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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9109473" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 84: Jan/Feb 2001part 2/6Maps of Mystery is a double bill this time. First up, Todd Morasch gives us an unusually topographic map of a peninsula with a jagged mountain range erupting on one side and a more gradual slope down to the sea on the other. Just like the real world americas then. Watch out for earthquakes in that region. Second is regular cartographer Craig Zipse, taking us to the Halls of Huhueteotl, a pyramid-dungeon suspended over lava pits. Since that’s obviously aztec based, the two maps could be used together pretty easily.The Harrowing: The last time they broke their record for biggest adventure was back in issue 73, and that was by a very narrow margin. In contrast, Monte Cook’s latest offering blows way past their last record for a single-part adventure and goes up to a full 42 pages. It’s also aimed at 15th level characters, more than triple any of the other 3e adventures so far. You’re not going to be able to play this for a while if you started with fresh 1st level characters along with the edition change. The premise is similarly large in scale, the kind of thing they’d never have allowed from a freelancer no matter how good the writing was. Lolth’s daughter is trying to usurp her mum. Thinking long-term, this might not be such a terrible thing for the universe, as infighting amongst the drow would make both factions easier to beat, but of course the ascension ritual requires large numbers of sacrifices and the PC’s world is among those in danger so you’re not in a position to be philosophical about it. Following the very large and obvious trail of dead animals will lead to a short linear dungeon, at the end of which is a portal to the Demonweb Pits. Thankfully the linearity lets up after this, with the map being typically web-like and three dimensional, with the opportunity to either walk in the tunnels inside the web strands or the outsides if you’re feeling brave. (although at that level, you really should have some flying magic to save you from slipping off into the endless void) There’s a whole load of monsters, some of which are loyal to Lolth and some to Laveth, but none will be pleased to see you unless you’re smart enough to disguise yourselves. Will you treat this as an all you can slay XP buffet, or actually try to figure out what’s going on and ally with one side over the other, at least temporarily? Either way, Lavesh will be pressing onward with her plans, with three distinct phases that change who is encountered where and what they’re doing there if you don’t stop them. Unless you’re fast or very lucky in the direction you choose you won’t encounter her until the middle of the final ritual, where she gets progressively more powerful if not disrupted. If you kill her, Lolth will not be grateful at all, (what’s a little backstabbing amongst family?) and you can expect irregular visits from drow assassins for the rest of your mortal lives. No good deed goes unpunished, eh?So this is a big, potentially setting changing adventure that balances between being a nostalgia trip to people who remember the original Q1, or maybe Monte’s other visit to the same stomping ground in Dead Gods, with being a whole new adventure and enough of a sourcebook to make the demonweb pits accessible to newer players. It includes quite a few new magic items, a new prestige class, (the Arachnomancer, which is typically underpowered like many of the first wave of spellcasting prestige classes due to having it’s own small spellcasting list rather than adding levels to your previous one) and converts fan favourites the Yochol to 3e rules. Even if you’re not in a position to use the whole thing there’s still probably elements you could take and use in other ways. It also puts an unusual amount of effort into it’s illustrations, with 6 pages of them at the end in the style of the old modules. It stands out from the crowd quite a bit, and could easily have been a standalone module if they wanted it to. But I guess it’s a bit too small for their current fashion in adventure design as it is, even if it is considerably bigger than the old 32 page ones. I guess that shows that this magazine still has an important place in their overall product strategy, making sure mid-sized adventures still have a place to go that’ll get them plenty of readers.</blockquote>

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