The Black Heart of Nyarleth and her daggers. The nice thing about the daggers is that not all of them are drey. We have an interesting cast including a barbarian medusa and a tiefling rogue.

For me, I felt that there were too many references to too many books. I can understand the heavy undertones of Plot and Poison, it’s a drow sourcebook after all, but then they went back and provided a lot of details in abbreviated format found in that book. I felt that you’d have to own at minimum, Plot and Poison, Wood Elves, and Corwyl, to get the most out of this product. Heck ,several dwarf NPC’s have equipment from Hammer & Helm. For those looking to flesh out and expand a drow fortress, Dezzavold provides all the tools you need.

 

[Psion]

Fixed it.

 

[GameWyrd]

It wasn't that long ago since I reviewed Corwyl: Village of the Wood Elves. It's a stalwart product. Corwyl is a setting-cum-adventure (the best sort of pre-packaged adventure, I think) and an extension for Bow & Blade. One of my grumbles about Corwyl is that it was fairly heavily entwined with Drow plot. Drow. Mleh. I'll be stoned by some gamers for daring to suggest that the Drow are done to death and horribly dull. I don't like them in my games and was disappointed to find them as baggage for Corwyl. This does not mean that all Drow books are boring. One of the best supplements for the dark elves is Plot and Poison.

Wouldn't it all be merry if we could close this loop and say that Dezzavold: Fortress of the Drow is both an extension for Plot & Poison and the Drow tie in for Corwyl? Guess what? We can. It's all a tidy little loop and it works quite well.

It's important to say that you don't need to have Corwyl to use Dezzavold (nor do you need Dezzavold to use Corwyl). You'll read references to Corwyl and they might well make you wish you had the book but the war between the two is over and so the references can be entirely historical.

There's more of a need to have Plot and Poison. Dezzavold uses a pantheon of Drow gods introduced by the core supplement and makes heavy use of new races, notably the Drey, also introduced in the supplement. If you can wing the Drey stats then Plot and Poison's role as a prerequisite fades considerably... and there are male and female Drey NPC stat blocks in Dezzavold. I suspect most readers will be able to use Dezzavold without any other support.

Let's save the plot stuff to last. I'll give a warning when that brief overview is about to start to gamers worried about spoilers can turn a way. That said; if you're really worried about spoilers then stop reading now.

As required by International Law this d20 supplement has new prestige classes and feats. There are two new core classes too. The first new core class is the Black Heart - described as an unholy barbarian. Hmm. So it's a bit like a barbarian then? The class is a mix of barbarian and cleric. I like alternative classes for campaigns without main core classes; I'm less fond of them as extras. If all raging warriors in a campaign world were unholy cultists then the Black Heart would be a great alternative to the barbarian class. In most default D&D style worlds the Black Heart is simple a multi-classed barbarian-cleric or best reserved as a prestige class. The Netherstrider seems more like a race than a class. Netherstriders are hairy, savage and fanged people who have become feral underground dwellers. I think it's really up to GMs to work out why gnome Netherstriders develop in such a similar way to human, dwarf or any other race of Netherstriders. Personally I wouldn't want to muddy those waters.

The prestige classes are on firmer ground. The Demonican is a dangerous prestige class which specialises in not just summoning Outsiders but reducing them to energy and placing it in gems. Having trapped the Outsider the Demonican can then tap and wield their energy. The Discordants are Drow who use deception and infiltration to sew chaos and inflict acts of sabotage. The Huzzlatarr are hunters, zealot elves who track and destroy Drow. Warren Sentinels patrol and protect the labyrinth of tunnels which surround the Drow's underground cities and forts.

There are new monsters too. Monsters like the Mithral Guardian Spiders which are constructed to protect key areas in Drow empires. It's a bugger to work out what a Mithral Guardian Spider's challenge rating is. It's just as hard to cope with the Hound Spider and Crys Spider's challenge ratings and this is because all these spiders have unfortunate blank-typos for their challenge rating.

The rest of the book - that's no insignificant page count (there are 96 pages in total) - covers the fortress of Dezzavold, the outlying area, the city of Dezzavold and denizens (both generic and key NPCs). There are several pages of cartography and this includes a double page spread for the city of Dezzavold. It's tough drawing maps for an underground fortress in a black and white book and Dezzavold neither shines nor excels here. Unlike the high quality illustrations the map work in this supplement is mediocre.

Green Ronin's illustrations are traditionally good quality. Dezzavold benefits from usual Green Ronin successes. The layout is good. The print size and text density is spot on - you've plenty squeezed on to every page but it's still easy enough to read. There's no white space padding here.

Okay. Let's talk plot. It's time to go if you're worried about spoilers.

The founders of Dezzavold aren't so bad - at least not as far as Drow go. They were expelled from a city below where they built Dezzavold but where granted a strange stay of execution. The minute their queen died that stay was lifted and a rival Drow house attacked. This attack forced the Drow of Dezzvold to hire mercenaries. It also inspired the initial and ill-fated approach to Corwyl. The war with Corwyl made matters worse. Fortunately for Dezzavold their Drow rivals were distracted and then defeated by an invading Formorian army. Unfortunately for Dezzavold one harsh band of mercenaries they had hired to defend the fortresses betrayed them and took control of the city. The Black Heart now controls Dezzavold more harshly than most Drow queens would. The Black Heart are mainly Drey. They've banned the worship of the Spider Queen and other deities in favour of their own warlike demigod. The Black Heart didn't manage to kill all the rightful heirs to the throne though. Oops.

Here we have a plot set up where Drow PCs can plot to overthrow an especially harsh regime and one which followers neither the Spider Queen nor the less harsh Goddess which the Dezzavold survivors followed. There's also the plot where the Black Heart turn their attention on Corwyl and the book looks at a plausible and deadly simple attack plan.

I like the way Dezzavold stacks into Corwyl and the class books from Green Ronin. It's a rather costly little collection though. I also see Dezzavold as the last of the add ons in the set of four and as some compensation for the fact that Corwyl is entangled with Drow in the first place.

The main reason to pick up Dezzavold is to complete the set (or to keep the set going if (when) Green Ronin release more). There's less incentive to buy the book if you're not going to use the plot bits. The Black Heart, for example, make most sense if you use the mythos introduced in Plot and Poison. Over all, though, the book rarely puts a foot wrong and chalks up a "good enough" success.

* This Dezzavold review was first published on GameWyrd.