Beware! This review contains major spoilers.
This is not a playtest review.
The Twenty Sides Of The Evil (TTSOTE) is a sequel to 0one Games' "Legend of the Steel General" (LOTSG) adventure, and is designed for characters of level 4. Both adventures are heavily influenced by David Gemmell's Drenai novels.
The adventure is a downloadable 9.6MB .pdf file coming in at $9.95. The adventure is 80 pages long and at first glance seems fairly expensive (compare to Natural d20 Press' "Tournaments, Fairs & Taverns" coming in at $5 for 74 pages). Part of the reason for this more expensive price tag is probably the quality of the artwork and maps, particularly the exquisite full colour maps (which can be used as battle maps if you can afford the colour toner). The quality of the writing is fairly good, though there are regular grammatical mistakes that imply the author's first language isn't English - unfortunately, none more so than the title itself. Editing is hard to assess, given this factor.
The adventure itself follows on directly from The Steel General, and may need a bit of work to run as a stand-alone, though there are brief guidelines for doing so. The adventure also presumes the PC managed to save the fortress in the previous adventure, but again gives brief guidelines where this was not the case.
Immediately after the fortress has been saved (in Legend of the Steel General), the Nath contingent (a large part of the defence forces) leave suddenly, given orders by their king to do so. The general in charge of the defence of the fortress charges the PCs with a mission to travel to the Nath king's palace to discover the reasons behind the withdrawal, suspecting foul play.
In addition, the general asks the PCs to investigate the disappearance of a royal courier bearing important news from the Draman capital, who went missing somewhere along the PCs intial travel route. This is a bit of luck, since the courier's news has bearing on the remainder of the adventure. Those PCs who ignore the second part of the general's request are likely to flounder (and miss half of the adventure).
In addition to this, there is a backdrop story surrounding the theft of a magical sword at the end of The Steel General adventure, which ties in with the later parts of TTSOTE.
The PCs must follow the clues given in the courier's message, facing a Draman bandit gang before setting off to a ruined temple guarded by minions of an evil brotherhood. The Brotherhood of the Seven Souls plots to tear apart the fragile coalition of nations that currently holds the barbarian hordes from devastating invasion. One of these plot threads form the backbone of this adventure.
The PCs must attempt to retrieve magical items, designed to combat the growing evil of the Brotherhood, from the temple. Here, we first encounter an example of the Night Devil template - humans or animals who are magically transformed into slaves of the Brotherhood, using a ritual which involves removing the heart from the still-living victim and placing it into a magical jar. The victims become Magical Beasts protected by magical darkness, with enhanced speed and the ability to disrupt spellcasters in their vicinity. Night Devils of various types are used predominantly as opponents during much of the adventure.
The ruined temple holds a number of varied challenges for the PCs, including combat, traps, puzzles, and roleplaying. Travelling on, they encounter a powerful cleric of the Brotherhood in a river port before travelling further to Nath Rex, the capital of the Nath and the location of the Nath king's palace.
They enter the palace and are granted an audience with the king. It appears the king does not have full control of his faculties. The PCs also meet the evil cleric who is the head of the Brotherhood in Nath Rex (and is magically influencing the king), plus one or more spies loyal to the throne who are working against the Brotherhood. The PCs may later gain an audience with the head of the spy network, which proves to be far more useful than their meeting with the king.
This meeting allows the PCs to discover an arch-thief called Demonbrain has arrived in Nath Rex with the magical sword stolen from the fortress in The Steel General adventure. The thief intends to sell the sword to the Brotherhood. They also learn the Brotherhood is in the process of creating an evil artifact to protect a dark being who is worshipped by the Brotherhood and has its lair beneath the king's palace. The Spy Master asks the PCs to help in a plan to free the king from the clutches of the Brotherhood. They must infiltrate the palace in disguise.
The PCs enter the dungeons beneath the palace and witness the meeting between the Head of the Brotherhood and the thief Demonbrain. Demonbrain is actually the good archmage Gadrath in disguise, come to kill the dark being beneath the palace. The dark being is none other than one of the seven generals who hold a piece of the soul of the shattered evil god, Zadrak. It is the dark general who seeks the sword, for it is a means of reunifying the soul of Zadrak.
In the ensuing battle, the PCs can do various things to aid Gadrath against the dark general and the head of the Brotherhood. They are aided by the Nath king's son, also disguised. The climax depends on the PCs actions at this time.
The main chapters are split into two sections - events (which are dependent on PC actions), and locations (where the events take place).
After the adventure, the appendices contain information on the Brotherhood of the Seven Souls (with rules for creating clerics), the Night Devil template and stats for two Gwarks, undead beings who guard the king and must be distracted if the PCs are to rescue the king. The magical items that can be retrieved from the ruined temple are also detailed here. The remainder of the module contains various handouts and maps. Finally, there are some PCs that can be used for play.
Note that the adventure itself takes up only half of the page count.
Conclusion:
Like the Legend of the Steel General adventure, TTSOTE has a rip-roaring plot, a fascinating setting, with some powerful enemies and a good mixture of combat, roleplaying, traps and puzzles. It is better orchestrated than its predecessor in terms of textual organisation whilst the maps are still of very high quality. The adventure is still somewhat railroaded at times, though not nearly as bluntly as LOTSG.
The stats for the major NPCs contain mistakes, mainly in the areas of skills and saving throws, and would have to be re-figured before play. Worst, the ELs of the scenarios are mainly too high for the proposed character level, most having an EL of roughly 10-12 for 4th level characters, with ELs of up to 17 and more (though the adventure does not state the EL of any scene). Playtesters are listed in the acknowledgements so I can't understand how this was missed, though some of the scenes with higher ELs could be avoided by thoughtful and experienced parties. Like LOTSG, the character level for TTSOTE should be upped significantly - both adventures could be run following on from one another if their character level were increased by about 4 or so.
This adventure could have got a 4 or even a 5 if the above errors had been rectified before publication, along with some better editing/grammar. Its an improvement on LOTSG in several areas, but the mistakes were significant enough to still require a fair amount of re-jigging by the GM to make this adventure usable. 0One should invest in some better playtesting and editing if they want to improve their products.
