Clik here to view.
We have moved into 1985 with today’s offering.
This adventure is bizarre.
And I don’t mean bizarre as in subject matter (although some parts are), but mostly in how it approaches the structure of a DSA adventure, how it rewards the characters, and how it transitions between parts. Oh, and how it utterly fails to give a proper resolution.
In fact from style and design to me this does not look like a DSA adventure, this looks more like a contemporary ADnD module, and not TSR either.
This has the feel of a Mayfair Games’ Role Aids scenario. Which easily could have been the model considering the time frame.
Also: treasure in this scenario is insane. Easily the biggest haul of game-breaking artifacts ever in a DSA scenario. A single of which (a harp that causes winds and storms) the GM is told not to leave in player hands at the end. Nothing like this is said about the lamp that can destroy any undead it shines on, the heart stone of a dragon, the “dragonslayer“, or a bow made from a demon horn. Those are all pretty campaign ruining artifacts that often received their own adventures in later years. Here they are just a bit of loot.
The adventure has three parts, the first is a cursed garden, the second your typical underground dungeon, the last an old tower with the titular demon on top. You can only proceed in all of them, you cannot go back after you move to the next part.
The beginning of the adventure is rather quaint: We are introduced to Throndwig of Warunk, who has the rather pacifist hobby of gardening and collecting plants. Unfortunately something has kidnapped his Ladifaahri, a plant-seeking flying kobold who recently found the crown jewel of his garden for him: the jaguar lily.
Clik here to view.
Much hay is made about the pacifism of the Warunkers and their lord here: “you might think the Warunkers are Swiss people that had mislaid their mountains” the author starts the introduction and then goes on about how they hire other people to fight for them if necessary.
I’m sorry? Swiss people?! The country with the 2nd highest rate of gun ownership in the world? Which has all entries to their country mined and ready to blow?
I think we have different views on how combat ready the Swiss are.
There’s only one entrance into the enchanted garden. Well. The author acknowledges you also could just go over the wall but that it’s “unhealthy” because a cursed plant is shooting at everything that’s climbing down the wall.
The whole book has a conversational style that feels like the author is just coming up with stuff on the fly.
After a short venture we find that whoever kidnapped the Ladi…fff…ehm… kobold took it into a hole in the ground. and so we have to follow.
It’s never quite clear why it was taken down there, and how the PCs are supposed to know that, but that’s where we go because the scenario tells us so.
Of course right after going down we get blocked from returning, so we better are fully equipped.
How would the heroes know it’s a one way path?
Beats me.
The dungeon is not that big, it’s the lair of an evil wizard, and it of course fails all kinds of logic checks you could apply to it: Where do the orcs come from? Where do they get food? The only paths in and out we can find lead to either the botanic garden on the city fortress, or out into the river. In fact how does the wizard even get in and out of there? He’s level 7, that’s hardly enough to just teleport.
There’s also a lack of conceptual reason: We just came in from the garden, why are there three portals here? Who is expected to get through them? Also they directly lead to the treasure chamber with the best loot.Why would you put the biggest doors in the whole dungeon, leading from the local palace, directly into your treasure chambers? Ugh.
In some parts this stuff is clearly just intended to be played around with. There is a “Banner of the Undead Lords” that summons friendly undead who will try to join your party (and later backstab you). That’s… an interesting interaction at least.
By the way the “Lords” in the text is in English for no obvious reasons, and it feels rather grating. Later on we will meet more undead that will join the party, then later try to backstab the PCs. A rather slow moving trap.
There is a teleporter here that transports people who know how to use it anywhere they know. That explains how the wizard gets out of there, but not how he gets in.
Of course nobody except the GM knows that it IS in fact a teleporter.
Maybe the wizard found some old teleporter and co-opted the place? Then there might be a second dungeon somewhere else. Hmmm…
One room has a lamp that starts to glow when people are near. At the same time a gigantic demon that is sleeping under the city awakens and causes the earth to shake until they either all die or just walk past it. A bunch of graves has both another undead that wants to join them and lead them to the boat he and his men arrived in (to backstab them, you can’t trust undead), the aforementioned demon bow, but also a scroll with an elvish spell formula. The latter is something that doesn’t really happen that much in DSA where the use of scrolls is not as codified, but here we have it.
