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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9182710" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 90/149: Jan/Feb 2002part 5/12Tears for Twilight Hollow: An issue of record-breaking size deserves at least one adventure of similar scale. Freed from editing three magazines at once, Chris Perkins has the time & energy to deliver this 45 page mammoth with the help of similarly prolific White Wolf writer Angel Leigh McCoy, with Brom on the cover art just to push the boat out a little further. Like the other two adventures this issue, an isolated place has been cursed and the PC’s will either wander through and be drawn into the adventure or hear rumors and be specifically attracted there in search of heroic deeds to do. The problem is somewhat larger and more subtle this time though. Twilight Hollow is still there, the people are alive, but it’s shot through with darkness, as a priestess of Loviatar has taken control of the place masquerading as one of Ilmater, keeping her childhood friend who became a paladin in perpetual suspended animation, her soul fuelling a Devourer and attracting other unpleasantness to the area, which she of course tells them they have to suffer stoically through. You’d think they’d spot the difference, but obviously the creeds of Ilmater and Loviatar have quite a few parallels despite their alignment differences. Ilmater himself is not fooled of course, but as usual for gods doesn’t interfere directly, instead sending cryptic visions that’ll point the PC’s in the right direction if they’re not proactive enough investigators on their own. There’s definitely plenty to investigate, with 10 pages spent fleshing out the village and another 9 on various locations in the valley around, some of which would be a full adventure in themselves in a smaller scenario before you even get to the main course: finding the secret catacombs under the village with the hidden temple of Loviatar smack bang in the middle. In a lesser adventure, this is where things would degenerate into a static dungeoncrawl. But even here there’s a decent amount of detail about the movements of the dungeon creatures, plus info on what will happen if you stop to rest and heal instead of clearing it all out in one go, (which will be a significant issue given the number of potential encounters) as obviously the priestess won’t take too kindly to anyone discovering her secrets and will do her best to make your name mud back in the village. (and just killing her without any compelling evidence of her perfidy will have the same result) So this isn’t one with any particularly epic scope in terms of size of the area covered or potential wider impact on the world, but it is unusually detailed at all points within the adventure, able to give the characters and the world they inhabit the depth needed to let the players choose their path and still have an interesting story whatever route they take. As such, it won’t be joining Tortles of the Purple Sage, Umbra and Empire of the Ghouls on the list of all-time classics that really push the limits of what you can do with an adventure, but it’s still very playable and could fill quite a few sessions if you take your time with it and don’t discover the hidden temple straight away. If you like big 2eish sandboxes I can definitely recommend it.</blockquote>

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