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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8405136" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon issue 35: May/Jun 1992part 2/5Twilight's Last Gleaming: James Jacobs continues to appear more frequently in here than he will for a long time in Dragon. it starts with a premise we've seen a couple of times before in here, that of a gloomy pass through rough mountains that is also an important trade route, making it easy pickings for any monsters who can control the high grounds and ambush travellers. The PC's get asked to clear it out. This does not turn out like the previous times, however, but leads into a far more epic plot in which a Rakshasa imprisoned in the demiplane of shadow seeks his freedom. Through a convoluted series of events, the artifact binding him's power was weakened, but not broken, so his spirit could leave and possess people, but despite being considerably less vulnerable in this state he'd still prefer his original body back. You get manipulated into going there and freeing him. Presuming you follow the exposition without getting suspicious of course, as there are some clues that this isn't entirely legit if you keep your eyes open. But even if you do, that won't ruin the challenge, merely shift the grounds you fight it on, and maybe skip some of the middle encounters. A pretty interesting adventure, with my main complaint being that it's too small, and feels like it was originally a much larger story that was heavily hacked down in editing. With a well-fleshed out antagonist like this, which has the potential to be the big bad for a whole campaign, it's a shame to throw them away after a session or two of adventure. It makes me itch for the future issues where they will embrace the idea of multi-part adventure paths where you can foreshadow the big bad long in advance, instead of having to tweak a bunch of small adventures to make them seem like a bigger whole post-hoc. Better press on if I want to get to the years he's staff instead of just a freelancer in a decent amount of time then.</blockquote>

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