By Bruce Boughner, Staff Reviewer and Co-host of Mortality Radio
Published by Bastion Press
Designer: Nathanael Christen; 46 pages, $5.99 (pdf download)
Caution: This review contains spoilers!!
Let’s start this off by saying Bastion’s one of MY favorite publishers. BUT one of my pet peeves about them is the unrealism of some of the artwork, I mean; I am a medievalist of over 24 years and really appreciate authenticity. Artwork that looks like it’s out of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, as opposed to Braveheart, just doesn’t do it for me. This product does not suffer from that. The art, by Patricio Soler, is some of THE best that I have seen and really gives punch to the monster descriptions. It is a 46-page adventure designed for four 5th level characters, but has room in sidebars to make it tougher for higher-level characters.
The background revolves around a retiring halfling merchant/adventurer who dealt in goods both mundane and exotic. During the course of her merchant years, the halflings followers built up a small town around the merchant house and the merchant was named mayor of this community. This town was built around a crossroads that used to be the home of a tribe of orcs lead by a diabolist named Ahkirat the Terrible. Ahkirat did his demon-summoning thing and sent his charges against a nearby dwarven temple. The dwarves, with the help of an elven paladin, repulsed these raids for many years.
Frustrated by his losses, Ahkirat summoned a succubus, who charmed her way into the paladin’s britches and slew him. Stunned by the elf’s murder, the dwarves were overrun by the orc hoard. Terrorizing the surrounding area for many years, Ahkirat mated with the demoness and sired 2 cambions. Ahkirat’s new found joys were short-lived as a coalition of dwarven priests and elven wizards led a force to drive the orcs out. The succubus was imprisoned, the dwarven temple was driven into the earth, taking out a good sized portion of the orcs, Ahkirat was slain and the entire place became a mass grave for orcs, dwarves and elves. Celestial hippogriffs were set to guard the ruins for the vessel holding the succubus was still buried below. The elves left the area. To the general populace, over the intervening centuries, all of this was forgotten, except for the 2 cambions. Malakhara became a warrior chieftain in his own right, while Thanorh tricked an elf wizard into apprenticing her. Moving in concert, the pair led away the celestial guardians and reopened the burial pit. Thanorh has raised an army of undead soldiers and off we go….
Celebrating the autumn festival, the characters, by dint of their achievements in the day’s sporting challenges are invited on a Great Hunt by the son of the mayor. A hippogriff cub is captured and the hunting party is then awash with strange attacks and happenings. Approached by an owl, they are led to (can anyone guess?), an orc-ridden wizards tower, an evil cleric at the head of an orc/undead army and the ghost of an elven warrior.
The setting is kept very generic to allow for its insertion into anyone’s campaign. A couple of basic hooks are offered to lead the horse (read PCs) to water and then the town of Fort Rollings is described, along with many NPCs. The Autumn Fest is then described, with guidelines for the tournaments for the PCs to compete in, also a mugging gives the chance for the PCs to ‘get noticed’.
The next section takes us on the hunt with Conrad (the mayor’s son) and Hawkeye (an elven archer) and 6 other halfling hunters. Holy Last of the Mohicans! From here, the plot runs from the synopsis with some interesting twists and turns. A general timeline of events is given as a guide for when to insert certain occurrences, but most is left for the DM to plot. Each encounter is described by area description, tactics of the encountered being, treasure and motivation of the encountered critter. This format works very well, as in other encounters, additional descriptive properties, such as traps and monsters, among other things can be inserted into the formula.
Treasure seems kinda sparse given the strength of some of the encounters, but it is a wilderness area. The module is finished with an NPC listing of all of the predominant personalities already described.
I really liked this story. It is well thought out and well planned with room to adapt. I thought some of the character naming was hokey but to each his own. As I stated before, the interior artwork is more than exceptional and well interspersed, the maps are very clear and well marked. The one drawback is this tendency to put all of the stat blocking at the end of the module instead of in the actual encounter. Let me say this, and I hope all you publishers are listening: THIS SUCKS!!!!! Put all the stats with the encounter so the DM doesn’t have to flip back and forth all the time. It saves time when we’re gaming and allows us to get more quality time in if the DM isn’t rifling through his paperwork!! This book is more than up to the usual high quality I’ve come to expect from a Bastion product and I would recommend it heartily.
To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.
