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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8975391" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 73: Mar/April 1999part 3/5Eye of Myrkul: The mere of dead men series has already gone on longer than any previous attempts at continuity in here. Now the finale also squeaks past their record for biggest single adventure as well, at a full 32 pages. (although quite a bit of that is all the exposition about the history of the area that was only hinted at in the previous 4 adventures, how it was created and why it has so many ruined places now suitable for adventure, plus several new spells and magical items.) After getting into a comfortable routine of accepting missions from Sir Justin, doing them and getting your reward, Sir Justin is kidnapped while you're out by our cover star, who wants the PC's to get him a macguffin from the ruined temple of Myrkul. This is obviously a bad idea, but since you're probably not strong enough to beat him in a head-on fight, plus you still have no idea where Sir Justin is even if you did manage to kill him the party is probably going to have to go along with the plot anyway. It's time to venture into the very worst depths of the swamp to reach the Uthtower. You'd better have recovered at least one of the Rings of Myrkul from previous adventures, otherwise you're going to find this a lot harder as it's packed with undead and some of the ancient magics are keyed off them. There's also multiple complications that make this not just a straightforward dungeoncrawl. First is that your "employer" is hedging their bets by sending another (evil) adventuring party after the same goal. Unless you're very fast they'll catch up with you at some point during the adventure and then you'll have to decide whether to fight them for the prizes or work together temporarily. (while watching each other for betrayal) Second is that certain actions in the dungeon can wind up strengthening or weakening Myrkul's power. If you weaken it too much, you'll break the curse on the mere and make it a substantially less hostile place, but the dungeon will also slowly collapse, forcing you to make a hasty escape even if you haven't explored everything yet. If you strengthen it, you'll probably get the better treasure short term, but you also set things up for further trouble in the long run. You're faced with a similar choice once you get back, as while they won't betray you, just giving the dragon the macguffins will allow them to go ahead with other long-term plans and result in Sir Justin giving the PC's a good bollocking in the debrief, as he'd be entirely wiling to sacrifice his life to fight evil. To get the best ending you should figure out some way of getting the drop on them and winning the fight now you've had time to prepare. So while this is slightly more railroady than previous instalments, it still offers you plenty of choices, not all of which are obvious, and at least some degree of moral ambiguity as well. Whatever route you take, it leaves you several ideas for further adventures involving the mere and it's inhabitants, so despite it technically being the ending you now have plenty of material to create follow-ups with. All in all it works pretty well as both an adventure and a bit of worldbuilding, although despite it's size it's nowhere near the longest adventure they've ever done in terms of actual play length. There's still plenty of room for them to escalate further in terms of both overall adventure path length and scope of challenges in future attempts. Nodwick's party turn on Sir Justin at the debriefing because what kind of monster would make Piffany cry no matter how much they screwed up the adventure's objectives?</blockquote>

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