The Cult of Fane

[Keith Robinson]

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The Cult of Fane - a d20 fantasy adventure for 1st Level characters.

The Tower of Fane has stood as a brooding monument overlooking the old mountain path between the village of Mazula and Olthorn for a thousand years. Once home to Fane, a powerful wizard who made war on the people of south and wreaked his terror upon them, he was eventually defeated and trapped in his tower. A terrible curse was put upon that place - that he should never again walk upon the lands of Arrasia and would remain locked in his tower for all eternity.

News, therefore, of lights having been seen above the old tower and the mysterious disappearance of some of the folk of Mazula have set tongues wagging. Now kobolds have appeared in the mountains and people remember the legend: when kobolds return below the tower of lore, so will the evil Fane be Lord once more. So it is with suspicious eyes that the people now turn their attention toward the sinister Cult of Fane who live in the old mansion on the hill over Mazula, as they have done for hundreds of years.

Can the old tales of the Curse of Fane be true? Has the time now come when he will rise from the ashes and renew his ancient war, beginning once again the nightmare of the past?

So begins the experience of a lifetime.

The Cult of Fane can be played as part of The Last Mage of Mount Fane Trilogy or as an independant, stand alone adventure.

Product Details:
- a d20 adventure for 1st level characters by Keith Robinson
- illustrated by Gillian Pearce and Danilo Moretti
- cover art by Anne Stokes
- cartography by Keith Robinson
- 53 pages, including 11 illustrations, 8 maps, player handouts and a bonus trilogy map!
- fully bookmarked PDF

 

[Crothian]

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Ah, the joys of getting free product. In one of the billion threads that goes on on EN World there was a good discussion on reviewers that do not list if they get the product they reviewed as free or if they bought it. Now personally, I do not judge a book differently if I spent money on it or not but since it matters to some people I should include that information since I am not writing for myself but for the audience. It is good to get feedback like that because sometimes I am wrong and can do things better. Not only have I received this as a review copy but I got the campaign world of the Kyngdoms, the giant map of the world, and the Atlas all as review copies as well. Reviews of all of those can be found under the products in the review data base here on EN World. I mention them since the module is designed for that campaign world.

The module is a nice PDF by The Kyndoms. They have a nice campaign site that really shows everything the world has to offer. It is very well done and can easily be viewed to allow people to check and make sure the world is for them before they buy the PDFs. The PDF is fifty three pages long and very nicely laid out. These guys do a good job of making a PDF look good. The PDF is well book marked and has some great player handouts. I always enjoy player handouts and it is a great extra for an adventure to include it.

Cult of the Fane is a first level module and the first in a trilogy of modules. It can be played as a stand along and the author specifically addresses this option. The background of the module is pretty standard. There is a kobold problem that comes from a certain section of mountains. This brings up a local legend of bad things happening that foretold ages ago. So when a few local villagers go missing the town really wants someone to investigate. Enter the player characters.

The story starts in the town as the player investigate what is going on and eventually learn some of the secrets in an old mansion. Then the adventure takes them into the mountains to an old church. A brief description of the next two adventures is given as well with the promise that those like this can easily be used alone. Reading through this adventure and the section on how to change it to make it a stand alone confirms that it will be an easy module to run that way.

The encounters are nice and appropriate for the level of the module. There are none that I would call hard so fear of death or even worse a total party kill is not going to be a big issue.

The adventure is fitting for low level characters. It is not that complicated and it is pretty straight forward. The module would make a good beginning to a campaign and also ease players into the setting and the game if needed. The module is also not needed to be run in this setting. With a little work this could easily be made into a module for Forgotten Realms and Kalamar.