Clik here to view.
A golem starts attacking them in a hallway. It’s quite impervious to most weapons the PCs might have, but when it reaches the stairs it will stumble, fall, and shatter.
*rubs eyes*
*exasperated sigh*
Clik here to view.
We meet the master of the labyrinth hiding behind the illusion of a tsunami.
He is literally called master of the labyrinth, no further name given. it seems he is a level 7 mage (seriously? The scenario is for level 5-10!) and he has a completely new spell that might make the fight difficult. (the Duplicatus, which creates illusionary duplicates of combatants).
In other words he is surprisingly weak sauce for the owner of this dungeon.
Clik here to view.
In the end we find the ship that can get us out, including the undead crew. well, unless their undead captain already tried to backstab us which causes them to turn to dust.
I mean, seriously. The only way out of the dungeon is this one boat, prepped ready to get out of the dungeon. Unless you figure out the teleporter and break the whole sequence.
Well, that is unless you fuck it up and break the boat and have to swim. Which means goodbye to loot and equipment and part 3 of the adventure. All a possibility.
Behind the area with the ship is a magic art gallery where pictures are either positive or negative, depending from which side you enter.
I don’t see any point in this. The adventure even acknowledges that it doesn’t have a point and only shows that even evil mages can have a sense of humor.
But it fills 2 more pages.
Part three starts with the characters out on the river. The current is strong, so there’s no way to stop until we reach the last part of the adventure: an old tower in the mouth of the river.
With atrocious architecture.
Clik here to view.
I mean seriously.
On the top we can see the Ladifaahri tied to a wagon wheel, hanging from a gallows pole.
Because yes, we obviously just entered a video game.
Clik here to view.
The tower has three more levels. We meet a captured ogre (captured by who?!), a harpy that just wants them to piss off, and the night demon, a demon that hides in the form of a jaguar lily during day, but becomes the shape of a WINGED LEOPARD AT NIGHT!
*crickets chirping*
yeah. I expected that demon to be a bit more impressive.
So anyway. the PCs fight the demon until he feels sufficiently hit, then he flies off into the night for other people to deal with…
…so yes, after this whole mess we don’t even get to finish the boss off.
But we rescued the kobold, which might be reason enough for good amounts of money and maybe even a noble rank or two.
So… it’s a bizarre mess of a scenario. It basically strings three different smaller scenarios together, none of which is well thought out. There are some neat ideas in here, and I think this could be fun. As long as people don’t think too much about all the implications of it all
Maybe this could work if me and the players would already be drunk when playing it?
Or it might work with kids. Despite some heavy implications there is not actually anything too scary in here.
This… is not a good adventure. I know I say that a lot about the early adventures, but this one is grating in a way that is just… exasperating. I guess it can work as an adventure, but to me as a GM it feels lackluster and forced. We are not even given a proper payoff in the end, as the boss… just kind of disappears. It might be this was supposed to be a sequel hook, but canonically that didn’t happen. And I think one of the reasons this didn’t happen was because this adventure module blows.
Maybe this was supposed to be a tournament adventure. The structure would fit. But tournaments never really were a thing in the German-language hobby. I have the suspicion the author took a bit too much inspiration from that type of DnD module.
Still a better module than B4 though.
Notes
- The stuff about the new spell with the mage surprised me. I had completely forgotten how limited the spell list of DSA in that time was, but yes, B6 previously had introduced spell 13 [sic!] and this one had the whole of two more spells.
- The ending might have been a sequel hook, but this adventure was never really revisited. According to the later novels the demon was canonically defeated by NPCs: the sword king Raidri Conchobair (who will be introduced in A1) and the wizard Rakorium from B3/B4
- in the end the heroes might end up enobled. Which never is really mentioned again, but ties in nicely with adventure A1 Die Verschwoerung von Gareth. Which also is like a quantum leap in adventure design. (but that one losely ties in with A2, which losely ties in with B13, which is why I don’t want to skip ahead too much
- This adventure has versions in German, French, and Dutch. No Italian this time. Interestingly the Dutch version was published ten years after the others (in 1996), and features the trade dress of the 3rd edition.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Running Tally (by quality, from best to worst):